Broccoli, Moral Hazard and the Regulation of Interstate Commerce

Official Photo of Federally-Endorsed Vegetable

In a recent essay in Slate Magazine, Akhil Amar, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale, contends that the rationale for the so-called "Affordable Care Act's" coercive individual mandate would NOT justify a national requirement that all Americans purchase and eat broccoli.  Several scholars and commentators have made similar arguments.  (See here and here.)

Amar's contention takes the form of a hypothetical response to a question that some Supreme Court Justices posed to the Solicitor General of the United  States at the oral argument over the law, that is, can Congress, relying on the Obama Administration's rationale for the individual mandate, also require all Americans to purchase and eat broccoli.

Here is the hypothetical exchange posited by Amar. 

"Q: What about a federal mandate to buy broccoli?

A: Thank you for that softball, Your Honor. There is no real, substantial, honest-to-goodness interstate spillover/externality problem with broccoli that I see at the moment. [pause]." 

After the "pause," Amar goes on to argue why, in his view, the coercive individual mandate, unlike a broccoli mandate, would address what he calls "interstate spillovers/externality."  I will return to this latter argument, that is, that "interstate spillovers/externality" justify the coercive individual mandate, later in this post.

I have enormous respect for Professor Amar. He is one of the nation's leading Constitutional Historians.  At the same time, I respectfully submit that his hypothetical response to the "broccoli question" is incorrect.   In fact, failure to purchase and eat broccoli creates obvious "interstate spillover[s]/externalit[ies]" that would, under Professor Amar's rationale for the individual mandate, justify a Congressional requirement that all citizens purchase (and eat) broccoli.

Simply put, individuals often purchase health insurance from out-of-state insurance companies (including "in-state" companies actually owned by out-of-state concerns) who insure individuals in several states, and even "in-state" insurance companies have out-of-state shareholders.   Many are employed by out-of-state companies that self-insure.  Moreover, millions of Americans receive health care via Medicare or Medicaid, both programs subsidized by the Federal Government and thus taxpayers throughout the country.  Coverage by private insurance and eligibility for Federally-subsidized care both create what economists have long called "moral hazard," that is, the incentive to take undue risks because someone else bears the cost of those risks if they materialize.   For instance, once an individual insures her home, she will have no incentive to take cost-justified precautions to prevent a fire knowing, as she will, that the insurance company will replace her home if such a fire occurs.  The result will be too few precautions and too many fires, reducing society's economic welfare.  In the same way, individuals who have purchased health insurance or are covered by subsidized programs do not internalize the full impact of their health-related decisions and will thus engage in risky behavior.  While insurance companies might attempt to control such behavior by contractual provisions requiring their insureds to alter their diets, such mechanisms could not fully replicate the more effective enforcement mechanisms available to the national government, including the deterrent effect of the criminal law.

Failure to eat broccoli is one such "risky behavior," like failure to exercise, sleeping too little, or driving too much or too fast.  As the national government reminds us, a well-balanced diet, including vegetables such as broccoli, is essential to good health.   Indeed, the Department of Agriculture recently sponsored a "Fruits and Veggies Video Challenge," whereby citizens submitted videos touting the virtues of eating lots of ..... fruits and vegetables.  More to the point, according to this September 2011 press release from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Affordable Care Act itself authorized grants to states and localities to "tackle the root causes of chronic disease such as smoking, poor diet and lack of physical activity" and encourage "1) tobacco-free living; 2) active living and healthy eating; and 3) quality clinical and other preventive services, specifically prevention and control of high blood pressure and high cholesterol."  (emphases added).  The Affordable Care Act also created a "National Prevention Council," chaired by the Surgeon General.  The introduction to the council's first report stressed that "preventing disease before it starts is critical to helping people live longer, healthier lives and keeping health care costs down.  Poor diet, physical inactivity, tobacco use, and alcohol misuse are just some of the challenges we face."  (emphases added).  Plainly the national government believes that poor diet, including insufficient consumption of vegetables such as broccoli, is bad for our health and increases the cost of health care, a cost not always borne by the individuals who make poor dietary choices. 

Of course, expenditures designed to encourage Americans, via education and moral suasion, to eat more broccoli are perfectly constitutional, given Congress's power to levy taxes or borrow and then spend the proceeds "for the general welfare."  However, Professor Amar claims that mandating the purchase and consumption of broccoli would exceed Congress's authority under the Commerce Clause, even if that authority includes the power to force individuals to purchase health insurance against their will.  However, as just explained, requiring each American to purchase and consume broccoli could thus counter-act the under-consumption of broccoli and reduce interstate spillovers, thereby justifying such regulation under Professor Amar's "externality/spillover" rationale.   That is to say, Professor Amar's case for the coercive individual mandate would equally justify a coercive broccoli mandate as applied to any American with private health insurance or any American entitled to Medicare or Medicaid.   Indeed, given the lag between bad dietary choices and poor health outcomes, Congress could presumably employ Amar's rationale to require consumption of broccoli before  individuals become eligible for Medicare and Medicaid. 

To be sure, the spillovers from failure to eat broccoli may not be that large for any particular individual.  However, precedent that Professor Amar does not question holds that Congress may regulate an entire category of commercial activities when the aggregate impact of those activities itself has a substantial effect on interstate commerce.  See Wickard v. Fillburn, 311 U.S. 111 (1942).  Thus, if the aggregate impact failure to consume broccoli is "substantial," as it surely is under governing precedents, then Congress could require such consumption under Professor Amar's rationale.   Indeed, if the aggregate impact of failure to eat broccoli is not substantial, then Congress could remedy this defect by requiring Americans to purchase and consume other foods as well, thereby increasing the impact of the mandate on individual health and further reducing the size of the spillovers.  That is to say, the more intrusive the food consumption mandate, the more likely the mandate would survive scrutiny under Professor Amar's rationale for the coercive individual mandate to purchase health insurance.

Indeed, insurance and subsidized health care is not the only source of potential spillovers in this context.  Many Americans work for corporations incorporated in other states and/or with shareholders in other states.  Poor health leads to reduced economic productivity because sick individuals miss work more often and are less productive when they do work.  Because state and national governments levy taxes on income, individuals do not internalize the full benefits of maintaining their health and thus their economic productivity.  (For instance, an individual who increases her productivity by $1,000 per year by remaining healthy will only realize $700 per year if her marginal tax rate is 30 percent.)  Here again, forcing Americans to eat more broccoli would counteract the tendency of such individuals to underinvest in protecting their own health.

Finally, it should be noted that the rationale for forcing Americans to buy and eat broccoli is in some sense stronger than the "externality/spillover" rationale that Professor Amar offers for the individual mandate.  Amar identifies two categories of spillover:

First, he notes that individuals without insurance may fall ill while in another state and receive care there, for which they may not be able to pay if they do not have insurance.  Second, he claims that individuals with insurance in one state might then develop a preexisting condition and that the existence of such conditions might deter these individuals from taking jobs in other states, because employers and/or insurance companies "discriminate" against such individuals.  As Amar puts it:

"Even if nothing I have said yet persuades Your Honors, my second commerce clause claim is that millions of Americans suffer from preexisting medical conditions. If they get a better job offer out of state, they should take it so that they can contribute more to their families and to the general economy.  But they will not be able to do so if the out-of-state employer discriminates against preexisting conditions.  This discrimination creates a huge lock-in of labor. It prohibits interstate mobility—the free interstate flow of services.  The core purpose of the interstate commerce clause is to allow Congress to remove interstate barriers—legal, physical, economic—such as this."

According to Amar, the remedy for these "externalities," is to coerce individuals into purchasing health insurance against their will.  This way, an individual who becomes ill in another state will be able to pay for emergency care herself and thus not impose the cost of that care on others.  Moreover, as explained previously on this blog, the individual mandate contained in the (so-called) "Affordable Care Act" forces individuals without pre-existing conditions to purchase insurance at rates that are higher than justified by their expected cost of health care, thereby making health insurance and health care LESS affordable for these individuals.  (For a more detailed explanation of how the so-called "Affordable Care Act" achieves this coercive cross-subsidy, see this essay by Mario Loyola, Richard A. Epstein and Ilya Shapiro).

Professor Amar's first argument does not even describe an "externality" or "spillover." Externalities or spillovers exist when individuals do not bear or "internalize" the full costs or benefits of their actions; the classic example is a polluting factory, which imposes costs on others (a negative externality) and a fireworks display, which confers benefits on spectators who do not pay to see it (a positive externality).  Individuals with pre-existing conditions predictably impose greater costs on insurance companies than individuals without such conditions, thereby explaining the sort of "discrimination" that Amar decries.  (Try obtaining low-cost life insurance if you have such a pre-existing condition.).  To be sure, the prospect of paying such high premiums may deter some individuals from taking new jobs in other states (if those states allow such "discrimination").  (At the same time, preventing such discrimination will force healthier individuals to pay premiums that are higher than before and thus deter THEM from moving to jobs in other states.) 

There is no doubt that individuals with pre-existing conditions will pay more for health insurance absent regulation of premiums.  However, so long as these higher premiums simply reflect the expected health care expenses of the insured, such premiums do not constitute or cause an externality or spillover and thus do not justify regulation under Professor Amar's rationale.

By contrast, the second argument DOES describe an interstate externality/spillover.  However, the externality and spillover does not come close to justifying the coercive individual mandate in its current form.  At the most, this argument would justify requiring individuals to purchase insurance that provides coverage for emergency medical expenses of the sort Professor Amar describes.  (Even this mandate would be overbroad, however, because some individuals are able to pay even emergency room expenses "out of pocket," without relying upon insurance.)  However, the insurance mandated by the so-called "Affordable Care Act" requires far more than coverage for the sort of catastrophic events that Professor Amar describes.  As Randy Barnett explains, the cheapest health insurance plan allowed by the Affordable Care Act will provide partial coverage for any number of garden variety health-related expenses and thus cost ten times more than the cost of a catastrophic policy that would address the sort of cost-shifting Professor Amar invokes.  Moreover, this cheaper policy is only available to individuals 30 years old or younger.  Thus, unlike the sort of moral hazard that afflicts dietary decisions, the prospect of interstate emergency expenses does not come close to justifying the so-called "Affordable Care Act's" coercive individual mandate in its current form.

Would Clint Eastwood Bail Out Super Bowl Losers, Too?

Bad Product = Low Sales

Did Not Receive A Half Time Bail Out

A Chrysler Super Bowl commerial featuring Clint Eastwood asserts that it is "halftime in America" and that firms like Italian-owned Chrysler are leading an industrial resurgence in the USA.  According to Eastwood:

"Detroit’s showing us it can be done. And, what’s true about them is true about all of us. This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines."

Oddly, Eastwood did not mention that American consumers delivered a knock-out blow to Chrysler, because of the poor products the company offered, like the Dodge Dakota pictured above.   Simply put, Americans preferred cars made by Ford, Toyota, Volkswagen and Honda, for instance.  (See this article in Forbes, which includes the Dakota and other Chrylser products among "the worst cars on the road.")  Then, American taxpayers bailed the company out, to the tune of $1.3 Billion, according to the Department of the Treasury.  (This does not include another $12 Billion in low-interest loans that the company received.)  During the same period, of course, 400,000 other businesses failed and received no such corporate welfare.  It's much easier to "get right back up again" after someone writes you a check for $1.6 Billion.

By contrast, when the New England Patriots underperformed last evening they lost.   There was no half time bailout for Tom Brady et al.  (Nominally, the Patriots were leading, but they were obviously struggling.)  That's the way competition is supposed to work in a free society.   Eastwood should know better.

President Obama's Upside Down Tuition Rhetoric

In his recent State of the Union Address, President Obama decried what he called "skyrocketing" tuition at American Universities and called on Congress to withdraw federal support from Colleges if such increases continue.  As the President put it:

"[L]et me put colleges and universities on notice: If you can’t stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down." 

The Administration subsequently explained that it will ask Congress to cut the availability of student loans in those states where public universities raise tuition more than the Administration would like.  This is upside down.  To be sure, tuition has risen significantly over the past few years.   However, colleges that have raised tuition have had little choice.  Across the nation, states responded to the recent recession by reducing financial support for higher education.  (This article describes this phenomenon in North Carolina.).  Colleges and Universities in such states have responded by raising tuition in an effort to maintain the quality of the product they offer, and tuition at such universities is still significantly below the cost of the education provided.  Moreover, many such universities have set aside significant portions of the proceeds from such increaes to support need-based financial aid that ensures the very sort of access President Obama claims to support.  California, for instance, recently set aside 1/3 of the proceeds from a tuition increase to expand the pool of resources available for need-based financial aid. 

In sum, state budget cuts have caused colleges and universities to raise tuition to protect the quality of the product they offer and generate sufficient funds for financial aid.  Instead of deterring future tuition increases, cuts to the Federal Loan Program will punish the very students harmed by increased tuition and likely cause schools to raise tuition even more to generate the financial aid necessary to ensure sufficient access. 

A Presidential Remedy for Obamacare

Understood the Nature of Executive Power

Ditto

Last week former Senator Norm Coleman, purportedly an advisor to Governor Romney, predicted that no President, Republican or otherwise, could repeal President Obama's Health Care Reform Legislation in its entirety.  Instead, he said, Republicans could repeal portions of the legislation while leaving other portions intact.  In so doing, he contradicted promises by major Republican candidates for President to work with Congress to repeal so-called "Obamacare" if elected to replace President Obama. 

Senator Coleman may overestimate the difficulty of eliminating "Obamacare" in its entirety.  After all, as some courts have already held (see also here), the Law's coercive requirement that individuals purchase health insurance policies designed by the National Government exceeds the authority that the Constitution confers on the Congress of the United States, by requiring individuals to engage in commerce, instead of regulating commerce.  Moreover, absent executive branch enforcement, this mandate would become a nullity, as individuals who declined to purchase such insurance would suffer no penalty.  Thus, upon taking office, a President who believed the coercive individual mandate to be unconstitutional could decline to enforce that provision of "Obamacare," thereby discharging his or her duty to "take care that the laws are faithfully executed," given  that the Constitution is, by its terms, the supreme LAW of the land.  (In so doing, the President would also "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" as required by the Presidential Oath specified in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution.)   For, as explained elsewhere on this blog (see also here), the text and structure of the Constitution require the President to decline to enforce statutes that he or she believes to be unconstitutional, without regard to the position taken by courts on the matter.  As James Madison explained more than sixteen decades ago:

       "As the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial departments of the United States are co-ordinate, and each     equally bound to support the Constitution, it follows that each must, in the exercise of its functions, be guided by the text of the Constitution according to its own interpretation of it; and, consequently, that in the event of irreconcilable interpretations, the prevalence of the one or the other department must depend on the nature of the case, as receiving its final decision from one or the other."

Thus, even if the Supreme Court were to err and uphold the coercive individual mandate this term, a President who believed the mandate to be unconstitutional would be duty-bound to decline to enforce that mandate.  In the same way, for instance, Andrew Jackson vetoed a bill attempting to recharter the Bank of the United States in 1832, partly on constitutional grounds, even though the Supreme Court had sustained identical legislation in McCulloch v. Maryland.  As Jackson put it:

"The Congress, the Executive, and the Court must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others. It is as much the duty of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the President to decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or resolution which may be presented to them for passage or approval as it is of the supreme judges when it may be brought before them for judicial decision. The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the President is independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve."

Of course, President Obama's health care reform legislation contains provisions other than the coercive individual mandate.  Moreover, some of these other provisions may not exceed the power of Congress.  Thus, declining to enforce the individual mandate would not itself repeal the legislation in its entirety.  Indeed, courts often strike down particular portions of laws, leaving other portions intact, applying the doctrine of "severability."   However, as previously explained on this blog, Congress declined to include a so-called "severability clause" in the legislation, thus weakening the argument Congress intended parts of the legislation to remain intact if other parts are struck down.  Morevoer, the Obama administration has argued that the individual mandate is a critical part of the reform legislation, without which the legislation could not serve its intended purpose.  This is not surprising.  For, as previously explained on this blog, the individual mandate requires healthy individuals to pay unreasonable rates for health insurance, thereby subsidizing the purchase of health insurance by individuals who are less healthy and thus would otherwise pay higher premiums.  Without the coercive individual mandate to purchase health insurance at unreasonable rates, healthy individuals would rationally choose to self-insure, thereby thwarting the National Government's objective of forcing insurance companies to provide below-cost health insurance to millions.   As a result, a President could rationally conclude, as did one Federal Judge, that the individual mandate is not severable from the rest of the legislation, with the result that the entire legislative reform package is void.  At the very least, the President could conclude that certain provisions inextricably intertwined with the coercive individual mandate must fall along with that mandate.

Hopefully a newly-elected President will heed the views of Madison and Jackson and rid the country of the individual mandate, unless the Supreme Court does so first.

California Exercising Freedom to Fail

No Longer a Land Worth Finding

In a recent Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush reminded us that true freedom includes the freedom to fail.  As he put it:

"We have to make it easier for people to do the things that allow them to rise. We have to let them compete. We need to let people fight for business. We need to let people take risks. We need to let people fail. We need to let people suffer the consequences of bad decisions. And we need to let people enjoy the fruits of good decisions, even good luck. That is what economic freedom looks like. Freedom to succeed as well as to fail, freedom to do something or nothing."

Bush, of course, was referring to the economic freedom of individuals and the businesses they own and create to compete in a free market.  But similar considerations apply to states in a system premised upon competitive federalism.   In such a system, states are free to make fiscal and regulatory decisions, so long as those decisions do not interfere with the authority of other states.  (For instance, Virginia is free to raise taxes on its own citizens; it may not raise taxes on citizens of New York.)  This freedom also empowers states to compete with one another for citizens and investment capital.  Thus, a state that offers an attractive mix of fiscal policy and regulation will presumably attract individuals and investment capital, while those that offer unattractive fiscal and regulatory policies will see individuals and capital flee.

Just as individual economic freedom must include the freedom to fail, so too must competitive federalism include the freedom of states to fail if they embrace detrimental fiscal and regulatory policies.  Like individuals, states should suffer the consequences of their actions. 

California seems to be exercising this freedom to fail with a vengeance.   According to Bloomberg News, California Governor Jerry Brown has proposed yet another significant increase in state spending, at a time when the State is already running a large deficit and holds an "A-" credit rating from Standard and Poors.  This rating is significantly lower than that held by Virginia (AAA), Indiana (AAA), the United States of America, (AA+),   France (AA+), Japan (AA-), and Chile (A+), to take but a few examples.   Sovereigns sharing California's credit rating include Botswana, Malaysia, and Malta.   (Go here for a comprehensive list of nations and their credit ratings.)  Indeed, according to this source, California is tied for last among American states with Lousiana when it comes to S & P's rating of its debt.  Brown would finance part of this new spending with yet another increase in state income taxes, raising the rate on individuals earning over $250,000 per year a full percentage point, to 10.3 percent. 

California already has the third highest income tax rates in the nation, behind Hawaii and Oregon, both of which stand at 11 percent.  Its sales taxes are also among the highest in the nation.  At the same time, the state imposes burdensome regulations on business that inhibit job creation and economic opportunity.  It's little wonder, then, that California currently suffers from an unemployment rate over 11 percent, compared to a national average of 8.5 percent.  Nor is it surprising that the state has recently seen a net outflow of citizens, as more and more Californians leave the Golden State for states like Texas.  While those who found California cried out "Eureka" ("I have found it"), more and more are crying "let's get out of here."  Hopefully Americans will resist calls by some to force citizens in more responsible states to bail California out.

Is The NCAA an Illegal Cartel?

Greedy Cartelist?

June 6, 2021 Update:

Earlier today I posted on this blog a forthcoming paper entitled: Requiem for a Lightweight: How NCAA Continues to Distort Antitrust Doctrine, 56 Wake Forest L. Rev. _____ (2021) (forthcoming).  (See here).  The paper critiques several aspects of the Supreme Court's decision in NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, 468 U.S 84 (1984), including the Court's decision to exempt all restraints imposed by sports leagues from per se condemnation as well as dicta suggesting that courts should subject some restraints that avoid per se condemnation to a "Quick Look" version of Rule of Reason.  The paper also endorses NCAA's dicta to the effect that horizontal restrictions on rivalry for the services of student-athletes can produce redeeming virtues, with the result that such restraints should survive per se condemnation.  The paper calls on the Supreme Court to correct these and other errors in NCAA v. Alston and thus ensure a more coherent jurisprudence under Section 1 of the Sherman Act that better reflects the teachings of modern economic theory.

An Op-Ed in Sunday's New York Times entitled "The College Sports Cartel," Joe Nocera decries the fact that NCAA student athletes cannot receive more than a full scholarship, room and board, and stipend to cover living expenses.   As the author notes, NCAA rules --- the product of an agreement between competing member schools --- forbid schools to pay student-athletes a salary analogous to what, say, a minor league baseball team would pay its players.  (Put another way, NCAA rules require student-athletes to remain amateurs.)  The author characterizes this agreement as "collusion" of the sort ordinarily forbidden by the antitrust laws, collusion that enriches member schools at the expense of purportedly "shackled" student athletes.   He ends by opining that "[I]t certainly would be worthwhile to see someone challenge [the NCAA's] cartel behavior in court."

And yet, as Nocera himself perceptively admits: "Sports leagues can’t exist without at least some [so-called] collusion."   A classic example, of course, the agreement between a league's members on the number of games in a season.  Thus, the NBA's decision that each team will play "only" 82 games in the regular season is a horizontal agreement on the output of games, a limitation that could be unlawful in other circumstances.  Ditto for members' agreement on the length of the playoffs, including how many games are in the finals.  (Imagine if Ford, GM and Chrysler announced they were agreeing on the number of pickup trucks they would produce in the coming year.)  Indeed, calling such agreements between members of the NBA "collusion" would deprive the word of any useful descriptive value in this context, as the term would become a synonym of "contract" or "cooperation."

Sports leagues are not unique in this sense.  All sorts of welfare-increasing economic activity is the result of agreements between rivals, agreements that economists and antitrust courts call "horizontal."  For instance, the formation of a partnership is a horizontal agreement that eliminates rivalry between the new partners.  Such partnerships often include explicit agreements between the partners not to "moonlight" and thus compete with the partnership.    Ditto for franchising, which many economists properly conceptualize as an agreement between actual or potential rivals (think of the numerous independent McDonalds franchisees in a medium-sized town).  Such agreements set product standards, decide what products members of the chain will offer, what ingredients each product will contain, etc.  Without such (horizontal) agreements, what consumers currently experience as a well-run franchise system would rapidly devolve into a loose confederation of business establishments that, while operating under the same trademark, would offer varying products and varying degrees of quality, sowing confusion in the mind of consumers and defeating the purpose of operating under a single trademark.  Thus, while such agreements reduce rivalry in some sense between members of a franchise system, they can ultimately enhance the quality of the products offered by a particular franchise system and thus further useful competition with other such systems, to the ultimate benefit of consumers and the rest of society. 

In short, like many productive ventures, the NCAA and other sports leagues entail cooperation between rivals, cooperation that could be problematic in other contexts when viewed in isolation.  The key question from the perspective of the antitrust laws is whether the cooperation in question, while nominally reducing competition between rivals, might in fact overcome a market failure and thus increase the welfare of society by inducing a more efficient allocation of resources.  That, in short, is the focus of antitrust's "Rule of Reason, " announced in Standard Oil v. United States.  (See this article for a more in depth explanation of the connection between market failure and Rule of Reason analysis.)

While litigation against the NCAA on this question might enrich antitrust lawyers, the Supreme Court has already explained how it would rule in such a case.  Twenty-five years ago, in NCAA v. Bd. of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, the Court evaluated NCAA rules limiting the number of games that networks could broadcast on television during any given season.  The rules also limited the number of times that any particular school could appear on television.  The Court condemned the rules under the Rule of Reason because they reduced output without any offsetting benefits.

In so doing, however, the Court expressly approved other horizontal restraints imposed by the NCAA, including those fostering amateurism by the players.  The Court's language (previously discussed on this blog) is worth quoting in full:

"What the NCAA and its member institutions market in this case is competition itself -- contests between competing institutions. . . . . [T]he NCAA seeks to market a particular brand of football -- college football. The identification of this 'product' with an academic tradition differentiates college football from and makes it more popular than professional sports to which it might otherwise be comparable, such as, for example, minor league baseball. In order to preserve the character and quality of the "product," athletes must not be paid, must be required to attend class, and the like. And the integrity of the 'product' cannot be preserved except by mutual agreement; if an institution adopted such restrictions unilaterally, its effectiveness as a competitor on the playing field might soon be destroyed. Thus, the NCAA plays a vital role in enabling college football to preserve its character, and as a result enables a product to be marketed which might otherwise be unavailable. In performing this role, its actions widen consumer choice -- not only the choices available to sports fans but also those available to athletes -- and hence can be viewed as procompetitive."

The Court then noted (as suggested above) that "a restraint in a limited aspect of a market may actually enhance market-wide competition."

Simply put, the Court concluded that unbridled competition between member schools for players, thereby allowing schools to pay players a salary, would result in a market failure.  That is to say, no individual school would, when setting players' compensation, take into account the impact of that decision on the overall "brand" or "image" of the product being offered.  While players might benefit in the short run, the "brand appeal" of college football would suffer over the longer run, as what was once amateur athletics associated with an academic tradition (and thus a natural fan base) would degenerate into a professional league inferior to the NFL and without a natural fan base.

The result may seem to countenance an unfair distribution of the benefits produced by NCAA football.  Certainly some schools earn millions each year due to the performance of their student athletes.  (At the same time, however, many others lose money on the sport, and no one is proposing that student athletes share in these loses.)  However, antitrust law does not exist to ensure a fair division of the gains from economic activity but instead only bans those agreements or unilateral practices that reduce economic welfare.