Court Rules NCAA Violated Antitrust Laws: But Did The NCAA Win By Losing?

A federal court has ruled that the NCAA cannot ban schools from giving athletes money based on their name, image and likeness, and cannot impose a salary cap below $5,000.  See O'Bannon v. NCAA (N.D. Calif Aug. 8, 2014).  The newspaper headlines will call this a defeat for the NCAA, but there may be a silver lining.  This interesting SBNation article argues that the biggest winner in the ruling is the NCAA itself since it was likely going to allow schools to offer a stipend anyway, and rather than opening up the market, this ruling appears to allow the NCAA to set limits on such compensation.  We followed this case in previous posts, and will likely discuss it in more detail later.  There is a lot to go through in the Court's 99 page opinion.