Mario Chalmers and more than a dozen other former college basketball players have filed a new putative class action lawsuit in federal court, alleging that Turner Sports Interactive ( TSI) and the NCAA made an unfair profit from the athletes ‘” continued use” of their NIL.
Some of the same attorneys who filed a lawsuit last month on behalf of former Utah Jazz player Thurl Bailey and nine North Carolina State national championship team colleagues is represented by the plaintiffs. Bailey et cetera. Similar to how the NCAA is accused of misappropriating their promotion rights by unauthorized broadcasts and videos featuring players NIL and promotion rights from their renowned tournament run by CLC. The” Cardiac Pack” complaint, however, was filed in North Carolina state judge, where the original NC State people hope to enjoy a house- court benefits in front of a judge.

However, Chalmers et cetera. v. NCAA et al. A group of players who participated in school sports before June 15, 2016, and whose NIL has been used in any video posted or licensed by the NCAA, the Conferences, TSI, or their providers, is being represented by a lawsuit that was filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The proposed course time corresponds to the anticipated cutoff time for group members in the potential House v. NCAA arrangement, who would have been required to have been college athletes since June 15, 2016.
Effectively, the new lawsuit aims to give at least a small group of former NCAA athletes who are prohibited from receiving House settlement money a chance to recover compensation for the appropriation of their NIL that occurred within the statute of limitations.
The plaintiffs ‘ attorneys told Sportico in an emailed statement that the NCAA has run an illegal price fixing scheme to exploit those same rights to earn billions for the NCAA and its conspirators.” For many decades, the NCAA has operated an illegal price fixing scheme to prevent student athletes from receiving any compensation for their publicity rights. The anticipated settlement in the House case compensates college athletes who have been a part of the sport since the middle of 2016. However, many more former student athletes have been harmed and continue to be so as a result of the NCAA’s illegal behavior.
For example, the lawsuit highlights the buzzer- beating, game- tying 3- point shot Chalmers scored for Kansas in its 2008 national championship game against Memphis, which sent the contest into overtime where the Jayhawks ultimately prevailed. As the complaint notes, clips of” Mario’s Miracle” have since been “replayed countless time for commercial purposes” by the defendants on live television broadcasts, advertisements and in various online videos prominently posted on the NCAA’s website.
The lawsuit cites Bylaw 2.9 of the NCAA constitution, which states that” student-athletes should be protected from exploitation by professional and commercial enterprises.”

However, according to the complaint, “( T ) he NCAA has exploited plaintiffs, as it has other former student- athletes, for more than 40 years, first by requiring them as young athletes to cede their NIL rights to the NCAA and then by appropriating those rights, without consent or compensation, long after they had graduated”.
The Chalmers plaintiffs seek a permanent injunction that would bar the NCAA from relying on any unenforceable assignment of publicity rights. They also want to receive actual and treble damages.
The NCAA, which did not respond to a written request for comment, has a number of defenses that it can use to support its co-defendants ‘ request for dismissal.
The plaintiffs ‘ defenses include contesting the statute of limitations argument. Additionally, the NCAA may cite First Amendment protections for the promotion of newsworthy events, including games and the associated publicity of those games. Players could refute that assertion in a number of ways, including by arguing that professional athletes are frequently paid for using their NIL in broadcasts and videos. However, at least one federal appellate court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, has rejected players ‘ claims that their names and images were used on televised broadcasts ( for more, see ( Sharing Broadcast and Streaming Revenues with College Athletes ).
Traditional defenses, such as players ‘ acceptance of amateurism rules as a condition of eligibility, could also be rewritten by the NCAA, including how to use their publicity. That line of defense failed in O’Bannon v. NCAA and NCAA v. Alston, but those cases–and especially Alston, which involved education- related expenses–concerned different sets of issues.