A federal judge dismissed an antitrust lawsuit Monday that had been brought against the NCAA by several former college basketball players, including Kansas standout Mario Chalmers, after ruling its claims fell outside the four-year statute of limitations.
The lawsuit, which included 16 total players who played before June 16, 2016, claimed that the NCAA had enriched itself by utilizing their names, images and likenesses to promote its men’s basketball tournament. That date in 2016 is the earliest date for players to be included in the House v. NCAA antitrust settlement awaiting final approval from a federal judge.
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer pointed toward a four-year statute of limitations for federal antitrust violations, despite the lawsuit contending that the law continues to be breached by the NCAA’s use of the players’ NIL in March Madness promotions.
Chalmers famously hit a tying 3-pointer with 2.1 seconds left for Kansas in the 2008 title game against Memphis, a highlight that remains a staple of NCAA Tournament packages. The Jayhawks went on to win the championship in overtime.
“The NCAA’s use today of a NIL acquired decades ago as the fruit of an antitrust violation does not constitute a new overt act restarting the limitations clock,” Engelmayer wrote in the 34-page decision. “Instead, as the NCAA argues, the contemporary use of a NIL reflects performance of an aged agreement: a contract between the student-athlete and the NCAA under which it acquired footage and images of the plaintiff.”
[Related: NCAA passes rules to prepare schools to pay players directly]
Engelmayer also noted that the plaintiffs were part of the class in O’Bannon v. NCAA, the 2015 case that helped to usher in the age of NIL payments so the lawsuit was not demonstrably different from other settled cases involving the athletes.
There are a number of other active suits filed against the NCAA on similar antitrust and NIL grounds. Former Villanova Wildcat Kris Jenkins, whose buzzer-beating 3-pointer won the 2016 men’s national championship against North Carolina, filed one earlier in April on his own rather than joining one of the existing suits. As he told ESPN, “I feel like it’s different from those [lawsuits], and the NCAA has shown that it is different from a lot of other things that have happened in the past just because of the magnitude of the situation, the shot, the financial gains for the NCAA and the unlawful rules that they had in place that prohibited all of us from being able to benefit.”
The key to Jenkins’ case – that buzzer-beater that Villanova and the NCAA profited from – occurred two months before the June 16, 2016 cutoff that had the suit of Chalmers et al dismissed. However, Jenkins also played during the 2016-2017 season for Villanova as a senior: whether another judge will echo Engelmayer and say this was all part of an “aged agreement,” or that it’s indeed a different case, remains to be seen.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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