Patterson Throws A Flag: Challenging The NCAA’s Redshirt And Four-Season Rules Under The Sherman Antitrust Act

by Faith Howard, Associate Member, University of Cincinnati Law Review Vol. 94

I. Introduction

College athletics are an integral part of long-standing American culture, with colleges hosting sports such as football at the collegiate level since the early 1900s.¹ Since its founding in 1906, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (“NCAA” or “Association”) has been the primary rule-making body for college athletics for four year colleges and universities.² Originally comprised of just 62 schools, the NCAA has grown substantially and now governs more than 1,100 colleges and universities at the Division I, II, and III levels.³ Given the large number of member schools, student-athletes, and the profitability surrounding college athletics, legal disputes challenging the NCAA’s rules and regulations have become a common occurrence.⁴ However, the NCAA has recently begun facing a variety of new legal challenges regarding their regulations on the ability of student-athletes to profit from the commercial use of their Name, Image, and Likeness (“NIL”).⁵ These recent decisions forced the Association to make significant changes to its rules, now allowing student-athletes to receive direct financial compensation for their NILs’ use.⁶ As a result of student-athletes’ newly acquired ability to capitalize on their NILs, some former and current student-athletes have begun filing individual and class action lawsuits against the NCAA on the grounds that some of the Association’s rules regarding student-athlete eligibility also violate federal antitrust law.⁷

This Article discusses the recently filed class action lawsuit Patterson et al v. NCAA and the plaintiffs’ likelihood of success in their challenge against the NCAA. Section II begins by discussing the Sherman Antitrust Act (“Sherman Act” or “Act”), the federal courts rule of reason analysis to determine violations, and why the NCAA’s restrictions fall under the Sherman Act.⁸ Then, Section II provides a brief overview of NCAA v. Alston and House v. NCAA and explains how these cases paved the way for current antitrust challenges that rely on a student-athlete’s ability to capitalize on their NIL and other education-related benefits to justify their arguments. Next, it analyzes Pavia v. NCAA and Fourqurean v. NCAA, which involved challenges to the NCAA’s Five-Year Rule under Section 1 of the Sherman Act. The Section concludes with a brief overview of the Patterson lawsuit. Section III then applies the rule of reason to the core elements of the Patterson complaint and explains why the district court is likely to side with the plaintiffs. Finally, Section IV concludes that the Patterson plaintiffs are likely to succeed in their challenge against the NCAA.

II. Background

A. Brief Overview of the Sherman Act and the Rule of Reason

On July 2, 1890, Congress passed the Sherman Act, the first federal law designed to limit trusts.⁹ Around the end of the nineteenth century, trusts had come to dominate many major industries across the United States, which destroyed competition by allowing industries to set up monopolies.¹⁰ In an effort to improve the economy, the Sherman Act enabled the federal government to initiate proceedings against trusts and order their dissolution, by prohibiting “activities that restrict interstate commerce and competition in the marketplace.”¹¹ Specifically, Section 1 of the Act declares that, “every contract… in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal.”¹² The Act further prohibits monopolies and attempts to monopolize all aspects of interstate trade or commerce by making violators subject to felonies.¹³

To determine violations under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, federal courts often apply a three-step, burden-shifting framework known as the rule of reason.¹⁴ The purpose of this analysis is to determine whether a business practice unreasonably restrains trade by balancing its anticompetitive harms against the pro-competitive justifications.¹⁵ A critical element of this analysis is whether the plaintiff demonstrates that their alleged injury to competition occurred within a relevant market.¹⁶ A relevant market includes both a geographic market and a product market, which comprises one larger market definition.¹⁷ The geographic market extends to an “area of effective competition…where buyers can turn for alternative sources of supply.”¹⁸ Whereas, the product market “includes the pool of goods or services that enjoy reasonable interchangeability of use and cross-elasticity of demand.”¹⁹

Once these relevant markets are defined, the plaintiff has the initial burden to show that the alleged restraint causes “significant anticompetitive effects” within the market.²⁰ To prove this, plaintiffs often present evidence of restricted output or other kinds of market distortions that demonstrate harm to competition.²¹ If the plaintiff satisfies this burden, it shifts to the defendant, who must give evidence of the restraint’s “procompetitive effects.”²² Typically, defendants will offer evidence such as better product quality or greater consumer access.²³ If the defendant meets this burden, it shifts back to the plaintiff to demonstrate that any legitimate objectives are achievable in a “substantially less restrictive manner” that still accomplishes the defendant’s goal without the same anticompetitive harm.²⁴

B. Application of the Sherman Act to NCAA Rules

During the 1970s, the growing economic benefits from college football and basketball sparked a rise in antitrust lawsuits challenging the NCAA’s competition-limiting regulations.²⁵ Initially, federal courts held that the NCAA’s rule making and regulatory power did not sufficiently affect interstate commerce to warrant evaluation under the Sherman Act.²⁶ However, by the mid-1970s, courts began to recognize college athletics as a business activity subject to the antitrust provisions.²⁷ It was not until the 1980s that the Supreme Court, in NCAA v. Board of Regents, formally recognized that although the Association is a nonprofit entity that possesses educational objectives, it does not receive a blanket exception from antitrust laws and must comply with the Sherman Act’s provisions.²⁸

C. The New Era of NIL in the NCAA

The most notable case paving the way for student-athletes to capitalize on their NIL was the 2021 decision in NCAA v. Alston.²⁹ This case involved current and former Division I student-athletes who argued that the NCAA’s rules restricting the education-related compensation benefits that student-athletes could receive violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act.³⁰ Applying the rule of reason, the district court held that the plaintiffs had satisfied their initial burden by defining a relevant market, which they described as the market for “men’s and women’s Division I basketball and FBS football.”³¹ The court further held that the plaintiffs had successfully proved that the NCAA’s rules suppressed market competition by limiting what schools could offer to prospective athletes, thereby distorting the student-athlete labor market and harming their economic opportunities.³² In shifting the burden to the NCAA, the court found no causal link between the Association’s claims that limiting education-related benefits helped protect amateurism and increased the consumer demand for college sports.³³ The court also found that the plaintiffs had proposed viable less restrictive alternatives for the NCAA’s policies, such as requiring transparency for the benefits student-athletes receive.³⁴ As a result, the court issued a permanent injunction prohibiting the NCAA from limiting the education-related benefits that schools could provide to student-athletes.³⁵ On appeal, the Ninth Circuit and Supreme Court affirmed the district court’s decision.³⁶ Two weeks later, the NCAA passed policies allowing athletes to profit from the use of their NIL to some extent.³⁷

Shortly after the Alston decision, the NCAA’s NIL landscape drastically changed once again, following the resolution of the House v. NCAA class-action lawsuit.³⁸ In House, the plaintiffs-current and former Division I student-athletes-alleged that the NCAA’s rules restricting athletes from receiving direct compensation for the use of their NILs violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act by conspiring to fix market prices and refusing to deal.³⁹ Opting to forgo trial, the NCAA began settlement negotiations with the plaintiffs, and on June 6, 2025, the Northern District of California approved a historic $2.85 billion dollar settlement agreement.⁴⁰ Under the terms of the agreement, the NCAA agreed to pay damages to student-athletes who competed in college athletics between 2016 and 2024, and permitted schools to directly share revenue with student-athletes up to an annual cap of $20.5 million dollars.⁴¹ Since the agreement, several athletic departments have begun developing revenue-sharing models to provide student-athletes with direct compensation.⁴²

D. Recent Five-Year Rule Eligibility Challenges and Courts’ Rule of Reason Analysis

Following the changes to student-athlete compensation after Alston and House, a growing trend has emerged among student-athletes looking to challenge different aspects of the NCAA’s eligibility rules, most notably, the Five-Year Rule under federal antitrust law.⁴³ For example, in Pavia v. NCAA, Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia filed suit against the NCAA, challenging the timing of the Five-Year Rule in accordance with the Determining the Start of the Five-Year Period rule.⁴⁴ Pavia argued that by counting the years an athlete spends competing at a junior college toward their total four seasons of eligible competition within the allotted five year window, the rule imposed an “undue restraint on the labor market for college football players,” in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act.⁴⁵

According to Pavia, the restriction not only harmed the market by limiting the number of players who can compete, but also harmed student-athletes who are not able to fully capitalize on the use of their NILs and other education-related benefits.⁴⁶ Applying the rule of reason, the district court accepted Pavia’s proposed relevant market— “the labor market for college football athletes in general and NCAA Division I football specifically.”⁴⁷ From here, the court found that Pavia met his initial burden by presenting evidence that the challenged eligibility rules harmed competition in the Division 1 college football labor market.⁴⁸ Specifically, the court agreed that by limiting student-athletes who first attended junior college from capitalizing on their NIL, the Five-Year Rule’s timing effectively punished players who initially did not enroll in a Division I school, even if attending junior college was the better option for them.⁴⁹ As such, the court found that the rules induced potential football players to attend NCAA institutions rather than junior colleges, which was enough to demonstrate the rules anticompetitive effect.⁵⁰

The burden then shifted to the NCAA to prove the rule’s pro-competitive rationale.⁵¹ Finding that the Association’s claim that its restrictions on eligibility length have no impact on athletes, “ignores the new economic reality in the age of NIL compensation,” the court concluded it failed to meet its burden.⁵² The court also rejected the NCAA’s argument that the rules prevented more experienced athletes from crowding out younger athletes, given that the NCAA’s own transfer rules undermined this position by allowing schools to use the transfer portal to fill spots that could have otherwise gone to incoming freshmen.⁵³ The court further found that the NCAA’s recent rule change allowing student-athletes to transfer unlimited times between schools further undermined its position that the rules helped maintain a natural and standard degree progression.⁵⁴

Additionally, the court accepted Pavia’s proposed less restrictive alternatives, agreeing that starting the eligibility clock when “an athlete first registers for classes at an NCAA member institution” instead of when they register at a “collegiate institution” could be a viable alternative to the rules current timing.⁵⁵ As a result, the court issued a permanent injunction against the NCAA.⁵⁶

A similar situation to Pavia arose in January 2025, when Nyzier Fourqurean, a member of the University of Wisconsin football team, also challenged aspects of the NCAA’s Five-Year Rule under Section 1 of the Sherman Act.⁵⁷ Fourqurean argued that by “restricting student-athletes to four seasons of intercollegiate competition per sport” the rule unreasonably restrained trade by preventing student-athletes from competing in NCAA Division I football.⁵⁸ On February 6, 2025 the district court agreed with Fourqurean and issued a permanent injunction against the NCAA.⁵⁹

In reaching this conclusion, the court relied on what it referred to as the “trend in the law since Alston.”⁶⁰ Applying the rule of reason, the court reasoned that Fourqurean himself did not have to define a relevant market because the “Supreme Court had already defined it in Alston as men’s Division I football,” and that under Alston, the Court had previously recognized that “the NCAA and its members enjoy monopsony power in this market.”⁶¹ From the district court’s perspective, the NCAA’s monopsony power, together with Fourqurean’s evidence that the rule “excludes student-athletes from playing college football after four seasons of competition, when their marketability for NIL income is more likely than not to be at its apex,” was enough to demonstrate the Five-Year Rule’s anticompetitive effect.⁶²

Turning to the NCAA to demonstrate the rule’s pro-competitive benefit, the district court agreed that the Association had satisfied its burden by connecting a student-athlete’s college athletic career to an ordinary degree progression, which allowed it differentiate between Division I football and other football leagues like the NFL.⁶³ However, in shifting the burden back to Fourqurean to propose less restrictive alternatives, the court agreed that “a Five-Year Rule with meaningful exceptions … to avoid unfairness to student-athletes whose individual circumstances may justify a departure,” was enough to satisfy his burden.⁶⁴ Following the decision, the NCAA appealed to the Seventh Circuit.⁶⁵

In a 2-1 decision, the Seventh Circuit reversed the district court’s ruling finding two fundamental flaws in its analysis.⁶⁶ First, the majority noted that Fourqurean’s entire reliance on Alston to define the relevant market was misplaced given that the Supreme Court in Alston did not decide the question of market definition.⁶⁷ Additionally, the majority emphasized that “whether an antitrust violation exists necessarily depends on a careful analysis of market realities,” and that the market realities of college sports has drastically changed in the four years since Alston was decided.⁶⁸ Therefore, without offering his own definition for a relevant market, the majority held that Fourqurean’s claims should not have been allowed to proceed.⁶⁹

Concerning Fourqurean’s second flaw, the majority found that his focus on his own personal exclusion from participating in college football as evidence of the Five-Year Rule’s anticompetitive effects was misguided.⁷⁰ According to the majority, for Fourqurean to establish the Five-Year Rule’s anticipative effects, he needed to demonstrate how the rule enhanced the NCAA’s position in the market, “by making it more difficult for the NCAA’s existing or potential rivals to compete against the NCAA.”⁷¹ However, because Fourqurean himself was not a rival of the NCAA, and he failed to present evidence linking his own personal exclusion to an adverse effect on an existing or potential rival of the NCAA, the court held that he failed to satisfy his burden.⁷² In concluding, the majority addressed a key point raised by the dissent regarding its belief that the Five-Year Rule did possess an anticompetitive effect because it “depresses student-athlete compensation by pushing out the most experienced players.”⁷³ But, as the majority acknowledged, such a conclusion is “a different theory of anticompetitive effects” than the one being offered.⁷⁴ Therefore, the Seventh Circuit reversed district court’s judgement.⁷⁵

E. Patterson et al. v. NCAA

On September 2, 2025, Langston Patterson, a current football player for Vanderbilt University, along with nine other current and former student-athletes, filed a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee against the NCAA, arguing that the Association’s Redshirt Rule combined with the Four Season Rule (“the Rules”) violates Section 1 of the Sherman Act.⁷⁶ The Redshirt Rule is not a formal policy but rather a way to describe how student-athletes can preserve a year of their eligibility by not competing in a season of athletic competition.⁷⁷ During a student-athletes’ redshirt year, they may not compete in intercollegiate competition, but instead are allowed to participate in team activities, such as practicing, conditioning, receiving athletic scholarships, and engaging in NIL opportunities.⁷⁸ The plaintiffs argue that the NCAA’s “Four Seasons Rule, when combined with the Redshirt Rule, functions not as a reasonable eligibility boundary but as an anticompetitive device.”⁷⁹ They assert that these overlapping rules distort the market for Division I athletics by forcing otherwise eligible athletes to forfeit a year of potential competition and their ability to fully compete in the labor market for NCAA Division I athletics.⁸⁰

III. Discussion

This Section follows the structure of the Patterson complaint, which is organized as if the plaintiffs are arguing under the rule of reason framework. It will explain why, given the court’s applications of the rule of reason analysis in Alston, Pavia, and Fourqurean, the plaintiffs will likely have satisfied their initial burden in showing the Rules’ anticompetitive effects and why the NCAA’s asserted procompetitive justifications are unlikely to overcome that showing. Finally, this Section will discuss how even if the court finds that the NCAA has satisfied its burden, the plaintiffs’ proposed less restrictive alternatives will likely be sufficient to justify the Rules’ restrictions, given that they still allow the NCAA to achieve its stated objectives.

A. Applying the Rule of Reason to Patterson

Under the rule of reason, the Patterson plaintiffs bear the initial burden of demonstrating that the Rules have substantial anticompetitive effects within the relevant market. As evidenced by the Seventh Circuit’s decision in Fourqurean, plaintiffs alleging violations of Section 1 of the Sherman Act must propose their own relevant market definition.⁸¹ In their complaint, the plaintiffs identify the relevant market as “the nationwide labor market for the services of NCAA Division I college athletes.”⁸² Within this market, the plaintiffs argue that the Rules suppress market output by preventing otherwise eligible athletes from offering their services for a fifth competitive year.⁸³ By artificially capping participation at four seasons within a five-year window, the plaintiffs contend that the Rules limit the number of college athletes who could contribute to and benefit from an additional season of play.⁸⁴ Absent these restrictions, they argue universities would compete for this talent in the same way they already do for other athletes, which would increase competition within the relevant labor market and benefit student-athletes by expanding their NIL opportunities, increasing their ability to benefit from the House revenue sharing model, and permitting them to receive other forms of educational related compensation.⁸⁵

In this case, the plaintiffs have likely satisfied the first step in defining their own relevant market.⁸⁶ Following the precedents established in Alston and Pavia, the plaintiffs’ proposed relevant market would likely be viable under a rule of reason analysis. For example, the plaintiffs’ proposed market definition closely aligns with that in Alston, where the Supreme Court accepted “athletic services in men’s and women’s Division I basketball and FBS football” as a relevant market.⁸⁷ Similarly, the district court in Pavia found “the labor market for college football athletes in general and NCAA Division I football specifically” to be a viable relevant market definition.⁸⁸ Therefore, given that the plaintiffs do not solely rely on either of these proposed market definitions for their own analysis, but instead follow a similar structural approach, it is likely that the district court in this case will accept the plaintiff’s market definition.

Furthermore, the plaintiffs are also likely to satisfy their burden regarding the Rules’ anticompetitive effects within the proposed market. As previously mentioned, one way that plaintiffs often demonstrate that a restriction has an anticompetitive effect is by providing evidence of restricted output.⁸⁹ Here, the plaintiffs present evidence of such a restriction by explaining how the Rules limit the number of college athletes who can contribute to the labor market by allowing some athletes to use a redshirt year to maintain another year of participation and receive additional benefits.⁹⁰ In contrast, athletes who do not redshirt are limited to just four years’ worth of participation within the Rules allotted five-year window, which reduces the benefits they may receive.⁹¹ The plaintiffs argue that without this restriction, schools will continue to compete for these athletes, as they already do, as seen with the growing market for transfer and graduate-transfer athletes following the Alston decision.⁹² Thus, turning to the district court’s decision in Pavia, where the court accepted that the timing of the Five-Year Rule harmed the market by limiting the number of players who can compete, it is likely that the Patterson court will also agree that the Rules in question here harm the market by not allowing otherwise eligible athletes to compete, thereby restricting market output.⁹³ Additionally, given that the majority in Fourqurean agreed with the dissent’s point that the Five-Year Rule could act as an anticompetitive device further demonstrates how courts are willing to accept reduced output of student-athlete labor as a viable demonstration of anticompetitive effects.⁹⁴ Assuming that the court accepts the plaintiffs arguments, the burden will then shift to the NCAA to prove the Rules pro-competitive rationale.

The NCAA has long contended that the Rules in question help serve three primary purposes: “(1) alignment of academics and athletics, (2) promoting amateurism, and (3) maintaining competitive balance.”⁹⁵ However, it is unlikely that any of these three would be sufficient to shift the burden back to the plaintiffs. As to its first point, the NCAA justifies that its eligibility standards “are designed to move student-athletes toward graduation in a timely manner.”⁹⁶ However, as evidenced by the Pavia court’s acknowledgment that some of the NCAA’s own transfer rules undermine this objective, it is not likely to be persuasive.⁹⁷ Given that the Alston court, in its rule of reason analysis, struck down the NCAA’s argument that promoting amateurism increased consumer demand for college sports, the NCAA’s second point of justification will also fail.⁹⁸ The NCAA’s final argument that it needs to maintain competitive balance is equally unconvincing. As pointed out in the complaint, such a justification is undermined by the NCAA’s own precedents.⁹⁹ For instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the NCAA provided student-athletes with an additional year of eligibility, and the NCAA market still performed at a high level.¹⁰⁰ Thus, given its harsh suppression on market output, the NCAA’s longstanding contentions for its Rules are unlikely to be enough to satisfy its burden.

However, even if the district court accepts the NCAA’s procompetitive justifications, the Patterson plaintiffs are still likely to be successful given their proposed less restrictive alternatives. As the plaintiffs point out, the NCAA itself already employs less restrictive measures to advance some of its stated objectives regarding the alignment of academics and athletics.¹⁰¹ For instance, to remain eligible for competition, the NCAA requires athletes to maintain satisfactory progress toward their degrees, as well as a minimum credit hour and grade point average.¹⁰² Additionally, the plaintiffs argue that modifications to the Four Seasons Rule could similarly preserve any legitimate pro-competitive objectives asserted by the NCAA by simply allowing athletes up to five seasons of competition within the five-year eligibility window.¹⁰³ This approach would closely mirror the existing benefits that redshirt athletes receive, but would extend those benefits to all athletes.¹⁰⁴ Therefore, because these proposals are less restrictive while still allowing the NCAA’s objectives to remain intact, the court would likely accept the plaintiff’s proposal.

IV. Conclusion

In the new era of NIL in college athletics, further challenges to the NCAA’s eligibility rules are inevitable. As the court in Pavia correctly highlighted, the idea that eligibility length restrictions do not impact athletes, “ignores the new economic reality in the age of NIL compensation.”¹⁰⁵ Given the Patterson plaintiff’s arguments have strong viability under the rule of reason framework, it is entirely likely that the student-athletes may be successful in their challenge against the NCAA.¹⁰⁶ But until the judge’s final decision, we’ll have to wait to see if the plaintiffs score.

Cover Photo by Nathan Shively on Unsplash

Faith Howard

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See Pavia v. NCAA, 760 F. Supp. 3d 527 (M.D. Tenn. 2024); see also Fourqurean v. NCAA, 143 F.4th 859 (7th Cir. 2025).; The Association’s Five-Year Rule states that “a student-athlete shall not engage in more than four seasons of intercollegiate competition in any one sport,” but has five calendar years to do so. NCAA, 2025-26 NCAA Division I Manual, Bylaw 12.6.1, at 46 (2025).
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