Alex Moyer
83 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 761
With annual revenues exceeding twelve billion dollars, the college sports
industry is the highest-grossing sports enterprise in the United States, consistently
outpacing professional leagues like the NFL and NBA. This highly
commercialized environment helps to line the coffers of the NCAA, athletic
conferences, and universities, while making millionaires out of many coaches
and administrators. There is, however, one constituency that is unable to
share in the profits generated by college sports: the college players on whose
backs this endeavor is built. This inequity exists because the NCAA and its
member institutions, the same conferences and universities that reap the rewards
of growing revenues, have joined together to declare the players “amateurs.”
Through the NCAA-enforced amateurism rules, “student-athletes” are
denied the opportunity to be compensated for their labor, both directly and
indirectly, beyond the cost of their minimal academic scholarships. Despite
numerous past and ongoing challenges to these anticompetitive restraints,
including the recently decided O’Bannon v. NCAA lawsuit, the amateurism regime
remains largely intact due to courts’ deference to the NCAA’s
amateurism ideals.
To solve this problem, this Note examines and applies the Section 1 analysis
of the anticompetitive amateurism regime and proposes new compensation
rules to be implemented by Congress, although the courts or the NCAA
could also take the lead. The proposed rules, modeled on the Olympic amateurism
model, would guarantee student-athletes scholarships that cover the
actual cost of attendance, as well as grant access to the commercial free market,
allowing student-athletes to secure endorsement deals and get paid for
signing autographs, among other things. Such a proposal would not only
remedy the anticompetitive effects of the amateurism regime, but would also
bring justice to the beloved pastime of college sports.
