A group of plaintiffs headed by former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon is suing the NCAA and EA Sports, a case which will probably go to trial in 2014 (five years since the initial filing). The plaintiffs want compensation for past and current college athletes for their likenesses being used for video games, for a cut of the TV money their schools get for televising their games and for royalties for selling paraphernalia bearing their names or likenesses.
Should they win, an additional result to the financial damages will be that the schools will not be able to restrict the athletes’ rights to contract individually for their own commercial interests. They would have the right to sell their autographs, hawk cars for the local Ford dealer and even accept outright payments or stipends from boosters.
So jump in with your comments about the merits of the suit itself, the college football “amateur” system and/or the changes that might happen if the suit is successful.
I have no idea, but I hope to hell they do win. It’s criminal that the larger football programs can bring in tens of millions of dollars per year without paying the players any money.
I’m firmly on the side of the players, too. The nicest thing I can say about the NCAA is that it set up an unworkable (and illegal) business model decades ago, which is sort of understandable because our views of “amateurism” were different then. But when the big money showed up the schools failed to address their faulty model and instead decided to keep up with the sham of amateurism so they could pocket every last dollar gleaned.
Public opinion, like that of a couple of other issues (marijuana, same sex marriage), has shifted noticeably on this topic in recent years.
I’m not sure that I expect things to change much even if the plaintiffs do win. Can’t the schools just insert a clause into their scholarships stipulating that the school/NCAA gets the player’s likeness rights?
If they all do it, it runs up against price-fixing prohibitions. IANAL but I don’t believe dominant entities in industries can conspire with each other to fix wages. Plus the first school to cave on the clause in order to procure the services of the next Reggie Bush or Tim Tebow would bring the whole conspiracy tumbling down.
If O’Bannon wins, the players are going to be getting a lot more than just traditional jobs in the offseason. The schools won’t have any say in the matter.
Some schools may indeed de-emphasize football (by eliminating scholarships), deciding that joining the financial rat race for football success is not the mission of the institution. They may still field teams, however, and if some booster wants to pay for a skilled player to attend school and play on the team (while also getting a healthy stipend from said booster), then the school won’t have any say in that, either.
I’ll take a (slightly) counter stance here. Yes, the players should be paid, but they should be paid equally out of the pool they all contribute their images/etc to. IOW, don’t care if you’re the Heisman winner or backup punter, you each get 10K a year.
The system you guys are promoting will rapidly end with an NFL Jr. League. And unless you are a fan of one of the top 40 teams in the country, your school is going to get fucked. Kentucky (in football)? Ha! Vandy? Out. Northwestern. (Probably) Gone. Boise? Not likely.
Think about it. In that system, Baylor and RGIII don’t happen. Johnny Football? Nope - UT would have destroyed the A&M program decades ago and UT declined to offer Manziel a scholarship. Be careful what you destroy unless you’ve planned out the replacement.
My parents used to warn me to be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
The soundbites sound good, really good. The athletes are being exploited…Pay them. And I agree, the athletes are exploited.
I am not smart enough to think through all the ramifications, but IMO, many of them will not be good for the game of football, basketball, the athletes, the NFL and the NBA.
The whole system is a house of cards and rattling the foundation is going to make it come tumbling down
Oh, I completely agree that the aftermath will be chaos resulting in a widening gap between the schools with rich boosters who want to be football powers and the schools who can’t afford or don’t want to engage in the financial arms race. Nonetheless I’m for players having the same rights as every other citizen when it comes to engaging in free trade without restraint. Their rights outweigh the needs of schools and fans to have a competitive system with which they’ve become comfortable.
I wouldn’t focus on the issue of schools paying players directly; I don’t think that’s really the issue here. You can’t make the schools pay players. But restricting the players from engaging in their own commercial enterprises is a violation of federal law, one that simply has never been seriously challenged to date.
The schools have built their system on the back of an illegal concept and it’s way past time when they stop and re-examine what role athletics are to play in their core missions. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Stanford and Northwestern and Duke and Vanderbilt lead the way by eliminating football and basketball scholarships soon after an O’Bannon victory. Alumni can support the programs to whatever financial extent they want (by providing scholarships and stipends to players), which probably won’t be enough for them to compete with the factories who want to compete at the top of the new pyramid. I’m ok with that.
I think that recruiting will become a different ball game; not only will good recruits want to go to good schools that win, but the marketing arm of the school will be just as important.
For example, if say… TCU has a great coach and a great season, they’re never going to out-market the University of Texas, for example, and recruits will have to consider that as well as the actual athletic potential of the program.
Who was the “former” UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon without UCLA and the NCAA? Just another 17/18 yr old basketball player who was good at playing a game.
O’Bannon would be a talented athlete without a showcase. Colleges and Universities allow sports programs because A) they add prestige to the school and B) a few of the programs bring financial rewards.
It seems to me that if O’Bannon et all win their suit, schools would have little reason to continue their basketball/football programs on the scale that they do. There are already some academics who object to their schools being known more for a “sport” instead of for it’s scholarly training and wouldn’t mind seeing the sports progams go away.
If the un-tried-at-college-level O’Bannon wanted more money, he could have attempted to go pro 4 or 5 years earlier than he did. Instead, he accepted the help of UCLA’s program to build his skills and notoriety. UCLA agreed to help O’Bannon with his sports career. UCLA used it’s coaches, trainers, equipment, reputation, and public relations skills to make O’Bannon a valuable commodity. But only to the NBA.
Remove “played at Division I level” from O’Bannon’s resume and O’Bannon would have to live by whatever salary his education could bring him.
There’s no argument that playing in a big time college program is a benefit for aspiring pro athletes. Offering that advantage, however, is not justification for illegally restricting their rights to negotiate and conduct business outside the collegiate parameters. Especially when the schools are not only allowing but actively encouraging all of their other students, scholarship or otherwise, to prepare themselves in the best way possible for life outside of school.
If a research laboratory offers a bright physics major a full ride, monthly stipend while he pursues his degree and a job after graduation, the fucking school puts that kid’s picture in the school magazine.
The argument that athletes get “enough” is a meaningless one. Some of them have a different value in the market than others and the colleges have no right to deprive them of capitalizing on it in the name of amateurism. The concept of amateurism should have died with the first football scholarship and the schools have no right to amateurism in any case.
Since I consider most lawsuits to be a crapshoot, these arguments are not “meaningless” as they may be presented to the court. I don’t personally care if O’Bannon wins his suit or not. I happen to believe that most atheletes are over-compensated or over-paid prima donnas but the market is what the market is. If someone would give me a free education or pay me $20 million for playing a game, I would jump at the chance. However, someone has to maintain the field of play and that’s not the athelete. It’s the schools, the conferences, and the NCAA.
You originally asked about what would happen to college football if O’Bannon wins the lawsuit.
If schools lose their ability to control their “product” (and it is a product), they would have no incentive to pour as much money into their programs as they currently do. Alumni donate money to their alma mater. Alumni donate a lot more money to their school if it has a winning national team.
If the O’Bannon’s wins the right to sell the image created by a school, conference, and the NCAA, I believe fewer opportunities will be available to future athletes. While schools operate most of their sports programs (swimming, lacrosse, bowling, etc) at a loss, the schools are not going to opperate their money-making sports programs (football, basketball, ???) at their current levels of expenditure.
If athletes are allowed to sell themselves (their product) to the highest bidder, the school with most affluent backers will buy all of the best players. Northwestern U. or Yale U. could, theoretically, become national champions decade after decade. The pro teams have gone to a “draft” system to equalize or spread the available talent across the teams. Most pro teams now have a better chance to win their championship. (Except for the Cubs, Mets, and Browns. )
I don’t know how this case will finally be settled. Will it be ruled in favor of “the game” or in favor of “the player”? The game can always find another player but very few players would be able to find another game (Bo Jackson, Jim Thorpe, George Halas).
If 90,000 fans continue to fill the big program stadiums, then schools will swallow hard and surrender that part of the control they must in return for the television revenues and gate receipts continuing to flow in. The quarterback hawking pickup trucks for the local Ford dealer will not be any great detriment to the program. Avery Brundage warned us in the seventies that professionalism would kill the Olympics but I doubt if very many viewers (among the ever-growing number of spectators, btw) refuse to watch the finals of the 100 meter dash because Usain Bolt is a multi-millionaire.
What will happen? I think 20-60 schools (sorry for the vague range) with the most determined boosters will break off into a new division of play, increase the number of scholarships allowed – or eliminate the cap altogether – and collar the bulk of the most elite athletes in pursuit of the highest level of championship. Wait. That’s not significantly different from now. The competitive balance argument is also a meaningless one in college football.
The rest from the current Division 1 will probably agree to maintain the scholarship limit at 85, or even decrease it a little, get an occasional money game with one of the big boys and otherwise compete at their own level of financial ability and booster support. Wait. That’s how it is now!
I think schools like Yale have already examined and chosen a certain niche for football within their overall mission. And schools like Northwestern may choose a more similar path if O’Bannon wins the case. But if Yale alumni wanted to fund 100 scholarships with stipends to talented athletes who also wanted the best education they could get, and began competing for the national title, I don’t know why this would be a problem.
Or the very, very large state schools- UT, UCLA, etc… who may not have such individually wealthy alumni, but who have literally millions of alumni willing to donate.
Did you remember to pay the bench-riding field hockey player the same as your Heisman hopeful? Remember, Title IX still exists, and if the players win, expect it to be enforced stronger than ever.
Even within a sport, do you pay the star QB the same as the third-string center? If not, why not?
Congratulations! You have not only just destroyed NCAA Division 2, but pretty much every sport outside of FBS football (and even the schools not in the major conferences/Notre Dame are going to find it tough to be anything close to competitive) and Division 1 men’s basketball. Now, go back to what I said above about Title IX.
Besides - what makes you think walk-ons can’t be part of this lawsuit? The NCAA’s amateurism rules apply just as much to them as to the scholarship players.
Personally, I don’t see what the case is against the NCAA. EA, I understand - the players own their likenesses, and should be compensated for them by EA - but the NCAA has the right to make its own rules concerning eligibility (IIRC, this has been upheld by the Supreme Court - something to do with Jerry Tarkanian, I think), especially as the rules are created by the schools themselves.
Two things people forget: the NCAA is (a) not just about football and men’s basketball, and (b) not just about the big-time athletic programs. Something like 7/8 of the schools are not Division 1.
Some people are saying that the “big money” schools will break away from the NCAA. I doubt that, for one simple reason - I am convinced that the reason they didn’t do this decades ago is because they have teams in other sports (yes, they do exist, even at Alabama) who would no longer have the opportunity to prove themselves as most other sports have championship contenders that would remain in the NCAA, which would never allow their champions to play the breakaway champions without being tossed out of the organization.
Don, You’re right I forgot about non D-I teams and non revenue sports. But as you rightly point out WRT to Title IX, implementing the ruling is a nightmare.
BTW, as I said above, I have no problem with athletes having off-season jobs.
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