NCAA wants Pennsylvania governor’s Penn State lawsuit tossed

The NCAA filed papers in federal court Thursday saying that Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett’s lawsuit should be dismissed.

This is pretty much a game of he-said she-said applied to jurisdictional legalese. The governor’s suit implies that the NCAA went too far by fining Penn State $60 million and imposing major sanctions on the school’s football team in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, saying that they don’t have the authority to do so. The NCAA’s filing says that the governor went too far by filing an antitrust suit, which would apply to regulation of economic activity, not something the NCAA argues it deals with. From the AP:

“It is exceptionally unlikely that sanctions temporarily impairing one school’s prowess on the football field would render any of these robust nationwide economic markets less competitive, such that Stanford suddenly could raise tuition, Michigan could offer fewer or less valuable football scholarships, or Notre Dame could charge more for branded football jerseys,” the NCAA said in the new filing.

They may have a point: as SB Nation’s legal expert wrote back when the suit was filed, Tom Corbett doesn’t really have any standing in this case. Even if the suit’s argument that the NCAA’s reach extended too far was deemed to be true, federal court might not be the right place to solve it.

SB Nation’s Penn State blog Black Shoe Diaries has the entire filing.