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8 

NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSN. v. ALSTON 

Opinion of the Court 

year.  Brief for Players Association of the National Football 
League et al. as Amici Curiae 17.  Commissioners of the top 
conferences take home between $2 to $5 million.  Ibid.  Col-
lege athletic directors average more than $1 million annu-
ally.  Ibid.  And  annual  salaries  for  top  Division  I  college 
football  coaches  approach  $11  million,  with  some  of  their 
assistants making more than $2.5 million.  Id., at 17–18. 

B 

The plaintiffs are current and former student-athletes in 
men’s Division I FBS football and men’s and women’s Divi-
sion  I  basketball.    They  filed  a  class  action  against  the 
NCAA and 11 Division I conferences (for simplicity’s sake, 
we refer to the defendants collectively as the NCAA).  The 
student-athletes  challenged  the  “current,  interconnected
set  of  NCAA  rules  that  limit  the  compensation  they  may
receive in exchange for their athletic services.”  D. Ct. Op.,
at  1062,  1065,  n. 5.  Specifically,  they  alleged  that  the
NCAA’s rules violate §1 of the Sherman Act, which prohib-
its  “contract[s],  combination[s],  or  conspirac[ies]  in  re-
straint of trade or commerce.”  15 U. S. C. §1.

After  pretrial  proceedings  stretching  years,  the  district
court conducted a 10-day bench trial.  It heard experts and 
lay witnesses from both sides, and received volumes of evi-
dence  and  briefing,  all  before  issuing  an  exhaustive  deci-
sion.  In the end, the court found the evidence undisputed
on  certain  points.  The  NCAA  did  not  “contest  evidence 
showing” that it and its members have agreed to compen-
sation limits on student-athletes;  the NCAA and its confer-
ences  enforce  these  limits  by  punishing  violations;  and 
these  limits  “affect  interstate  commerce.”    D.  Ct.  Op.,  at 
1066. 

Based on these premises, the district court proceeded to 
assess the lawfulness of the NCAA’s challenged restraints. 
This Court has “long recognized that in view of the common 
law and the law in this country when the Sherman Act was