NCAA Accused in Rice Player's Suit of Antitrust Violations on Scholarship
The National Collegiate Athletic Association was sued by a Rice University student over claims it conspires with colleges to prohibit multiyear athletic scholarships.
Former Rice football player Joseph Agnew sued the NCAA in federal court in California, seeking to also represent other student athletes who received one-year scholarships that weren’t renewed. Agnew, who started for Rice in Houston as a freshman in 2006 and lost his scholarship after on-the-field injuries before his junior year, said he and other such athletes face two “unpalatable options.”
“They can pay tuition out of pocket, often by taking on tens of thousands in loans, or they are forced to uproot themselves and transfer to another institution that will provide them with a scholarship,” according the complaint filed today by Agnew’s law firm, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP.
The NCAA’s alleged prohibition on multiyear athletic scholarships and limits on the number of scholarships each member school can award drives up the cost of a four-year education for student athletes, the Seattle-based law firm said in the complaint. If colleges were forced to compete for students without such limits, the number of scholarships would increase and more students would be offered multiyear awards, according to the complaint.
The NCAA and its members, through their agreement not to offer multiyear scholarships, conspired to restrain trade in violation of federal antitrust law by artificially inflating the price of a bachelor’s degree for athletes such as Agnew, according to the complaint.
Bob Williams, an NCAA spokesman, didn’t immediately return a message left at the NCAA media office.
The case is Agnew v. NCAA, 10-04804, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California.
To contact the reporter on this story: Karen Gullo in San Francisco at kgullo@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: David E. Rovella at drovella@bloomberg.net.
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