A class of athletes recently challenged the NCAA’s governing policies on antitrust grounds and won, but how much of a victory it is remains to be seen. Judge Claudia Wilken, the California District Court judge who favored players over the NCAA in O’Bannon v. NCAA, has done it again in Alston v. NCAA, which largely piggy-backs on her previous opinion. In O’Bannon, a group of Division I athletes sued the NCAA in an antitrust class action suit, alleging that the organization was using the likeness of players to garner more and more revenue without asking for consent or sharing any of those profits with the players. At the time, NCAA rules estopped schools from offering students any money gained from capitalization in marketing of the players on each team. After finding this to be an unreasonable restraint on trade, the NCAA rules were changed to offer larger scholarship opportunities to student athletes and to also allow schools to place revenue generated from marketing campaigns in trust for players to use after college.

In many ways Alston picks up where O’Bannon left off, arguing that the NCAA has a monopoly on the college athletic market and has misused it. The Alston plaintiffs alleged that through its monopoly power, the NCAA has manipulated players’ compensation by forcing all schools to follow their regulations or face the threat of punishment. By creating these compensation limits, the NCAA artificially lowered the prices that might be paid to college athletes if the NCAA had failed to exercise its monopoly power. Finding the NCAA to be in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act, Wilken held that the NCAA could not fix or limit the amount of compensation paid to players unless the money offered to the students was “related to education.” This type of compensation might include money for computers, musical instruments, furniture for a dorm or other school-inspired expenses. The exact paraments of the phrase were not defined by Wilken and so they remain open for interpretation by the NCAA’s governing body. Previously, schools were restricted by NCAA rules from providing benefits outside of grant-in-aid scholarships (room, board, books, tuition, cost of attendance).