Ed O’Bannon, who played basketball at UCLA from 1991-1995, recently won a major victory for thousands of college athletes throughout America. He sued the NCAA and EA sports for using his likeness in video games. He went unpaid, although he helped make companies like EA sports and the NCAA lots of money, because he was a college athlete, and it is against NCAA policy to receive any money for your likeness or your popularity. The supreme court ruled that any player in an EA sport video game from 2003-2014 was to be paid for their appearance.
College athletes are worth more than just a scholarship. The money made off of their likeness and their name is millions of dollars, the NCAA and colleges make money off the the athletes hard work as well as the NCAA and public colleges are classified as “non-profit” organizations, and the incentive of some financial reward could keep some better athletes in college all four years. Many people say college athletes should not get paid for autographs or for their jersey sales. When Marcus Mariota won the Heisman Trophy there was 25 different number 8 jerseys that Oregon licensed(espn. o. com).
Colleges aren’t allowed to put names on jerseys but there wasn’t 25 different number 1 jerseys. Mariota wore the number 8 all three years he was at Oregon. In his amazing career Mariota sold thousands of jerseys but he received no monetary compensation. Recently teams have cut down on what numbers they sell. For the 2016 season Ohio State will sell the number 1 jersey and the 16 jersey(nytimes. com). This is limiting business opportunities for many. There is no reason that players couldn’t be compensated for their likeness and allow colleges to sell jerseys like NFL teams.
EA sports just canceled their college football game series, which was very popular. There EA sports was forced by a federal judge to compensate the athletes for their likeness in game. From this point on any college sport video game would have to be have to have licenses of each player. The NCAA has payed millions of dollars to lawyers in order to prevent players from making any money in any way and they aren’t going to just let EA pay college player for their likeness. The the NCAA football series makes 80 million dollars per game(sports. ice. com).
Not only does it make financial sense to compensate player it makes legal sense because of the ruling of the Ed O’Bannon case. Colleges make more than enough money to on ticket sales alone to a support a pay for play system. Eight College football stadiums hold more than 100,000 fans(collegeexpress. com). The smallest stadium in division one college football has 16,000 seats, which are still sold out every home game(collegexpress. com). Successful teams can bring a median ticket price of well over $100(ticketcity. com).
Doing some math, large programs can make over 10 million dollars per home game while smaller schools still make at least 1. 6 million dollars. College basketball can also make huge fortunes in games. The Rupp Arena can hold 23,000 fans, in 2012 the average cost of a basketball ticket for NCAA division one basketball game was 70 dollars. Again doing some math that would add up to about 1. 6 million dollars per home game in tickets. Baseball being a far third in popularity could also afford to pay athletes. The average ticket price for a college baseball game is about 20 dollars(ticketcity. com).
Haymarket park in Lincoln, Nebraska has a capacity of 8,500 seats. Teams play between 60 and 65 games, if half of them are home games, which is about average, that’s 30 home games. All of that added up equals about 5. 1 million dollars of income per year. In many sports great athletes leave college early for the professional level but some incentive could keep great players in college for longer and increase the level of play. From 2006 to 2012, 51 player left college basketball after only playing one year in college (collegesportsscholarships. com). That’s a little less than nine players per year.
This may be a relative few, but the nine that leave are usually some of the best players in the NCAA. A small financial incentive may be able to keep these kids in college longer and improve the quality of the game. In football, this year had the most players leave early of any other year(cbs. com). This year wasn’t extraneous though, 2014 had the second most players leave early. The trend of players leaving early is alarming and paying these players would encourage players to stay in college and improve their odds of going pro. And about 40% of the underclassmen that enter the NFL draft go undrafted(cbs. om).
We need to give some incentive to keep students in school and this is it. College players should be given some financial compensation for their efforts. Colleges and other companies make millions off of players likenesses while players aren’t compensated. Colleges make millions off of ticket sales and players get minimal compensation in the form of college tuition. Some financial pay would keep great players in college for longer and make all sports better. Ed O’Bannon may have only been a stepping stone to greater freedoms for college athletes, but more must and will be done.