The NCAA last Friday filed its opening brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit as the association seeks a reversal of Vanderbilt quarterback and former JUCO transfer Diego Pavia’s thus far successful case to play a sixth season in 2025-26.
Pavia v. NCAA centers on whether NCAA eligibility rules are subject to antitrust scrutiny, a point of law that has profound implications for how long college athletes can play. With NIL deals and, if the House settlement is approved, revenue sharing opportunities, D-I sports has moved away from an “amateur” setting and closer toward a pro sports model (albeit one with college students who must meet educational requirements).
The case could eventually land at the U.S. Supreme Court, particularly as the justices see Pavia-inspired lawsuits play out across the country and yield conflicting rulings. The variability of college athletes’ eligibility based on which judge and jurisdiction reviews their case could motivate the Court to intervene.
Last December, Chief U.S. District Judge William L. Campbell, Jr. enjoined the NCAA from enforcing eligibility rules that would have prevented Pavia, 23, from playing another season.
Pavia played at New Mexico Military Institute, a junior college, from 2020 to 2021, then New Mexico State from 2022 to 2023 before joining Vanderbilt for the 2024 season. NCAA rules generally limit athletes’ eligibility to five calendar years from when the athlete begins studying at a college and four seasons of intercollegiate competition (including junior college competition) in any one sport.
The gist of Pavia’s legal argument centers on NCAA member schools and conferences using NCAA eligibility rulemaking to foreclose players’ potential NIL opportunities and further development of their athletic skills. Campbell, who presides in a Tennessee federal district court, concurred with Pavia that NCAA eligibility rules unreasonably constrain the “labor market” for NCAA D-1 football and related athlete opportunities for “commercial transactions.” Campbell underscored that nowadays in college sports, eligibility rules must be evaluated as economic restraints on trade. Those rules directly impact the chance for endorsement, sponsorship and influencing deals that are tied to an athlete’s status as a college athlete.
Through a brief drafted by Rakesh Kilaru and other attorneys from Wilkinson Stekloff and Holland & Knight, the NCAA insists that Campbell fumbled the law. The association asks the Sixth Circuit to reverse the preliminary injunction ordered by Campbell.
The brief raises several key arguments.
First, courts have historically viewed NCAA eligibility rules as non-commercial, meaning, in effect, exempt from antitrust scrutiny since antitrust law governs commercial dealings. The NCAA argues that Campbell “broke from the text, history, and consistent judicial understanding of the Sherman Act in sweeping aside longstanding eligibility rules based on deeply flawed reasoning.”
To evidence that point, the NCAA repeatedly references the Sixth Circuit’s 2008 ruling in an antitrust case brought by Claude Bassett, who resigned as an assistant football coach at the University of Kentucky due to allegations of rule infractions. In a lawsuit demanding $50 million, Bassett argued the NCAA and Southeastern Conference (among others) engaged in an illegal group boycott of his services.
A district court and later the Sixth Circuit rejected Bassett’s theory in part because enforcement of NCAA rules “is not within the purview of antitrust law.” As those courts saw it, NCAA rules are “not related” to “commercial or business activities.” Rules regarding recruiting, improper inducements and academic fraud were instead construed as ensuring fair competition. The Sixth Circuit went so far as to say rules related to the recruitment of college athletes are “anti-commercial” since they’re designed to ensure competitiveness among member schools. The NCAA urges the Sixth Circuit to adopt the reasoning and precedent of Bassett v. NCAA in deciding Pavia.
The NCAA further maintains that “on the rare occasions” that NCAA eligibility rules have been subject to antitrust scrutiny, they have been upheld. Eligibility rules, the NCAA insists, are designed to ensure that college athletes “excel in athletics and academics, secure a degree, and then move on to the next phase of their lives, making way for the next group of student-athletes to have life-changing opportunities.”
Eligibility rules also, allegedly, help to distinguish college sports as a “unique” product that attracts fans and consumers. College athletes who follow a customary trajectory–passing college courses over the four years after high school–make college sports arguably different from minor league sports and veteran minor leaguers. The prospect of college athletes having collegiate “careers” that last many years could make college sports seem more like minor league sports.
In addition, the NCAA portrays Campbell as misunderstanding and misusing O’Bannon v. NCAA and NCAA v. Alston. The NCAA insists that neither antitrust case is relevant here since they concerned challenges to NCAA compensation rules, not eligibility rules. O’Bannon involved restrictions on NIL opportunities, particularly the use of players’ likenesses in video games, while Alston concerned NCAA limitations on colleges compensating athletes for education-related benefits.
The NCAA even goes so far as to quote Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion in Alston as supporting the NCAA’s position in the Pavia case. While Kavanaugh sharply rebuked the NCAA and its business model, he also—the NCAA stressed—“took great care to emphasize that Alston” concerned a “narrow subset” of NCAA compensation rules. In his own words, Kavanaugh wrote that “[e]veryone agrees that the NCAA can require student athletes to be enrolled students in good standing.”
The NCAA also portrays Pavia’s objectives as legally problematic. The association says Pavia’s complaint and other litigation documents “made clear this case is fundamentally about money—specifically, Pavia’s desire to continue earning compensation for his NIL.” Similarly, the value of Pavia’s NIL opportunities “could be calculated.” The problem with NIL opportunities being calculable, the NCAA asserts, is that an injunction is intended to prevent irreparable harm, meaning harm that money damages can’t cure. If Pavia’s harm is monetary and calculable, that arguably makes it less deserving of injunctive relief.
The NCAA requests that the Sixth Circuit, which will convene a three-judge panel to decide the appeal, hold an oral argument. “This appeal,” the NCAA writes, “raises important issues relating to NCAA eligibility rules, and the consequences of the ruling may extend beyond the specific rules at issue in this case.” The NCAA has already granted a waiver for players similarly situated to Pavia to play another year in 2025-26. Still, the association wants to win the appeal to establish that it can lawfully enforce eligibility rules going forward.
Pavia’s attorneys, including Ryan Downton and Salvador M. Hernandez, will file their brief by April 21. Expect them to continue to make the case that NCAA eligibility rules are inextricably linked to economic considerations, namely NIL, and are thus appropriate for antitrust scrutiny. They can also argue that eligibility rules unreasonably prevent individual member schools and conferences from deciding which students can play sports, which schools and conferences should (arguably) be able to in a more competitive market.
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
