Essay by Ray Yasser
Even the most avid sports fan may well not realize that the modern athletic scholarship is no longer a ‘four-year deal.” A quiet evolution has occurred and the traditional four-year deal has been consigned to the dust bin in the athletic director's office. The modern athletic scholarship is now a one-year deal, renewable at the sole discretion of the university. The hypothesis of this Essay is that a viable antitrust cause of action exists on behalf of a scholarship recipient whose scholarship is not renewed, either because he or she has disappointed the coach or is no longer able to play due to an injury. The antitrust theory posits that NCAA member schools have agreed to limit athletic scholarships to one-year renewable awards and that this agreement is an unreasonable restraint of trade in violation of section 1 of the Sherman Act. The gist of the claim is that a highly recruited athlete would have been able to negotiate for a two-, three-, or four-year deal had the market not been artificially constrained by the illegal agreement. Abundant case law supports the viability of this theory. This Essay fully examines the theory, which, if successful, would fundamentally alter the way business is conducted in big-time intercollegiate athletics.
About the Author
Ray Yasser. Ray Yasser is the lead coauthor of Sports Law: Cases and Materials, a sports law casebook widely used in law schools around the country, and has published widely in the area of sports law. Yasser has served as plaintiffs' counsel in more than seventy Title IX cases, and he has also represented numerous athletes in eligibility disputes. He teaches torts, sports law, and antitrust law at the University of Tulsa, where he has won numerous teaching awards. His scholarly focus has been on the possibility of using the courts to reform the NCAA, and he has been actively involved in the effort to reform the BCS to establish a bona fide national playoff in Division I-A football.
Citation
86 Tul. L. Rev. 987 (2012)