By Jordan Mamorsky
The Bobby Fischer of professional basketball was a multi-millionaire by the age of 18. Signing endorsement deal after endorsement deal, the precocious basketball whiz was a name brand from Shanghai to New York City before he could legally taste a beer.
Yet, in 2010, Lebron James’ 18-year-old face would never have the opportunity to reach Nike Time Square billboards. James would be forced to go to college because of the National Basketball Association’s (“NBA”) minimum age requirement rule.
The National Football League (“NFL”) and the NBA are the only sports leagues which do not allow players from participating in their leagues after high school graduation. 1 While the NFL requires amateur players to have completed three years since high school to be eligible for the NFL draft, the NBA requires players to be at least 19 years old on Dec. 31 of that year and for one NBA season to have passed since that player’s high school graduation. 2 Application of both NFL and NBA rules has resulted in many unhappy players, high-profile litigation and lots of controversy within the sports law community.
At the Fordham Law Sports Law Symposium on March 26, 2010, team representatives and sports law practitioners spoke about the rule, its effect upon players, collegiate sports, and fairness concerns for teenage prodigies looking to provide money for their families.
“It is difficult to find someone who supports minimum age restrictions,” Smith Amundsen, Sports Law Practice Chair Timothy Epstein said. “[In the NFL and NBA context] age is seen as a proxy for physical maturity.”
Despite the minimum age rule’s obvious unpopularity in the sports law community, the NFL and NBA have no plans to remove the restriction for incoming players. The league justifies its stance on the ground that it is a private organization that can freely decide what is in the best interest of its operation, competition and team players.
“The NFL [and NBA] believe its product works best if they have minimum age requirements,” Herrick Feinstein, LLP Of Counsel Matthew Pace said. “The league wants to make sure college basketball and football operate properly. College basketball and football operate almost like a minor league. The Leagues are run like businesses and don’t see any reason why their business should be restricted. If the NFL decides it doesn’t want you in their league, we have to live by those rules.”
NFL age requirement rules were granted legal blessing in the Second Circuit case, Clarrett v. NFL. In Clarrett, Judge Sotomayor held that the non-statutory labor exemption shielded NFL age restrictions from antitrust law. Sotomayor reasoned that the NFL age eligibility rule comprised a mandatory bargaining subject because it pertained to initial employment. 3 Sotomayor also curiously found the traditional non-statutory labor test (the Mackey test) non-controlling despite the fact that it had been routinely applied in the Second Circuit previously–including in the District Court below. 4
The Mackey test shields restraints of trade from antitrust law review if the restraint (1) primarily affects only parties to the related collective bargaining agreement, (2) reflects a mandatory subject of collective bargaining, and (3) emerges from bona fide arms-length bargaining. 5 The NFL’s failure to meet these elements would have allowed Ohio State freshman football phenom Maurice Clarrett to challenge the league’s age restriction rule under antitrust law.
If Clarrett had actually been successful, one could take a look at Major League Baseball (“MLB”) for a barometer on what the NBA or NFL would look like with lower age requirements. The MLB allows its clubs to draft domestic players 18 years and older and international players at least 16 years old and older. For MLB teams this rule presents its own unique problems as clubs struggle to deal with international players that have received little advanced education beyond middle school.
“Signing a player at 16 makes it difficult on a club,” Boston Red Sox International Scouting Coordinator Fernando Tamayo said. “For the Boston Red Sox you don’t know at that age how the player will actually develop. However, on the other hand you can develop that person through the resources of your club. Players that we sign [internationally] go to our academy. Eighty percent of them do not have education beyond 13 years old.”
While financial rewards make sense for a lot of young domestic and international players, the lack of education and maturity going into sports leagues with grown men (some over the age of 40) is a concern. For every Lebron James or Kobe Bryant, there are cases where teams draft a young player with lofty expectations only to see the individual fail to appropriately adapt to the everyday pressures of being a professional athlete.
Robert Marks, vice president of Basketball Operations for the New Jersey Nets, believes that if colleges provided some sort of compensation to student-athletes, more players would have the opportunity to mature and stay in school. “Colleges should have some sort of stipend or compensation for student-athletes,” Marks said. “It’s only fair to the kids. You would see more people stay—kids usually come out of college early because of economic concerns. There is certainly some visibility value for staying.”
At least in college basketball, the lack of lawful compensation for athletes may be the culprit in creating situations where blue chip recruits choose to attend top basketball programs for a year without investing much time or interest in educational pursuits. In such situations, NCAA schools operate more like a minor league than an actual educational institution for the player.
Host and Executive Producer John Vorperian of the sports television series “Beyond the Game” believes that the age requirement rules produce foolish results for both fans and players. Vorperian believes that the issue comes down to the very rights of professional athletes to pursue their chosen calling. “I see it as a freedom issue,” Vorperian said. “If you have the talent you should be on the [professional] court or field.”
Unfortunately, for lawmakers, Supreme Court judges, and league officials, freedom of amateur athletes is not a pressing concern. For the next 18-year-old Lebron James, the billboards will have to wait. (At least a year.)
Jordan Mamorsky is a third year student at New York Law School where he is Managing Editor of the Media Law & Policy Journal. Prior to law school, Jordan worked as a Special Projects Editor for Sports Illustrated Magazine. In 2006, the Southeastern Journalism Conference named Jordan the “Number One Sports Writer in the South” for his work as Sports Editor of the Vanderbilt Hustler, the school newspaper at Vanderbilt University. He can be reached at jordan.mamorsky@law.nyls.edu
1. Michael A. McCann and Joseph S. Rosen, “Legality Of Age Restrictions In The NBA And The NFL,” 56 CASE W. RES. L. REV. 731 (2006).
2. Id. at 3.
3. Id. at 14.
4. Id.
5. Id.
