![handle is hein.journals/tulr86 and id is 995 raw text is: The Case for Reviving the Four-Year Deal*
Ray Yassert
Even the most avid sports fan may well not reahre that the modem athletic scholarshp is
no longer a four-year deal. A quiet evolution has occured and the traditional four-year deal
has been consigned to the dust bin in the athletic director's office. The modern athletic
scholarship is now a one-year deal, renewable at the sole discretion of the univeisity The
hypothesis of this Essay is that a viable antitrust cause ofaction exists on behalf ofa scholarship
recipient whose scholarship is not rnewed either because he or she has disappointed the coach
or is no longer able to play due to an injury The antitrwt theory posits that NCAA member
schools have agreed to imit athletic scholarships to one-year renewable awards and that this
agmement is an unreasonable restramt oftrade m violation ofsection 1 ofthe Sheiman Act. The
gist of the claim is that a highly recruited athlete would have been able to negotiate for a two-,
the-, or four-year deal had the market not been artificially constrained by the illegal
agreement Abundant case law supports the viability of this theory This Essay fully examnles
the theory which, ifsuccessfui, would fundamentally alter the way business is conducted in big-
time intercollegiate athletics.
I. INTRODUCTION ................................. ..... 988
II. THE DEATH OF THE FouR-YEAR DEAL .............. ......989
III. BOOMER'S CASE. ...................................1003
* [Editor's Note: On October 15, 2011, Professor Yasser submitted this Essay for
publication as part of the Tulane Law Review's Symposium Issue. On October 27, 2011, the
NCAA Board of Directors approved a plan to allow for multiyear scholarships, rather than
requiring all scholarships to be one-year renewable contracts. The initiative, which was
pushed by NCAA President Mark Emmert, has been met with resistance. On December 27,
2011, more than seventy-five universities expressed their desire to override the multiyear
scholarship plan. As of this Essay's publication date, President Emmert's plan has not been
approved, meaning athletic scholarships are still one-year renewable contracts.]
t D 2012 Ray Yasser. Ray Yasser is the lead coauthor of Sports Law: Cases and
Materials, a sports law casebook widely used in law schools around the country, and has
published widely in the area of sports law. Yasser has served as plaintiffs' counsel in more
than seventy Title IX cases, and he has also represented numerous athletes in eligibility
disputes. He teaches torts, sports law, and antitrust law at the University of Tulsa, where he
has won numerous teaching awards. Most recently, his scholarly focus has been on the
possibility of using the courts to reform the NCAA, and he has been actively involved in the
effort to reform the BCS to establish a bona fide national playoff in Division I-A football.
Professor Yasser wants to express appreciation for the superb contributions of his
research assistant, Josh Mozell. Josh exhaustively researched and then pieced together the
largely untold (and unknown) story of how the once commonplace four-year deal came to
be replaced by athletic scholarships that by rule can only be one year in duration. He also
provided yeoman's service in preparing the manuscript and getting those pesky footnotes into
shape.
Professor Yasser would also like to thank his long-time faculty assistant and all-purpose
enabler Cyndee Jones for all of her kind assistance during the production of this Essay.
The University of Tulsa generously supported this project with a research grant.
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