Mark Emmert said he isn’t done after the NCAA faced a historic decision to eliminate its rules blocking payments to college players for commercial use of their names, images and likenesses last week. Emmert told ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos on Sunday that the NCAA will appeal the judgment. Emmert stated that while the organization admired portions of the decision, other parts would be challenged. “No one on our legal team or the college conferences’ legal teams think this is a violation of antitrust laws and we need to get that settled in the courts,” Emmert said.
In other legal news, a judge ruled that Major League Baseball cannot use its antitrust exemption to stem a lawsuit claiming that the league unfairly controls television markets and outlets for its teams. The judge wrote, according to the AP, that exceptions to antitrust laws had to be construed narrowly, noting that the U.S. Supreme Court has “expressly questioned the validity and logic of the baseball exemption and declined to extend it to other sports,” and ruled that the lawsuits could proceed to trial.