WATCH: Senate hearing on NCAA and student athletes profiting from ‘name, image or likeness’

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the NCAA, the future of college sports and and student athletes profiting from ‘name, image or likeness’ deals.

Watch the hearing in the player above.

The NCAA and major college sports conferences are facing yet another antitrust lawsuit — among other legal and political challenges — that could force decision-makers to reckon with a reality where some athletes are paid employees or at least get money in a revenue-sharing model that looks a lot like professional sports.

House vs. the NCAA is a class-action lawsuit being heard in the Northern District of California by Judge Claudia Wilken, whose previous rulings in NCAA cases paved the way for college athletes to profit from their fame and for schools to direct more money into their hands.

One of the rulings was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, where justices ruled 9-0 against the NCAA in 2021. Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s blistering, concurring opinion from the Alston case still rings out.

“Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Two years later, college sports is again in danger of having its future dictated by outside forces, unable or unwilling to get out in front of an issue.

NCAA President Charlie Baker is scheduled to testify to a Senate committee Tuesday, the 10th hearing on Capitol Hill focused on college sports since 2020.

The former Massachusetts governor and other college sports leaders continue to lobby for a federal law to regulate how athletes can be compensated for name, image and likeness work, but the next set of threats is closing in.