(04-08-2013 10:48 AM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(04-08-2013 01:03 AM)Bull_In_Exile Wrote:  

(04-05-2013 01:20 PM)giesing Wrote:  In my eyes, it is some kind of a monopoly and someone is shut out of the "FBS-Business", because of their religious belief.

Monopolies are held over industries not companies. So long as the NAIA is there then nobody can say "The NCAA has a monopoly"..

Yet the existence of the Mac and Apple's OS, with Linux also set forward by Microsoft was not sufficient for them to win the argument, and they were ruled a monopoly. In that kind of anti-trust action, a key question is determining the relevant market, and it would be very hard to maintain that the market that the Access Bowl schools are in and the market that the NAIA is in are substantially the same market.

Quote: Who has moved up that was less deserving than Liberty?

This is a lot more to the point. Liberty would have to show that they would be allowed to upgrade under a reasonable standard and have been denied an upgrade because of the standard applied was unreasonable.

And its hard to find a general standard that would be widely accepted as reasonable under which they "ought to be" next in line.

No Microsoft was ruled to be engaging in a way to create a monopoly by make the IE browser not only the default browser in Windows by shipping it with Windows, they made it essential to the operation of Windows that you have IE installed and did not provide an easy way to make any other browser the default so that if you clicked on a link in a document the other browser would open.

The court held their behavior was designed to create a monopoly and deny access to the market for competitors when less restrictive means could have been used by Microsoft.

The NCAA has inherent interest in assuring that schools wishing to be FBS meet certain standards AND have the capacity to meet those standards.

A school wishing to realign to FBS is required to play a minimum number of games vs FBS competition. Perfectly reasonable restriction. Why should a team playing a majority or half their games against lower division teams be permitted to market themselves as FBS? It harms the FBS brand.

A school wishing to realign FBS is required to play a minimum of five home games vs high scholarship programs. That protects the brand so that a school does not market itself as FBS without playing FBS home games of very few FBS home games. There are past examples of FBS schools (back when it was called I-A or just I) that played few home games and their lack of success by being on the road so much harmed local market interest depressing ticket sales making it difficult to continue to operate a football team and a number of schools did in fact drop football. Each dropped program is a loss of opportunity for the involved student-athletes and creates a financial hardship for schools that had them on future schedules. It is a reasonable restriction.

The requirement that a school be invited by a conference furthers those aims. Would a court strike them completely down? That is unlikely. A court might direct that there be a less restrictive option, such as the old rule where you had to line up four years worth of contracts but the history of the change is that the old rule was hard on the schools and the NCAA, there is no guarantee the NCAA would even be forced to offer that option and the chances that the membership criteria would be struck down are slim.