Ten days from now will mark the start of the 2015 NCAA men's basketball tournament — one of the most watched sporting events of the year.   Recently, the NCAA sold 14 years worth of television broadcast rights to the NCAA Tournament for $10.8 Billion.  On an annual basis, that comes to an annual sum of  $770 Million per year.  

The athletes who play in these games, by contrast, do not receive any share of the derived revenues, nor are they allowed to endorse products or sign autographs for money.  In addition, the most successful teams in this tournament will have athletes that are required to miss upwards of nine class days based on a tournament schedule that is created to accommodate television broadcasts.

As a guest blogger for the month of March, I will be discussing the legal issues related to NCAA amateurism and the economic realities of the NCAA men's basketball tournament.  Some of the topics I will discuss include why the NCAA is indeed an economic cartel, why the U.S. district court's decision in O'Bannon v. NCAA does not go far enough to protect college athletes, why perhaps the National Labor Relations Board should grant college athletes the right to unionize, and how the NCAA men's basketball tournament could be structured differently if student education, rather than athletic revenues, were truly a top priority.  

Thank you to Haskell Murray for providing me with this wonderful forum to share my ideas and scholarship.  And to all of the Business Law Prof Blog readers, please do not worry: I have no plans to be a Debbie Downer.  I will, however, talk seriously about the economic and legal realities of college sports and how we, as academics, can make a difference.