The NCAA has lost the authority to enforce any rules on name, image and likeness compensation for student-athletes, for now and potentially for good.
Federal judge Clifton Corker granted a preliminary injunction suspending the NCAA’s NIL rules as part of the lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of Tennessee and Virginia against the organization, according to Adam Sparks of the Knoxville News Sentinel. The decision will apply nationwide.
Corker found that the current NIL rules caused irreparable damages to student-athletes and the NCAA’s ban on using NIL money as recruiting inducements “likely violates federal antitrust law.” From the News Sentinel:
“(W)ithout the give and take of a free market, student-athletes simply have no knowledge of their true NIL value,” Corker wrote. “It is this suppression of negotiating leverage and the consequential lack of knowledge that harms student-athletes.”
The decision is a disaster for the NCAA, which has been trying to grasp any authority it can in the landscape created by the 2021 Supreme Court ruling opening the door for NIL compensation.
College athletes are now free to directly negotiate their compensation and sign NIL contracts before enrolling at a school and will be able to do so until at least the end of the court case. The injunction alone is a bad omen for the NCAA’s chances, and is a direct blowback from its investigation into the Tennessee football program for alleged breaches of NIL rules.
The Tennessee and Virginia AGs…
