NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

The Following was sent to NCSA by the legal team representing Oliver vs the NCAA.  His comments regarding the NCAA are extremely interesting.

Media–

Other Recent NCAA Lawsuits: In today’s Indianapolis Star, Mark Alesia discusses our lawsuit as well as two (2) of the three (3) other recent lawsuits against the NCAA that relate to the NCAA’s profits earned on the backs of its members’ student-athletes without any compensation. These recent lawsuits have also been covered by the New York Times’ William C. Rhoden on July 22nd, Pete Thamel on July 21st, and Katie Thomas on July 3rd; there is a condensed discussion of all three (3) recent ones on the July 23rd Wall Street Journal Law Blog. I wish to make two (2) comments regarding all of this:

First, the idea that the Oliver lawsuit is about “amateurism” is a red-herring, because it is not–it’s about the right of counsel, which the NCAA attempted to prohibit in order to protect its free labor market vis-à-vis the professional leagues very expensive labor markets, in my opinion. As the judge noted in our case, there is simply no connection between the NCAA’s purported goal of “amateurism” and allowing student-athletes to be represented by counsel in negotiations that the NCAA allows them to engage in. What the NCAA is afraid of, in my opinion, is that the best student-athletes will go pro at a younger age, with the advice of expert legal counsel, which will diminish the NCAA’s “product,” which is the broadcast rights to student-athlete competitions. This is not “amateurism” but “commercialism,” as admitted by Myles Brand in the April 1st edition of USA Today, and the NCAA is using it’s idyllic notion of “amateurism,” which no longer exists today, to illegally compete against the professional sports leagues for broadcast revenues, in my opinion. It’s that simple. Moreover, the number of superstar young athletes, who can go pro at a very young age is so small that the impact would be minor in any case (look how few basketball players are skipping college and going to Europe to escape the first-year draft ban).

Second, this new wave of lawsuits, some of which cite to ours, assume that the NCAA’s Student-Athlete Statement is a contract that the NCAA uses to gain ownership of the student-athletes’ copyrights and rights of publicity, when Myles Brand is on record as stating that the NCAA does not own their rights of publicity, and when the NCAA has taken the position in our case that it has NO contractual relationship whatsoever with its members’ student-athletes. As such, it is simply legally impossibly for the NCAA to own any rights related to any aspects of student-athletes’ competitions, likenesses, names, etc. Not included in these lawsuits, but representing the billion dollar question is what legal right the NCAA or its members, including the various conferences and schools, have to sell broadcast rights to student-athlete competitions, which are “performances” governed by the federal Copyright Act? Legally, the answer is, “None.” Morally, the answer is, “None.” (See the National College Players’ Association web page, www.ncpanow.org, for a description of all of the reasons why the grant-in-aid is hardly fair compensense for playing collegiate sports let alone for acquiring the players’ economic rights; see also Kristina Peterson’s story in the NYT on July 24th regarding collegiate health care for student-athletes or the lack thereof and consequences visited on injured student-athletes).

Thanks,

–RGJ

Encls.

Richard G. Johnson, Esquire
Richard G. Johnson Co., L.P.A.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 5:39 pm and is filed under NCAA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.