Ed O’Bannon, former UCLA basketball star, has been an advocate of compensating college athletes, and is now ramping up efforts on his lawsuit against the NCAA. Prior to now, the lawsuit was one of antitrust variety, meaning they are accusing the NCAA of denying a free market for the players.
Now, the lawsuit is being morphed into a class-action suit, meaning one person is suing on the behalf of a larger group who all share the same problem. O’Bannon argues that the players should get a cut of the billions of dollars that the NCAA makes from their various sources of revenue.
In response to the movement, the NCAA has argued that the players can not be treated as one and the same, as in a class-action suit, because they are not all in the same situation. Some players create more revenue than others, so it is not fair to group them all together in this way.
They also say that some players are already given scholarships to attend that school, often for free, and that paying them more would ruin NCAA sports. They did not specify how, but it is likely because players will no longer play for the love of the game.
There is also the dilemma of how this would affect the competitiveness of certain terms. If certain teams can afford to spend more, as in professional sports, it could create a large separation of talent between teams. Teams like Florida Gulf Coast may not get chances like they had last year if everyone wants to play for the teams with the most money.
Those are things that are still up in the air, but at this situation rolls on, more details will likely come out, however, I personally doubt we see change in the system anytime soon.