Earlier this week, the Supreme Court rejected the NFL's request for "broad antitrust law protection," deciding that each team must be considered separate when selling NFL branded items. This means that each team must be considered its own entity when it sells branded items like jerseys and caps.

The court's decision was unanimous, and it reversed a lower court's ruling that threw out an antitrust suit filed against the NFL by American Needle, which lost its contract for making official NFL hats to Reebok International.

I was checking out one of my favorite blogs yesterday (UniWatchBlog.com - operated by the obsessive Paul Lukas) and I found myself with a subject for this week's JockStocks. Is the NFL a monopoly? Should the league be exempt from the Sherman Antitrust Act?

This all stems from a suit by a company known as American Needle, which sued the NFL in 2000 when the league selected Reebok to be the exclusive provider of licensed NFL apparel. American Needle sued the NFL, stating that the Reebok deal violated antitrust statutes becasue the league and Reebok "conspired to stifle competition and inflate prices."