Why Shouldn't We Pay Student-Athletes?
In 2009, the former UCLA basketball star Ed O'Bannon took on the NCAA in a lawsuit that challenged the organization's ability to profit from the likenesses of college athletes in a video game. But as the case heated up, its stakes and scope began to sprawl, and opened a can of worms that threatened to upend one of the bedrock principles of college sports: amateurism.
"I wanted...to get the NCAA to at least admit that they were wrong in using former players likeness for profit, and that eventually branched off into current players owning their likeness and why they should." O'Bannon said to me on the Code Switch podcast. "Then it branched off later into actual current players getting paid from the universities and from the NCAA â not only basketball and football, but all athletes. Men and women."
