OBannon Ed - Court Justice: The Inside Story of My Battle Against the NCAA and My Life in Basketball

Diversion Books
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Copyright 2018 by Copyright 2018 by Edward C. O'Bannon, Jr. and Michael A. McCann
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
Unless otherwise noted, all images are courtesy of the OBannon family.

For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com

First Diversion Books edition February 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63576-261-7

As recently as the early 1980s, it was still possible to believe that college sports, even at their highest level, were small potatoes, at least in terms of dollars and cents, because they were. Iowa States Johnny Orr, the highest-paid college basketball coach in the country, was making $45,000 a year, the equivalent of about $127,000 in 2017. The big football bowl games generated huge television audiencesbut the rights to broadcast them went for a pittance compared to what the networks pay today. March Madness was only just beginning to take hold of the average sports fans imagination.

Even though the pie was so much smaller, it was clear then, as now, that the athletes in the revenue-generating sports (essentially football and mens basketball) werent getting their fair share.

As the rights fees have skyrocketed, and the coaches salaries, and the merchandising revenue, and as the schools have built luxury boxes and weight rooms and locker rooms that would make Caligula blush, it seems more than a little precious that virtually nothing has changed for those athletes whose talents make the whole circus possible. Quarterbacks Baker Mayfield and J.T. Barrett are rewarded no more generously for their contributions to those massive money-making machines at Oklahoma and Ohio State, respectively, than Red Grange was for his efforts on behalf of the Fighting Illini in the 1920s. And everybody elsethe system, the coaches, the athletic administrators, the marketing companies, the official sponsors, the shoe companies, the endowmentsare flush in sweat-generated cash.

Unfair? Sure. A groundswell of outrage that might lead to change? Not really. Not, anyway, for the first 125 years of big-time college sports. The players, after all, arent a permanent class of the disenfranchised. They cycle in and out. Any attempt on their part to tear up the system would not benefit them as individuals, only future generations. In fact, any kind of activism on their part would probably bring condemnation, or worse. And for everybody elsethe schools, the NCAA, the business community, the fansthe system has been working just fine.

Then along came Ed OBannon. Like Curt Flood and Oscar Robertson, who paved the way for free agency in pro sports, OBannon decided there was a principle at stake, that he wouldnt accept the perpetual exploitation of college athletes, and former college athletes, even if the struggle would be costly. OBannon gave the movement to reform college sports a name and a face. More importantly, he gave it passion and purpose, animated by righteous indignation.

Maybe at some point someone else would have come along to challenge the system. Or maybe it would have taken another twenty years. Or maybe it never would have happened. It seems obvious now that someone would have made the attempt, but that wasnt inevitable. It was OBannon, and it still is, refusing to be cowed by those who would preserve the status quo at the expense of the athletes. This reckoning has been a long time comingbut Ed OBannon lit the spark that might actually lead to, believe it or not, a system that treats the athletes with the same respect it affords everyone else.

Jeremy Schaap, ESPN Journalist and New York Times Bestselling Author, January 2018

E

A

Sports

Its in the game.

Take it from me, it sure is in the game.

Ed, youve got to believe me, Spencer was playing you in this video game last night.

Spencer Curtis was a nine-year-old boy in April 2009. He possessed otherworldly hand-eye coordinationback then while holding an Xbox 360 controller and in the years that followed while showing his stuff on the football field. These days hes lining up as a wide receiver for the Weber State Wildcats. When I met Spencer, I just knew him as Mike Curtiss kid. Like me, Mike was an exbasketball player working as a car salesperson in Nevada. We had played ball against each other in the 1990s. I was a UCLA Bruin. Mike banged the boards for the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV), the college I had wanted to attend.

The video game came up in conversation within a minute of my arrival at Mikes house in Summerlin. Along with our friend Rick Glenn, Mike and I had just played in a charity golf tournament. Now it was time for a couple of beers. It was a hot, lazy Saturday afternoon in Nevada. Just like a lot of afternoons there.

But this one would prove very different.

We could all hear Spencer somewhere in the house playing his Xbox at high volume. There were beeps, slashes, and whooshes, along with ambient music. Regaining my focus, I replied to Mike, Wait, what? Dude, you pulling my chain? How was he playing me in a video game?

Im not a gamer. My prime years as a video game player occurred back in the early 1980s when my brother Charles and I would spend hours on our Atari 2600 moving Pac-Man through a maze or blasting asteroids. I realized that games had evolved quite a bit since then, but why the heck would I be in a game? Im no Pitfall Harry jumping over crocodiles. Im not Frogger trying to avoid becoming roadkill. Im just Ed.

Yeah, Mike assured me, Spencer has this game where youre in it. And he scored like two hundred points playing as you. Youre the star, man, just like in the old days! I was genuinely stumped. But then again, I knew next to nothing about college basketball video games. I had never played them, and my children hadnt either. I knew vaguely of sports video games like John Madden Football and some NBA games. They looked pretty cool, too, in their ads. But I had always assumed the players in those games gave their permission to appear and were compensated, too. Yet no one had ever asked me to be in a game.

Howd I end up in the game?

After my initial confusion, I started to feel like anyone would feel if theyd been Super Mario-ed: flattered. Wow, I told Mike. Then Rick, who was sales manager where I worked, interjected with an Ed, thats really cool, man kind of remark.

Mike brought us over to the living room where Spencer was killing on-screen zombies. Spencer had no idea we were there. He was almost in an Xbox trance, as though his brain had been transported to the video game world. Thats how realistic and immersive these games have become. Hey, Spence, do me a favorcan you swap games and put the NCAA one in? Mr. OBannon wants to see himself. Spencer obliged, and we sat on the family room couch in front of the big TV with the Xbox 360 connected to it.

From the floor, Spencer grabbed the NCAA March Madness 09 video game casethe one with Kevin Love pictured on the cover. After the disc slid into the game system, it loaded up. First the words Electronic Arts appeared, and then I heard, E. A. Sports. Its in the game. After several more seconds of loading, a select team menu came up. Spencerwiselychose the UCLA Bruins 199495 squad.

And then, there I was, in the starting lineup. Number 31. Six feet, eight inches. Two hundred twenty-two pounds. Power forward. Left-handed shot.