"That's where MBNA came in and cleaned house," Huma said of his high-interest credit card.

After graduation, Huma lobbied for a bona fide full ride for NCAA athletes, whose standard scholarship package, called a grant-in-aid, is equal to an amount about $2,500 a year less than the official cost of attendance. The NCAA wouldn't budge, despite supportive statements made by association president Myles Brand about raising the cap.

Now it has come to this: A federal antitrust lawsuit filed late Friday in Los Angeles seeks to prohibit the NCAA from telling member colleges they cannot offer athletic scholarships up to the full cost of attendance -- and could expose the NCAA to hundreds of millions of dollars in damages for past wrongs.

The class-action claim was brought on behalf of Division I-A football players and major-college basketball players, whose programs generate the overwhelming amount of revenue that flows into college athletic departments. Under antitrust law, any current scholarship athlete, as well as any player in the past four years, qualifies as a plaintiff. ...

On college campuses, athletes are the only students subject to aid restrictions imposed by an agreement among universities. Talented students in music, chemistry or any other area can be bid upon by individual colleges, without limits on the total value of their scholarship packages. Some, often graduate students, receive the full cost of attendance plus cash payments.