Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

I’d like to briefly take a break from exhaustive Video Game News to point to some actual College Sports Industry News. The judges have ruled in Johnson V NCAA…and they kinda punted.

Johnson, for those who haven’t relentlessly followed every legal attack on the NCAA status quo professionally over the last few years, is a case centered on the employment status of college athletes. The early arguments in that case, back in February, were not kind to the NCAA, leading many legal analysts to predict that the courts would eventually decide in favor of the plaintiffs. Friend of the newsletter Sam Ehrlich, a law professor at Boise State, explained why the early arguments sounded so rough, if you’re interested in more of the legal specifics.

On Thursday, the judges sent the case back to a lower court for additional consideration, although they specifically refused to rule out the idea that college athletes could be considered employees. Via the opinion:

On the surface, that reads like good news for the plaintiffs (athletes wanting to be considered employees) and bad news for the NCAA (who really, really, really does not want that).

But, via USA TODAY:

Sam has graciously offered to give a more detailed legal analysis of this decision for Extra Points later next week, and I imagine many other actual legal professionals will offer their insights in the coming days as well.

My reading of everything here is that while there is broad sympathy towards the plaintiffs, there are a few things here that should help some administrators sleep a little easier.

For one, there are indications that judges think that the QB at Michigan and a swimmer at Western Michigan should be treated differently.

Scroll to the bottom of this thread here:

Here’s a TL;DR:

For the NCAA at large, even if they’ve been hesitant to explicitly make this argument in court… I think judges making this realization is a win. Texas football players could potentially be deemed employees, and the structural enterprise of Texas football could continue without massive changes. There’s enough money generated to pay every athlete a comfortable salary. But there almost certainly isn’t enough money to pay even minimum wage to, say, soccer players at Wagner, softball players at Incarnate Word, or track athletes at West Georgia. At least, not without massive cuts to athlete opportunities.

You also have the courts recognizing that changing athlete employment status would have significant implications elsewhere, on immigration status, Title IX compliance, scholarship funding, and more. The more expansive the decision, perhaps the more likely the courts ask the legislative branch for clarity.

Which brings me to the big reason why I think this ruling actually helps the NCAA. Forget what the law actually says. New people are gonna be writing laws

Officials with the NCAA and major conferences would like Congress to pass a law that prohibits athlete employee classification. They’ve been asking for such legislation for two years, but such legislation has rarely moved beyond hypothetical drafts.

A major reason for that is the partisan makeup of Congress. Republicans are broadly more sympathetic to the NCAA’s requests, but Democrats control the Senate and the White House. Finding even a limited compromise between Rs and Ds on NIL regulation, athlete health care, or anything else related to college sports has been impossible.

But here’s the thing. We’re going to have another election here in a few months, and since the last time I made this point, it’s only become even more likely that Trump wins and gets ~54 Republicans in the US Senate. Unified Republican control isn’t just a hypothetical thought experiment, but as of this moment, it’s the odds on most likely outcome.

Over a long enough time period, I would agree with most sports law analysts that eventually, the courts are going to rule that at least some college athletes should be considered employees. But that’s all moot if lawmakers simply pass a law that says “nuh-uh, actually, college athletes are exempt from employee classification.”

If Trump wins and Republicans control the House and Senate, I think that’s exactly what happens. It also probably means a lot of other changes to higher education, many of which could directly impact college sports, such as dramatic changes to Title IX.

So regardless of what judges say in opinions, anything that stretches the employment question out long enough for lawmakers to beat them to the punch is a ruling that, in my view, ultimately benefits the NCAA.

But I’m not a lawyer or a fortune-teller, and I’ve certainly been wrong before. I’ll be excited to read what more experts think over the coming days.

Are we about to get a more informed NCAA Basketball Tournament Selection Process?

The NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee just finished meeting, and no, they didn’t make any final decisions about expanding the basketball tournaments. Those conversations will continue over the coming months and years. But they did make a few other big decisions.

For one, the NCAA voted to move the 2006 D-I, D-II, D-III and NIT men’s basketball champions all to the same city…. Indianapolis. The events will be held at Lucas Oil, Hinkle Fieldhouse, and Gainbridge Fieldhouse. The NCAA has previously held multiple basketball tournaments in one city in Atlanta (2013), Indy (2016, Women’s basketball) and Dallas in 2023.

The committee also announced that they are adding two new metrics to the bracket evaluation process…the Wins Against Bubble rankings, and data from Bart Torvik. 

I’ve found the T-Rank data from Torvik to be really useful in how I understand college basketball, and my hope is that the more advanced stats information the committee has access to, the more informed decisions they’ll be able to make. Both Torvik and Wins Against Bubble data, ideally, will make it easier for committee members to better understand schedule strength and actual resume.

Now…they just need to do the same for baseball, right?

Here’s what else we wrote this week:

Just as an FYI, I’ll be in Utah on a family vacation from the 18th-24th. Yes, Extra Points will still be publishing while I’m out… I’m working to pre-write a few things, and we’ll have some guest voices over the next two weeks as well. When I get back, we’ll look at making some video content, making sense of the video game post-release, and getting serious about a few big products here on Extra Points that I can’t wait to tell you about.

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Thanks for reading. I’ll see you on the internet next week.