Wolf Gnards

Ed O’Bannon has taken some time from his career of piling street junk into a beat up pickup truck to speak out against the NCAA. Actually, I think he might be a used car salesman, which is much better than getting paid million of dollars to dribble a basketball.

Some of you may remember Ed O’Bannon winning a national championship for UCLA. Some of you may remember O’Bannon for averaging 5.2 points a game for the Nets. But most of you probably don’t remember Ed O’Bannon at all.

And that’s the point.

Ed O’Bannon hasn’t done much, but if other people are going to make money off of the his few achievements, he would like to get paid for it. This is why Ed O’Bannon is suing the NCAA. The suit filed this Tuesday states that the NCAA has illegally used college athletes’ images for commercial use without sharing any of the proceeds with the former athletes. These images namely being DVD’s, photographs, apparel, and most of all video games.

Who is this Player #23?

If you played NBA Live in the 90’s, you may remember the legend of Player #23. Michael Jordan didn’t want his likeness used in video games, so companies included very familiar, very high jumping, bald player with no name. NBA In the Zone ’98 famously replaced Jordan with some white guy. This is because Jordan opted out of the game because of different licensing than the NBA Player’s Association. This is what NCAA video games have to deal with. Since college players can’t be paid money, video games that feature these players then have to use fake players… fake players, of course, that have the same heights, skills, and general likenesses as their real life counterparts. Ed O’Bannon and many other former college athletes have noticed that Player #31 on the all-UCLA legends team bear a striking similarity to himself.

The Madden franchise has faced similar lawsuits from former players featured on the All-Madden teams. Are we to believe Player #16 is not Joe Montana? Of course not and the players received $28 million because of these. Guys like Ed O’Bannon don’t even have much in pro-money to start with. They live for their former achievements. Video game companies are making millions of dollars, and the NCAA is getting paid by them, shouldn’t the former players as well?

I like to believe that I’m capable of doing one great thing. Only one though. And I’d like to be paid for that one great thing—be it a hotdog eating championship or finding a dead body or being great at claw machines. I’d like to get paid for my okay things to. O’Bannon buys his lunch out of trucks and eats his lunch in other trucks, a little video game money can upgrade this to a restaurant every once in while. They’re not making Used Car Salesman Sims anytime soon, although if they do make that game, I’ll probably play it.