Steve Berkowitz

USA TODAY Sports

Lawyers for the NCAA on Friday night filed two motions that could further delay the start of a long-awaited trial in a lawsuit relating to the use of college athletes' names and likenesses and the association's limits on what major-college football and men's basketball players can receive for playing sports.

One move, made with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, seeks to dismantle the case's status as a class action.

The other asks U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken to either separate claims relating to videogames from the rest of the case or delay the trial until a proposed settlement of those claims is finalized or the Supreme Court decides whether to take up and resolve issues related to videogames that presumably were going to be rendered moot by the settlement.

Friday night's actions came a little more than six weeks before the NCAA and a group of former college athletes headed by UCLA basketball player Ed O'Bannon were scheduled to begin a trial in Wilken's court in Oakland.

The NCAA labeled its filing with the 9th Circuit as a "urgent petition for permission to appeal," and the document states that the court's decision on whether to hear the appeal is needed by May 23. If the 9th Circuit allows the NCAA to pursue the appeal, there is little chance that the trial will open as scheduled on June 9.

The NCAA wants the opportunity to convince an appeals panel that Wilken was incorrect in certifying the case as a class action. Wilken determined that the plaintiffs could seek, on a class basis, an injunction that would prohibit the NCAA from limiting Bowl Subdivision football players and Division I men's basketball players to scholarships under which they basically can receive only tuition, mandatory fees, room, board and books. An injunction could allow football and men's basketball players to be compensated for the use of their names, images and likenesses in ways such as merchandising and live television broadcasts.

"The court's certification of a class … was manifest error," the NCAA's filing says.

The appellate court's "immediate review of the certification decision is warranted, not only because of the clarity (and gravity) of the district court's errors but also because of the importance of this case," the NCAA's lawyers wrote. "Plaintiffs are attacking core aspects of the college-athletics regime; were they to succeed, college sports could be radically transformed. Such a consequential case should not proceed to a lengthy and expensive trial with a class that was improperly certified."

Michael Hausfeld, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said the NCAA's action showed its level of concern about the case actually going to trial.

"Their multiplicity of efforts to try to derail the upcoming trial seems to be an obvious act of desperation," he said.

The NCAA's arguments to the appellate court are similar to those that had made to Wilken both when she was considering whether to certify a class and later when she was considering whether to the grant the sides' respective requests for summary judgment – or, rulings in their favor without trial.

For a case to meet the criteria for class certification that are set under the federal rules of civil legal procedure, there is basically a requirement that there be questions of law or fact that are common to the prospective wider class. There also needs to be a commonality of interests among a class.

The NCAA argued to the 9th Circuit that Wilken erred by refusing to determine that allowing all football and men's basketball players to make money from their names, images and likenesses while they are playing college sports would harm some athletes in those sports. The NCAA has argued that if its limits on compensation are lifted, some schools will leave Division I, thus reducing the number of scholarships available.

This "should have led (Wilken) to deny certification based on a failure to satisfy" the requirement for a commonality of interests.

"This was a manifest error … If this case goes forward, parties purportedly representing the entire class will make arguments directly harmful to the interests of many class members. Such damage cannot be undone at the conclusion of the case. … This Court's review is thus needed now."

The NCAA also continued to argue that college athletes cannot claim a right to market the use of their names, images and likenesses in live TV broadcasts because some state laws expressly say that athletes have no such rights. And it told the appellate court that Wilken did not properly consider how this, too, affects the plaintiffs' commonality of claims.

Wilken "failed to assess — before certifying the class — whether all class members had" name, image and likeness rights "or instead whether only some class members had them. That was manifest error, warranting this Court's prompt review."

The NCAA's motion Friday night regarding video games relates, in part, to the lack of a resolution of a proposed settlement that involved the other two other parties that initially had been named as co-defendants -- video game manufacturer Electronic Arts (EA) and the Collegiate Licensing Co., he nation's leading collegiate trademark licensing and marketing firm.

The proposed settlement's existence was revealed in September 2013, but a final version has not been filed.

Claims involving video games are being pursued under both anti-trust law and under laws relating to personalties' right to control the use of their names, images and likenesses also known as right-of-publicity laws. When this litigation began five years ago, those claims were being pursued under two separate lawsuits -- a right-of-publicity case filed by lawyers for former Arizona State and Nebraska football player Sam Keller and the anti-trust case filed by lawyers for O'Bannon.

Those two cases later were consolidated into one, but EA raised issues with a ruling related to the right-of-publicity claims and was allowed to begin pursuing appeals while the anti-trust portion of the case kept moving forward. When EA's appeal to 9th Circuit failed, it asked the Supreme Court to take the case. That request is still pending, largely because the proposed settlement has resulted in Keller's attorneys seeking — and being granted — multiple extensions of deadlines to file a response.