atxman
Active member
For folks who subscribe to The Athletic, here’s more about the blurry (and probably soon to be disappeared) lines between what’s cheating and what’s not. A key passage:
But whenever I would ask folks in the collective world why they weren’t more fearful of an NCAA crackdown, I heard back exactly what we’re seeing this week: If the NCAA ever tried to punish them, it would be an antitrust suit waiting to happen.
Sure enough, we had our first one within 24 hours of the Tennessee news.
The attorneys general of Tennessee and Virginia are arguing that the NCAA can’t open the spigots for athletes to earn NIL money but still try to limit whom they can discuss NIL deals with and when. They contend it’s anticompetitive to deny recruits access to some of the primary bidders in the NIL free market — collectives.
But the NCAA likely will counter that NIL pay-for-play restrictions are both necessary and procompetitive because, without them, the schools with the richest boosters would hoard all the talent and create a competitive imbalance among its members. Yes, we know that imbalance already exists, but we’re talking legalese here.
For the entire history of college athletics, something akin to Spyre and Nico’s arrangement would be universally viewed as blatant cheating — just like with Michigan’s sign-scouting scheme. But a court of law with no regard for NCAA history may well declare there’s nothing wrong with boosters offering money to recruits.
Is it illegal in college football if everyone is doing it?
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