NCAA president Mark Emmert talks Kyle Guy's wedding registry, antitrust lawsuits, gambling

MINNEAPOLIS — NCAA president Mark Emmert tackled the usual subjects Thursday in his annual news conference at the Final Four, including amateurism, the federal investigation into basketball, changes in sports gambling laws and more. But first, he had to deal with a flare-up from earlier in the day.

When Virginia’s Kyle Guy told reporters he and his fiancée had been prohibited from creating a wedding gift registry, it was exactly the sort of poor optics that so often dog the organization. Except Emmert, who said he’d only learned of the issue a little earlier, said it wasn’t against NCAA rules.

“What we know right now is that nobody in the NCAA said anything of the sort,” Emmert said. “We don’t know what the source of that information (to Guy) was, whether it came from the institution or not. It’s certainly not the case that it’s a violation of NCAA rules.”

If the mystery of the (not) illegal wedding registry is still unfolding — who told Guy and his fiancée they could not do it, and is it OK now to give them the blender? — by comparison to the myriad larger issues the NCAA faces, it’s a blip.

Emmert contended the NCAA came out a winner in a federal antitrust lawsuit, even though it is appealing the decision after Judge Claudia Wilken ruled the NCAA violated antitrust laws. Emmert said Wilken’s decision tracked with previous rulings that he said “reinforced” the NCAA’s model of amateurism. Wilken ruled the NCAA cannot “limit compensation or benefits related to education,” while leaving other limits intact.

“Virtually all of the rulings have made clear that college athletics is about college students playing other college students (in sports),” Emmert said, “not employees playing employees. And we’ve had a number of rulings now in the federal courts … that have reinforced that and agreed with the notion.”

Emmert said the NCAA does not agree that it violated antitrust law in limiting the amount of educational awards college athletes can receive, or that the courts should be involved — as Wilken suggested — in determining what qualifies as an educational benefit.

“We’re still working on the details of what (the) appeal will look like, and we’re going to try and get as much clarity as we can through that process,” he said. “We think it’s challenging at the very least to have any definition of what is tethered to education go back to a judicial process. … So we’re going to see if we can get a better resolution of that question.”

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♦ Emmert was asked for his reaction to proposed legislation by a North Carolina congressman to allow college athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness. He said NCAA representatives had spoken with Rep. Mark Walker and “are trying to understand his position and trying to make sure he understands ours.”

“There is very likely to be in the coming months even more discussion about the whole notion of name, image and likeness, and how it fits into or doesn’t fit into the current legal framework and the environment of college sports,” Emmert said. “Similarly, there needs to be a lot of conversation about how — if it was possible, how would it be practicable? Is there any way to make that work and still allow fair competitive relationships among schools? And nobody’s been able to come up with a resolution yet around that.”

♦ Emmert said the NCAA continues to push to get evidence from recent and ongoing federal trials related to corruption in men’s college basketball, which has led to allegations of rule violations by several coaches and programs. The NCAA changed its rules to allow outside evidence to be used in its enforcement proceedings, and has petitioned the court to provide the evidence from the trials. But Emmert said the NCAA has not yet received “all the information that we would like to have from those trials.”

“We’re going to continue to argue aggressively that they should provide that information so we can get to the facts,” he said, “since there’s so much interest, not just on our part, but across the country in knowing what really transpired there.”

♦ Emmert said the NCAA is working to be ready for the anticipated advent of legalized sports betting in many states after a Supreme Court ruling last year.

“I hope everyone remembers we argued that sports wagering shouldn’t be legal outside of the states where it already exists,” Emmert said, “and we lost that in court. … So now we find ourselves in an environment where we have to manage it like everyone else.”

He said the NCAA hopes to work with professional sports leagues and the federal government to create “guidelines around what individual state laws look like … to put in place some parameters so that all 50 states decide to have legalized wagering with some consistency.” And he said the NCAA is “moving … aggressively” to develop systems to monitor betting in an attempt to detect suspicious betting behavior that might indicate point shaving or similar behavior.

♦ Emmert also said the NCAA is willing to allow its championships to be held in Nevada. The state has long been prohibited from holding them because it allowed sports gambling. The NCAA has issued a temporary lifting of the ban but legislation will be required for a permanent change.

“I don’t want to presuppose (an outcome),” Emmert said, “but so far I haven’t heard any great objections (to permanently lifting the ban).”

Emmert said regardless of changes to sports wagering laws, he does not foresee a day when a college athlete would be allowed by the NCAA to bet on sports other than his own.

“We want a prohibition,” Emmert said. ‘The membership wants a prohibition of athletes gambling in any sports, period.”

♦ And concerning Guy and the wedding registry, Emmert indicated the Virginia guard and his fiancée, who are planning to get married this summer, were free to let folks know of their preferred tableware.

“We allow people to have all the usual and accustomed gifts among families and friends at all holidays and weddings of the sort,” he said. “There’s not a prohibition against that.”

After the news conference, he added: “It winds up being a silly story. I understand why people are tweeting about it, but it’s not accurate.”

Follow USA TODAY Sports' George Schroeder on Twitter @GeorgeSchroeder.