How can NCAA just accept tampering for NIL

Sure they can.

First, SCOTUS is most often ruling on the applicability and validity of laws *as written by Congress*. So if Congress had written a law that was ambiguous or contradicted by other existing law, SCOTUS untangles the words. Congress can go and untangle the words themselves to make the law comply with SCOTUS ruling, or to "overturn" SCOTUS ruling (e.g., law says X, SCOTUS agrees that the laws say X; Congress wanted the law to say Y instead, which is what they meant the first time so Congress passes new law replacing the law that says X.)

Second, sometime SCOTUS overturns laws on Constitutional grounds that are fairly technical in nature, and Congress can rejigger the words to do the same thing and pass muster.

More drastically, Congress can initiate a Constitutional amendment to override SCOTUS by removing the level SCOTUS used to overrule Congress.

mpercy®

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Re: How can NCAA just accept tampering for NIL

Dec 28, 2022, 8:52 AM [ in reply to Re: How can NCAA just accept tampering for NIL ]

In particular to this case, SCOTUS (irrationally, to my mind) decided that employment laws and anti-trust laws would make the "contracts" that players operated under illegal. Justice Kavanaugh: "Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate. … The NCAA is not above the law."

That is, SCOTUS decided that athletes are employees and thus entitled to employee protections. But NCAA athletes are not employees, and never had been. Their participation in NCAA-sponsored sports was subject to NCAA's rules, yes, but no one forced anyone to participate or denied them the right to participate elsewhere for whatever money they could get. Are the USGA's rules preventing PGA pros from playing in the US Amateur tournament illegal?

Congress could, if they so desired, step in and write new law that specifically exempts scholarship athletes from being subject to employment laws when it comes to their sports participation at an amateur level.