(Excerpts of The New York Times)

• The Supreme Court unanimously ruledon Monday that the N.C.A.A. cannot bar relatively modest payments to student-athletes in the name of amateurism. The decision, based on antitrust law, came as the business model of college sports is under increasing pressure.
• The court rejected the N.C.A.A.’s argument that compensating athletes would alienate sports fans who prize students’ amateur status. “Uncapping certain education-related benefits would preserve consumer demand for college athletics just as well as the challenged rules do,” Chief Judge Sidney R. Thomas wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco.
• “Such benefits are easily distinguishable from professional salaries,” he wrote, as they are linked to education and could be provided in kind rather than in cash. “The record furnishes ample support,” Judge Thomas added, “that the provision of education-related benefits has not and will not repel college sports fans.”
• Aside from the pandemic, no issue has engaged the N.C.A.A. more in recent years than the rights of student-athletes, including whether they may profit from their fame.