In 2006, Joseph Agnew played cornerback for the Rice University football team under head coach Todd Graham. The following season, Graham departed for the University of Tulsa, and his successor at Rice, David Bailiff, chose not to play Agnew as frequently. Agnew also suffered a number of football-related injuries that required multiple surgeries. Prior to Agnew’s junior year, Bailiff decided not to renew Agnew’s athletic scholarship. Under NCAA rules, all scholarships are one-year renewable options at the coach’s discretion. Agnew remained enrolled at Rice and paid his senior year tuition and expenses out of pocket.
Agnew — who majored in economics at Rice, according to the university’s website — decided that it was unfair he had to pay for one year of college by himself, so he filed an antitrust class action against the NCAA on behalf of all other scholarship athletes throughout the country. Agnew claims two NCAA policies violate the Sherman Act: first, requiring scholarships be renewed annually, as opposed to allowing four- or five-year scholarships; and second, the NCAA’s “arbitrary limits” on the number of scholarships that each school may offer. In football, for example, Division I institutions may not have more than 85 players on scholarship at any time.
The antitrust argument is quite interesting. Agnew’s complaint describes the NCAA as an illegal cartel that maintains “the price of bachelor’s degrees … at artificially high levels.” Agnew notes that “scholarships” — the NCAA calls them “grants-in-aid” — are really discounts off the full price of a bachelor’s degree. By prohibiting individual schools form offering multi-year, 100 percent “discounts” and limiting the number of discounts overall, the NCAA is restraining trade, according to Agnew.
In his own case, Agnew argues that he suffered an antitrust injury, not because Coach Bailiff decided not to renew his scholarship, but because NCAA rules prevented Rice from offering Agnew a four-year scholarship initially. “In a competitive market,” the complaint says, “Mr. Agnew would not have incurred [senior-year] tuition and or room and board payments because he would have received a multi-year athletic discount sufficient to cover the entire cost of his bachelor’s degree.”
This is the sort of speculative-injury argument that antitrust is infamous for. There’s no allegation of fraud here. Agnew understood from the outset his scholarship was subject to annual renewal by the head coach. Indeed, he didn’t name Rice or Bailiff as defendants, just the NCAA. But it’s impossible to say what Bailiff — or more accurately, former coach Todd Graham — would have done in a hypothetical world where the NCAA restrictions did not exist. Even without an NCAA mandate, individual schools might still choose to offer scholarships on an annual, renewable basis.
Agnew maintains that competition would force schools to adopt four-year scholarships. Maybe so. But it’s also possible that such a system would be financially untenable for many lower-level football programs — and Rice is not exactly the University of Texas on the field — and they’d abandon football scholarships altogether. And remember, Agnew’s class action includes all scholarship athletes throughout the country. At least some of the proposed class members would not get four-year scholarship offers absent the NCAA’s “restraints.”
Much of Agnew’s complaint comes off as envious whining. His lawyers chose to highlight how much money NCAA officials and top-level coaches at other schools earn, as a contrast to the poor Agnew, who had to pay his own tuition for senior year. This should have no legal relevance, but this is antitrust after all. Sometimes it’s sufficient to say, “It’s illegal because it’s immoral.”
All antitrust complaints are rooted in entitlement. Agnew feels he has a legal right to a free bachelor’s degree, and that the NCAA’s “collusion” wrongly deprived him of this right. I certainly am no friend of the NCAA or its policies, but I see no merit in Agnew’s claims. He didn’t have the football career he expected — his complaint goes on and on about how touted a recruit he was coming out of high school — and now he’s making a federal case over it.
That said, this is a credible antitrust lawsuit. I’ve seen far weaker cases get through the system, and Agnew’s alleged market for “the price of bachelor’s degrees” could pass muster with a judge or jury. New reports indicate the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division has opened its own investigation on this front. I would not expect any immediate DOJ action — remember, most NCAA members are themselves government institutions — but if Agnew gets his class certified, the political leadership at DOJ might want to hijack the case for itself. The Antitrust Division would hate to cede control of a potential precedent-setting case.
{ 10 comments }
Sports is a MAJOR profit centre for a lot of colleges and since NCAA rules prevent colleges from paying players a salary, a scholarship is the best a college can offer.
Let’s assume that a college makes $10,000,000 in revenue from it’s Basketball team in a single year and that there are 10 players on that team plus 1 coach. If the coach gets $1,000,000 and the college has to spend another $3,000,000 on other expenses then the college now has $6,000,000 as income. This would mean that each player on average helped generate $600,000 in income. I realize that a star player is worth more but let’s say they were all of similar ability.
A four year college degree (without scholarships or financial aid) + expenses would be about $250,000 over 4 years. It’s fair to say that each player has MORE THAN earned that money for the college and hence even if a player on that team only played for one year, he is still entitled to a free college degree.
It’s not easy to quantify this contribution of an individual player, especially without a competitive market but I hope you see the point.
Would like to remind you that nothing in life is ‘FREE’. You have to do something of comparable value to get something for free (unless you’re on welfare and even then that money is used to buy your vote). Even those merit scholarships are with the hope that the student will make it big and become a big donor someday.
College tuition isn’t ridiculously expensive because 85 students out 30,000 are getting a scholarship. College tuition is ridiculously expensive because it’s a government subsidized industry.
Yes.
The attitude from people working/going to these subsidized schools, from what I’ve heard, is that if you paid full price for university your a moron. The prices are setup to extract the maximum subsidizes as possible and does not reflect the actual cost to either the college or the student attending.
College is not about sport. College is about learning. Sure, you can have as much sport as possible. But it is dangerous if sport becomes number 1 concerning a college education.
Education takes a long time. Even after college, you must learn on the job. What is covered in college/university is only a small proportion of what a true education is. You can read books, the classics, the great learning about human nature, outside of university.
It is the student that matters in deciding if an education will be attained. The college/university is oveften overrated. Princeton produced Ben Bernanke. Harvard produced Obama. Yale produced George Bush 2.0 (though Bush flunked Texas Law School). MIT produced Paul Krugman. As you can see “brand-name education” produces people with enormous intellectual blindspots, and flaws. The greatest flaw being love of the culture of the institution, which makes them incapable of thinking outside a very narrow perspective on the world.
Therefore, at the very top, and at the bottom, tertiary education is not working. Of course some universities are producing excellent graduates. But, before send your kids there, I recommend that you check the graduates, and not the hype or the “price” of a college education….
Frankly college football is a minor league for the NFl and you can include basketball and the NBA and the rest of the programs. There are lots of injuries in football and it is a major source of money. The players should be compensated for their market value. When players are injured does the college give them a disability. Some injuries are permanent and most college players do not make it to the pros and the ones that do fail or have short careers. College sports should be considered a business and the players compensated accordingly. Once you are injured, you no longer have any value. A classic line from the movie THE NORTH DALLAS FORTY was, we’re not the players, we’re the equipment. Owners move us around, depreciate us, and once we’re used up throw us out on the side of the road and move on. College athletics preys on the youth especially the lower class who view sports as a ticket out of poverty. They are easy prey because they are teenagers for the NCAA business enterprise that makes million of dollars and that pays the players [call them entertainers] virtually nothing. The stars get big contracts in the pros, the rest are forgotten. Some do not even leave college with a degree and a lot of the degrees are really worthless. Let’s call it what it really is, a minor league for the pros and treat it like a business. Get rid of the rats leeching off the players and these big fat cat college officials living a glamourous lifestyle. Instead of giving scholarships get rid of scholarships and pay the players. Then let the players pay for their education and decide which courses meet their needs. Let players negotiate contracts with the schools. The universities since they are suppose to be the enlightened ones, the all knowing will have to institute a business plan that is profitable. The young players learn a very valuable lesson in contract negotiations. Fans will win because instead of public money involuntarily taken from someone who is not interested in sports will not be forced to support it. The marketplaces rules.
This is what happens when you mix the ‘Rice-complex’ and football.
i wont to learn a bachelor degree
Respected
sir/madam
I wanted to know if this institute provide free degree online.
regars
rameez
Dear everybody
I’m eagerly to find a free way to get a bachelor degree,
if any of you,my friends,can help me,provide information about free bachelor degree,
please contact me as the following way:
Msn\E-mail: [email protected]
God be with you…
I’m want to upgrade my Education,but how can I get full information about it?.
Comments on this entry are closed.