Monopsony Fracture: An Exploration of College Athletes’ Freedom to Move and Freedom to Capitalize Through the Lens of Push-Pull Theory

In 2015 the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) monopsony splintered when Judge Wilken ruled that the NCAA could not bar colleges from offering athletes the full cost-of-attendance (O’Bannon v. NCAA, 2015). By 2019, when California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the Fair Pay to Play Act into law, the NCAA’s monopsony fractured, ushering in a quasi-free market wherein college athletes can more freely transfer and monetize their name, image, and likeness (NIL; Cal. Educ. Code § 67456, 2020). Therefore, this article begins by setting forth the necessity of the monopsony fracture in forcing NCAA policy change. Next, the authors examined college athletes’ rate of transfer (freedom to move) and opportunity to secure scarce benefits via NIL (freedom to capitalize) due to NCAA policy change. Last, the authors explore an approach toward understanding college athlete labor migration through push-pull theory (Lee, 1966).