-
Chapter 5: Hunting the Shark: The Road to NCAA v. Tarkanian
- University of Michigan Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
extreme—to prevent commercializing in›uences from destroying the unique ‘product’ of NCAA college football.”132 “Even in the increasingly commercial modern world,”it added, “this Court believes there is still validity to the Athenian concept of a complete education derived from fostering full growth of both mind and body.”133 In the court’s view, the purpose of the rules Gaines challenged was to “preserve the unique atmosphere of competition between ‘student-athletes.’”134 As a result, the court rejected the notion that those rules violated antitrust law, and it denied Gaines’s request for a preliminary injunction, saying that the NCAA’s eligibility rules “are not subject to scrutiny under § 2 of the Sherman Act.”135 But, the court reasoned, even if the antitrust laws applied to NCAA eligibility rules, the Association would still prevail, because “[t]his Court is convinced that the NCAA Rules bene‹t both players and the public by regulating college football so as to preserve its amateur appeal.”136 “Moreover,”the court added, “this regulation by the NCAA in fact makes a better ‘product’available by maintaining the educational underpinnings of college football and preserving the stability and integrity of college football programs.”137 In other words, instead of being anticompetitive, the no-draft and no-agent rules, in the court’s estimation, “ha[d] primarily procompetitive effects in that they promote [d] the integrity and quality of college football and preserve[d] the distinct ‘product’of major college football as an amateur sport.”138 Thus, the court concluded that even if it granted Gaines a preliminary injunction and his case proceeded to trial, he had failed to show a substantial likelihood of obtaining a permanent injunction that would have enabled him to play for Vanderbilt in 1990.139 Therefore, the court did not pause long to consider the other three criteria for winning a preliminary injunction (i.e., immediate and irreparable injury to Gaines, hardship to the NCAA and Vanderbilt if the injunction were granted, and the public interest in free and open competition in the marketplace).140 Noting that the public interest in “preserving amateurism and protecting the educational objectives of intercollegiate athletics” outweighed the public interest in a free and open marketplace , the court denied Gaines’s request for a preliminary injunction.141 Two years after Gaines, Banks v. NCAA also featured an antitrust challenge to the NCAA’s no-draft and no-agent rules.142 Braxton Banks had one year of college eligibility remaining at Notre Dame when he entered the NFL draft; like Bradford Gaines before him, Banks was not drafted, and no pro team signed him to a free-agent contract either.143 He then tried to rejoin the Fighting Irish football team, but the NCAA’s no-draft and no-agent Thursday Night Games and Millionaire Coaches 91 rules blocked his path.144 A federal district court in Indiana dismissed Banks’s claim because he had failed to allege that those rules sti›ed economic competition in any identi‹able market.145 Banks then appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which reached the same conclusion as the district court. Like the Gaines court, the Seventh Circuit rejected the notion that the NCAA’s eligibility rules were subject to the antitrust laws. According to the majority opinion in Banks, “none of the NCAA rules affecting college football eligibility restrain trade in the market for college players because the NCAA does not exist as a minor league training ground for future NFL players but rather to provide an opportunity for competition among amateur students pursuing a collegiate education.”146 Reinforcing this point, the majority articulated the traditional view of college sports as extracurricular activities for students whose primary goal was to obtain an undergraduate education. “We consider college football players as student-athletes simultaneously pursuing academic degrees that will prepare them to enter the employment market in non-athletic occupations,” the majority opinion observed , “and hold that the regulations of the NCAA are designed to preserve the honesty and integrity of intercollegiate athletics and foster fair competition among the participating amateur college students.”147 Thus, the Seventh Circuit af‹rmed the district court’s dismissal of Banks’s case, concluding that “Banks’s failure to allege an anti-competitive impact on a discernible market justi‹ed the district court’s dismissal for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.”148 But the most interesting aspect of the Seventh...