The class-action lawsuit challenging the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s limits on compensating student-athletes in top echelons of college football and men’s and women’s basketball got underway Tuesday in U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken’s courtroom in Oakland, California.

For a case with potentially dramatic consequences—especially for schools among the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC, the “Power 5″ sports conferences to whom the plaintiffs want to shift the burden for setting limits of player compensation—the trial will be short on trial theater and heavy on technical details. Both sides made opening statements in the bench antitrust trial via filings lodged with the court in the run-up to Labor Day weekend.