Tenured Law Professor. Fulbright Scholar. Sports Ethics Director. Attorney. Former Skadden. I write on Antitrust, IP, Higher Ed and Sports. [email protected]
New York, NY and Canberra, ACT
Joined June 2009
- Tweets15.2K
- Following199
- Followers7.4K
- Likes6.6K
This might surprise a few recent commentators on my posts, but tenured and tenure-track law professors don’t typically have case loads; school bylaws only entitle us one day per week of outside practice. 80% of our time is to be spent on publishing, teaching and school service.
Curious where other sports law profs stand on the Protect College Sports Act. Here’s what we know for sure:
Edelman: opposed
Holden: opposed (we spoke this week)
McCann opposed (based on X)
Koller: opposed (we spoke this week)
Boland: opposed (saw yesterday)
Sabin: opposed (X)
So much spin doctoring going on here. In my mind, ‘Cantwell be wrong.’ 🎶
Keeping with my goal of continuing to take classes as a student, I have the privilege this semester of studying 20th Century Berlin with Professor Benjamin Hett. I have never been to Berlin, but I am planning to visit in January, the week before I teach antitrust at the Sorbonne.
Marc Edelman retweeted
Politicians and college officials trying to blame the players. On brand.
Cantwell's report relies on GAO data from before the House settlement ushered in revenue sharing. The GAO data actually shows that Division I spending on coaches grew faster than spending on athlete scholarships, up to twice as fast, from 2014 to 2024.
Players didn't cause the deficit. The schools did. The players shouldn't be the ones paying for that overspending. And Congress shouldn't bail the schools out with an antitrust exemption.
Full GAO report below.
Not unexpectedly, I share the NAACP view. For good sources on how collective bargaining at the league level may already be feasible, Will Berry has a great article in Texas Law Review. @McCannSportsLaw, Holden and I also have a number of articles on how this would work. All free.
Trying to hold two opposed ideas in mind:
1. The Protect College Sports Act is a terrible bill that sacrifices college athletes' free market rights for self-interested demands of the higher ed lobby
2. Even if this terrible bill passes, we've still come a long way from 2013.
Below is my response to the pushback I’ve received in opposing Congress’s proposed college sports bills and my preference for free markets and collective bargaining.
This will probably be my final post for a few days, in respect for both 9-11 content and the Jewish New Year:
The attempts to bind CBA on future non-members is a concern and imperfection; it comes up in the Clarett case. At least, as Sotomayor acknowledges in Clarett, the union has a legal duty of fair representation that can be sued upon. By contrast, the taxpayer dollars thing is a bit of a red herring, as we are not passing a bill to cap other college sports employee salaries, some of which feed on the limits to athlete compensation (coaches, ADs etc) nor do we have the interest in curbing other costs related to intercollegiate sports. If the spending of taxpayer dollars was even remotely the true concern, someone could propose a bill to have some or all college sports spun off into private entities isolated from public funds. But that’s not what Charlie Baker (who just like the athletes has his pay attached to public funds) requested, nor what members of Congress are seeking to do.
My skin crawls when people who support the SCORE Act say the proposed athlete pay is “fair.” Fair pay today is an unfair pay tomorrow. That’s why structural freedom (free markets or collectively bargaining away free markets) resolves the issue and legislative fiat falls short.
I strongly agree w/ @McCannSportsLaw. When judges decide #NCAA eligibility disputes, they do so through the lens of 136 years of generalizable antitrust principles. If legislators do so, their outcomes are drawn from populism, lobbying and a might-makes-right mentality.
The NCAA lands a key legal win as a federal judge in West Virginia rules against athletes from HS class of 2022.
For all the talk of the "chaos" in college sports and the need for Congress to act, it's judges who are best positioned to calm the waters:
sportico.com/law/analysis/20….
Anyone with public opinions on the Middle East should be regularly reading Thomas Friedman’s work. I am not suggesting anyone has to agree with him, but you should at least know and understand his perspective.
Two Nations. Two Democracies at Stake. nytimes.com/2026/09/08/opini…
The problem for plaintiffs challenging #NCAA eligibility rules is not that these rules are per se legal. It is that they haven’t meticulously defined the market and produced compelling expert declarations as is needed to maintain a preliminary injunction on antitrust grounds.
Marc Edelman retweeted
On Sept. 9, 1934, the Detroit Free Press sports front blazed with a huge Hebrew headline, “L’shana Tova Tikatevu” saluting Tigers star Hank Greenberg and declaring: “And so to you, Mr. Greenberg, the Tiger fans say, ‘L’shana Tova!’”
Marc Edelman retweeted
The SEC's legal battle with LSU, and the Big 12's now-resolved legal battle with Texas Tech, are signs we're entering a new era of college sports law:
The conferences using the courts to enforce their rules.
This is a big deal. My @Sportico column:
sportico.com/law/analysis/20….
Someone asked me if there is any #NCAA eligibility rule that I believe would pass antitrust scrutiny. I wrote one:
“For any athlete to be eligible to compete in NCAA sports, that athlete must be enrolled and fully participating in their school’s general student body courses”
I know I have posted this before; however, @samcehrlich and my forthcoming article in Washington & Lee Law Review about college sports eligibility rules and antitrust law explains everything you’d ever want to know on the topic and more. Link below:
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.…