NY Times Editorial: Unfair Business in College Sports (Ed O'Bannon Should Win)

[Tugg Speedman]

The New York Times
October 4, 2013
Editorial

Unfair Business in College Sports

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/opinion/unfair-business-in-college-sports.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0

The National Collegiate Athletic Association is now the sole defendant in a lawsuit that could alter the college sports business model, under which everybody — the N.C.A.A., universities, media companies, coaches — makes money except the student athletes.

In 2009, Ed O'Bannon, a former basketball star for the University of California, Los Angeles, sued the N.C.A.A. for licensing his "likeness" for use in video games and broadcasts without permission or payment. Last week, two other defendants in the suit, E.A. Sports and Collegiate Licensing Company, settled a consolidated suit for $40 million; current and former players whose likenesses appeared in the video games could potentially get a share.

But the N.C.A.A. won't go along. Its chief legal officer, Donald Remy, said last week that he would take the case "all the way to the Supreme Court" if necessary. The involvement of current players creates an immediate problem for the N.C.A.A., which must decide if accepting settlement money counts as a violation of amateur status for the players. Of course, that issue pales in comparison to the trouble the N.C.A.A. will face if it loses this suit.

Mr. O'Bannon's lawyers contend that the N.C.A.A. and its member schools violate antitrust law by requiring student-athletes to sign a contract permitting the N.C.A.A. to use their images to promote events or championships. Players essentially forfeit their rights to enter into individual licensing agreements, they say, while the N.C.A.A. is free to sell their names, images and likenesses without passing along a cent. A loss at trial for the N.C.A.A. could establish the principle that players have the right to share in the billions of dollars of revenue generated by their labor, including from television broadcast contracts — a result the association desperately fears.

The N.C.A.A. argues that players should get nothing more than a scholarship (which colleges may cancel), because payment from colleges or outside companies would ruin the amateur model of collegiate sports. That model, however, is fundamentally unfair. Walter Byers, the first executive director of the N.C.A.A. and now a critic of the way it does business, aptly described the athletes' plight in his memoir: "The college player cannot sell his own feet (the coach does that) nor can he sell his own name (the college will do that). This is the plantation mentality resurrected and blessed by today's campus executives."

[ChicosBailBonds]

Doesn't the NY Times think most things about business is unfair?