OPINION AND COMMENT
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In this Nov. 22, 2005 photo, USC running back Reggie Bush racks up yards against Fresno State in Los Angeles. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times/TNS) Wally Skalij TNS
Us regular people like to tell athletes to “shut up and haggle” and “stop complaining, they’ll pay you millions of dollars.” For thousands of college athletes, the chance for a big payday often never comes.
The power structure in college sports is only now beginning to change. However, progress has come slowly and only after many college athletes saw their talents and earning power exploited by their schools, their fans, the NCAA, and even me and my family.
I thought about that on Thursday with the announcement that NCAA College Football 25, a video game that was an obsession of mine as a kid, will once again be available for purchase on July 19, 2025. Its long-awaited return a decade after a historic The legal settlement awakened the inner child in me. The 29-year-old journalist is also happy for future athletes who will earn money if they participate in the game.
It’s in the game
Pick any night during the college football season when I was growing up, and you would hear yelling and screaming between my brother and I as we played 2007 NCAA college football at our home in Tullahoma, Tennessee.
To all my younger siblings who played video games, you know the heavenly joy of beating your obnoxious older brother in a game. He lived to serve my brother a nice slice of humble pie on sticks. See, my brother in high school was the more athletic of the two of us. With his lean and muscular 6-foot-2 physique, he was highly sought after by high school coaches. He played baseball, rugby and soccer.
My brother was great at everything, but I was even better at video games, especially NCAA college football. And my brother couldn’t stand it.
In one game I played as the University of Kentucky Wildcats and my brother was the University of Tennessee Volunteers. After the first quarter the score was 21-0 in my favor and I started at a disadvantage because the game considered that their team was stronger than mine. In the gaming world, we call that “skunking.” I enjoyed every minute, but my brother wasn’t enjoying it.
“You’re cheating!” my brother screamed at the top of his lungs after giving up another touchdown. “There’s no way you’re going to beat me to Kentucky.”
So we restarted the game and continued playing well into the night.
Our PlayStation 2 could burn a hole in the ground for as long as we kept it on, playing for hours.
Similarity Battle
In 2014, EA Sports discontinued all of its college sports video games (and its use of college brands in general) because a prominent California athlete, former UCLA basketball star Ed O’Bannon, joined other former student-athletes in a class action lawsuit against the NCAA, EA Sports and Collegiate Licensing Company.
O’Bannon was a starter on UCLA’s 1995 national championship team and the NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player who saw his image in the 2009 NCAA college basketball game and felt he should be compensated. This was almost a decade after his brief NBA career had ended. the term. There was a character in the video game that looked like O’Bannon, from his face to even the jersey number he was wearing.
In late 2009, O’Bannon filed his lawsuit, which was combined with others filed by other athletes, alleging violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act. They argued that student-athletes deserve to be compensated. EA and Collegiate Licensing Company, in addition to the lawsuit, reached a $40 million settlement with O’Bannon and 20 other former athletes.
The state of California has arguably led the way in making college athletics fairer for college athletes.
Following O’Bannon’s transformative legal challenge, California passed the Fair Pay for Play Act in 2019, paving the way for any student-athlete to be compensated for their name, image and likeness. It also prohibits California universities from revoking scholarships from students seeking sponsorship deals. The law came into effect in 2023.
We should not make light of the years of exploitation before student-athletes could be compensated. Reggie Bush, the cover athlete for my 07 NCAA football game, publicly fell from grace when he was stripped of his Heisman Trophy in 2010. Bush, a USC running back, was found to have accepted thousands of dollars as a college athlete. Fortunately, Bush got the Heisman back from him in April, 14 years after it was taken from him. The Heisman Trust says “enormous changes in the college football landscape” led to the decision to return the trophy to Bush.
And they would be right. There have been many changes in college football and college athletics. It’s time for all of us to change our minds too.
Deep down, sports are pretty awesome. They evoke so much joy and passion in us. For too long, not enough people understood that college sports made money for many people besides the players who laced up their cleats.
We have now entered a time where people in the field have a say in how their brand is used. And that’s fine with me.
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LeBron Hill is an opinion editor for The Sacramento Bee and a member of its editorial board. He is a Tennessee native and has worked at The Tennessean in Nashville and the Chattanooga Times Free Press. LeBron enjoys writing about politics, culture, and education, among other topics.
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