30 years later and the NCAA will be taking the Supreme Court in a landmark antitrust case. And lucky for us we get front row seats to this matchup, an epic and long-fought battle between college athletics’ elite players. 

On March 31, 2021, the Supreme Court will hear the case of NCAA v. Alston to decide the issue on whether college athletes can be paid. The procedural history of the case sports the Ninth Circuit Court in North California’s holding that the NCAA’s cap on education-based benefits was indeed a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The holding in favor of the student-athlete plaintiffs, captained by former West Virginia running back Shawne Alston, held that limiting compensation of these college athletes did in fact violate federal antitrust law. On appeal, the NCAA desperately tries to remain in control of the college athletics landscape and its own beloved traditional amateurism model. 

The very fact that the Supreme Court has decided to grant cert to this case might foreshadow the change that is to come. The last NCAA case decided before the Supreme Court was the revolutionary NCAA v. Board of Regents case in which the court decided, under the Rule of Reason antitrust analysis, that the NCAA’s television restrictions constituted an unreasonable restraint of trade. Accordingly, this Court held in favor of the universities’ freedom to its broadcasting and television rights. In the wake of the decision, college athletics became akin to a Fortune 500 with D1 football coaches earning a higher salary than university presidents. It seems quite odd then that it is White’s dissent in NCAA v. Board of Regents that underlies the NCCA’s argument in the NCAA v. Alston case now at the forefront. If the NCAA has any shot at scoring, it must distinguish this case from its previously losing argument. It must use the very Fortune 500 nature of college athletics that emerged as a result of the NCAA v. Board of Regents’ holding to caution against a potentially uncontrollable effect. This might be the last hope for the NCAA’s century-old amateurism principle, its last hope to call the lines between college and professional athletes.

Yet as the players fight for compensation because of the value they bring to the universities and conferences, as well as the NCAA itself, the NCAA fights to retain leverage in the tug-of-war battle at the brink of crossing the amateurism boundary. However, in light of the big bucks of college athletics and commercial exploitation of these athletes, the amateurism/professionalism dichotomy is seemingly already blurred. Whether the NCAA can defend its principle of amateurism relies on its defense set to take the stage in three weeks.