Antitrust Laws and NCAA Eligibility: What You Need to Know

Kudos to Charlie Baker for taking a firm stance. In the midst of significant changes in college sports, the president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association is actively asserting the organization’s right to set the rules for athlete eligibility.

Recently, the NCAA has appeared hesitant to fully exercise its authority over eligibility issues, a domain it traditionally dominated. This hesitation stems partly from widespread concerns that enforcing these rules might breach antitrust laws.

However, this assumption is misguided.

In a recent announcement, Baker clarified that athletes who have signed contracts with NBA teams are ineligible for NCAA competition. The need for such a clarification highlights the evolving landscape of college athletics.

With several antitrust lawsuits progressing against the NCAA and a lack of definitive legislative guidance from Congress on collegiate sports, the NCAA might feel as though it’s navigating a legal gray area.

In a new statement, Baker made clear that athletes who have signed contracts with National Basketball Association teams are not eligible to return to NCAA competition. The fact that the NCAA president even needed to make this statement shows how much the times have changed. 

Several antitrust lawsuits have moved forward against the NCAA. In the absence of comprehensive legislation from Congress on collegiate athletics, the NCAA might believe itself to be operating in a sort of legal twilight zone.

Student athletes have pushed the envelope. In 2024, Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia brought an antitrust suit against the NCAA to obtain an extra year of eligibility. The NCAA, applying its longstanding rules, had ruled that Pavia’s junior college years counted toward his college eligibility and precluded him from playing another season. But a federal district court judge granted Pavia a preliminary injunction that allowed him to play in 2025. 

More recently, reports indicated that Chicago Bulls rookie Trentyn Flowers — who has already signed an NBA contract — would pursue NCAA eligibility.

But the NCAA is pushing back. And Baker’s statement on eligibility for players who have signed NBA contracts is a step in the right direction. The power to define who can and cannot play in a collegiate sporting event is integral to the NCAA’s ability to administer college athletics. 

True, the Supreme Court held in NCAA v. Alston that NCAA restrictions on educational benefits for student-athletes violated antitrust law. But that does not mean that the NCAA is prohibited from maintaining any eligibility rules. Rather, the question in an antitrust case brought under the Sherman Act (as challenges to NCAA regulations often are) is whether a given restraint of trade is reasonable. And, in general, eligibility restrictions in sports are reasonable.

Sports have always occupied a special place in antitrust law. As Judge Robert Bork explained in his famous book, “The Antitrust Paradox,” league sports are “perhaps the leading example” of activities that “can only be carried out jointly.” 

Although antitrust law enforces competition, “competition” is itself the product in sports. Thus, courts typically grant latitude to sports leagues and governing bodies to regulate competition. The closer to the on-field product, the less of an antitrust problem — for example, no one would question the NCAA’s ability to specify the overtime rules in football.

The NCAA has strong arguments that the Sherman Act is altogether inapplicable to the eligibility restraints that have been in the news. 

Whereas the rules at issue in Alston were tied directly to student-athlete compensation, these eligibility rules relate instead to the status of the athlete — whether he has been in college for a certain number of years or whether he has signed a pro contract. Any impact on the player’s ability to obtain compensation for his publicity rights is merely incidental. To be sure, a federal appeals court declined to adopt this theory as a rule in a recent decision about NCAA eligibility rules.

But even if the Sherman Act applies, courts should uphold these status-based eligibility rules as reasonable restraints of trade in service of maintaining the integrity of the NCAA’s unique product. To ensure that the NCAA continues to offer “college” sports, it must draw the line somewhere. Tying eligibility to enrollment is an obvious manifestation of the principle. And, following that line of logic, eligibility cannot be unlimited. 

The whole point is that the opportunity to play college sports is a fleeting moment in a young man or young woman’s life, associated with that student’s pursuit of an undergraduate degree (with narrow exceptions). When a student chooses to take the leap to the professional ranks in a sport and signs a professional contract, the NCAA has made a reasonable determination that his or her eligibility to continue playing that sport in college must come to an end. 

This rule ensures a clean delineation between college athletics and professional sports, establishing a meaningful distinction between the two products (as antitrust law allows) and protecting the college game.

The NCAA understands this, and the organization needs some flexibility to bring order to college sports. Here’s hoping, for the sake of the game, that they get it.

Eli Nachmany is an attorney in Washington, where he practices antitrust and sports law.