If you recall O'Bannon was the guy who sued the NCAA because he saw a basketball player in a college basketball video game that looked just like him, yet he never got any money from it.

The end result was a district judge in California last year ruled that the NCAA must establish rules such that each player in FBS and DI men's basketball gets not less than $5k per year put into a trust fund that they receive after their collegiate career, in exchange for the sale of their NIL (name, image and likeness) rights.

Interesting side note: I think there were also similar lawsuits that sued EA Sports and maybe the conferences themselves? I know they were combined with O'Bannon's lawsuit. Not so sure on the conferences, but I'm pretty sure EA Sports settled out of court.


Well, as you might expect, the NCAA claims that it's going to take this to the U.S. Supreme court, if need be.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Appeals Court for the 9th Circuit (mostly for the western US districts) started hearing arguments.

Here is one article: http://espn.go.com/college-sports/story/...-precedent



The really interesting thing here is that this isn't even the keystone in the assault on the NCAA's amateurism model.

The keystone is whether players should be employees of the school. I don't know when or where those lawsuits start. But I would imagine this year? Maybe not.