Devon Ramsay and Rashanda McCants filed the class-action lawsuit in California on Thursday afternoon, leaving open the possibility for more athletes to join them. The suit doesn’t just go after the paper class scandal at North Carolinawhich experts say is the worst case of academic fraud in NCAA historybut says that cheating is a fundamental flaw of the amateurism model in college sports.
It says UNC and the NCAA and have, in “spectacular fashion,” broken the promise to give athletes an education in return for keeping the millions of dollars generated each year from revenues.
Washington attorney Michael Hausfeld is the lawyer behind the suit, and he’s already got a winning record against the NCAA.
Last summer, he changed the face of college sports when he convinced a judge that the NCAA violated antitrust law when it banned universities from paying athletes for the use of their images. The ruling allows athletes, for the first time, to collect a paycheck for their sport.
The target: Athletic scholarships
This time, Hausfeld and co-counsel, former N.C. Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr, are going after the main pillar that supports the NCAA’s argument for not paying athletes: scholarships.
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The suit asks for damages but not a specific amount.
Orr, who is co-counsel with Hausfeld, said they are looking for two things:
— Compensation for the athletes who were short-changed by academic fraud,
— New reforms that will make sure athletes get an education when they sign up to play revenue-generating sports; specifically, Orr said, those athletes who come in unprepared.
“If you’re bringing in an athlete with skills that put him behind the curve, there needs to be reform so that person can participate in athletics but proceed at a pace in a level they can achieve and ultimately get that college education,” Orr said.
“This is about the delivery of qualitative education to all the men and women who are working 30 to 50 hours a week in athletics, traveling from one end of the country to the other, missing classes. Putting a system into place to make sure they’re not going to be shuffled through like we saw at UNC and all around the country.”
