NCAA Hit With Antitrust Suit Over Coaching By-Law

Volunteer D-I Baseball Coaches File Antitrust Suit Against the NCAA. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, volunteer baseball coaches claim the governing body illegally sets their pay at $0, Bloomberg Reported.

On Tuesday, Division I volunteer baseball coaches filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of California alleging the NCAA illegally limits not only the number of paid baseball coaches a team can hire, but also illegally price fixes a volunteer coach’s salary at zero.

Named plaintiffs for Smart et al. v. NCAA, which is seeking class certification, include Arkansas coach Taylor Smart and UC Davis coach Michael Hacker.

Related: NCAA Hit With Yet Another Class-Action Antitrust Suit

The governing body’s bylaws — which schools agreed upon — allow for three paid D-I baseball coaches, and one unpaid coach.

The complaint alleges that volunteer coaches still perform full-time duties for no money, while some assistant coaches make six figures a year — and head coaches make more than a million.

As a result, the complaint said, a volunteer coach “performs significant valuable work, and who would be paid for that work in a competitive market, but who cannot be paid for that work.

This isn’t the first time the NCAA has faced litigation over its coaching compensation rules. In the 1990s, a case called Law v. NCAA struck down an NCAA rule that capped certain Division I coaching compensation.

The suit represents the latest in a growing wave of antitrust challenges confronting the NCAA.