Tenured Law Professor. Fulbright Scholar. Sports Ethics Director. Attorney. Former Skadden. I write on Antitrust, IP, Higher Ed and Sports. [email protected]
Sometime years ago, circa 100 US colleges decided to operate their football and basketball teams like big-time commercial businesses. There are pros and cons that go along with that:
As Congress debates troubling legislation to regulate college sports, I am heading off to the EURAM conference to present a forthcoming @MinnesotaLawRev article entitled "Private Equity in College Sports," which I co-authored with @SunealBedi and John Holden: https://t.co/1Qq3JPwaep
It's a huge deal — albeit expected — that MLB is proposing centralizing all local TV revenue as part of its salary-cap proposal.
https://t.co/T3LdIwAuvu
When Maria Cantwell’s office called me about expanding the Sports Broadcasting Exemption to #NCAA sports, I suggested a bill to expand the exemption to “any sports league with athletes as employees and elsewhere fully subject to antitrust law.” She missed the big, beautiful boat!
It’s curious to me that @RutgersU offers an online B.S. in labor and employment relations. And yet, they are part of the Big Ten Conference, which cannot even admit that their football players are “employees.” At what point will sports hypocrisy affect educational credibility?
In the SEC, collective bargaining has gone from long-shot discussions to full-blown presentations.
More preliminary talks are expected here in Destin. While momentum grows, the concept is fraught with problems.
But, says one AD, “Maybe it is the answer.”
https://t.co/UiVDoaz5sN
That moment when you have all 150 exams for your very last course graded, reviewed and re-reviewed, and all that remains between you and summer break is clicking the “submit” button. 😍
@PiranhaRGJ I left out the word “view.” I was saying you and Richard Karcher have an iconoclastic view of Alston. I’m not saying you are normatively wrong. I am saying very few antitrust lawyers and law professors, myself included, see it as you two do.
Enjoy your holiday weekend as well.
If we go back to many of the pre-O’Bannon and pre-Alston antitrust lawsuits that failed, questionable drafting of the pleadings stands out. In particular, we see this in Banks v NCAA and Tanaka v Pac 10. I fear a potential repeat coming if we see overzealous neophyte lawyering.
The rule is an antitrust challenge waiting to happen. Many lawyers are undoubtedly lining up plaintiffs to bring a claim. And, troublingly, those lawyers that don’t understand the nuances of Rule of Reason scrutiny risk making bad case law for future athletes.
@PiranhaRGJ You and Richard Karcher have this iconoclastic with which I respectfully disagree. To me, the Alston decision was instrumental to the subsequent litigations of Tennessee v NCAA and Ohio v NCAA, which today serve to prevent NCAA restraints on third-party pay and athlete movement.
@PiranhaRGJ I would have loved to have taken a sledgehammer to the system. Jeffrey Kessler went in with a chisel. Jeffrey is one of the most successful lawyers I’ve ever met, and he worked on White v NFL and McNeil v NFL, which changed the pro football system. I give great deference there
The rule is an antitrust challenge waiting to happen. Many lawyers are undoubtedly lining up plaintiffs to bring a claim. And, troublingly, those lawyers that don’t understand the nuances of Rule of Reason scrutiny risk making bad case law for future athletes.