NCAA: The EA Sports company has begun to pay former NCAA football athletes.
By Andrew Carlson, Staff Writer
Three years ago, EA (Electronic Arts) Sports, a major sports video game franchise, ran into complications regarding its popular National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) football series. As video game technology became more advanced, with more realistic graphics, it became a legal problem to use the college players’ likenesses without paying them.
The NCAA had allowed collegiate players’ avatars in the games, claiming that they did not represent the athletes because the names were left off. (A player would be shown as QB #10, but have a similar face and body type to the real-life player). However, the player names could be downloaded off the internet, and the EA settlement form states “EA’s internal spreadsheets show that each avatar was matched to dozens of the real student-athlete’s identifying characteristics … For example, for the NCAA football video game, EA matched: (1) the name of the real student-athlete; (2) his real-life jersey number; (3) his position played; (4) his hometown; (5) his year of eligibility; (6) his athletic abilities (on at least 22 dimensions, including speed, strength, agility, etc.); (7) his physical characteristics (on at least 26 dimensions, including, weight, height, skin color, face geometry, hair style, muscle shape, etc.); and (8) how he dressed for games in real life.” Obviously, EA couldn’t pay the athletes because, regardless, the athletes are unpaid under the NCAA rules of amateurism.
Paying athletes was not an option for the NCAA, but when the legal discussions began, not paying them was not an option either for EA. The game was then discontinued to avoid these problems, and it has been a video game relic since.
However, a compromise was reached in July of 2015. EA Sports and the Collegiate Licensing Company (CLC) agreed to a 60 million dollar settlement check to “certain Division I men’s basketball and Division I Bowl Subdivision football student-athletes who attended certain institutions during the years the games were sold.” In short, most NCAA football players since 2003 will receive various amounts of money for the use of their likeness. Basketball players do not receive any compensation, as the series was discontinued before the complications arose. These checks have begun to arrive. The first reactions to the checks came on April 11, 2016 from former players such as Channing Crowder, who played at the University of Florida and former Maryland quarterback C.J. Brown. They were the first of many, and athletes have been sharing their check arrivals on Twitter and other platforms.
Now that most of the finance complications are over, a court ruled that the NCAA games can return to market. Although this notion is unlikely to occur anytime soon, in a few years, fans may see a new NCAA game on the shelves. This will only be possible if the NCAA drops or loosens the ban on paying college players. A judge recently ruled that EA could not continue using player likenesses without compensation. EA is willing to pay large sums of money to continue the game, considering that they brought in nearly 80 million dollars a year. NCAA is against paying players, and it is a stalemate court case at the moment, but many gamers hope for the return of the game.