A world-champion Cuban wrestler is suing the NCAA over rules that he says have unfairly barred him from wrestling for Iowa State University.
As reported by Clark Kauffman of the Iowa Capital Dispatch, the lawsuit was filed this week by lawyers for Reineri Andreu Ortega, a student and prospective college wrestler at ISU, in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa. The lawsuit challenges the NCAA’s so-called “Five-Year Eligibility Clock” and the manner in which the NCAA decides when that clock begins running and thus when a student’s eligibility to compete expires.
Attorneys for Ortega argue that the NCAA’s application of the rule violates antitrust laws and unjustifiably restrains the ability of Ortega and other college athletes to “earn meaningful compensation that is now available to [other] NCAA Division I athletes,” Kauffman reported.
The market for name, image and likeness compensation opportunities available to NCAA Division I athletes has “exploded into a multimillion-dollar industry,” the lawsuit claims, adding that such compensation is largely available only to NCAA Division I athletes. Athletes who compete outside of what the lawsuit calls “the NCAA monopoly” have no meaningful opportunity to collect revenue-sharing income or profit from their name, image or likeness, per Kauffman's report.
Under NCAA bylaws, an athlete has five years of eligibility to play four seasons of “intercollegiate competition” in his or her chosen sport. This five-year window is known as as the “eligibility clock” and begins to run from the date on which an athlete registers as a full-time student at any “collegiate institution” — regardless of whether the institution is a member of the NCAA and regardless of their participation in sports.
Lawyers for Ortega say this rule has had the effect of barring students from competing in NCAA sports even if they’ve never competed. They say students such as Ortega “can attend a non-NCAA college for three years without playing any sports, take two years off from school for personal reasons, transfer to a four-year NCAA school, and the student will have used all of their eligibility without ever having competed in a college sport for a non-NCAA or NCAA college.”
According to Kauffman, citing the lawsuit, Ortega completed high school in Cuba in the spring of 2016, and then, beginning in the fall of 2016, began taking courses at Manuel Fajardo University in Cuba. In 2017, Ortega began training and wrestling for the Cuban National Team, which has no affiliation to a college or university, while continuing to study at Manuel Fajardo University until the spring of 2019.
Ortega is a two-time U23 world champion and two-time Pan American gold medalist, according to USA Wrestling.
Ortega claims that the NCAA has effectively excluded him from an NCAA Division I college career, and because, as a 130-pound athlete, he has very limited pro-wresting opportunities open to him after college, a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction barring the continued application of the eligibility rule is necessary.
Per Kauffman's reporting, the lawsuit claims the NCAA’s application of the five-year rule violates the Sherman Act by restraining the market for NCAA Division I college athletes by barring Ortega and similarly situated athletes from having an opportunity to earn money through revenue sharing and NIL.
"As part of the lawsuit, lawyers for Ortega also argue that should the court grant their requested injunction against the NCAA, it must also address a separate NCAA rule," Kauffman wrote. "That rule says if a student-athlete who is deemed ineligible by the NCAA is permitted to participate in sports in accordance with the terms of a court order that is later vacated or reversed, the NCAA can take punitive action against the school — such as vacating wins or imposing postseason-competition bans and financial penalties."
The lawsuit seeks an immediate temporary restraining order, a preliminary injunction, and then a permanent injunction that will block the NCAA from applying the five-year rule to students such as Ortega, Kauffman reported.
