Let me give the uninitiated a brief rundown of how the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) deals with student athletes. (If you already know this, feel free to skip ahead to the jump.) Universities make tons of money on college sports. Athletes receive a free college education. Universities make tons of money selling paraphernalia associated with popular teams and players. Athletes are not allowed to profit off of their skills while still in school. Universities = tons of money. Athletes = pretend to go to school. College sports programs = big business. Athletes = unpaid interns.
As Smilin’ Jack Ross would say: “There are the facts, and they are indisputable.”
Let me give the uninitiated a brief history of sports video games. (Again, the jump is right there.) People used to play video games using fake teams and fake players. Then professional sports leagues figured out that they could make a lot of money by licensing out their teams’ logos and jerseys. Then labor unions realized they could make a lot of money by licensing out the likenesses of their players. Then sports video games became cool. Then Michael Jordan decided he could make even more money for his specific likeness (because he was Michael Jordan and nobody else was). Then video game makers allowed people to create their own players, so everybody made their own version of Michael Jordan (mine … played for the Knicks). Now professional players get their video game money through their union and everybody is happy.
Everybody still with me? Okay, so you can see the obvious problem with college sports video games. Everybody wants real teams and real players, but the game publishers can’t use the likenesses of actual college players. That would be stealing! But since it’s perfectly legal for the NCAA to prevent kids from earning money for playing college sports, there’s not really anybody video game publishers can pay for the rights. Except the colleges and universities themselves. Who, again, make a metric ton of money off of college sports.
So, game publishers like Electronic Arts, essentially, cheat. If you pick up the copy of a college sports game, you’ll see all the players, with their accurate numbers, positions, player attributes, pretty much everything except the players’ actual names. Luckily, you can change the names of players, and every year hundreds of users sit there and change all of the names of all the players to their real life counterparts. Then people like me pay for the “updated rosters” (back in the day) or simply download them for free.
And everybody is happy.
Except, of course, the college athletes. Especially the college athletes that have only a limited chance of going pro but are very popular college athletes and want to get a little more than a diploma out of it.
Okay, enough set up, let’s get into what Nebraska QB #9 (Sam Keller) and others are doing about it.