Attorneys acting on behalf of two current college athletes on Monday filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA and the Power Five conferences that could substantially increase the tension — and financial stakes — connected to athletes’ ability to make money off their name, image and likeness.


The suit, which seeks to be a class action, not only asks that the NCAA be prevented from having association-wide rules that “restrict the amount of name, image, and likeness compensation available” to athletes but also seeks unspecified damages based on the share of television-rights money and the social media earnings it claims athletes would have received if the NCAA’s current limits on NIL compensation had not existed.

This has the potential to put, conservatively, hundreds of millions of dollars at stake. As allowed under federal antitrust law, the suit seeks to cover athletes who played in any of the past four years and carry forward through the date of a final judgment. In addition, if a jury decides to award damages to an antitrust plaintiff, the amount is tripled.

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The NCAA is facing another lawsuit over athletes' names, images and likenesses.
KIRBY LEE, USA TODAY SPORTS
Specifically, the suit claims that football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball players at schools in the Power Five conferences are entitled to damages related to the use of their NIL’s during telecasts of games and that athletes in any sport at a Power Five school are entitled to damages related to social media earnings.

"The college sports industry has been immensely profitable for every party involved except the players themselves," the plaintiffs' lead attorney, Steve Berman, said in a statement. "... For too long, the NCAA’s bylaws, constitution and rules have governed all aspects of college sports, and we think these outdated and unnecessary regulations are unlawfully keeping college athletes from compensation that is rightfully theirs."

Monday’s filing adds to a series of recent developments threatening to destabilize a college sports landscape also being shaken by the coronavirus pandemic and protests in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.


Less than a month ago, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a district court ruling that the NCAA had violated antitrust law with its limits on various benefits athletes can receive from their schools. On Friday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis put his state alongside California and Colorado in passing a law aimed at helping college athletes make money off their NIL.

The moves by those three states and the introduction of similar bills in dozens of other states prompted the NCAA Board of Governors to approve in April a set of principles that set up significant reforms related to athlete name, image and likeness. But the association and the Power Five conferences also have been actively lobbying for federal legislation that would supersede the states’.


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