Joel Klatt lists keys for the NCAA to avoid future lawsuits after House settlement

The NCAA has spent a lot of time in court as of late amidst all the changes to collegiate athletics. Now, to avoid any further such instances, Joel Klatt has listed three ways for them to avoid more legal proceedings.

Klatt listed those three keys during an episode of his podcast following the settlement of House v. NCAA. To start, he highlighted antitrust laws at the national level as a pivotal one. Without them, he doesn’t see how the competition levels in the sport get evened out across the country.

“Number one is that they need, desperately, some antitrust protection from the federal government, from Congress. They need it desperately,” said Klatt. “Without it, I don’t know if there’s a real path forward.”

“Antitrust laws are there for the true marketplace, the true capitalist marketplace and protects against monopolies in our country, right. Listen, I’m not expert on all of this but I know that professional sports? The only way that they can operate as we know that they operate is with antitrust exemptions. That’s exactly the model that the NCAA or the enterprise, whatever you want to call it, needs,” said Klatt. “They need anti-trust exemptions.”

Secondly, Klatt, like many others since the beginning of these shifts, called for consistency in the college rules everywhere. The absence of that aspect has led to different states having better or worse standing depending on their own laws, which hasn’t helped in any of the cases regarding the NCAA.

“The second thing that they need is a uniform set of rules across state lines. Again, that’s where Congress comes into play. They need some sort of legislation that provides a baseline of rules across state lines so that they’re not operating under one set of rules in one state and a different set of rules in a different state,” Klatt explained. “Can you imagine, for a moment, in the National Football League, if the Seattle Seahawks were operating in a substantially different model because of laws in the state of Washington than the Arizona Cardinals? Both in the NFC West but, because Arizona is in Arizona and the Cardinals have to operate based on Arizona law, they’re at a sever disadvantage because of some set of rules and laws that were happening in the state of Washington. Well, of course that has to change, right?”

“They need some uniform set of rules that goes across state lines. Until that happens, we will continue to have, regardless of who’s trying to enforce rules in inter-collegiate athletics, some states suing the NCAA and continue litigation, whether it’s individuals or states, for the foreseeable future,” Klatt continued. “That’s the exact opposite of the goal at hand, which is to stop getting sued.”

Finally, Klatt believes that certain sports need to be separate depending on how much money that they generate. To him, they need to play by a different set of rules since they already are from a monetary standpoint.

“The last thing that they’re going for? And there are probably others but, for the sake of this podcast at this point in time. The next thing that they’re going to be needing to go after is a separation – a separation between revenue sports and non-revenue sports in inter-collegiate athletics,” Klatt added.

The wheels of these motions will continue to turn at the pace that they have, which is why there could be more suits in the the future for the NCAA. However, with these three facets in place, Klatt thinks that the association will be in a better spot without having to spend as much time and costs in defense of themselves.

“All of those things are vital for a lot of different reasons,” stated Klatt.