My Turn | Illinois history shows problems with new NCAA rule – The News-Gazette

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A New York Times story from May 1, 1981, reported: “The Big Ten Conference plans to place the University of Illinois on probation, bar it from postseason play in all sports for two years and withhold conference television revenue from it for two years, sources at Illinois reported today.”

According to the report, “the Big Ten decision, made in the case involving the eligibility of the quarterback Dave Wilson, could cost the university $2 million and destroy its athletic program. Some athletic officials at Illinois were reported to favor leaving the conference rather than accept what they consider unfair sanctions.”

Forty-five years later, the NCAA Division I Cabinet, on June 23, unanimously approved rules to eliminate traditional redshirts.

Starting in fall 2027, the NCAA will implement a strict, age-based five-year window of eligibility with zero waivers for redshirting or medical hardships.

The NCAA’s press release stated: “For many student-athletes who enroll in college immediately after high school, these changes will result in the opportunity to potentially compete for an additional season in their chosen sport. For campus officials and coaches, this change provides rules that are simpler to administer and easier to predict for roster-management decisions.”

These statements are true.

Coaches and fans might welcome this change.

But the statement’s yellow flag is “this change provides rules that are simpler to administer and easier to predict for roster-management decisions.”

It suggests an intent to stabilize team rosters.

Player agents and lawyers may see collusion by NCAA schools to reduce eligibility for junior-college and injured players.

The new rules will likely be challenged in antitrust lawsuits. The essence of an antitrust violation is whether a practice is an unreasonable restraint of trade.

Here, the trade is college athletes’ names, images and likenesses in a labor market.

The Wilson saga shows the potential unreasonableness of the new rules.

As the New York Times summarized matters: “The case involves a dispute between Wilson and the Big Ten as to how his eligibility should be computed. Wilson was injured on his first play of 1977 at Fullerton Junior College in California and dropped out of school without playing another game. He returned for the 1978 and 1979 seasons, then transferred to Illinois.

“The Big Ten says that 1977 was Wilson’s freshman season and that he used an entire season of eligibility then. Therefore, the conference says, he did not have enough academic hours to play for Illinois as a senior in 1980 and cannot play this year because he has used all four years of eligibility, 1977, 1978, 1979 and 1980.”

Like Wilson’s lost junior-college year due to injury, future injured players who exhaust eligibility for all or much of a year will lose NIL earnings because of the new rules.

Some NIL contracts allow schools to adjust compensation. For example, the Big Ten’s NIL form contract states: “The consideration (athlete pay) may be subject to regular review and assessment at institution’s discretion.”

This relates to the NCAA’s statement about “managing rosters.”

The new rules create a situation where an athlete cannot recoup a lost year, nor make up lost NIL opportunities.

Since the Alston v. NCAA case in 2021, the NCAA’s junior-college rule and five-year rule (five years to play four seasons) have generated the most NIL litigation.

I prompted Westlaw’s artificial-intelligence-powered legal-research database to provide a comprehensive, up-to-date list of antitrust cases involving college athletes who have sued the NCAA over the junior-college and five-year rules.

The summary said: “Following Alston, athletes began challenging a new category of eligibility rules — particularly the five-year rule and the JUCO rule — arguing that these rules are commercial in nature and unreasonably restrain trade in the labor market for college athletic services. The results have been mixed, with district courts frequently granting preliminary injunctions that appellate courts have then vacated for procedural and substantive deficiencies.”

In other words, more antitrust lawsuits are likely, and could yield mixed and confusing outcomes.

A unique Illinois angle to junior-college eligibility goes beyond Wilson.

Former UI Chancellor and law Professor John Cribbet became enmeshed in Wilson’s ongoing eligibility dispute. He worked feverishly to protect Illinois from crippling sanctions.

After he fended off the Big Ten’s threatened expulsion of Illinois, he lamented: “I had high hopes of being able to make some contribution to the solution to the many troubling problems (in intercollegiate athletics) surfacing in the mass media. Now I fear I shall be known, in athletic circles, only as the chancellor who was involved in the Wilson case, a fact which truly saddens me.”

Cribbet was a towering scholar in American property law with enduring influence.

His landmark law review article, “Changing Concepts in the Law of Land Use,” argued that property rights must adapt dynamically to societal, economic and environmental needs.

Today, NIL has evolved from a privacy right in the 1890s — the right to be shielded from unwanted and unauthorized publicity — to a valuable intellectual property right, a right to earn money from personal publicity.

The NCAA’s new eligibility rules aim to manage NIL property rights that are shaped by rapid societal, economic and technological changes.

If courts find that the new rules unreasonably restrain injured and junior-college athletes’ NIL rights, the outcome will be just as disillusioning for college athletics as the Wilson case.