Sure, March is when madness overtakes the NCAA and January is when football crowns its champion, but history tells us that June is when the foundation of college athletics tends to undergo seismic shifts.

Forty-two years ago this month Title IX of the Education Amendments was signed into law.

Which is why we have Rainbow Wahine Volleyball, among other sports.

Thirty years ago this month, in NCAA v. Board of Regents, the Supreme Court ruled that NCAA control of television rights violated the Sherman Antitrust Act.

That gave us 50 college football games on TV to choose from on Saturdays in the fall — and the power schools the megabucks to distance themselves from the have-nots.

All of that is worth keeping in mind as Ed O’Bannon v. NCAA, which opened in a U.S. District Courtroom in Oakland, Calif., Monday, plays out over the next few weeks.

The case alleges antitrust violations by the NCAA and challenges the association’s most fundamental definitions of amateurism, framing the potentially explosive issue of whether players whose likenesses are used should share in the billions of dollars, including TV money, they help produce for the NCAA and its members.

Or, as the NCAA has argued, whether it should be "deprived" of preserving, "the revered tradition of amateurism in college sports."

Earlier Monday, the NCAA announced a $20 million settlement with a group of current and former athletes in a video game suit originally filed by ex-Arizona State and Nebraska quarterback Sam Keller.

But the biggest stage belongs to O’Bannon and the other plaintiffs, who have already reached a $40 million settlement with video game giant EA Sports and the Collegiate Licensing Co. and are seeking an injunction to strike down NCAA rules that have long prohibited players from being paid for use of their likenesses in various forms.

The contention by O’Bannon and his group of former college football and basketball players, including Bill Russell and Oscar Robertson, is that the NCAA is illegally restricting athletes from being paid for the use of their names and images.

And to think it all started when O’Bannon happened to glimpse his likeness on the screen of the 1995 NCAA basketball championship video game that a friend’s son was playing.

Right there, 14 years after helping lead UCLA to the national title as the tournament most outstanding player of the Final Four, O’Bannon saw himself, jersey No. 31. "I was initially flattered," O’Bannon told the Star-Advertiser when the case was first assigned. "My first though was, ‘That’s pretty cool. I’m on the video game.’"

Then, O’Bannon said his friend noted, "’What’s funny about this whole thing is we paid X amount of dollars for it and you didn’t see one penny of it.’"

O’Bannon said, "My thoughts went from flattery to being upset."

That pique might, some day, end up fueling the biggest change in college athletics in decades.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.