Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I don't think California is going to have to stand by itself or strongarm anyone.  I think there are plenty of states/universities that will likely enact similar law.

i'm not so sure.

first, i might be wrong but i think i saw where most cal schools were against the law, or at least apprehensive about it. ncaa IS the schools, that's the only ones they represent. they wouldn't have the rules if the vast majority didn't want these rules. or even a strong minority.

second, and i am not an attorney so take this with a big block of salt, i don't think most states will need to. nothing they did in this act really changed anything. all they did is basically make a law that 'nullifies'  the ncaa bylaw. ncaa has some interstate commerce and antitrust protection due to the type of entity it is, but they must be within state/federal laws. however, i don't think you can just make a law for the sole purpose of nullifying a bylaw of such entities. (everything i just said it amateur hour based on what i've read/seen/heard, and could be completely off. would love to hear some attorney thoughts on it). 

also, and more importantly, most states won't need to because it will work itself out without them needing to do anything. as i said, this law doesn't make anything that was previously illegal legal, it just attacks this bylaw. whether the ncaa decides to just go along with it and adapt, fight it and win, or fight it and lose, it'll be resolved long before the other state will need to make changes. some will anyway.

Oh I'm not disagreeing that a lot of schools cheat the system, I just don't agree that those that are cheating right now would be against this change.


Make no mistake about it, the schools that are already paying players, are licking their lips at this opportunity. 

Ed Zachery.  Also, just because there would now be a legal way to pay players doesn't mean the cheaters would quit cheating.  They would also continue paying players illegally.  Such as recruits before they sign......

Arizona and Oregon and Utah simply can't afford to allow the California schools' players to be paid, while theirs cannot.  The playing field would be unbelievably slanted in that case, and any chance at competition would cease to exist.

One way or the other, this has to end up all or nothing.  It might be within the construct of the NCAA.  It might not.  It might be within the construct of the current conferences.  It might not.

That is precisely accurate. And I think this groundswell of litigants against the NCAA and of Skinner-type bills in other legislatures all combine to indicate that the future is more likely to be "all" than "nothing."

and i am not an attorney so take this with a big block of salt, i don't think most states will need to. nothing they did in this act really changed anything. all they did is basically make a law that 'nullifies'  the ncaa bylaw. ncaa has some interstate commerce and antitrust protection due to the type of entity it is, but they must be within state/federal laws. however, i don't think you can just make a law for the sole purpose of nullifying a bylaw of such entities. (everything i just said it amateur hour based on what i've read/seen/heard, and could be completely off. would love to hear some attorney thoughts on it). 

How was your stay at Holiday Inn? 

So a couple of things: states can certainly regulate commerce within their borders, but there could be an argument that California's actions interfere with the federal regulation of interstate commerce. Haven't put a lot of thought into that, but I think it's a stretch. There isn't a lot of direct federal regulation over the NCAA; it's a private organization operating primarily pursuant to its own rules. The NCAA could argue that this somehow infringes on distribution of Title IX funds, but, again, a stretch.

The NCAA doesn't really have any special antitrust protection. Unlike MLB, there is no special exemption for the NCAA. However, the NCAA has relied for decades on "amateurism" for the product it sells. So in an antitrust analysis, the NCAA wants courts to apply the antitrust laws in a way that maintains amateurism in college sports because without that, the NCAA says, it has no product, or at least not a competitive one. The big problem for the NCAA is that the courts have been pretty hostile to that view. Antitrust laws are all about economic analysis, and the analysis for amateurism as a product doesn't work very well.

Of course, this isn't just about the NCAA championship level programs. There are 58 Div. 1-3 schools in California. Although that's less than 10%, it's still a big number.

Now, at all but the major Div. 1 schools, this law will have no impact, or almost none. Few people clamber to buy the center's jersey for a D-3 program, or even most Div. 1 programs outside of major football and major basketball, and photographs (and even video game likenesses) of all of those non-major players aren't likely to drive a lot of royalty dollars. But it could really shake up how the big kids interact with the littles. And it will really confuse athletic directors as to how to treat their major sport athletes as opposed to their others.

What wouldn't surprise me is a players association that forms and negotiates for the rights of the players as a group, with its own system for divvying up the dollars that come in from royalties.

If the eventual rules are "market value" rules and the smaller school athletes have little market value, their ADs should not be much affected by these rule changes. Ditto about P5 schools dealing with non-revenue athletes. They may be hurt in pride, and the small schools may be hurt in association, if the P5 breaks away, but I don't think we need to coddle them. Just acknowledge that this is the way of our capitalistic world and that college athletics is no longer in a separate reality.

How was your stay at Holiday Inn?

So a couple of things: states can certainly regulate commerce within their borders, but there could be an argument that California's actions interfere with the federal regulation of interstate commerce. Haven't put a lot of thought into that, but I think it's a stretch. There isn't a lot of direct federal regulation over the NCAA; it's a private organization operating primarily pursuant to its own rules. The NCAA could argue that this somehow infringes on distribution of Title IX funds, but, again, a stretch.

The NCAA doesn't really have any special antitrust protection. Unlike MLB, there is no special exemption for the NCAA. However, the NCAA has relied for decades on "amateurism" for the product it sells. So in an antitrust analysis, the NCAA wants courts to apply the antitrust laws in a way that maintains amateurism in college sports because without that, the NCAA says, it has no product, or at least not a competitive one. The big problem for the NCAA is that the courts have been pretty hostile to that view. Antitrust laws are all about economic analysis, and the analysis for amateurism as a product doesn't work very well.

An excellent survey.