Court Justice

The last editions of the NCAA Football and Basketball video games came out in 2013, and the enormously popular series may never be renewed. Why? The primary reason is a lawsuit, O'Bannon v. NCAA, in which the courts essentially held that if the NCAA is going to sell and profit from the images of current and former athletes, it needs to compensate them for doing so. But the NCAA's rules around amateurism bar compensation beyond college scholarships and some cost-of-attendance support, so the games have ceased production. It's more complicated than that, but that's basically the situation. And in Court Justice, lead plaintiff Ed O'Bannon tells his side of the story, both in regards to the lawsuit itself, and his life as an athlete.

I am very interested in the lawsuit and the workings of college athletics in generally, but I am not at all interested in Ed O'Bannon (who I'd literally never heard of before I became aware of the lawsuit), so I'd been hoping for an emphasis on the legal part rather than his college and career. That was probably naive on my part...O'Bannon (with co-writer Michael McCann), not a lawyer or other broader expert, is the author, so it's naturally strongly focused on his experience. And I don't know if he himself did a lot of the writing or it was an editorial decision to keep the finished product as close to his own words as possible, but either way it doesn't quite work: the writing quality here is weak.

The entire book is basically framed through a device in which O'Bannon recounts a stage of the lawsuit, then (usually clumsily) segues into an anecdote from his life. This is not particularly effective, as the narratives feel disconnected and neither builds up much momentum. O'Bannon is unfamiliar with the legal system and it shows: he takes things like the NCAA lawyers trying to trip him up in deposition personally, when the reality is that that's how litigation works. He feels like the higher level federal courts are for “the elite” because they're in fancier buildings than state courts. His perspective as an outsider adds precious little to an understanding of the mechanics and legally successful arguments of the case.

What it does do well is force one to consider the perspectives of the athletes, and how very real the feelings of exploitation are when you're barely able to scrape together enough to have the basics while watching coaching salaries explode and facilities become ever-more luxurious. Someone is doing the labor that makes the system profitable, and it's not the people who are the sole profiteers. When you add in the racial dynamics (an overwhelmingly white athletics administrative and authority structure, with overwhelmingly black athletes in the revenue sports), there's another dimension to the unfairness. O'Bannon touches on this, but never really develops it and that's honestly frustrating. There's a really interesting examination of the issue of compensation for college athletes (I personally support the Olympic model, in which athletes would be able to seek outside endorsements), but this book isn't it. Unless you've got a deep and abiding interest in Ed O'Bannon and a high tolerance for poor-quality prose, I'd avoid it.