Ed O'Bannon suing the NCAA

Last summer, we did a Where Are They Now? piece on Ed O'Bannon, the former UCLA standout turned Las Vegas car salesman.

I don't think anyone is going to be asking that question again anytime soon.

Yesterday, Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports broke the story that Ed O'Bannon will be the lead plaintiff (on behalf of all current and former DI football and men's basketball players) in a class action lawsuit against the NCAA. The case centers around the fact that the NCAA can cash in on the likenesses, the accomplishments, and the memorabilia sales of former players (be it via video games, commercials, jersey sales, etc.) in perpetuity without those players seeing a dime.

Apparently, they have a case (for those better versed in legalese than I go read what Michael McMann has to say about the case at SI - he breaks everything down for you). I'm no lawyer, but I can tell you that when you are represented by a firm that won reparations for Holocaust survivors, price fixing cartels, and benefactors of slave labor, there is a good chance a large amount of money can be made.

Ed O'Bannon is the lead plaintiff in a case against the NCAA
involving their use of a players likeness after graduation.
(photo credit: lowposts.com)

Do I need even need to mention how big of a deal this case is?

Seriously, think about what this covers - ESPN Classic replays; a Carmelo Anthony Syracuse jersey; those Pontiac game changing performance commercials; any copy of NCAA video games.

In fact, the video game is where the entire case originated. From the Wetzel article:

Last winter, Ed O'Bannon discovered that a couple of kids down the street didn't just know the star of the 1995 UCLA national championship team as a friend of their dad, a really tall neighbor or even as a guy who shows up on ESPN Classic every once in a while. They knew O’Bannon – his tendencies, his number 31, even the mechanics of his lefty jump shot – from playing a video game that featured classic college teams. "They literally played me on a video game," O'Bannon told Yahoo! Sports on Saturday. "You could play the '95 Bruins. It didn't have my name, but it had my number, left-handed, it looked like me. It was everything but the name. My friend kind of looked at me and said, 'you know what’s sad about this whole thing? You're not getting paid for it.' I was just like, 'wow, you're right.' It just kind of weighed on me."

An interesting side note to this case is that they are not pushing for athletes currently on scholarship to get paid; only that they players see a cut of the profits from collegiate licensed merchandise once they move on from the NCAA.

According to Wetzel, collegiate licensed merchandise is an estimated $4 billion industry. These are rough economic times for the NCAA and its member institutions, and if O'Bannon happens to prevail, the NCAA may be forced to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

Don't cry for the NCAA. They make money hand over fist off of these kids while they are in school. OK, I get it, the NCAA is technically a non-profit organization and these kids are technically amateur athletes. While I may not completely agree with the current structure, I can tolerate it simply because I love the ideal of a "student-athlete" representing his school.

But why shouldn't former players like O'Bannon get a taste once their collegiate careers come to an end?

The guys over at RTC say it best:

Frankly, it’s about effin’ time. As Dan Wetzel poignantly notes in his article breaking the story today, the players are painted into a (legally unrepresented) corner at 17 or 18 years old when all they’re really worried about is getting their eligibility to play college sports. We understand why the NCAA doesn’t want its current players profiting off of their likenesses while an amateur, but why does the NCAA retain 100% of those rights for the rest of those players’ lives? Why does Texas Western profit off of 1966 jerseys of #14 Bobby Joe Hill, but not the player (or the estate in Hill’s case) some 40+ years later? Same thing with Jerry Rice’s MVSU #88 jersey? Or, as O’Bannon stated in his complaint, why doesn’t he see a dime for an EA Sports video game licensed by the NCAA that clearly shows his silky smooth left-handed collegiate “self” running around making shots and ripping down rebounds as a 1995 UCLA Bruin? It’s absolutely ludicrous, and we’d really like to see the NCAA take it on the chin this time around.

One last note - O'Bannon explains his rationale for becoming the lead plaintiff over at Lost Letterman.

Continue reading...

Billy Gillespie Loves to Piss off the NABC, and does the NCAA's Rules Committee Actually do Anything?

Billy Gillespie, the head coach of the University of Kentucky, has already had one run-in with the NABC this year, resulting in the NABC denouncing the recruitment of athletes before their sophomore year in high school. Well, Gillespie has once again drawn the ire of the NABC, this time for his decision to hold Kentucky's Big Blue Madness on October 10th, a full week before the legal start of practice. Andy Katz has reported in his blog that the NABC is none to happy about this. According to Katz:

The NABC board of directors said that "skill development events should not be open to the public." The NABC said the initial intent was for coaches to assist their players in skill development and create stronger relationships. But by "making such skill development sessions public events, they appear to be geared more for recruiting than skill development sessions."

Let's set the record straight. In both of these situations, Gillespie broke no rules. In the case of Midnight Madness, the rules clearly state that teams are allowed two hours of skill development per week, and Gillespie has decided to use his two hours as Midnight Madness. It is actually an incredibly smart move. Think about the recruiting advantages - since every other school in the country (save Illinois, they're doing their Midnight Madness on the 11th to coincide with a football weekend) will have their Midnight Madness on the 17th, Gillespie can theoretically get any recruit in the country to come. And you better believe the outpouring of Big Blue Nation is quite a recruiting tool.

The bottom line is that this is why Kentucky hired Gillespie. He finds the grey areas and the loopholes where he may be going against the spirit of the law, but still remains within the letter of the law. Yea, I'll admit I would probably be just as upset as any coach in the country if I saw guys like Billy Gillespie, Bruce Weber, and Billy Donovan consistently and continually pushing the envelope. But isn't that what makes them great coaches? Isn't that what you hire them for? To find any and all legal advantages that will help make their basketball teams the best they can be.

That is exactly what Gillespie is doing, and although I don't necessarily agree with what he is doing or how he is going about doing it, you gotta give the guy the credit he deserves.

To be honest, I would be much more concerned about the lack of policing when it comes to major infractions than when Kentucky holds their Big Blue Madness. Read this article by Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports. The last time that a major (meaning a top nine conference) basketball team was busted was when Kansas was caught for "improprieties" in October of 2006. You're telling me that in the past two years, not one recruit has received any benefits from booster's; not one grade has been changed; not one agent has been handing money to players. According to Wetzel, the NCAA used to average seven infractions a year from 1986-2006 in football and basketball (it's big-money sports), but now, even with their number of investigators (20) and meetings of the infractions committee (seven times last year) at all-time highs, they have not found any infractions in 24 months. And this is with NCAA President Myles Brand openly saying there is an epidemic of cheating.

Wetzel comes to a simple conclusion:

It never has been so obvious the NCAA is protecting its big-time programs and television money.

Mine is a little bit different. I think the NCAA is just too busy going after teams like Middle Tennessee State women's volleyball and Texas Southern tennis to worry about things like having notoriously unsavory characters (Ronald Guillory) hanging around some of the NCAA's biggest stars (OJ Mayo).

At this point, Gillespie might as well just start having full blown practices in August. Will the NCAA even do anything about it?
See below for full list of the 2008 NCAA rules infractions.
Continue reading...

Myles Brand, the $935,000 man

A lot of you out there might not know who Myles Brand is. Well, he is the President of the NCAA, which means he is the President, and public face, of college athletics. I've have argued many times on this blog that college athletes, especially those in revenue generating sports like basketball and football (which basically provide athletic departments with their budgets) should be compensated with more than just a scholarship, and I am about to do that again.

The reason I bring this back up is that last week, the NCAA released its annual financial disclosure forms for the 2007 year, an IRS requirement for tax-exempt organizations such as the NCAA (they are tax-exempt because they "keep sports as an integral part of the educational program and the athlete as an integral part of the student body"). In this document, they announce the salaries of some of the top NCAA officials. Nine make more than $275,000 a year, topped by Brand's $935,000, which is more than the president of any school that is an NCAA member and a 4% raise from 2006.

With our economy in the crapper, Fannie and Freddie following Bear's lead, job's flowing abroad, and the student-athlete continually taken advantage of, it only makes sense to give the guy who is best known for not implementing a BCS playoff a raise, right?

The NCAA, which lists 434 employees and $608 million in revenue (I am not sure how they get this number, because CBS pays around $545 million a year for the NCAA tournament), also paid just under $1 million for charter air travel and $18.6 million in attorney fees and a fund for former athletes after they were sued because some former athletes did not receive the full cost of their education. So clearly, the NCAA does not have a cash flow problem.

But the NCAA's exploitation of collegiate athletes is getting worse. CBS Sports now offers a fantasy football game with individual players names. In past years, Yahoo and the Sporting News have offered a type of fantasy game - Yahoo's game involved picking winners of top 25 games, where as at the Sporting News you picked team positions (i.e. Notre Dame's running backs). But this is the first time that a site has been able to use the names of the players, which I'm sure CBS paid a pretty penny for. So not only are these players having money made off of their jersey sales (I know the names aren't on the jerseys, but if you've bought a #50 UNC jersey in the last three years, I'll bet you're not getting it because Brian Bersticker wore it), the ticket sales to their games, and revenue from televised games, there is now money being made off of their names?

In the past, I've said that athletes should receive a small stipend just so that they have a little bit of spending money in their pockets (well, legitimate spending money anyway), and in theory that could work if regulated correctly. But in reality it would be very difficult, mainly because athletic departments, for the most part, run at a deficit as it is. So paying players is not really all that practical, and imagine what would happen if agents and boosters were actually allowed to spend time together. You think it is corrupt now?

I know all of the arguments against paying players - they are receiving a scholarship (which can reach six figures at many schools), they are amateurs, they already get paid by boosters (kidding, sort of), etc. But the best argument, and the one that has me leaning in this direction right now, is that playing a sport in college is actually a choice you make. In most sports, there are options. Brandon Jennings went to Italy to get around an age limit. Mike Sellers went to Canada. Baseball players can go pro straight from high school.

But it still is not fair to profit off of these athletes without them seeing a cut. So instead of just flat out paying the players, why not set up a retirement fund (401k, IRA, something like that) which would allow these players to access at least a piece of the money being made off of their likeness, given that they complete their degree? The fund can be supplied by the NCAA, the venues that host the NCAA tournament games, the people that advertise at and during sporting events, and the merchandisers and websites that use the players to make money, be it fantasy sports or jerseys sales.

This not only allows the players to (eventually) see some of that money, but it creates a strong incentive for them to actually graduate. And the only people that get affected negatively? The people already making all the money. Continue reading...