In an article for the American Bar Association’s Litigation magazine, the firm’s Chris Patton and Yaman Desai provide a history of the NCAA’s amateurism model, and outline why the organization’s longtime control of college sports is eroding.  The foundations of that model have been chipped away by successful litigation challenging scholarship restrictions and income caps for student-athletes, as well as eliminating the NCAA’s control of individual name, image and likeness (NIL) rights. Chris and Yaman write:

In hindsight, the NCAA’s control was always more brittle than it appeared. It rested on fragile cultural assumptions about education, fairness, and sports that no longer hold. As courts pulled away card after card, the structure began to fall. Of course, the NCAA still exists. So do college sports. But the days of unpaid labor cloaked in the language of amateurism are gone.

To read “House of Cards” go here.