Let’s Hope So!
By The NCAA argues that the lawsuit claiming that when the NCAA profits from player likenesses the players should actually not be prohibited from deriving any of these profits could have scary, scary consequences:
A day after the plaintiffs’ lawyers in an antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA and two co-defendants filed an amended complaint regarding the use of athletes’ names, images and likenesses, the association’s general counsel responded by acknowledging the threat the case presents to the collegiate model of amateurism.
“College sports today are valued by the student-athletes who compete and all of us who support them,” Donald Remy, the NCAA’s vice president for legal affairs, said in a statement. “However, the plaintiffs’ lawyers in the likeness case now want to make this about professionalizing a few current student-athletes to the detriment of all others. Their scheme to pay a small number of student-athletes threatens college sports as we know it.
I’m also reminded of Bowie Kuhn assuring Congress that if players were paid more than a small fraction of their market value then major league baseball would immediately go bankrupt.