## Facts

- Braxston L. Banks played football at the University of Notre Dame on a full scholarship beginning in 1986.
- After knee injuries limited his participation, Banks sat out his senior season to allow further recovery.
- Having completed three seasons, Banks entered the 1990 NFL draft and signed a standard representation agreement with a player agent.
- NCAA rules provided that entering a professional draft or signing with an agent permanently forfeited remaining collegiate eligibility.
- Banks went undrafted, returned to Notre Dame to finish his degree, and sought reinstatement of eligibility; the NCAA refused to grant a waiver.

## Issues

1. Whether Banks’s claims for injunctive relief and class-wide injunctive relief were moot once his NCAA eligibility period expired.
2. Whether Banks stated a claim under § 1 of the Sherman Act by plausibly alleging an unreasonable restraint of trade, including anticompetitive effects in a relevant market, arising from the NCAA’s “no-draft” and “no-agent” eligibility rules.

## Decision

- The Seventh Circuit held Banks’s request for injunctive relief was moot because his eligibility had expired, eliminating any continuing personal stake in reinstatement.
- The court further held Banks could not represent a class seeking injunctive relief where his own injunctive claim was no longer live.
- The Seventh Circuit affirmed dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) because the complaint failed to allege anticompetitive effects in an identifiable relevant market and thus did not plead an unreasonable restraint of trade under the rule of reason.
- The district court’s judgment was affirmed.

## Legal Principles

- Article III requires a continuing personal stake; when an athlete’s eligibility expires, claims seeking reinstatement-based injunctive relief are generally moot absent a recognized exception.
- The “capable of repetition, yet evading review” exception does not apply where the controversy is not inherently so short-lived that review is impracticable.
- NCAA eligibility rules are evaluated under the rule of reason rather than treated as per se unlawful.
- To plead a Sherman Act § 1 claim under the rule of reason, a plaintiff must plausibly allege (among other elements) a relevant market and anticompetitive effects; allegations of individual hardship do not substitute for harm to competition.
- Antitrust law protects competition, not a particular competitor; an injury must be tied to a competitive harm in the market to constitute antitrust injury.
- Eligibility restrictions may be justified as part of maintaining amateur intercollegiate athletics as a distinct product, but dismissal here rested on inadequate pleading of market harm.

## Conclusion

The Seventh Circuit concluded that Banks’s expired eligibility mooted his request for injunctive and class-wide injunctive relief, and it affirmed dismissal of his Sherman Act challenge because the complaint did not plausibly define a relevant market or allege anticompetitive effects attributable to the NCAA’s no-draft and no-agent rules.


Banks v. Nat’l Collegiate Athletic Ass’n, 977 F.2d 1081 (7th Cir. 1992)