Hello, my name is Chuck Cox. And I'm a sports video game junkie.

In fact, sports video games are pretty much the only ones I ever buy. One of my annual rituals is getting my hands on my favorite game — EA Sports' "NCAA Football" — and pretty much playing it during my free time for the next month or two. That was until this summer.

Because of the antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA led by former UCLA basketball star Ed O'Bannon and 19 other former college athletes, the game was not released. But the result of that trial was well worth that small void in my life.

In fact, the ruling was a huge step in the right direction in a time of massive shift changes in the landscape of college athletics.

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled in a 99-page decision that NCAA football and men's basketball players can be compensated for the use of their names, images and likenesses in broadcasts and video games. The ruling, which came on the heels of a three-week trial in June, said the NCAA violated antitrust laws.

Under the ruling, players in the two sports will be able to be compensated a maximum of $5,000 per year to be put into a trust fund and distributed to them when they leave the institution. The NCAA is appealing the decision, but it's really a natural progression that should have happened years ago. O'Bannon says he is happy with the result, but he hopes that cap on compensation will increase down the road.

There was certainly a time when a scholarship and the cost of attending college were more than fair compensation for student-athletes. But that was a completely different day and age. There weren't video games coming out with player likenesses, player jerseys selling like hotcakes or, most importantly, the billions of dollars in revenue college football and men's basketball generate for schools, including massive television contracts.

Remember? Before you could check scores and see highlights on your phone?

Another great thing about the ruling, O'Bannon points out, is player compensation could also lead to a better product in terms of players staying in school longer, rather than jumping to the professional level. It will be interesting to see if compensation eventually spreads to other NCAA sports, but I wouldn't expect that to happen any time soon.

The one negative is the fact that extra compensation does take away from the spirit of amateur athletics. In fact, lawyers for the NCAA in the trial argued that making that change would decrease the popularity of those two sports and force schools to make cuts to other athletic programs.

But that argument doesn't hold water. As a lifelong sports fan, I can pretty much assure you fans flocking to big-time college football and men's basketball isn't going to change anytime soon — whether players are receiving extra compensation or not.

The cap is a good place to start. Let's see what happens for the first few years and go from there. I have always hated the "this is the way we've always done it" line of thinking. Sometimes you have to evolve with the times — even when it's not an easy thing to do.

As for my favorite video game, EA settled a $40 million lawsuit brought on by the players but wanted to pay them for using their images and likenesses all along. The company's president, Joel Linzner, even took the stand in the O'Bannon trial and said EA would like to bring the college football and basketball games back if players can be compensated.

Sounds good to me.