(10-27-2019 12:19 AM)Attackcoog Wrote: (10-24-2019 08:44 AM)chester Wrote: Plaintiffs have filed their appeal for broader relief. Via Andy Schwarz:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xjp-2Vo...YxVFT/view
They say "the district court's refusal to grant broader injunctive relief is grounded in legal error" and that it "abused its discretion by issuing an injunction more limited than the anticompetitive harm it found." (Page 80 on)
BTW, anyone have an idea how long it might take the 9th Circuit to rule on this case? I've no idea what its backlog is.
I’m not sure they they can prove “harm”. IF the NCAA didn’t exist—where are the big money alternatives that pay more than a scholarship and FCOA? Not to mention the current system supports a crap load of Title9 opportunities which I would assume most judges would view as a “public good”. I suspect that figured into the judges use of discretion in the final ruling.
Well, the fact that there are no viable alternatives for the class of Alston plaintiffs (some thousands of FBS football players and D1 men's and women's basketball players, IIRC) is not an excuse for the NCAA to abuse its monopsony power.
Look at it this way: no one has to buy, say, tuna and no one has to work in the tuna industry, and yet it's still illegal for the tuna companies to collude with each other to fix the price of tuna and to fix the wages of cannery workers. The one harms the consumer and the other harms the worker. Both are anticompetitive.
We would not say that consumers should be happy with their artificially high-priced tuna because there is no other way for non-fishers to get the stuff, and we would not say that cannery workers should be happy with their artificially low wages because there is no other way for people to scratch a living canning tuna. Americans are supposed to have access to any product or services they desire at fair, competitive, free market prices and they are supposed to be able to work in any industry they like while receiving fair, competitive, free market wages.
Anyway, Alston plaintiffs DID prove to the district court that the NCAA's compensation rules are, on the whole, harmful. The court did find that the NCAA's cap on certain education related compensation is unnecessary and harmful, as they are nowise needed to maintain consumer demand for college sports.
Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, the district court did not grant them the relief they want. Plaintiffs had recommended to the court three alternatives to the NCAA's illegal compensation model. (The court opted for a variation of their least desired alternative.)
But what the plaintiffs really want is a injunction against the Cartel's cap on both education and non-education related compensation and for individual conferences to have the freedom to set their own compensation rules. That would open the market.
"Public good" in the sense of access to college athletics had nothing at all to do with the district court's reasoning. Judge Wilken's one and only reason for denying plaintiff's their desired alternative was due to her buying into the NCAA's argument that unrestricted "pro-level" pay for athletes in Big Time college sports would hurt consumer demand. (Y'all keep that in mind next time someone tries to tell you that no college athletes are worth more to their schools than what they're paid, or that no schools can afford to pay athletes more than they do, or that what paid college athletes receive is "enough" or "too much." The NCAA itself admits that there are college athletes who are greatly underpaid.)
Not just that, Judge Wilken seems to think that "pro-level" pay would happen all of a sudden. She offered:
Quote:It is to be hoped that gradual change will be instructive. If it were persuaded to do so, the NCAA could conduct market research and allow gradual increases in cash compensation to student-athletes to determine an amount that would not be demand-reducing.
--Judge Wilken's ruling p. 55
WTF?
The 9th Circuit will do as it will. But IMO, the district court's reason for denying an injunction against the cap on non-education related pay is, frankly, dumb.
First off, no NCAA school would immediately start paying any athletes a million bucks if the cap was suddenly lifted, especially if they truly believe that pro-level pay would hurt consumer demand. That's silly. Rational people don't do irrational things.
Second, it shouldn't matter anyway. As plaintiffs argue in their appeal, "The court's lone reason for declining this broader relief—its concern about the 'unintended consequences' of conferences engaging in 'trial and error'—rests on a mistake of law. The trial-and-error process the court feared is nothing more than the very market competition that antitrust law exists to protect—and that the court's injunction was required to restore."
Team Athlete! Screw the NCAA!