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by
Edward N Matisik, Esq.
edmatisik@yahoo.com
February 4th, 2005
NIT SUES UNDER
SHERMAN ANTI-TRUST ACT
CLAIMS NCAA IS ENGAGED
IN DECADES-OLDCONSPIRACY
TO ELIMINATE THE NIT
With the
explosion of interest in the post-season NCAA men’s basketball tournament
during the past 15 years—the term “March Madness” just about says it
all—basketball fans may forget that the National Invitation Tournament (NIT)
once ruled the roost. In fact, it far eclipsed the prominence of the NCAA
tournament from the 1930’s through the 1950’s and continued to maintain a
certain cache through the early 1970’s.
The NIT
began in 1938—the NCAA tournament started a year later—with a six-team
field. The tournament was founded by, and is still run by, a coalition of
five New York City schools called the Metropolitan Intercollegiate
Basketball Association (MIBA): St. John’s, Fordham, Wagner, New York
University, and Manhattan College.
Several NIT champions
from the early years of the tournament were crowned as “national champions”
instead of the winners of the then less prestigious NCAA tournament. Many
schools turned down bids to play in the NCAA tournament in order to play in
the NIT. Some schools even played in both. In 1950, for example, both City
College of New York (CCNY) and Bradley University played in both the NIT and
NCAA tournaments, with CCNY winning both the NIT and the NCAA. And as late
as 1970, Marquette turned down an NCAA bid in favor of a bid to the NIT.
(Marquette ended the regular season that year ranked #8 in the Associated
Press Poll and #10 in the UPI Poll. Marquette won the 1970 NIT but finished
the year still at #8 in the AP and #10 in the UPI.)
However, the NIT has lost much of its prestige during the
past 30 years as the NCAA tournament expanded from 8 teams to its current
65-team field and several NCAA rules have limited teams ability to choose to
participate in the NIT. As several commentators have joked, winning the NIT
nowadays just means that you can say, “We’re #66!”
Competition between the two tournaments was stiff for the first thirty years
or so. The NIT and NCAA tournaments actively competed with each other to
get the best fields. But the NCAA, by its nature as the rule-making body
for college basketball, had the upper-hand. Unlike the MIBA, the NCAA has
always been able to set the rules that all Division I teams must follow.
The first
salvos came in the early 1950’s when the NCAA expanded its field from 8 to
16 teams in 1951, then to 22 teams in 1953. The NCAA also adopted the
so-called “One Postseason Tournament Rule” in 1953 which prohibits any NCAA
member institution from competing in more than one post-regular season
tournament, thereby preventing any school from duplicating CCNY’s 1950
double-championship season.
Although
competing in two tournaments was no longer an option, schools continued to
prefer the NIT over the NCAA, so in 1961 NCAA adopted the “Expected
Participation Rule.” Under this rule, all NCAA member institutions were
“expected” to participate in NCAA championship tournaments in preference to
any other post-season tournament. However, many schools ignored this rule.
In 1961, for example, the University of Dayton ignored the newly-adopted
rule to accept an NIT bid over an NCAA bid, and in 1962 alone Loyola of
Chicago, Mississippi State, the University of Houston, Dayton, and St.
John’s all turned down the NCAA in favor of the NIT.
The NCAA
stepped up the heat against the NIT in 1975. That year, the NCAA expanded
its field from 22 teams to 32 teams and eliminated a rule that permitted
only conference champions to participate in the NCAA tournament. The NCAA
tournament field was further expanded to 40 teams in 1979, 48 teams in 1980,
52 teams in 1982, 53 teams in 1984, 64 teams in 1985, and its present
65-team format (including the “play-in” game) in 2001.
The NIT
protested these tournament field expansions to the NCAA, claiming that the
NCAA was attempting to limit the number of quality teams available to the
NIT selection committee. The NCAA argued that its decisions to expand the
field were not motivated by a desire to harm the NIT, but were merely taken
in reaction to an increase in the number of schools that play Division I
basketball and an explosion of interest in college basketball from the
1970’s through the present day.
However,
the NCAA adopted one rule in 1981 that the NIT took particular exception to
and which the NIT still vigorously opposes: the so-called “Commitment to
Participate Rule.”
Under the
“Commitment to Participate Rule” (CPR), if a team at a NCAA-member school is
invited to participate in a NCAA post-season tournament, that team must
participate in that tournament or it may not participate in any post-season
tournament whatsoever. In other words, schools may no longer turn down a
NCAA bid in favor of a NIT bid. The NIT actually issues private invitations
to the tournament prior to the NCAA’s “Selection Sunday,” but under the CPR
schools must refuse those bids if it they are invited to participate in the
NCAA tournament. The NIT believes that in recent years several schools
would have turned down their NCAA bids and accepted an NIT bid if had not
been for the CPR.
In 2000,
the NCAA’s Management Council began to review all NCAA rules to determine if
there were any potential anti-trust problems. The Management Council
recommended that the NCAA drop several rules including the CPR. However,
several commissioners of unspecified conferences objected to dropping the
CPR, claiming that such an action would lead to “disorganization.”
Eventually, the Management Council never moved to vote on the elimination of
the CPR.
Shortly
thereafter, the MIBA sued the NCAA under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act,
alleging that the CPR and other NCAA rules constituted a conspiracy to
restrain trade under federal law. Under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, it is
unlawful to “monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire
with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or
commerce among the several States or with foreign nations.” The MIBA
alleged that the NCAA, in conjunction with its constituent conferences and
members, was attempting to drive the NIT out of business and thereby obtain
a monopoly on all post-season college basketball games.
The MIBA
has also challenged one proposed NCAA rule change that it believes is meant
to interfere with the NIT.
In 1985,
the MIBA began conducting the Preseason NIT (PNIT) after the NCAA adopted
special legislation that exempted all PNIT games from being counted toward
the maximum number of games that a member institution could play during the
regular season. However, during the past few years the NCAA has put forth a
proposal that would eliminate this exemption. The MIBA also alleged in its
suit that that the NCAA was proposing the elimination of the PNIT exemption
in order to further damage the NIT and MIBA.
Prior to
trial, the MIBA made a motion to the federal court in Manhattan to grant it
immediate, summary judgment—that is judgment without a full trial—because,
it argued, the evidence that it had against the NCAA was so overwhelming.
The MIBA was able to produce minutes of meetings of NCAA officials in the
1940s, 1950s, and 1960s in which those officials allegedly made statements
that the NCAA would adopt the CPR and expand the NCAA tournament field in
order to “disadvantage” the NIT. In arguing against the MIBA’s suit, the
NCAA claimed that those statements were merely assertions that the NCAA
“wanted the teams it selected to participate in its Tournament.”
The
federal court examined the MIBA’s evidence, but concluded that it was
insufficient to grant the motion for summary judgment. The court found that
the minutes of meetings from 40 to 60 years ago were insufficient evidence
that would not support a motion for summary judgment. Under federal law, a
court must view any evidence submitted by a moving party in the light most
favorable to the non-moving party—since no actual trial has yet been
conducted on the matter—when making a decision on the motion. Since the
NCAA’s interpretation of the MIBA’s evidence is plausible without further
examination, the court held that the MIBA had not met the burden of proof
necessary for the granting of summary judgment. The court denied MIBA’s
motion for summary judgment and ordered that the case proceed to trial.
The case
is Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association v. National
Collegiate Athletic Association, 337 F. Supp.2d 563 (S.D.N.Y. 2004).
To contact Ed
Matisik, or to read his bio, please click
here.
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