Steve Berkowitz

USA TODAY Sports

OAKLAND — On Day 1 of trial in the Ed O'Bannon class-action antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA, the biggest development had nothing to do with O'Bannon, even though he was the opening witness Monday.

Moments after U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken entered a packed courtroom, lawyers for the NCAA here and a lawyer for former Arizona State and Nebraska quarterback Sam Keller, participating by phone, announced they had agreed to settle a case pertaining to the use of college athletes' names and likenesses in video games.

News releases by the NCAA and Keller's lawyers said the proposed deal was worth $20 million, on top of the recently filed $40 million proposed settlement of claims against video game manufacturer Electronic Arts and Collegiate Licensing Co., the nation's leading collegiate trademark licensing and marketing firm. Those claims stemmed from four separate lawsuits, including a part of the O'Bannon case. (Additionally, the NCAA said it was settling a case it had filed in Georgia State Court against EA and CLC that was related to the company's alleged responsibility to indemnify the NCAA if they acted in a fashion contrary to NCAA rules.)

"This is the start of a lot of things to come against entities who are misappropriating the property rights of student-athletes, including (athletes) who stopped playing years ago," said one of Keller's attorneys, Robert Carey, whose firm already has one such case going against CBS Interactive concerning the marketing and sale of college athletes' photographs through school athletics websites.

Keller just seemed to revel in the present.

"It's a neat feeling," he told USA TODAY Sports in a telephone interview. "It's a sense of accomplishment, this becoming the first time the NCAA is paying out for a product on the field. This is going to be the first of many dominoes to fall. It's an exciting time. The whole goal in (these lawsuits) is to change the landscape — to do what's fair and right. And I wish (the O'Bannon plaintiffs) the best of luck."

O'Bannon and the plaintiffs' main economics expert, Stanford professor Roger Noll, took the stand. O'Bannon completed both his testimony and cross-examination, but the plaintiffs' lead attorney, Michael Hausfeld, did not finish his questions for Noll, so that's where things will pick up Tuesday. Noll will then face cross-examination, and Hausfeld said he expects to at least begin questioning another of the named plaintiffs, former Alabama football player Tyrone Prothro. Hausfeld said Chase Garnham, a senior on Vanderbilt's football last season, likely will be called Wednesday.

The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction that would prohibit the NCAA from limiting what Bowl Subdivision football players and Division I men's basketball players can receive in exchange for playing their sports.

Hausfeld and the NCAA's lead lawyer for the trial, Glenn Pomerantz, each got a lot of what they wanted from O'Bannon, the former UCLA basketball star who last played for the Bruins in the 1994-95 season.

Under questioning from Hausfeld, O'Bannon spoke in detail about the disparity in the amounts of time he spent on basketball and his academics. He said that during the basketball season, he spent 40 to 45 hours a week on his sport and about 10 to 12 hours on school. He added that he came to UCLA wanting to major in communications, but ended up majoring in history because an academic adviser nudged him that way for basketball scheduling reasons. "I was an athlete masquerading as a student," O'Bannon said. "… I was there strictly to play basketball."

O'Bannon also said that when he began at UCLA, he was 17 years old and signed a series of forms that he did not read — forms that, according to the plaintiffs, included a release or releases they have contended are not enforceable. O'Bannon said that in 2008 he recognized an image of himself in a video game, but he said had not consented to have his image used in a game and never had been asked for such consent.

All of this was aimed at attacking the NCAA's contention that athletes either tacitly or explicitly allow the use of their names, image and likenesses, and that the association's limits on what athletes can receive help keep athletics integrated with education.

To that end, Pomerantz guided O'Bannon through a series of questions in which O'Bannon described the benefits he got from being a UCLA basketball player: a free education, TV exposure, mentoring, training assistance and the opportunity to play against top competition. Pomerantz also got O'Bannon to concede that he spent so much time on basketball by his own choice. Asked what he did with his time outside playing basketball, going to class, sleeping and basic daily activities, O'Bannon said: "Not a whole lot."

O'Bannon also provided several answers to questions about his views of amateurism that Pomerantz pointedly showed were contradictory to answers that O'Bannon gave during a deposition in 2011. For example, O'Bannon said Monday he now thinks college athletes should be paid. (O'Bannon also testified that he thinks Little League baseball players should be paid if they are generating revenue when their games appear on TV, as they do during regional championships and the Little League World Series.)

After the trial session, O'Bannon told USA TODAY Sports: "I think one thing that you got to understand (is) you evolve. Your mind evolves and your case evolves and people evolve, and, you know, what I said three years ago — my thoughts have evolved. Simple as that."

The NCAA's chief legal officer, Donald Remy, said that it's "for the judge to determine the credibility of his comments."

Noll's testimony was, at times, very technical and difficult for even Wilken to follow. She stopped him several times in efforts to elicit clearer explanations of his answers— not an ideal circumstance for the plaintiffs. But he repeated the plaintiffs' basic contention that, absent the NCAA's restraints, football and men's basketball players would be able to get more from schools and/or other business sources for the use of their names, images and likenesses in live television broadcasts, rebroadcasts of games, video games and other forms of marketing.

Along the way, Noll testified that one of the NCAA's economic experts, Daniel Rubinfeld, had written in a textbook that the NCAA is a cartel, or a group that prevents members from pursuing their self-interest to what would be their natural outcome —in this case, a group of schools that would otherwise take the revenue they get from television and other uses of the athletes' names, images and likenesses and make competing and varying offers to prospective recruits.