OAKLAND, Calif. — On Monday, I returned to U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken’s courtroom for the first time since covering the O’Bannon v. NCAA trial in 2014. That was a three-week debate about whether college athletes making money — any money — would mark the death of the enterprise.
Wilken didn’t buy the NCAA’s defense.
It was a profound moment in the history of college sports, even if Wilken’s narrow decision for the plaintiffs at the time only led to athletes receiving modest scholarship stipends.
“Back then, the myth of amateurism was impenetrable,” said Michael Hausfeld, the lead attorney for O’Bannon. “Now it’s totally gone.”
Eleven years later, Hausfeld was also back in Wilken’s courtroom, concerning a much more drastic change to the landscape: The proposed House v. NCAA settlement, which would allow universities to share $20.5 million in revenue in the first year, and escalating from there, with their athletes.
Quite a leap from those $5,000-or-so stipends back in 2014.
Wilken spent the day listening to testimony from individuals with objections to the House settlement. Hausfeld, representing former Iowa basketball star Jordan Bohannon and several other athletes, was one of them.
While his clients who played before 2021 stand to earn a cut of…
