[rbertels]

Sorry, but some of you completely miss the point. This case has nothing to do with whatever benefits the NCAA provides to student athletes - directly or indirectly. You can bad mouth Keller all you want, but what's driving this is a group of attorneys who realized a real legal problem, and use Keller because you would have to be directly affected by it to bring the lawsuit. I guarentee EA's in house legal staff are very, very nervous about this case, as it affects more than just the NCAA Football game. While an athlete who enrolls in a university allows the NCAA to use his likeness in promotional matters, there is nothing allowing the NCAA to then sell that likeness to a 3rd party, and allowing that 3rd party to then use the likeness for profit. This is essentially what the NCAA is doing in knowingly allowing EA to use rosters that are substantially similar to the actual teams. I don't think anyone can seriously argue that 90% of the players in the NCAA series are not strikingly similar to their real life counterpart. The only thing missing is the name. Using anyone's likeness for profit, without permission, regardless of what that person does, incurrs severe civil liability. This is true whether you are a professional athlete, an amateur athlete, or a factor worker in Ohio. Obviously, it's only worth an attorney going after it though if there are damages, or in other words, a lot of $$ involved, like in the EA Sports games which sells millions each year.

Think about it this way, When an someone joins the NFLPA or the MLBPA, they give that union the right to collectively engage in negotiations for any product using the likenesses of all players in the union. This is how the NFLPA is licensed to Madden. If there were no such union though, each player would still have an individual right to not have his likeness used for profit. You couldnt make a football game featuring a team in Indy that had its 1 best player as QB #16 from Tenn. with the same height, age, weight, skin color, as Manning without risking being sued, regardless if there is a union or not. This same right exists for all NCAA players, and doesn't cease to exist just because they got a scholarship. That's a red herring argument at best.

The same problem exists with any "classic rosters" in any sporting game. It is pretty easy to determine who these players are, and if they are not in the players union anymore, they don't get a dime, unless the players association works out a seperate deal to avoid a lawsuit like the NFLPA did last year. I enjoy playing these games as much as anyone, but that doesn't change the fact that these players' likenesses are being used without their consent, for profit, by a 3rd party. I bet the U.S. Supreme Court ends up deciding it.