Former Colorado football player files class-action lawsuit against NCAA, power conferences

Alex Fontenot, a former football player at Colorado, has filed a class-action lawsuit against the NCAA and power conferences, alleging that NCAA rules that prohibit athletes from receiving compensation from schools and leagues violate antitrust law.

“This lawsuit aims to change that,” states the lawsuit, which was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Colorado. “It focuses on the ever-increasing television revenue and other revenue brought in by these athletes’ labor, of which the athletes would be entitled to receive a substantial portion, but for the NCAA’s rules.”

The suit marks the latest legal threat to the NCAA’s model, which is increasingly coming under attack in ongoing proceedings in the courts and with the National Labor Relations Board. Among the most prominent proceedings is the House v. NCAA/power conference class-action lawsuit, in which some $4.2 billion is now at stake related to NIL backpay and broadcast rights revenue. 

Fontenot’s lawsuit spells out in detail how enormous broadcast rights deals have escalated in recent years and how College Football Playoff revenue will also skyrocket when the event expands from four to 12 teams next year. The Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics has said that CFP expansion will generate some $1.4 billion annually in new and unaccounted-for revenue – none of which will flow to the athletes on the field.

“The need for ‘amateurism’ was always a fallacy,” the lawsuit states. “But the current state of college athletics has put the proverbial nail in the coffin for the NCAA’s amateurism argument.”

The complaint also references recently fired Texas A&M football coach Jimbo Fisher and his $76 million severance package. 

“If that type of money can go to a fired coach,” the lawsuit states, “then surely the players on the team can be fairly compensated.”

On3 reached out to the NCAA for comment about the lawsuit.

Lawsuit against NCAA not about NIL

As Mit Winter, a college sports attorney with Kennyhertz Perry, noted, the complaint says it is not about NIL. 

Rather, it is “about allowing revenue to be allocated by the free market rather than the restrictive and unlawful rules of a labor cartel that takes advantage of the athletes that are the primary sources of its massive income.”

“The NCAA/P5 will continually get hit with lawsuits like this unless they A) get rid of limits on athlete compensation or B) allow athletes as employees and engage in collective bargaining,” Winter tweeted.

The lawsuit states: “These college football and basketball players bring in billions of dollars in television revenue for Defendants and their member schools. Everyone profits from their efforts: the NCAA, the conferences, the schools and the coaches. Everyone, that is, except the players themselves, because the NCAA prohibits it.”