LA Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik thinks the O'Bannon case - which takes its name from a former UCLA athlete - means less than some might think.
...Few people have the courage to mess with the business enterprise that
is big-time university sports. Not the National Collegiate Athletic
Assn., which supposedly monitors academic standards for
"scholar-athletes" and protects them from commercial exploitation. And
not U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken of Oakland, who handed down a landmark antitrust ruling about a week ago that undermines the NCAA's ban on paying student athletes what they're worth.
Many observers say that Wilken threw the NCAA for a big loss. They're wrong.
It's
true that Wilken chipped away at some NCAA prohibitions on athlete
compensation, notably the ban on paying them for the licensing of their
"names, images, and likenesses." (This was the particular target of the
plaintiffs, led by Ed O'Bannon, the former UCLA basketball star.) She
recognized big-college sports as a business, not amateur competition,
which can hardly come as a surprise to the NCAA or university
presidents.
But her ruling — which the NCAA plans to appeal —
still is shadowed by this outmoded concept as it applies to football and
basketball...
Full column at http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-20140815-column.html
Hiltzik's basic point is that football and basketball are different from other sports that have not become de facto commercial enterprises. The court opinion tries to cover all college sports, ignoring the difference.
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