Court strikes down payments to student-athletes

A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that the NCAA can keep a ban on compensating athletes beyond the cost of attending school, in effect nullifying last year’s landmark decision that such rules violate antitrust law. The decision came in a lawsuit filed by O’Bannon and 19 others.

Beginning in August, the NCAA gave the larger “Power Five” conferences more autonomy to act as they please.

University of Houston football player Rowdy Harper dresses his 8-month-old son Jax at their home on Tuesday, March 11, 2014, in Houston.

University of Houston football player Rowdy Harper dresses his…

North Carolina head coach Roy Williams, left, and players Wayne…

The appeals court’s decision may affect what “ultimate relief” the athletes get, he said.

Wednesday’s case is also seek- ing damages for past compen- sation that athletes were denied before the NCAA full cost-of-attendance model fell into place. We vacate the district court’s judgment and permanent injunction insofar as they require the NCAA to allow its member schools to pay student-athletes up to $5,000 per year in deferred compensation. That added transportation and miscellaneous personal expenses on top of traditional costs like room, board and books.

In the ongoing and contentious fight over compensation for college athletes, the NCAA scored a narrow split decision in federal appeals court Wednesday.

Many legal observers noted that the most important part of Wednesday’s ruling is that the panel supported the crux of Wilken’s opinion. A few had started to pull out of their agreements with EA prior to the cancellation of the NCAA Football series and they were never even sued by any current or former athletes.

At Seton Hall, the athletic department announced that players on the men’s and women’s basketball teams would receive $2,600 annually, which will be distributed via two checks per semester.

The O’Bannon case will likely be taken to the Supreme Court, but there is no guarantee it will be heard there. A case working its way through the courts, led by antitrust lawyer Jeffrey Kessler, challenges schools’ rights to cap compensation at the value of a scholarship.

The appeals panel argued that the Supreme Court did not claim the NCAA’s amateurism rules are valid as a matter of law and that the rules are subject to anti-trust laws because they regulate commercial activity. The athletes could appeal the ruling on cash compensation, an option Hausfeld said his clients are considering.

The case could be decisive in determining the fate of the NCAA’s cherished amateurism rules, given that other legal challenges to those policies – one of which would create a virtual free market for college athletes – wait on the sideline.

Yet they saw a big difference between providing compensation for attendance costs and giving them cash payments for the use of their image and likeness. But we do not decide, and the NCAA need not prove, whether paying student athletes $5,000 payments will necessarily reduce consumer demand. “If we can show that consumers are kind of angry about the disparity between what coaches and schools make versus what players make and that action actually enhances consumer demand, I think we can win”.