Video Game Lawsuits May Be Lethal To NCAA

[HT: Birmingham News/Jon Solomon]

Three former quarterbacks could throw the completion that turns fantasy video games into a harsh, new reality for the NCAA.

First came Sam Keller, a former Arizona State and Nebraska quarterback, who in May sued EA Sports and the NCAA, alleging the video game company steals players' likenesses and the NCAA enables it to happen.

Now comes a lawsuit from former Rutgers quarterback Ryan Hart and California quarterback Troy Taylor, who say their likenesses in a video game were used without their permission.
If either of these lawsuits gain traction, and it's very possible they will, they could mark a significant game-changer for the NCAA. The blueprint would have to be rewritten on how to market -- some would say "exploit" is the more appropriate word -- players that are supposed to be amateur.

College athletes are forbidden by the NCAA from cashing in on their name beyond the scholarships they receive. But athletes are now featured in numerous arrangements with commercial products, advertisements and fantasy sports games that bring millions of dollars to the NCAA, member schools and outside parties.

The NCAA insists that college athletes shouldn't be sales tools. An NCAA task force on commercialization recently recommended loosening guidelines on how to use athletes' names and likenesses as long as it "does not portray the student-athlete in a manner as promoting or endorsing the sale or use of a commercial product or service?"

What does that mean? Crossing that line has been awfully blurry, even before the video game lawsuits.

Why do you think fans buy No. 8 Alabama jerseys and No. 15 Florida jerseys? It's no coincidence the punter's jersey number doesn't hang in stores next to those of Julio Jones and Tim Tebow.
What about the Pontiac Game Changing Performance, which lets fans vote online for several selected big plays? Featured prominently on the Web page is a logo and car from Pontiac, a major sponsor for the NCAA. The NCAA justifies the online display by saying it promotes big plays and Pontiac happens to be the sponsor.

By clinging to its amateur status for so long, the NCAA has invited lawsuits like those over video games.

There is no question EA Sports identifies individual players. If this were an open-records request by a media outlet, universities would redact every video game player, citing personally identifiable information. Funny how that works, isn't it?

The NCAA prohibits video games from listing players by name. But virtually every video-game player mirrors an actual player's jersey number, height, weight and hometown. The skills of video-game players typically mirror those of their real-life counterparts.

NCAA President Myles Brand has made it a priority for member schools to adopt a more aggressive commercial approach. The NCAA commercialization task force wants a committee to monitor, but not dictate, when it believes schools have overstepped the marketing of athletes. That's not far enough.

Blowing up the system and paying salaries is unrealistic. Malcolm Moran, a former New York Times and USA Today sports reporter and the Knight Chair in Sports Journalism in the College of Communications at Penn State, has floated an interesting compromise.

In a recent NCAA Champion Magazine article, Moran wrote that all scholarship athletes should have their full cost of college attendance -- counting incidental expenses -- covered for the length of their careers. In exchange, athletes would provide greater commercial use of their names and images.

All it takes for a major NCAA mess is one sympathetic judge or jury to an athlete's claim of exploitation. Ironically, that forum could come from video games, which are wildly popular with the very college athletes whose identities are being used.