The NCAA is not entitled to any special immunity from application of the Sherman Act. The district court properly evaluated the NCAA’s rules limiting athletes’ compensation under the rule of reason analysis. At either end of the spectrum of restraints, abbreviated analysis may suffice to show the challenged restraint either is or is not a violation of the Sherman Act. But here, the district court correctly reviewed the NCAA’s rules on compensation in depth because they were not obviously necessary to foster competition in collegiate sports. Here, the district court properly applied a three step analysis of the NCAA’s rules. First, it required plaintiffs to establish that the NCAA’s rules produced significant anticompetitive effects in the relevant market. Second, it allowed the NCAA to offer its pro-competitive justifications for its rules. The justifications are considered as to the rules generally, not rule by rule. Nor must the defendant show that it has adopted the measure that least restrains commerce to achieve the asserted pro-competitive effect. Finally, the district court properly considered plaintiffs’ demonstration that less restrictive measures could achieve the same pro-competitive purposes.