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The NCAA Cartel and Antitrust Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Roger D. Blair

    (University of Florida)

  • Wenche Wang

    (University of Michigan)

Abstract

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was originally founded to protect student athletes from the brutality of college football. The NCAA has established a number of prominent athletic programs and achieved huge commercial success. In spite of this success, the NCAA has limited the compensation of student-athletes through collusive monopsonistic restraints. Ordinarily, these restraints would be vulnerable to antitrust attack, but the NCAA has enjoyed benign neglect by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. The root of this is the Board of Regents [National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, 468 U.S. 85 (1984)] decision, which requires rule-of-reason treatment of the NCAA’s restraints. The essential role of amateurism of student athletes is used to justify the NCAA’s cartel behavior. In this paper, we demonstrate that amateurism is a myth. We suggest that the NCAA will be unable to provide an evidentiary foundation for its claim that amateurism is crucial to the success of college athletic programs. In addition, we reject the possibility of an efficiency defense for the NCAA’s cartel behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Roger D. Blair & Wenche Wang, 2018. "The NCAA Cartel and Antitrust Policy," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 52(2), pages 351-368, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:revind:v:52:y:2018:i:2:d:10.1007_s11151-017-9603-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s11151-017-9603-y
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blair,Roger D. & Harrison,Jeffrey L., 2010. "Monopsony in Law and Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521746083.
    2. Vivek Ghosal & D. Daniel Sokol, 2016. "Policy Innovations, Political Preferences, and Cartel Prosecutions," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 48(4), pages 405-432, June.
    3. Blair,Roger D. & Harrison,Jeffrey L., 2010. "Monopsony in Law and Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521762304.
    4. Roger D. Blair & Andrew Zimbalist, 2017. "Reforming College Sports and a Constrained, Conditional Antitrust Exemption," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(5), pages 634-643, July.
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    7. Peter K. Hunsberger & Seth R. Gitter, 2015. "What is a Blue Chip Recruit Worth? Estimating the Marginal Revenue Product of College Football Quarterbacks," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 16(6), pages 664-690, August.
    8. Herbert Hovenkamp, 2018. "The NCAA and the Rule of Reason," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 52(2), pages 323-335, March.
    9. Robert M. Feinberg & Hyunchul Kim & Minsoo Park, 2016. "The Determinants of Cartel Duration in Korea," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 48(4), pages 433-448, June.
    10. George J. Stigler, 1968. "Price and Non-Price Competition," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 76(1), pages 149-149.
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    12. Allen R. Sanderson & John J. Siegfried, 2018. "The National Collegiate Athletic Association Cartel: Why it Exists, How it Works, and What it Does," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 52(2), pages 185-209, March.
    13. Andrew Zimbalist, 2018. "Whither the NCAA: Reforming the System," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 52(2), pages 337-350, March.
    14. Robert Brown, 2011. "Research Note: Estimates of College Football Player Rents," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 12(2), pages 200-212, April.
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    Cited by:

    1. E. Woodrow Eckard, 2020. "The NCAA’s Graduation Success Rate: How Successful Is It?," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 61(6), pages 780-793, September.
    2. Annelies Knoppers & Donna de Haan & Leanne Norman & Nicole LaVoi, 2022. "Elite women coaches negotiating and resisting power in football," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 880-896, May.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Sports economics; Antitrust;

    JEL classification:

    • Z2 - Other Special Topics - - Sports Economics
    • L4 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies

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