A simple solution for EA’s college football problem
By Paul Pabst
I saw a few articles about how fans miss EA Sports NCAA football game. Current college football players have weighed in and said that they will miss playing the game “as themselves.” The O’Bannon v. NCAA lawsuit helped end EA’s NCAA franchise.
EA’s NCAA football video game had been around since the early 1990s, but really hit its stride in the early ‘00s. The entire O’Bannon lawsuit was about college athletes not being compensated for EA using their likeness or something very close to their likeness. Let’s resolve both issues … get the game back in production and get the athletes paid.
Current college football players would enter into an agreement with EA as freshmen to give up their “likeness” to the game for the remainder of their college eligibility. When that eligibility is over, you get $2,000. On average, there are approximately 2500 college football seniors each year. This would cost EA about $5 million per season in payouts to seniors after their career are over. Yes, two grand is not much … but it’s way more than zero, which is what most seniors have waiting for when the finish their eligibility. The game returns, the player gets 2K to go into the working world with. Boom.
Yes, I know this is ultra-simplistic, but good solutions usually are. The NCAA/colleges will always want their cut, but if this could somehow be worked out, it would be a way to get some funds to college athletes on EA’s tab.