Keep pulling the thread on Matt Brown.
For decades, the NCAA controlled all national television rights for college football and, later, college basketball.
The NCAA created the term "student-athlete" as a legal strategy to absolve itself from workers' compensation claims after the death of football player Ray Dennison from on-field injuries.
Title IX, a federal law passed in 1972 prohibiting sex-based discrimination in education, fundamentally changed college athletics by requiring universities to offer equivalent opportunities for men and women.
The 1984 Supreme Court case, NCAA v. Board of Regents, deregulated college sports television rights, ending the NCAA's monopoly and allowing conferences to negotiate their own broadcast deals.
The SEC pioneered the modern conference expansion model by adding Arkansas and South Carolina to reach 12 teams, which enabled the creation of a highly lucrative, made-for-TV conference championship game.
The Big Ten, under Commissioner Jim Delaney, created the Big Ten Network after rejecting a media rights deal from ESPN, pioneering the conference-owned television network model.
Boosters exert overwhelming influence over key decisions in major college athletic departments, including the hiring of coaches and athletic directors.
During Nick Saban's tenure as head football coach, the University of Alabama's out-of-state student enrollment increased from 26% in 2007 to over 60% by the late 2010s.
The O'Bannon v. NCAA lawsuit, initiated by former UCLA basketball player Ed O'Bannon, led Electronic Arts to discontinue its popular college football video game series for a decade.
In the 2021 case NCAA v. Alston, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 against the NCAA, finding that its limits on education-related benefits for student-athletes violated antitrust law.
In a concurring opinion for NCAA v. Alston, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that the NCAA's business model would be "flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America."
A significant portion of the Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) market operates as a "bag man market," where payments are effectively talent acquisition or retention fees disguised as legitimate marketing deals.