State Laws Might Lead to NCAA Expulsion

State legislation written to protect schools from the NCAA ultimately might disqualify those colleges for NCAA membership, Executive Director Dick Schultz said Tuesday.

“It would depend on how the legislation is written,” Schultz said. “But it might be impossible for that state’s institutions to be a member of the NCAA because there would be no way for them to comply with the rules.”

Several states, almost all with schools recently punished by the NCAA, have or are considering legislation dealing with the NCAA, including Kansas, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, California and South Carolina. Such a bill was signed into law in Nebraska last year.

“Under a bill introduced last year by the Illinois legislature, we couldn’t have enforced any kind of rule in Illinois,” Schultz said.

Schultz said any state regulation could run afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court decision of 1988, when the court ruled 5-4 that Nevada Las Vegas Coach Jerry Tarkanian’s rights to due process had not been abridged by the NCAA process.