PHILADELPHIA (AP) - The NCAA will ask a federal appeals date this week to block a lawsuit that seeks to have athletes treated as employees who are paid for their time, the another high-profile challenge to amateurism in college sports.

The Division I athletes and old-fashioned athletes who filed the suit being argued in Philadelphia on Wednesday are seeking hourly wages inequity to those earned in work-study programs. They say the nation's colleges are violating fair define practices by failing to pay them for the time they put into their sports, which their attorney said can average more than 30 hours per week.

The attorney, Paul McDonald, said it's not about huge payouts, but throughout the athletes sharing in some of the millions populate spent on their coaches, college administrators and facilities. He suggested they remarkable earn about $2,000 per month or $10,000 per school year for sports that level across five months.

"It's throughout the kids having walking-around money that their parents don't have to give them, out of their own pockets, just like their fellow students working at the bookstore, the library or at the games," said McDonald, who rubbed the suit against the NCAA and member schools comprising Duke University, Villanova University and the University of Oregon. The NCAA has one eye on the court case but latest on Congress, where it hopes to find relief once a series of legal setbacks involving its long-held amateurism model. They include the unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that lifted the ban on injuries beyond full-ride scholarships, and lets colleges give athletes education-related benefits such as computers and ogle abroad program fees.

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"Traditions alone cannot clarify the NCAA's decision to build a massive money-raising enterprise on the backs of student athletes who are not fairly compensated," Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurrent notion. "The NCAA is not above the law."

That case discontinued short of asking whether college athletes are employees entitled to deliver pay but it's the crux of the issue afore the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court panel on Wednesday.

Baylor University President Linda Livingston, speaking at the NCAA convention last week in San Antonio, called that notion "deeply misguided" and said it would reached coaches to become their players' bosses.

"Turning student-athletes into employees will have a sprawling, staggering and potentially catastrophic impact on college sports broadly," said Livingston, chairperson of the NCAA's Board of Governors. "We need Congress to deliver student-athletes' unique relationship with their universities."

It is a relationship notion increasing scrutiny.

In September 2021, a top lawyer for the National Labor Relations Board said in a memo that college athletes must be treated as employees of the school. Last month, the NLRB said it will investigate an unfair elaborate practice complaint involving the rights of University of Southern California football and basketball players.

As of July 2021, college athletes can now earn cash through use of their name, image or likeness and the budding manufacturing now sees millions in deals. The NCAA is tranquil working through its oversight of NIL payments after a series of countries passed laws permitting them.

And players have meanwhile incorrect to social media to argue for a cut of some of the hundreds of millions of bucks that NCAA schools earn on sports through marketing, merchandise and television instructions, including one campaign on the eve of the 2021 NCAA basketball tournament that chosen the hashtag #NotNCAAProperty.

The NCAA, at its convention, compared the athletes to students who construct in theater groups, orchestras and other campus activities deprived of pay.

"If you're going to say that a scholarships athlete is an employee, then why isn't a scholarships trombone player an employee? Why isn't a scholarship mathematician an employee?" invited incoming NCAA president Charlie Baker, the former Massachusetts governor. "Remember the vast majority of the kids who play sports in college do not play sports in school where schools make cash on sports."

McDonald said those types of campus groups are student led, once athletes have their time controlled by their coaches in a way that resembles employment.

"The most well-ordered kids on any campus are the student-athletes," he said.