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A Different Take on the Expansion of the NCAA Tournament to 96 Teams

By Rick Karcher, Michael McCann, Geoffrey Rapp, Greg Skidmore, and Howard Wasserman

While most of the college basketball fans in the country have been finalizing their "why I hate Duke" speeches, the NCAA continues to move towards expanding the tournament from 64 to 96 teams. The proposed expansion has been met with an avalanche of criticism. Critics claim that a larger field will devalue the regular season and the conference tournaments, dilute the NCAA tournament field, destroy office brackets, and all but ruin March Madness. I'm not convinced that expanding the tournament is a good idea (though I do not think it will destroy the tournament), but I think the NCAA has a more subtle concern than the negative reaction from fans and journalists: Adding 32 teams to the tournament may have a real impact the NCAA's position in antitrust lawsuits, including the O'Bannon-class action suit currently pending in federal court.

I have a new column up in the Huffington Post that takes a closer look at the possible antitrust implications of a 96-team tournament. Here's an excerpt:

Judicial deference to the NCAA is not unconditional. While some commentators have been screaming for years that the NCAA cares about money, not amateurism, courts have continued to defer to the NCAA in antitrust cases when the NCAA makes rules governing student-athletes that are arguably related to maintaining amateurism and furthering academic ideals. That deference could fade if the NCAA makes decisions--like expanding the tournament-- that seem to put the "athlete" ahead of the "student" in student-athlete. At a minimum, it will give ammunition for plaintiffs to use in antitrust cases--and their quest to obtain treble damages-- and give judges and juries a reason to more strictly scrutinize NCAA rules.

You can find the full column here. You can follow me on twitter here.

Full post as published by Sports Law Blog on April 05, 2010 (boomark / email).