Three former college quarterbacks have lawsuits on the table claiming that the NCAA has illegally used their likenesses in EA Sports’ NCAA Football video game franchise.

As you probably know if you play this (or any other college games), while the digital players have the same build, skin color, and skill sets of their real human counterparts, they due not have a name attached to the back of their jerseys.

Florida’s quarterback, for example, might be a bulky, white kid with the ability to pass accurately and run like a fullback, but his jersey would read only “QB #15.”  It’s not a far leap to figure out that that little guy is the digital version of Tim Tebow.

Here’s the issue at stake for the NCAA: currently, the organization makes big bucks from EA Sports for the use school names, colors, stadiums and player likenesses… but if any of the players’ lawsuits are successful, the NCAA and EA Sports might have to cut the players in for a piece of the action.

Which, let’s be honest, is exactly what should happen.  That said, there’s no feasible way to actually pay thousands of college athletes, so don’t expect the NCAA to start cutting checks anytime soon.

There are, however, other possible compromises.  Jon Solomon of The Birmingham News provides an excellent overview of the litigation facing the NCAA and the video game maker, as well as those aforementioned payment options.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 9:52 am and is filed under Alabama, Homepage . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.