A college football player, who claims he lost his Division I scholarship due to National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules that prevent Division I football players from transferring to other NCAA Division I schools without losing athletic eligibility for a year, is challenging the association in court.
Specifically, Weber State University defensive back Devin Pugh claims that the NCAA’s transfer limits violate federal antitrust laws, according to his attorneys at Hagens Berman and The Paynter Law Firm PLLC.
The lawsuit, which was filed Nov. 5, 2015, alleges that the NCAA’s limitation on the mobility of college athletes is patently unlawful, preventing Pugh and other proposed class members from receiving millions of dollars in athletics-related financial assistance and other direct compensation, which they would have received if they were permitted to transfer without this limitation.
The suit also tackles the NCAA’s continuing cap on the number of football scholarships a Division I football team may award as well as the NCAA’s former prohibition on multi-year scholarships. Both restrictions, or practices, have been the target of the plaintiffs’ bar in prior years.
Sports Law Expert Believes ‘Legal Nightmare’ for NCAA
Gary R. Roberts, the authority on antitrust law as it intersects with the sports industry, suggested to Sports Litigation Alert was not surprised about the lawsuit and bellieves the die has been cast as far as future antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA.
“If you view every NCAA rule as an ‘agreement’ of member schools subject to antitrust rule of reason review under purely traditional economic, consumer welfare, standards used for normal commercial industries, then every rule in the NCAA manual is subject to being struck down as an antitrust violation,” said Roberts, who is the Dean Emeritus & Gerald L. Bepko Professor of Law at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. “Pugh is no different from any of the other dozens of antitrust cases that have been filed against a panoply of the NCAA’s rules, and there will be dozens more filed against virtually every rule that works to the disadvantage of someone willing to get a lawyer and file a lawsuit.
“This will continue until Congress or the Supreme Court establishes some sensible approach for giving the NCAA leeway to create rules that allow member schools to operate amateur intercollegiate athletic programs that have goals and values other than those that drive traditional for-profit industries without being overwhelmed with claims that every rule in the book violates antitrust law. But politically, giving the NCAA that kind of necessary legal leeway will be hard to accomplish as long as the Power Five conferences and schools operate their football and men’s basketball programs as if they were nothing but profit-making enterprises that serve to benefit the schools and to enrich coaches and athletic administrators, and have little to do with the education or welfare of the supposedly student-athletes who provide the talent. So until the NCAA is willing and able to ‘decommercialize’ its power programs, this sort of legal nightmare will continue.”
Background on the Pugh Case, and the Rationale behind the Suit
Pugh was allegedly highly sought after out of high school and recruited by numerous FBS schools. Pugh ultimately selected Weber State, where he was a skilled cornerback, based on the pledge of the head coach that his scholarship would be renewed annually as long as Pugh remained eligible for NCAA competition, and even if there was a coaching change.
However, after his head coach retired, the new coach decided not to renew Pugh’s scholarship. Upon learning that Pugh was interested in transferring as a result, three FBS and three FCS schools allegedly offered Pugh full grants-in-aid to transfer — contingent upon Pugh’s ability to play two more years of NCAA football. Pugh ultimately saw all offers rescinded after he was forced by NCAA regulations to sit out competition for one year.
Around December 2011, Weber State named a new head football coach, and a year later, Pugh was allegedly told by the new coach that he would no longer have the promised scholarship at Weber State.
After he was unsuccessful in securing a waiver of the NCAA transfer rules, which required him to sit out of competition for a year, Pugh was unable to stay in school without a scholarship, allegedly forced to transfer to CSU Pueblo, a Division II school.
Pugh’s grant-in-aid at CSU Pueblo was substantially less than what he received at Weber State, and he was allegedly forced to twice double the amount of money he borrowed at Weber State just to cover his expenses.
In addition to Pugh, the lawsuit seeks to represent anyone who, since November 2011, sought to transfer from one NCAA Division I football school to another, but was athletically ineligible to participate in NCAA Division I football for any period of time under the NCAA’s transfer rules.
“These regulations restrain players’ ability to make the best choices for themselves,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Steve Berman. “If they transfer, they risk losing it all, and often transfers are made based on financial and personal circumstances.”
The suit states that the loss of a year of athletics eligibility can make student-athletes a very unattractive option for coaches who are under constant “win now” pressure.
The suit also highlights the NCAA’s artificial restriction to the total number of available Division I football scholarships, “another antitrust, uncompetitive practice that leaves injured or ineligible student-athletes cut from a team and their scholarships terminated.
“Once their scholarships are terminated, Division I football student-athletes who wish to remain in school face three unpalatable options: (i) pay tuition out of pocket, often by taking on tens of thousands in loans, (ii) uproot themselves and transfer to another institution that will provide them with a scholarship, or (iii) uproot themselves and transfer to a new school and pay tuition. They would not incur these expenses and/or hardships but for the existence of the challenged unlawful restraint and agreement.”
There is a reason for these practices, suggested the plaintiff in his lawsuit.
“The restraint preserves the hegemony of the top ‘Power 5′ conferences … who are able to recruit the most highly coveted high school prospects in the country,” the lawsuit states. “By locking-in those players, the transfer rules prevent player movement to less-powerful schools and conferences. Thus, a player may languish at a Power 5 conference school, unable to obtain the playing time promised in the recruiting process, instead of flourishing and developing at a smaller school, to the benefit of the player and fans alike.”
In a statement, the NCAA countered that “it appears that many of the allegations are patterned after litigation filed by this lawyer in other cases.” This was likely in reference to John Rock et al. v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, which is still pending in the Southern District of Indiana.
