Making NCAA pay?

With all the recent conversation about NCAA 10, this story seems pretty timely:

...Tuesday in federal court in San Francisco, [Former UCLA Bruin, Ed] O’Bannon became the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit on behalf of all current and former Division I-A football and men’s basketball athletes against the NCAA. He’s represented by two of the nation’s most high-powered law firms – including one that secured reparations for Holocaust survivors from Swiss banks.

The complaint, obtained by Yahoo! Sports, alleges that the NCAA “has illegally deprived former student-athletes” from “myriad revenue streams” including DVDs, video games, memorabilia, photographs, television rebroadcasts and use in advertising.

I'm really not sure what side I'm inclined to take. On the one hand, as the columnist points out, this isn't the best economy for colleges to take a huge financial hit--not only in whatever the penalty may be, but a massive reduction of a revenue stream. And I've always felt that scholarship athletes are, in effect, paid via free tuition, room and board, and all the other perks. At least at Oregon, and undoubtedly at other schools with 'top flight' facilities, student-athletes have their own computer centers, tutors, etc.

On the other hand, it just doesn't seem right for a school to profit off of athletes once they've left. Not even giving alumni a piece of the action for the use of their image seems inherently unfair. The contrivance of not providing names in video game rosters is a pretty weak defense (Insert OSU joke here). We all know that it's just a matter of filling in names. And going beyond XBox, as the complaint alleges, schools have always made a pretty penny off of memorabilia and the like (Order SI now and receive a special XYZU issue, celebrating their championship run!).

Hmm. If I had to choose, I guess I'd side with the athletes--although professional shady character Sonny Vaccaro's involvement makes me hesititate.