A federal judge in Tennessee granted a preliminary injunction Friday afternoon prohibiting the NCAA from punishing any athlete or booster for negotiating name, image and likeness agreements during their recruiting process or while in the transfer portal.
The court order is not a final decision in the case, but the judge's decision will likely have an immediate and dramatic impact on how NIL agreements are used in the recruiting process.
“The NCAA's ban likely violates federal antitrust law and harms student-athletes,” U.S. District Judge Clifton Corker wrote in his decision Friday.
NCAA rules prohibit athletes from signing NIL contracts that are designed as incentives for them to attend a particular school, one of the few restrictions in place on how athletes can earn money. For example, the NCAA recently announced sanctions against Florida State football because a member of its coaching staff connected a prospect with a booster group that works closely with the Seminoles. The group made a specific offer to the player, who was considering transferring from his current school to Florida State.
The attorneys general of Tennessee and Virginia argued that the NCAA is illegally restricting athletes' opportunities by preventing them from negotiating the terms of NIL agreements before deciding which school they want to attend. The lawsuit was filed on Jan. 31, a day after University of Tennessee Chancellor Donde Plowman revealed in a letter to the NCAA that the school's athletics department was being investigated for possible violations of athletics rules. recruitment.
In Friday's ruling, Corker determined that the attorneys general have a reasonable chance of winning their case and that athletes could suffer irreparable harm if the restrictions remain in place while the case is decided.
Anthony Skrmetti, Tennessee's attorney general, said in a statement Friday that his office plans to litigate the case “to the fullest extent necessary to ensure that the NCAA's monopoly cannot continue.”
“The NCAA is not above the law and the law is on our side,” Skrmetti said.
The NCAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment after Friday's ruling.
Corker said NCAA attorneys did not present a compelling argument for why using NIL contracts as a recruiting incentive would undermine the academic aspect of college sports.
“While the NCAA allows student-athletes to benefit from their NIL, it fails to show how the timing of a student-athlete signing such an agreement would destroy the goal of preserving amateurism,” the judge wrote.
Earlier this week, Skrmetti told ESPN that he was willing to work with the NCAA to find a middle ground on how it could enforce some of its recruiting rules while the case is resolved.
“If they want to talk about possibilities to find a viable solution in the short term, we are always open to conversation,” Skrmetti said, noting that he had not discussed the case with NCAA leaders. “There is no guarantee we can reach an agreement, but if there is a mutually acceptable path forward as we work to resolve these issues, we are open to it.”
In an interview with ESPN on Tuesday, NCAA President Charlie Baker said the restriction on recruiting incentives was drafted because the association wants athletes to choose their future schools based on the best educational opportunities rather than where they could earn the most money.
“I also think it makes it a huge challenge, as we are currently seeing in the existing NIL environment, for children and families to figure out what the right option is in the first place because an enormous amount of information flows their way that they may not fact is accurate,” Baker said.
ESPN asked Baker if having contracts that prospective athletes could sign before committing to a school would help ensure the offers they received were accurate or could provide some way to hold a promoter or school accountable for false promises.
“I don't know,” Baker said.
Since adopting new rules that opened the door to NIL deals in 2021, the NCAA has issued two sanctions related to how boosters used NIL opportunities as an incentive in the recruiting process: the recent Florida State case and one involving the Miami women's basketball team in February. 2023.
The NCAA has struggled to enforce incentive rules despite widespread recognition and complaints from coaches, players and administrators that offers for NIL money have become a central discussion in recruiting players out of high school. and the transfer portal. The rules allow coaches and groups to share information about a prospect's earning potential, as long as they do not make specific offers or promises. Without documented evidence of a violation or cooperation from parties directly involved in a bid, NCAA law enforcement personnel do not have the power to demand the information they need to impose sanctions.
Plowman, Tennessee's chancellor, said in his letter to the NCAA that it was “intellectually dishonest” to have rules that allowed collectives to meet with recruits and enter into contracts with recruits, but prohibited “conversations that would be recruiting in nature.”
“Any discussion of NIL could influence a prospective student-athlete's decision to attend an institution. This creates an inherently unworkable situation, and everyone knows it,” Plowman wrote. “Student-athletes and their families deserve better than this.”
Baker told ESPN that he didn't believe the NCAA was ignoring reality by asking athletes to choose their schools based on academic and athletic opportunities and worrying about NIL opportunities after they arrive.
“I think the most important thing here is to first address some of the issues around accountability, transparency and consumer protection,” Baker said. “And if we then want to have a conversation about other things, about how this should all work, especially if we get to the point where we give schools the ability to do more in this space, I'm all for that.”
In a separate case over NCAA rules that restrict an athlete's ability to transfer to a new school without penalty, a federal judge decided in December to grant an injunction. That ruling forced the NCAA to change its rules to allow athletes to transfer as many times as they want during their college careers while the case is pending.
