Insights on Collegiate Athletics

On December 16, 2015, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied a group of former student-athletes’ bid to rehear the court’s earlier decision that student-athletes do not have to be compensated beyond the cost of attending college.

On August 8, 2014, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Board of Directors (the Board), in a groundbreaking measure, voted 16–2 to grant the so-called “Power Five” conferences significantly expanded autonomy in how those conferences govern themselves.

In a landmark ruling for college athletes, US District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) cannot stop players from selling the rights to their names, images, and likenesses to the schools that they attend.

It is unlikely that any ruling by a Regional Director of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ever sparked such nationwide commentary as that of Region 13 Regional Director Peter Sung Ohr in ruling that Northwestern University scholarship football players are “employees” of the University.

On Thursday, February 20, a critical hearing took place in the college student-athletes’ class action antitrust lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).