Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti filed suit against the NCAA on Wednesday over its “NIL-recruiting ban,” taking the same aggressive posture of the University of Tennessee as it confronts a new NCAA investigation into whether it violated athletics recruiting rules.
The attorney general’s lawsuit was filed in the Eastern District of Tennessee federal court. It mentions the UT investigation as an example of the “unlawful restriction” of the NCAA’s NIL policy.
Skrmetti told Knox News, part of the USA TODAY Network, that “we sued to protect the rights of current and future Tennessee student-athletes from Memphis to Mountain City, from Union City to Unicoi County, from Covington to Cleveland, and everywhere in between.”
Skrmetti argues the NCAA violates federal antitrust laws by putting a “shifting and opaque series of rules and guidelines” around athletes’ benefits for their name, image and likeness.
It’s similar to the language UT Chancellor Donde Plowman used in a scathing email to NCAA President Charlie Baker on Monday denying that UT broke NCAA rules involving NIL benefits for athletes.