Currently there are at least five major lawsuits against the NCAA. The pending legal challenges could well bring major changes to the face of college athletics as we know them.
Marc Emmert has been the commissioner of the NCAA since 2010 and his office has been under almost constant attack since he took over. They made a big mess down in Miami and are still being called to task for that one. And of course they couldn’t help but get caught up in the ugly business at Penn State.
But now Emmert’s office and indeed the very foundations of the NCAA, are facing serious challenges on many fronts and it is taking major resources and efforts to keep up with them all.
Principal among the outstanding legal battles the NCAA faces is the case of the student athletes at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois where former quarterback Kain Colter is leading a movement to unionize student athletes and has gone so far as to petition the National Labor Relations Board for union status.
Then follows the very serious cases concerning concussions and just where the responsibility of the NCAA lies. Recently, when asked by the NCAA government relations officer asked the NCAA’s top health and safety official if concussion recommendation in youth sports exceeded those of college sports. He replied,
“Well, since we don’t currently require anything all steps are higher than ours”.
Unfortunately, that seems to be a commonplace attitude among officials at the organization charged with the protection of the nation’s collegiate athletes.
And now former West Virginia footballer Shawne Alston has filed suit against the NCAA and 5 major conferences alleging that the universities violated antitrust laws by limiting an athletic scholarship below the full cost of attendance. Alston said that he had to take out additional loans to survive in college while his coach was bringing home a nice round three million bucks a year.
A famous antitrust attorney in New York named Jeff Kessler has entered a class action antitrust suit which does not claim any damages but rather aims to change the very structure of how the NCAA deals with student scholarships.
And finally we have the case of Ed O’Bannon and his now famous case against the NCAA, EA Sports and the Collegiate Licensing Company for using his likeness in video games which netted the company millions in profits, all with the blessing of the NCAA.
