Breaking down why attorney generals have filed lawsuit against NCAA

The attorney generals of Tennessee and Virginia filed a lawsuit against the NCAA on Wednesday. This comes in the wake of the NCAA investigating multiple athletics departments for potential NIL violations, including the Tennessee Volunteers.

During an episode of Andy Staples On3, Staples broke down the situation and explained why these attorney generals felt the need to file a lawsuit against the NCAA.

“In a lawsuit filed Wednesday morning in Knoxville, the Tennessee and Virginia AGs accused the NCAA of violating federal anti-trust law based on recent enforcement of NIL rules,” Andy Staples said. “Basically, what’s going on is the NCAA is looking into cases involving NIL where basically they are accusing schools of using NIL to induce recruits or discussing NIL payments with recruits.”

Along with Tennessee, it was recently reported that the Florida Gators are under investigation for similar NIL issues. Florida State, meanwhile, has received multiple major penalties from the NCAA relating to NIL issues.

“It’s not even the schools, necessarily, that are being accused. It’s the collectives attached to the schools that are being accused of this and we know Tennessee is being investigated. We know Florida is being investigated. There are other schools under investigation right now. We’re not entirely sure who those schools are, but I imagine we’re going to find out here in the next days and weeks. So, basically what this lawsuit is asking is a judge to issue a temporary restraining order or an injunction that says, ‘Hey, these rules don’t apply because they violate the Sherman Act.'”

The question then becomes whether or not a judge views the NCAA’s rules as violating anti-trust laws. This, as Staples pointed out, hasn’t gone well for the NCAA in the past.

“And do they? Well, the way to check on this is, is it a bunch of competitors colluding to keep a certain group of people from making as much money as they can? Well, yeah. The answer is yes. The schools made these rules through the NCAA to keep their costs down. So, there’s a really good chance that a judge is going to rule that this does violate anti-trust law, and the NCAA will have to come up with some sort of pro-competitive justification, and we’ve seen in past NCAA anti-trust cases, they don’t really have any good arguments,” Staples said.

“Their best argument in the past was people like it better when the athletes don’t make any money, which isn’t based in fact and in fact, since NIL payments came into existence college football ratings are up. In fact, ratings are up across the board. Sports are more popular now than they’ve ever been.”

A logical argument for the NCAA then becomes that this would make for an unfair competitive advantage for some schools. However, even that is an argument that Staples doubts will work.

“But the NCAA has to come up with a way to claim that this is a pro-competitive thing. They could say these rules exist to make it more fair, to make it more equitable in the sport. In the sport of football, that’s going to be hard to argue because when the rules were really in effect and as strict as they could be college football was probably the most competitively unbalanced sport of all the major sports in America, and in fact has become more balanced since the NIL stuff came into effect.”

Ultimately, Andy Staples thinks that it’s important to remember that these conversations have gone on and will continue to go on during recruitment for athletes.

“So, this specifically deals with recruits and what makes this feel so big is that this is kind of the last piece of it, because yes, you can pay current athletes. You can discuss current payments with current athletes if you’re a collective. To say you can’t discuss it with a perspective athlete is just silly because, one, those conversations went on under the table long before NIL was allowed,” Staples said.

“Two, those conversations go on now. You cannot sign a good football player or a good basketball player unless that person knows what their NIL situation is going to be coming to your school, whether they’re coming out of high school or whether they’re coming out through the transfer portal. It’s just a piece of information that they require before they make that decision and what the attorney generals are saying is you can’t keep that information away from those players because you are trying to suppress that market.”

Tennessee governor releases statement in support of Donde Plowman, Vols fighting back vs. NCAA

Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee released a statement in support of the University of Tennessee administration fighting back against the NCAA.

“The University of Tennessee has been nothing but forthcoming with the NCAA, and I thank Chancellor Donde Plowman for taking a stand on behalf of all universities and student athletes,” Lee wrote. “It’s time for the NCAA to establish clear rules in the interest of student athletes, rather than try to retroactively enforce ever-changing name, image and likeness guidance.”