Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti joined Saturday’s edition of Fox & Friends to discuss his antitrust lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).
“NIL is not something the university is giving the student-athletes — it’s an athlete’s inherent right; it’s an intellectual property right,” AG Skrmetti told @foxandfriends this morning.
The @AGTennessee's office will continue to fight for the rights of all student-athletes… pic.twitter.com/V7M80eSTcX
— TN Attorney General (@AGTennessee) February 3, 2024
Skrmetti joined Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares in filing the lawsuit against the NCAA on Wednesday, arguing the organization violates federal antitrust laws with its “anticompetitive restrictions on the ability of current and future student-athletes to benefit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL).”
The NCAA currently prohibits prospective student-athletes from discussing potential NIL opportunities with schools and collectives prior to enrolling.
On Saturday, Skrmetti said a student athlete’s NIL is “an intellectual property right” during his appearance on Fox.
“Student athletes have the right to be compensated for their name, image, and likeness, and the rules the NCAA has suppress the market for that and they’re costing the kids’ money. And you don’t have college sports without college athletes. It’s not right that everybody else is getting rich off this and they are artificially suppressed in what they can get for their name, image, and likeness rights,” Skrmetti said.
“The thing with NIL is it’s not something the university is giving the students, it’s an inherent right that they have, it’s an intellectual property right, their name, image, and likeness. The law is they retain that right whether they are playing for that school or not. So this is a matter of a school interfering with their property rights in a way that’s suppressing their compensation,” Skrmetti added.
On X, Skremtti said his office will “continue to fight for the rights of all student-athletes across the Volunteer State.”
Skrmetti is also a plaintiff in a multistate antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA’s Transfer Eligibility Rule, which requires Division I athletes who transfer a second time to wait one year to compete.
– – –
Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Tennessee AG Jonathan Skrmetti” by the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office.
