By Joe Davison

College athletics, like professional sports, have become a multi-billion dollar business. As the NCAA and its conferences sign lucrative media contracts, many have started to question the lack of compensation for college student-athletes. This has resulted in an outbreak of antitrust action against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). In O’Bannon v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, plaintiffs challenged the restrictions on student-athletes receiving compensation for the use of their names, images, and likenesses. Plaintiffs are a group of twenty current and former college student-athletes who played either Division I men’s basketball or football between 1956 and the present. They represent a certified class of all current and former student-athletes who “compete on, or competed on, an NCAA Division I . . . men’s basketball [or] . . . football team and whose images, likenesses and/or names may be, or have been, included . . . in game footage or in videogames licensed or sold by Defendants, their co-conspirators, or their licensees.” Named Plaintiff, Edward O’Bannon, was a student-athlete who played on the 1995 University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), national championship team. Continue reading →