text: (CNN) -- Momentum is mounting against the NCAA, the century-old body that governs college sports. 
  
  A federal judge has just heard one case calling for revenue from TV deals to be shared with student athletes and she will likely take on two more landmark suits this year that seek something even bigger -- a free market in college sports. 
  
  At the same time, Northwestern University is appealing a ruling that would allow football players to unionize. 
  
  Here are five things you need to know about what just happened and what's coming. 
  
  The end of some of the biggest traditions? 
  
  National championships. Age-old rivalries. Larger-than-life game day atmospheres. 
  
  That's what's at stake, according to NCAA President Mark Emmert, who described a doomsday scenario if college athletes are paid, when he testified in the case brought by former UCLA basketball star Ed O'Bannon. 
  
  Emmert said many school leaders have told him they would not want to pay for athletes. Instead they might opt out of Division I sports into Division II where there is less money for coaches, facilities and scholarships. 
  
  Schools that did stay in D1 would likely have to cut less popular sports to afford to pay athletes, he said. 
  
  And the schools that chose to pay would probably never play the schools that chose not to pay -- preventing a true national championship and putting an end to traditional rivalry games that are fan favorites, Emmert said. 
  
  But that idea is rejected by one of O'Bannon's lawyers, Bill Isaacson. 
  
  "The millions of sports fans who watch these games and everyone at the networks that broadcasts them knows that the games will continue to be played," he said. 