Background
College baseball player Noah Blythe sued the NCAA under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, challenging its Five-Year Rule. The rule generally limits student-athletes to four seasons of intercollegiate competition within five calendar years after first enrolling full-time at a collegiate institution.
Blythe began playing at Hawaii Pacific University in 2020, transferred to the University of Antelope Valley, and returned to Hawaii Pacific in 2024. After completing the five-year eligibility period, he transferred to the University of Nevada, Reno. UNR unsuccessfully sought a waiver that would allow him to compete in the 2026 season. The district court then preliminarily enjoined the NCAA from enforcing the rule against him, and the NCAA appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Ninth Circuit held that the Five-Year Rule is a commercial restraint subject to Sherman Act scrutiny. Relying on the Supreme Court’s reasoning in NCAA v. Alston and joining the Third, Fourth, and Seventh Circuits, the panel concluded that non-compensation eligibility rules are not categorically immune from antitrust review when they affect commerce.
The panel nevertheless held that Blythe failed to establish a likelihood of success on his Sherman Act claim. The district court improperly defined the relevant market as the Division I collegiate baseball labor market without sufficient evidence about current market realities, reasonable substitutes, market participants, or market dynamics. Blythe also offered no evidence that the rule substantially harmed competition in the market as a whole, relying principally on his own exclusion. Because he failed on the threshold likelihood-of-success factor, the panel did not address the remaining preliminary-injunction factors and vacated the injunction.
Key Takeaways
- The NCAA’s Five-Year Rule is a commercial restraint subject to scrutiny under Section 1 of the Sherman Act.
- A plaintiff seeking preliminary antitrust relief must support the proposed relevant market with current, market-specific evidence rather than relying on market findings from earlier cases involving different sports or circumstances.
- A student-athlete’s personal exclusion from competition, without evidence of market-wide anticompetitive effects, does not establish a likelihood of success under the rule of reason.
Why It Matters
The decision rejects categorical antitrust immunity for NCAA eligibility rules while emphasizing that susceptibility to antitrust review does not itself make a rule unlawful. Student-athletes challenging those rules must develop evidence defining the relevant market and showing substantial harm to competition, particularly given the rapid changes in college athletics following Alston and the expansion of name, image, and likeness compensation.
Judge Bennett concurred in the merits analysis and in vacating the injunction but would not have decided whether the Five-Year Rule is commercial because that question was unnecessary to resolve the appeal and the evidentiary record was sparse.