EA Sports Being Sued Over NCAA Football Game

by dishingoutdimes on May 8, 2009 8:38 AM CDT in Football Comment 7 comments

"Some Sooner Athlete" runs over a Colorado defender. Image via images.ea.com.

No, I'm not kidding. Former Arizona State quarterback Sam Keller, who eventually transferred to Nebraska, is stirring the collective off-the-field pot again. From the East Valley Tribune:

The player best remembered in Tempe for his 2006 role in a quarterback fiasco is now suing EA Sports and the NCAA.

Keller filed a class action lawsuit on Tuesday accusing the video game manufacturer of profiting from the likenesses of college athletes, and the NCAA of going along with it. Collegiate Licensing Co., a marketing firm from Georgia that represents the NCAA, is named in the suit as well.

The lawsuit claims that "despite clear prohibitions on the use of student names and likenesses in NCAA bylaws, contracts and licensing agreements, Electronic Arts utilizes the likenesses of individual student-athletes in its NCAA basketball and football video games to increase sales and profits."

The only thing I can surmise is that this is for money. What hardship has this caused Sam Keller? Do people regularly call him and ask why he isn't better on the NCAA Football game?

In my opinion, it's pretty absurd. Student athletes play these games all the time and nobody cares because nobody's name is used, and it's fun to play with a similar team to what actually exists in real life. If you don't believe me, watch Blake Griffin's video diary where he asks why nobody is playing as the Sooners:

And here's the NCAA response:

"Our agreement with EA Sports clearly prohibits the use of names and pictures of current student-athletes in their electronic games," the NCAA said in a statement. "We are confident that no such use has occurred and that we will ultimately be dismissed from this lawsuit."

If all they prohibit is the use of names and pictures, there should be no problem. Here's Keller's lawyer making an interesting argument:

"I think (the NCAA) is looking the other way," Carey said. "They're not protecting the student athletes."

Protecting them from what? Thousands of student athletes have fun playing those games every day and they don't care. Their pictures aren't used in the game and neither are their names. You can tell this isn't a rampant violation of rights because you don't see student athletes rising up around the country and protesting.

Finally,

Keller was ASU's starting quarterback in 2005 before suffering a season-ending thumb injury. He was originally named the starter in 2006, his senior season, but then-coach Dirk Koetter flip-flopped the next day, giving the job to Rudy Carpenter.

You can draw your own conclusions.

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Comments

I've played the NCAA football games since 2002

Sam Keller is way off. Sure the players have the same arm bands and numbers and such but they look nothing like the actual players. Last year, Phil Loadholt was white and Auston English was black in the game. These were two big time players!

I think he is just looking for some cash and some publicity.

Boomer Sooner!

Come check out FanIQ for your one stop spot for all sports

by Jubanator14 on May 8, 2009 10:25 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs

This

In fact on of my complaints with the game is that the rosters aren’t close ENOUGH.

That and the computer AI makes no sense and one time had a bowl game where the OU qb, was 1-50 with 15 Ints.

by Redhawk on May 8, 2009 11:25 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Ha! Those sound like Justin Fuente numbers

by ccmachine on May 8, 2009 12:35 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Hey! Lay off Justin! :-D

Seriously, though, if you were a QB under John Blake, you should get combat pay. As I recall, Coach Blake could never decide what sort of offense he wanted to play…how do you expect any QB to function in that sort of environment? He tried to run Fuente in the WISHBONE, for heaven’s sake!!! :-D

As to EA Sports, I LOVE the game, and while I think this lawsuit is frivolous, I would agree that everyone knows who is who when they’re playing the game, so there’s some merit to the argument (in principle). Of course, I’m also for a little bit of relaxing of the hypocritical “no pay” conditions for students. Does anyone know why OU has such a high ratio of National Merit Scholars (as we are constantly reminded by the OU marketing folks in the OU marketing commercials during every game)? Because they get their NMS money (which is a full ride), AND OU pays them an extra “scholarship” to go to OU. So they get paid to go to OU! No one worries about that, though…in fact, many will argue that they’re not the same thing at all. But why can you pay one student beyond their scholarship to go to your school, and not pay another, just because he plays sports?

by ousooner919 on May 8, 2009 1:26 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs