Doc: Oscar Robertson, former Cincinnati great, wants justice from lawsuit
With class-action suit, former UCLA star O'Bannon wants former players to be paid
Feb. 16, 2013 4:05 PM


As a co-captain in 1958-59 and 1959-60, Robertson led Cincinnati to the Final Four. / Enquirer file photo

Written by
Paul Daugherty

Oscar Robertson spent years scratching his head. He’d be a guest at major sports memorabilia shows in Chicago or Las Vegas or Los Angeles. He’d wander aisles jammed with mint-condition bubble-gum cards, impeccably framed posters, signed balls and anything and everything else associated with a collector’s passion for sports. And he’d see himself. Right there, on that card.

“Oscar Robertson, Number 12, University of Cincinnati,’’ Robertson said Saturday, his voice still full with baffled bemusement. He always wondered about that.

“Who makes these cards? There was one with my Olympic picture on it. How can I get this stopped? Who said it was OK for them to use my likeness? I didn’t say it was OK, I can tell you that,’’ Robertson said. He tried, not entirely successfully, to find out. “They told me the NCAA had the right to do it,’’ he said.

Robertson recalls when he signed to play basketball at UC. He remembers the attention it drew, even then. What he doesn’t recall is signing anything that gave anyone the right to use his likeness to make a buck.

Times might change, but greed is constant. The NCAA does include a waiver now. It says basically that an athlete has no right to make anything off his own likeness or name, but that the NCAA has every right to make as much off it as it can. If you don’t like those terms, Mr. or Ms. Student-Athlete, too bad. Don’t play college sports.

The NCAA could be forgiven, or at least tolerated, if it limited its craven exploitation of players to when they are still in college. After all, those people are on scholarship. They are getting paid, of a fashion.

The NCAA didn’t, though. It cut deals with makers of video games (and in Robertson’s case, card companies) in which it sold the likenesses of athletes no longer in school. EA Sports thought it a great idea to include “classic’’ teams in its video games. Which is why Ed O’Bannon is suing the NCAA. He is joined in the class-action suit by Bill Russell. And by Oscar Robertson, who just might get all the answers he has been seeking, all these years.

O’Bannon was a member of the 1995 UCLA team that won a national championship. He was surprised to see his likeness in a video game commemorating that team. He was just like Robertson, only in the video age, not the age of bubblegum cards in bicycle spokes. O’Bannon wants former players to be paid. He wants current players to be paid, too, via a temporary trust fund they’d tap into after they finished their college careers.

In other words O’Bannon and The Big O are trying to make legal what many have argued for a very long time: The players are the game. They deserve more than a full ride to school. Especially when that ride is in the rearview mirror. What has always been a moral issue could become a financial one as well.

If O’Bannon wins, athletes will retain the rights to their own likenesses. That’s something the rest of us simply assume: If you’re going to use my picture to make money, you better be asking me first, and paying me second. If I say no, you have no recourse. You can’t deny me an athletic scholarship.

If O’Bannon wins, the people creating the wealth will benefit from their work. In 2013, why is this still seen as radical?

Oscar Robertson isn’t interested in making money from the lawsuit. He’s interested in a little justice. Nor would he mind if the suit knocked the NCAA from its lofty, arrogant throne. “I would like it if they want to use Cashmere Wright’s picture, they’d have to go to him and say, ‘We’d like to use your likeness on this card or billboard, and pay him,’’ Robertson said. “A lot of players have been taken advantage of.’’

O’Bannon filed the suit in 2009. It’s scheduled to go to trial in July 2014. The NCAA has tried without success to get it thrown out. Every time another school steals away to another “power’’ conference, in search of more TV money, the NCAA’s case loses heft. The NCAA is built on exploiting its unpaid laborers for profit. As the suit progresses, documents will reveal how deep the exploitation runs.

If nothing else, the lawsuit might nudge the NCAA toward reforming itself. Oscar Robertson wouldn’t benefit from that. Cashmere Wright might.

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20130...om-lawsuit