ӣ����Ƶ

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Missouri men’s basketball center Josh Gray and three former ӣ����Ƶ University men’s basketball players are suing the NCAA and its power conferences, echoing familiar antitrust allegations as they seek monetary damages in a new federal lawsuit.

Gray and the former Billikens — Hasahn French, Lamont Evans IV and Jimmy Bell Jr. — are part of a group of 67 athletes arguing they have been harmed by their previous inability to receive compensation for their name, imagine and likeness. They’re now suing to be awarded an unspecified amount in damages.

Their lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court in California, accuses the NCAA of price fixing through its policies. The Power Five conferences — the Southeastern Conference, Atlantic Coast Conference, Big 12, Big Ten and Pac-12 — are also defendants.

Those allegations, and the broader question of whether to award damages to college athletes who competed during a time when they were not allowed to receive compensation like they presently can, are nothing new. The sprawling House v. NCAA case in the same Northern California court tackled that issue and spawned a settlement which will send $2.8 billion in back pay to that class of athletes.

This new antitrust lawsuit is tied to the House settlement. The group of 67 athletes now suing the NCAA, led by former Mississippi State running back Kylin Hill, have all opted out of the House settlement.

Doing so is something of a legal gamble. By opting out, they forfeit their share of back pay, which court documents say spread over 10 years for men’s basketball and football players. (The exact amount that a specific player stands to receive is unclear.)

But opting out, which they had to do by Friday’s deadline, preserves their ability to sue the NCAA in similar fashion — which this group elected to do.

Whether this new lawsuit, dubbed Hill et al v. NCAA et al, will produce the damages that these athletes seek — or when that would happen — is also unclear. Nearly five years after the House case was filed, final approval of its settlement is still yet to come.

In the Hill lawsuit, the players argue that NCAA and conference rules kept them from earning compensation for their NIL and “athletic services.” The complaint contains mirroring assertions about those policies’ effect on each individual plaintiff — take Gray’s section as an example:

“Gray has been a valuable asset to the NCAA and the Southeastern Conference,” the lawsuit reads. “But the NCAA’s pay-for-play rules prohibited him from earning any compensation or benefits for his athletic services, aside from the limited and fixed categories of compensation that Defendants allow, primarily an athletic scholarship. But for the NCAA’s anticompetitive rules prohibiting pay-for-play compensation, (Gray) would have received substantial additional compensation in the relevant labor market for his services. He was harmed by these anticompetitive rules.”

The complaint also attacks the NCAA and conferences for making billions of dollars from college sports while athletes weren’t allowed to receive compensation for NIL until 2021.

“Defendants’ actions are solely to enhance revenue for themselves and their for-profit business partners by, for example, being able to take all of the revenue related to the commercial use of student-athletes’ names, images, and likenesses for themselves,” the lawsuit reads. “Defendants’ actions have no relationship to any alleged goal of ‘amateurism.’”

The amount of damages that the Hill plaintiffs are requesting “has not yet been ascertained,” according to the complaint, but given that the athletes opted out of the House settlement, it’s likely more than they would have received from that agreement’s back pay.

The lawsuit is not directed toward the University of Missouri nor ӣ����Ƶ University.

Gray is in his first season with the Mizzou men’s basketball team and has played in all 21 of the Tigers’ games. He spent the 2020-21 season — the lone season of his career that would be subject to the lawsuit, since NIL compensation became permissible in 2021 — at Louisiana State before transferring to South Carolina.

French played four seasons at SLU, appearing in 117 games between 2017 and 2021.

Evans started his career at South Florida before joining the Billikens for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons, in which he played seven games. He now plays at McNeese State.

Bell spent the 2019-21 seasons at ӣ����Ƶ University before a junior college season, transfer to West Virginia and another transfer to Mississippi State. After giving football a try at his last stop, Bell has declared for the 2025 NFL draft as an offensive lineman.

There’s a chance that the Hill lawsuit will impact final approval of the House settlement. Judge Claudia Wilken of the U.S. District Court in California’s northern district will hold a hearing April 7 to decide whether she’ll approve, modify or reject the settlement. A wave of objections to the settlement — including those from a former Mizzou walk-on football player and a current MU swimmer — rolled in last week.

“These follow-on lawsuits represent a very small minority of student athletes who could have participated in the settlement process,” the NCAA said in a statement. “We will explore all options as to these new lawsuits, but they do not present an obstacle to approval of the settlement, which will provide landmark new benefits to student athletes and is consistent with antitrust law.”