In a nutshell, Ohio State running back Maurice Clarett has sued the NFL, wanting overturned a league rule that says that a person must be three years out of high school before being considered for the NFL draft.
The NFL, of course, stands by its regulation.
Clarett says that the rule violates anti-trust laws, and that, by these regulations being in place, he has lost out on millions of dollars and being denied his right to earn a living (for some reason, Arena League football doesn’t factor in, though I admit to not knowing their age policy).
He either wants the rule abolished, or a supplemental draft to occur sooner. As it stands, he would not be eligible to be drafted by an NFL team until 2005.
I’m no lawyer, and I admit it freely, but I don’t see the legality being questioned here. Doesn’t the NFL have the right to impose its own restrictions as to who it accepts as members? While I concede the point that it’s a business, isn’t it also a private club, and able to establish its own membership requirements?
Given Clarett’s acedemic and legal problems (that led to his being suspended from the team for this season), suing to get a job in the NFL seems to be a very BAD way to make yourself appealing to your potential employer.
However, given his legal troubles, I can see the Dallas Cowboys measuring him for a jersey.
Back on topic, though…does the NFL have the right to impose its own standards for admission based solely on age?
INAL either, however I’m sure one will come along quickly and definitively answer your question.
However, I am a rabid college football fan, and as I understand it - the reason that Mo can raise this issue is that the restriction is not written down. Even though the Players’ Union and the NFL agree on the restriction, they forgot to encode it.
Therefore it’s just “understood” that you cannot play until you are three years out of high school.
Mo is challenging it because the NFL is on murky legal ground since they left this clause out of their bylaws. The argument is that if the restriction is truly something that they considered important, then they should have included it.
On the NFL side, I would think that they could easily (and legally) make uniform hiring policy a condition of the teams continued participation in the league.
In comparison, my company won’t consider hiring anyone for my position unless they have a 4 year college diploma. I doubt any company would put a person in this type of job role without identical requirements.
Perhaps Clarett can get through if the NFL didn’t institute the rule in a solid legal fashion. I can’t imagine how the NFL would be forced to allow anyone of any age to be in the draft, aren’t they allowed to have hiring policy?
I’m sure his lawyers are going to argue that the NBA allows high schoolers to be drafted, so the NFL’s rule is arbitrary and restrictive.
While I side with the league in this, the fact that the courts ordered the NBA to allow undergraduates and younger players to enter the league would give Clarett a very strong case. In general, you can’t discriminate by age if the person is over 18. Further, the NFL is not a private club – it is an employer, and must conform to labor laws.
No one in the NFL – not even the Players Association – wants the rule to be changed, but there’s a strong possibility the court will insist.
I’m no antitrust lawyer, but I think the short answer to these questions is no. This is an area of antitrust law which is way over my head, but in absence of a more knowledgeable source I’ll try to hit some of the major points.
The idea behind antitrust is this: Congress takes as a given (pretty much) that competition ultimately benefits consumers. Therefore, a group of businesses cannot decide as a group how their business should be run; instead, each individual business decides how it wants to operate, and the ones that have the most attractive plan (from a consumer standpoint) are the ones that get patronized, while the rest either fall in line, innovate, or wither and die. The NFL is by no means a private club – it is an association of separately-owned business which makes up rules with which those businesses comply. Antitrust doesn’t care about rules which actually “enhance” competition, and it’s clear to see that some NFL rules have this effect – it’d be pretty difficult to stage a game if the Jets counted a field goal as three points and the Redskins as twelve – or if the Bengals decided to start fielding a 15-person team.
However, Clarett’s suit would seem to be saying that the draft-age rule does not enhance competition because the use of a player of a different age doesn’t effect the ability of two teams to agree on the rules of the game. (And indeed, I think he’s got a strong argument on this.) The point is that if the rule were restricted, maybe he would be drafted, and if people want to see him play, the NFL’s rules would be stopping one club who wants to run its business in this way from doing so – and from attracting ticket sales from the folks who want to see Clarett play.
The complication here is that professional sports leagues generally have weird rules in antitrust law, based largely on the undeniable fact that rules are necessary for business which compete in games in a way that rules are not necessary for businesses which compete in the marketplace. Baseball has a court-created exemption from the antitrust laws. Football doesn’t, but some exemptions do apply to football, especially one related to labor contracts. I don’t think it’s apposite here, but I don’t understand it very well, so maybe I’m wrong.
Ay, but there’s the rub! The NFL would not be his employer – some individual team would be. So maybe Clarett does piss off the NFL – all he needs to do is convince one of the 32 owners that he’s worth it. If he could but for the NFL rule prohibiting it, then it’s a clear case of the cartel making decisions which affect individual members’ ability to compete. The question remains whether this is a permissable restriction (either because in the final analysis it enhances competition or because there is some antitrust exemption which applies).
One of the lines from the article really got to me.
What about Arena Football? While it may not offer the lucrative millions of dollars that the NFL does, it’s certainly known as a professional football league.
Couldn’t Clarett, in deciding to forgo the rest of his college eligibility, sign with an AFL team until his age requirements are met? I can see him not WANTING to do this, but NFL exclusion is no reason why he can’t play professional football.
Oh, and, concerning collusion, could the owners say, “well, we can’t all agree not to draft this problem child, however, it certainly wouldn’t bother any of us if this kid never picked up a football again? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge?”
Clarett is claiming that the rule against drafting players less than three years removed from high school is a violation of section 1 of the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act. His complaint can be found here, and the following are the reasons why he claims “The Rule” violates antitrust law:
Note: While this is technically true, the courts have always interpreted the Sherman Act as only applying to unreasonable restraints of trade. So don’t let the broad language fool you.
A very few practices are held to be “per se unreasonable.” However, these practices are limited to agreements among competitors. Clarett is not in competition with the NFL–he is not, after all, a football team or league, and the NFL is not a football player. Because Clarett and the NFL are not in competition with each other, there is no obvious basis for his claim of a per se violation.
The legality of a group boycott under antitrust law depends on how essential the boycott is to a lawful objective. It is certainly lawful to decline to hire young persons (age-based antidiscrimination laws apply only to older people), and it makes eminent sense to me given the increased risk of injury that young players face.
In any event, group boycotts/concerted refusals to deal are generally analysed under the “rule of reason,” which inquires whether the challenged action adversely affects competition in the relevant market. As a practical matter, virtually nothing violates antitrust law under the rule of reason analysis. I cannot fathom how Clarrett intends to prove that the challenged rule restricts competition among football leagues.
This is what Clarett would have to prove to get around the rule of reason. Ain’t gonna happen.
Harmful to young football players is not synonymous with harmful to competition. Clarett has to show that the NFL’s rule is harmful to the NFL’s competitors, not just that it is harmful to the people excluded by the rule.
True, but basically irrelevant. It doesn’t mean that they’re liable for an antitrust violation, just that they’re not immune from antitrust.
I’m no expert on labor law, but this is crap. A labor agreement between an employer and a union will invariably restrict competition in the labor pool for the employer’s jobs. If that’s the standard for an antitrust violation, corporate America is doomed.
Back to the rule of reason. Good luck with that one, Mr. Clarett. You’re gonna need it.
In 1986, the USFL sued the NFL, alleging monopoly practices, among other things. The USFL proved the monopoly charge, and was awared $1.00, which was trebled. This link has a bit about the trial.
My point on that was that there surely has to be a way that all of the owners would agree not to draft Clarett without collusion actually being proven.
I normally don’t wish ill will on people, but Clarett? Frankly, it wouldn’t bother me in the least if he suffered a career-ending injury before ever playing pro ball.
Gene Upshaw of the player’s association, who is against Clarett’s suit, said something to the effect of “there will be defenders across the league salivating at the thought of going up against a kid this young”.
The NBA caved in pretty quickly when they got sued over the same point, and now the most talented players come into the league straight from high school. Clarett may be hoping for the same.
Well, in the NBA, you don’t have 280lb linebackers pummeling you at full speed. Clarett hasn’t, IIRC, even made it through one college season uninjured, the NFL would eat him for lunch.
I believe that the union, if they felt strongly enough, could have their own rule about what sort of experience is necessary to be allowed on the field. Three years in a post-high school league, for instance. Other unions do similar things about the job roles they allow people to take, you need X years of experience (training, education, whatever) in this sort of position before you are eligible for that position.
No, but you do have 350lb centers and 250lb power forwards throwing elbows.
I really don’t care much one way or the other about how this is resolved. However, the experts on ESPN Radio make it sound like the NFL is pretty worried about their defense.
Clarett may be coming off as a schmuck, but I think Ohio State should be worried. The NCAA is pretty heavy handed about rules violations. It seems to me that if Clarett ever gets vindictive, Ohio State is going to be out a national championship.
