N. Jeremi Duru, American University Law School:
Well, John, it is another skirmish in, as you put it, a long battle.
A century ago, college athletics was a circumstance in which you had athletes who were truly student athletes who were receiving nothing for their work. And you had very little in the way of industry around the work, or around the playing, around the game.
But what we have seen over the course of a decade is that an industry has grown up around the college sports. So, you have billion-dollar broadcasting deals and million-dollar salaries for coaches conference commissioners. And student athletes are restricted from getting compensation.
And they have been arguing for the last several decades, we would like our piece of the pie. And they have been bringing lawsuits under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the National Labor Relations Act, antitrust suits. And they have, for the most part, been unsuccessful.
And this is a win for them. And so it adds a chapter that seems to be suggesting we’re moving toward a world in which student athlete activists are going to be getting the upper hand.
