1981: OU and UGA sue the NCAA under Sherman Anti-Trust

[King Crimson]

for tv rights.

there are better articles about this that have been written over the years....and should be more.....since it so important.....but anyway, this article appeared in the Daily Oklahoman by writer Berry Tramel who is generally a moron but i give him credit for writing this.

every contemporary college football fan should know about this:

http://newsok.com/ou-georgia-changed-co ... le/5577095


Back in the early 1980s, the NCAA limited teams — including the Barry Switzer-coached Oklahoma Sooners — in number of televised appearances per year. A lawsuit led by OU and Georgia changed all of that.

Kent Meyers still remembers the day colleagues Clyde Muchmore and Andy Coats walked into his office.

OU Regent Dee Replogle, also an attorney at Crowe Dunleavy in Oklahoma City, had called Muchmore. OU athletic director Donnie Duncan had called Coats. Each asked the same question: Interested in suing the NCAA?

The Sooners and Georgia play New Year's Day in the Rose Bowl. The storied programs never have met on the gridiron. But they've shared many a courtroom. From 1981 through 1984, OU and Georgia were partners in a lawsuit that changed college football.

They sued to end the NCAA's regulation of televised football.

On Sept. 26, 1981, Oklahoma and Southern Cal played football in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. ABC televised the game to 48 states. The Carolinas received the Appalachian State- Citadel game. Appalachian State and The Citadel received the same amount of television revenue from that telecast as OU-USC received.

Most Saturdays, only one game a week was televised, either regionally or nationally. Teams were limited in number of appearances per year. Games such as OU-Texas and Bedlam regularly had to seek special permission for a local telecast and sometimes were denied. Some schools, including Kansas State and Virginia, literally had never had a football game televised.

That same Sept. 26, 1981, Nebraska hosted Penn State. Both were at the height of their glory. That game was not televised.

So OU and Georgia became the names behind the lawsuit that threatened the rigid television policies of the NCAA. Why the Sooners and the Bulldogs? Georgia President Fred Davison was president of the College Football Association, a coalition of most major-conference programs that was formed to fight for NCAA football reform. The Sooners, led by Duncan and OU President Bill Banowsky, were adamant that reform was needed and were willing to stand up to the NCAA. Which was no small matter. The attorneys say both schools were threatened with NCAA sanctions if they didn't cease and desist, that long-time NCAA Executive Director Walter Byers exacted draconian influence on collegiate sports.

“Sometimes, when you're going into the hall of horrors on Halloween, you want somebody to hold your hand,” Meyers said. “We were fearful that we'd be scared to death, from Walter Byers jumping out. Georgia seemed amiable to (suing). ‘We'll do it if you'll do it. OK, we'll do it together.' Some of that mentality.”

So Georgia decided to fight the case in Oklahoma, and attorneys were needed.

“Neither Andy nor Clive knew if the word antitrust was hyphenated or one word,” Meyers said.

But Meyers didn't know much about college football television.

“They described the NCAA plan,” Meyers said. “I said, ‘Guys, that's a classic cartel.'”

Meyers eventually found an expert economist who testified that the only difference between the NCAA and OPEC, the petroleum exporting consortium, was that the NCAA had better enforcement mechanisms.

“It clearly was a cartel,” Meyers said the other day from his Oklahoma City office, where he's still practicing law with Crowe Dunleavy. “And nobody had ever challenged it, because it would run them afoul of Walter Byers.”

Initially, OU and Georgia sought to have the action tried as a class- action suit. But 12 members of the CFA, including Missouri and Iowa State, said they were not on board with the Sooners and Bulldogs.

“Some schools and pundits thought this whole exercise was crazy,” Meyers said. “Even if OU and Georgia won, that they'd be in worse shape, not only because of sanctions which could follow — and in fact did — but they thought they'd make less money per game and not be on. They were really fearful of oversaturation of the market, viewership going down.”

Coats said that legendary Penn State coach Joe Paterno “really blasted us. He was very much against us.”

Coats said he and Muchmore attended NCAA conventions and “were like the illegitimate at a family reunion. Nobody really wanted to say hello to us. But (athletic directors) DeLoss Dodds at Texas, Bob Devaney at Nebraska told us, ‘Gosh, we sure hope you win that lawsuit. But don't use our name.'”

Muchmore also remains a practicing attorney with Crowe Dunleavy. Coats went on to become dean of the OU Law School. He was elected mayor of Oklahoma City in 1983, during the appeals process of the OU-Georgia lawsuit.

Coats said they learned that NCAA stood for “Never Compromise Anything Anytime. We tried to settle every time we met. OU and Georgia were somewhat uncomfortable. The NCAA had never lost a case.

“Fred Davison, wonderful gentleman. Banowsky, he'd take on anything. Didn't matter. They were the only ones with the guts to stand up. Showed some courage.”

OU and Georgia won in U.S. District Court, with Judge Juan Guerrero Burciaga of New Mexico ruling that the NCAA engaged in price-fixing and limiting production of games. Antitrust laws generally boil down to a simple question: Is the consumer hurt by the regulation?

Attorneys say the key question in the OU- Georgia lawsuit was to which group did college football belong? Should college football be considered just part of the overall entertainment options of U.S. citizens — is college football competing against “I Love Lucy?” as Coats put it — or is college football its own entity?

The NCAA appealed to the 10th Circuit Court, where Burciaga's ruling was upheld 2-1. The NCAA appealed to the Supreme Court.

U.S. Solicitor General Rex E. Lee supported OU and Georgia to the Supreme Court. The National Federation of High School Athletic Associations filed a brief supporting the NCAA; the Association of Independent Television Stations filed a brief supporting the universities.

In June 1984, the Supreme Court sided with OU and Georgia. The decision was 7-2.

Justice John Paul Stevens cited “restraint of trade.” He wrote that the NCAA restrained trade and thus the burden of proof was on the NCAA to establish why that was justified. The NCAA failed to do so, in the majority's mind.

Justice Byron “Whizzer” White, a football all-American at Colorado, famously dissented, saying it would be the “death knell” of live attendance.

“That certainly did not turn out to be the case,” Meyers said. “He also said, same plan, you'll be back in front of the Supreme Court, trying to defend it.”

That did not turn out to be the case. You know what happened. Soon enough, the College Football Association had its contract with ABC and ESPN. Notre Dame broke ranks with the CFA and signed an exclusive contract with NBC. College Football Association members were angry but knew that deregulation meant deregulation. Eventually, the CFA expired. Its work was done.

College football television exploded over the next 30 years. Now, virtually every game is televised. Every major conference has multiple contracts with networks, and the finances of athletic departments have mushroomed. Attendance declines have come only in the last few years, with a concurrent decline in television watching. Both are blamed on the digital explosion that has threatened everything from retail to social norms.

“If they had any concerns, I think some athletic directors were thinking in terms of perhaps overexposure, and I think the NCAA was using that as an argument,” said Vince Dooley, then Georgia's coach and athletic director. “And it was a pretty good argument. You wondered if it would hurt your attendance.

“It did bring in more people that maybe didn't have a chance to watch college football, begin to watch it. What it did was added more people that became interested in college football. More fans.”

Meyers pointed out that OU and Georgia indeed paid a price. Both were on NCAA probation before the 1980s ended. Duncan famously said “they wanted us, they got us,” when announcing NCAA sanctions in December 1988.

But gone was the NCAA of Walter Byers. Gone were the days of a Nebraska-Penn State game not being televised. Gone were the days of The Citadel getting paid the same for being on two television stations as Oklahoma was paid for being on 207 stations.

The NCAA's ironclad hold on college football television ended thanks to OU and Georgia. Sure, the NCAA's policy was doomed some day. It's like what Seinfeld said of Columbus discovering America; someone would have found it. But it was OU and Georgia who indeed invested in such freedom. They play New Year's Day for a spot in the national championship game. But they once were brothers.

[King Crimson]

it's also kind of common knowledge around Norman legal circles.....that the suit began as a "bet" of a steak dinner at Norman's old Indian Hills Steak House. that the NCAA could be defeated as such in the Supreme Court.....for a porterhouse. that's just a good story my friends.

[Carson]

That's how TBS (a Georgia=based broadcaster) started their SEC games.

Ted Turner ain't stupid, except for marrying Hanoi Jane.

[Left Seater]

So JoPa was against this. Add another pile of shit on his grave.