EA Sports sued over using athletes' likenesses
by Jeff Nusser on May 7, 2009 8:00 AM PDT
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The lawsuit claims Electronic Arts, the NCAA and Collegiate Licensing Co. conspired to circumvent the association’s rules and violated the players’ rights to control and profit from the use of their names and likenesses. It seeks to recoup profits from the games for the players and seizure of games that infringe on athletes’ rights. ...
The NCAA denied that athletes’ images were used in the games.
“Our agreement with EA Sports clearly prohibits the use of names and pictures of current student-athletes in their electronic games,” said Stacey Osburn, a spokeswoman for Indianapolis, Indiana-based NCAA. “We are confident that no such use has occurred and that we will ultimately be dismissed from this lawsuit.”
Yeah, you definitely can't tell which player is which in the game, and it's definitely not a selling point of the game that you get to play with your favorite players on your favorite team ...
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There are services that allow you to download rosters as well
So then you have the players’ names to go along with their likenesses!
This is where per game statistics go to die.
CougCenter
I know
The NCAA is claiming it has nothing to do with that, so it’s not in violation of the rules. Again, try not to laugh too hard …
This is funny!
The NCAA is basically saying, “We’re not exploiting athletes at all! Really, we promise!”
Yeah, it becomes pretty comical
Until you remember that athletes are being exploited. They’re so full of hypocrisy, it’s insane.
Not all athletes, by the way
I just mean the revenue-generating athletes. While I know the non-revenue-generating sports benefit greatly from things like this, there are also a lot of non-students who are getting very rich because of it. That’s where I get upset.
OK, sanctimonious rant over.
Agreed
Yes, many athletes do reap the benefits of collegiate athletics, which is good. And yes, the athletes competing in the “revenue sports” are being somewhat exploited. However, I don’t know what the remedy to that is…
by '03CouveCoug on May 7, 2009 10:52 AM PDT up reply actions
Exploited, really?
Most “revenue generating” athletes get a free education, often at top-of-the-line school. Some athletes get the chance to go to schools they couldn’t possibly consider without athletic talent.
Further, once they do get to school with the rest of the students, they have access to individualized tutors, they have computer labs only they can access, their dining hall is – in some cases – restricted to their use only, their living conditions in campus housing is often preferential, often times athletes get a per diem, or stipend and finally, they get priority registration for classes.
I get it. Football and basketball make money for the school, but if they want to be compensated for their services to the school, perhaps they can start by paying their one $20K tuition, room, board and books.
I hear what you're saying...
I understand that athletes are compensated for their services, often lavishly compared to their fellow students. No doubt that all athletes are given very preferential treatment for what they provide to the school. I also don’t deny that getting a free education that said athlete may not have had the opportunity to pursue otherwise is a nice draw.
That said, I should clarify my original statement by saying that compared to the tens of millions of dollars generated by football and basketball players at schools like USC, Ohio State, Florida, or even WSU, the athletes generating that revenue are being exploited. So much so that it makes their scholarship and everything that comes with it seem nearly insignificant. I would venture to guess that the amount spent on football and basketball players is less than 25% of the amount of cash that they generate. Perhaps that is a bit of a leap, I don’t have any numbers to back that up. Nonetheless, I’m sure that the collegiate athletes aren’t reaping the 60% of revenues that NFL/NBA players do.
That’s what makes this issue such a conundrum for me. While I feel that the athletes in revenue sports are being somewhat exploited, I don’t feel that said athletes should be flat-out compensated for their services. That’s what pro leagues are for. So, what’s to be done? I don’t know! But, that’s a whole other issue, probably for a different topic post.
by '03CouveCoug on May 7, 2009 12:02 PM PDT up reply actions
Depending on their playing time, college football players should be making six figure salaries
Star players should probably be approaching a million dollars a year even at that level. Obviously bench scrubs are probably adequately compensated with the scholarship alone (though they ought, at least, to be able to defer the actual class-going part of the scholarship to a time in their lives when they aren’t spending some ridonkulous part of their workweek in football practices). But players of any significance are ludicrously undercompensated.
Linda's in the cold ground, won't see her anymore
Somewhere out on the highway tonight, the drunken engines roar
It's just one of those things, one of those things
-- Al Stewart, "Accident on 3rd St."
In memory of Nick Adenhart and all victims of drunk driving
Economics
A typical strong team will have 2 or 3 star players, 10 or so future NFL draft picks, another 10 or so college-level starters, 20 or so backups who get substantial playing time, 20 or so who get minor playing time, and 20 or so benchwarmers.
A big-time program will bring in a lot of money. I don’t know what the exact figures are, but a team that sells out a 70,000 seat stadium 7 times a year is getting almost half a million fans in attendance. That’s a lot of revenue. Some of it has to be spent on maintenance, on coaches, on stadium staff, and on recruiting, and that’s understandable. But it doesn’t seem outrageous to me that the school could have a budget of $7M or so for player salaries.
Let’s divide that up:
$2.5M to 3 star players
$2M to 10 future draft picks
$1M to 10 collegiate starters
$1M to 20 backups getting major time
$500K to 20 backups getting minor time
Unpaid scholarships to 20 benchwarmers
These numbers are a. very back-of-the-envelope and b. obviously pulled out of my ass, so I’m not expecting anyone to take them for the gospel— just “showing the work” on my thought process.
Linda's in the cold ground, won't see her anymore
Somewhere out on the highway tonight, the drunken engines roar
It's just one of those things, one of those things
-- Al Stewart, "Accident on 3rd St."
In memory of Nick Adenhart and all victims of drunk driving
But
Football teams don’t pay only for themselves. The money the football team makes goes into the athletic department to pay for other sports.
When I was at San Jose State doing graduate study, they were talking of dropping their football program. They didn’t because they realized that even though their program was horrible, it paid for every other athletic program.
Washington State University could not afford to pay those salaries, but they produce NFL-caliber athletes.
I don’t think your logic makes sense as a broad stroke explanation for all D-1 college football schools.
The fact that they don't pay only for themselves doesn't make it any less exploitative
In fact, you could argue that makes it more exploitative.
Agreed
Often times, entire athletic departments are surviving on the backs of the football and/or men’s basketball teams. Seems to me like 80 or so guys supporting the entire operations of a department whose annual gross revenues are in the tens of millions of dollars is a little exploitative.
by '03CouveCoug on May 11, 2009 8:48 AM PDT up reply actions
So what do you suggest?
Do we pay football players for funding an athletic program? Or Basketball players? If players start getting paid to play, what happens to the money that is used to fund women’s crew, golf and tennis. If any one of those sports is cut, WSU risks losing Pac-10 membership. I just don’t see it as exploitative when student/athletes know what they are signing up for. Athletes with 2.0 and 800 SAT are not exploited – they are given an opportunity of a lifetime.
As I said earlier...
I don’t have a suggestion…I don’t know how this can possibly be solved. I don’t think that athletes should be flat-out compensated, however I do feel that athletes in the revenue sports (star athletes in particular) are being taken advantage of. Then again, like you say, it’s still a hell of an opportunity for most of the athletes that take advantage of it. The bottom line is that every one of the athletes that accepts a scholarship knows what they’re signing up for.
by '03CouveCoug on May 11, 2009 10:15 PM PDT up reply actions
I'm in the same boat
This is an unbelievably complex situation, which is why you won’t see me going on multiparagraph diatribes decrying the injustice of it all. In the vast majority of those instances — here’s one, for example — authors grossly oversimplify the situation by saying “PLAYERS SHOULD BE PAID! IT’S SLAVE LABOR!” It’s just not a straight line from the players to the revenue, and any attempt to make it appear so just makes the author look like a buffoon.
In my mind, the root of the problem is the inequities from school to school. I think the place to start is by asking the question of what’s driving the need for revenue. Is it really supporting those other programs? Or is it more supporting overpaid coaches and an arms race of epic proportions? Now, one could make the argument that those coaches and facilities bring in more revenue and therefore make the investments worth it. But that argument starts to leak water a little bit when you look at what universities pay out to fire coaches.
Honestly, I think players would absolutely be OK with the current situation if they knew the revenue they were generating wasn’t lining the pockets of some adult riding on their coattails. You probably wouldn’t hear a peep out of Sam Keller if the EA Sports revenue was going directly to student athletes. But it’s not.
If the NCAA was really serious about making the its revenues count for what really matters — helping student-athletes get an education — it would figure out a way to corral the out-of-control spending across its membership. But until the students unionize, it’ll never happen, because the history of the earth tells us that those in power are reluctant to give it up. There’s just no incentive to do so. And since the students are in and out of the university before they can affect any real change, it’s quite the stretch to imagine student-athletes ever becoming a unified work force.
by Jeff Nusser on May 12, 2009 11:53 AM PDT up reply actions
For my money
The 2K sports games are better for basketball. My favorite game of all time is NCAA Football 06 for PS2, it was amazing.
This is where per game statistics go to die.
CougCenter
by Craig Powers on May 7, 2009 10:50 AM PDT up reply actions
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