Attorneys for two-time Southeastern Conference defensive player of the year Zakai Zeigler accuse the NCAA of trying to dodge facts and law by asking a federal judge to deny the Tennessee point guard's preliminary injunction seeking to play a fifth season in as many years.
Zeigler's attorneys compared the NCAA's motion filed Monday to misdirection and said it used “cherry-picked" or “fundamentally flawed” data ahead of Friday's hearing on the preliminary injunction request before U.S. District Judge Katherine A. Crytzer in Knoxville.
“Rather than recognize the evolution of antitrust law’s application to its business model, the NCAA relies on outdated legal arguments. And rather than address the law as it is, the NCAA mischaracterizes it to defend its illegal actions,” Zeigler's attorneys wrote in a response filed Tuesday.
Zeigler sued the NCAA on May 20 over its rules limiting him to four seasons in a five-year window as an unlawful restraint of trade under both federal and Tennessee laws. His lawsuit argues he could earn between $2 million and as much as $4 million with another season.
The NCAA argued Monday that Zeigler's injunction request should be denied because he is asking the court to make him the first athlete in history to play a fifth season in Division I “as a matter of right.” The NCAA also said using the case of Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia doesn’t help because that case was “decided in error.”
Pavia, who started his career at a junior college, was granted another year to play a fifth season, a ruling the NCAA is appealing. Zeigler played four seasons at Tennessee and already has graduated. The NCAA's motion said the life of a collegiate athlete is enabled by the Four-Seasons Rule, which creates a stream of opportunities for rising high school athletes.
The NCAA argued the Four-Seasons Rule is necessary for DI athletics to exist separately from “purely professional athletics.”
Zeigler is asking the court to eliminate lines between the NCAA's compensation rules subject to the Sherman Act and eligibility rules that don't involve compensation. The NCAA said nothing would stop Zeigler from asking for a sixth or seventh season while pursuing a doctorate degree if he wins.
"College athletics is a means to a better end for student-athletes — not the end itself,” the NCAA motion said.
Zeigler also has known since stepping on the Tennessee campus that he had five years to complete four seasons of basketball and could have challenged the Four-Seasons Rule at any time, the NCAA said.
“Whatever emergency underlies Plaintiff’s request for relief is of his own making,” the motion said.
It noted Zeigler can keep playing basketball with foreign leagues or the NBA's G League since “if he had a viable path to the NBA, given his resume, he would already be a viable prospect.”
The U.S. Department of Justice also filed a brief Tuesday encouraging the judge to apply Alston's “flexible” rule of reason approach to Zeigler's injunction request and “consider how the rule may benefit competition in the relevant labor market” and potentially enhance the athlete experience.
Alston was the 9-0 Supreme Court case ruling in June 2021 that opened the door for compensation. The high court agreed with a lower court’s determination that NCAA limits on education-related benefits that colleges offer athletes who play Division I basketball and football violate antitrust laws.
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