Within days of U. S. District Judge Claudia Wilken tentatively approving a multibillion-dollar arrangement in the House, Carter and Hubbard competitive litigations, the NCAA landed another win Monday when U. S. District Judge Catherine Eagles denied University of North Carolina golf person Reese Brantmeier’s activity for a preliminary injunction. While her antitrust case against the organization is pending, Bannermeier requested Eagles to request that the NCAA stop enforcing its reward money regulations against school runners who compete in specific sports.
In what she hopes will be a class action lawsuit, Brantmeier filed on behalf of herself and other Division I sports in specific sporting in March. Those sports are tennis, golf, swimming, track and field, wrestling, gymnastics, riding, fencing, women’s ball, indoor and outdoor cross country, women’s race, women’s horse, weapons, and snowboarding.

Brantmeier contends that the NCAA and its affiliated institutions are a part of a price-fixing scheme that intentionally reduces personal sports athletes ‘ earning potential. Additionally, Bandmeier claims that the NCAA has conducted a team protest of athletes who accept prize money under amateurism laws.
Tennis players are not permitted to accept more than$ 10,000 in prize money per calendar year before enrolling in college, with allowances for additional prize money not exceeding actual and necessary expenses. According to Brandmeier, this restriction amounts to value fixing. Given that school athletes can now create unlimited earnings through NIL deals, and given that the above antitrust lawsuit would, if approved, empower colleges to give athletes for media rights, ticket sales sponsorships, and NIL, subject to an annual salary cap, the restriction is controversial, which is difficult to support.
But as Eagles explained, a preliminary injunction is an “extraordinary remedy”. In finding that Brantmeier’s arguments came up short, the judge offered several reasons.
For starters, Eagles wrote the “evidence of harm to competition from the prize money rules “—the central thesis of the antitrust argument —”is remarkably thin”. Eagles argued that Brantmeier has not provided sufficient evidence to support his claim that there are many college athletes who compete in each sport, that there are many opportunities for prize money in each sport, and that athletes from those sports who compete in those sports might win prize money.
Eagles was also persuaded by Brantmeier’s claim that tournaments with prize money restrictions reduce the number of college athletes who compete in the money. The judge reasoned the relevant market for Brantmeier’s case concerns college athletics, not non-NCAA events. Eagles added that Brantmeier “has not demonstrated that the number of players who make this decision is meaningful enough to have an effect on quality, at least not in every Individual Sport,” despite the fact that some athletes choose to avoid the NCAA because of prize money restrictions.

Another flaw, Eagles wrote, in Brantmeier’s demand for an injunction is that while” a few elite athletes” in tennis, bowling” and perhaps swimming” might be able to win” significant sums of prize money”, and while “one might assume the same for gymnastics and golf”, the judge concluded this impact on the market in general “is insufficient to show a likelihood of success on the merits”.
That does n’t mean the NCAA was completely convinced of the judge’s legal standing.
Eagles refuted the NCAA’s claim that prize money rules are “non-commercial eligibility requirements” and therefore outside the purview of antitrust law in light of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s ruling for Ed O’Bannon against the NCAA, in which case the court ruled it was” not credible” that the NCAA eligibility rules “do not regulate any commercial activity.” The judge also concurred with Brantmeier that the NCAA has no right to regulate the market for the services of individual sports athletes who want to “receive a college education in exchange for their athletic services.”
Brantmeier, who could appeal the ruling to the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, has not lost her case. Even if she has gotten a preliminary injunction, she still has a chance of winning a jury trial on the same set of issues.
But for now, register another legal win for the NCAA.