he U.S. Supreme Court recently granted a writ of certiorari and will review American Needle in its 2009-2010 Term. As this Feature will detail, American Needle presents the most meaningful sports law controversy in recent memory. For the first time, a U.S. court of appeals has expressly recognized that in certain settings of collusive behavior, a professional sports league and its independently owned franchises may function as a single entity. American Needle offers the Supreme Court an opportunity to settle a longstanding source of confusion: how should antitrust law regulate the peculiar, perhaps incomparable, business entity known as a professional sports league? The stakes could not be higher.
