Sports Law: Alston vs NCAA

Student’s Name
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Sports Law Final Paper
Alston v. NCAA Case
Summary of the Decision
The Alston case was a unanimous decision in which the Supreme Court upheld a ruling by the United States Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit, which resulted in the striking down of the NCAA caps on student-athlete academic benefits based on the antitrust grounds. The decision overturned the traditionally unfair practice of the “no-pay for play.” The decision put the NCAA into a new reality. The capitalistic tendencies that the NCAA operated on, which upheld the status quo of restricting the student-athlete compensation, were no longer applicable.
Justice Gorsuch reasons that refusing to compensate the activities under the guise that the events were education-related amounted to a violation of the Sherman Act, which bars any “contract, combination, or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce.” The case had been brought before the court to challenge NCAA’s restrictions on student compensation. The plaintiffs argued that the NCAA was acting unfairly by restricting their compensation based on the virtue of them being students. NCAA was tasked with justifying its policy of not compensating the students. The NCAA, on its part, argued that the student-athlete program was unique and that the participants were armatures rather than professionals. The NCAA hoped that the court would utilize the antitrust difference and sought support from the 1984 NCAA v. Board of Regents.
The court rejected NCAA’s argument, noting that in NCAA’s reference case, the Board of Regents was not applicable to the questions of athlete compensation and also noted that the commentary of the decision that NCAA enjoys “ample latitude” under the federal antitrust law was only a pronouncement that did not warrant NCAA protection against the antitrust scrutiny. More specifically, the Court noted that the NCAA did not provide any economic analysis that would prove that the consumer market for college sports would suffer if the teenage athletes were compensated for their participation in the sports. The court noted that instead, the Alston plaintiffs sufficiently proved that the college sports popularity had increased significantly when the colleges allocated more allowances for sports. NCAA’s argument that the sports fans would stop attending the games or be hesitant to support college sports when the schools introduced a program to support the athletes was insufficient to sway the judges.
Justice Kavanagh provided a more elaborate ruling, in which he told the NCAA that it should appreciate the fact that the Court delivered a lenient decision for the organization. The judge argued that NCAA’s restrictions were comparable to a restaurant that cut the wages of its cooks because its customers prefer eating meals prepared by low-paid cooks. According to the judge, the NCCAA’s business model would be “… flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America.”
Meaning of the Ruling
The court’s ruling means that schools should begin finding ways to compensate their students who participate in sports events. Schools will have to re...