Days of Selling Popular College Players’ Jerseys Seem Numbered

as a symbol for all that's wrong with college sports the sale of players names and images by school, with no rights or returns due the player will serve even more vivdly than the sham of the "college education" offered to players.

Universities make billions from football games while players are granted scholarships but cannot use their star status to make a dime on autographs, appearances, etc. The NCAA's restrictions on players - many from impoverished backgrounds - making ANY money from their high profiles is un-American and the courts need to free them to do so.

Football players should be paid the same minimum wage for 10 hours a week as other student-jobs on campus. A college kid working lunches in the cafeteria can take home 50 bucks and afford to take his gal for a night out. An athlete's career can be ruined if the pizza shop gives him a free pie.

I remember in our Big 10 fraternity the guys playing football were actually the ones most often broke. I was stuffing dead birds for the biology department a couple afternoons a week and had more pocket change than the brother on the team that was practicing, working out, watching films, leaving Friday morning for travel, etc. while having to keep a GPA higher than I was required.

It's easy at Texas A&M. Everyone wants to be #12.
The home of THE 12th MAN.

So the real point is that colleges would rather not sell jerseys than have to share the money for selling a jersey with the player whose name is on it.

Get a jersey without a name/number and then add your own player name and number of choice after buying it. Let Ed O'Bannon (or any other player) try and sue you then!

Perhaps the largest football and basketball schools should drop all the "student athlete" pretense and create a minor league relationship with the pros. It would save them a ton of money and the fans would soon get over it. After all, few of the fans are actually alumni. They really so not care about the athletes on a personal level, they just want a winner. Why do the athletes need to be students at all? Could they not just be gladiators? The largest schools are driving this to absurd levels. The Mid-American conference has contracted with ESPN to have mid week games in order to get their share of TV money. When the cameras pan the stands, no one is there. Lets you know that college sports has evolved from students and "student athletes" into something else entirely. If it is really only about money, then why not drop all pretense and let someone other than the universities pay for it.

And in the meantime, a heralded player with superstar potential like Terrelle Pryor has been booted by OSU and the NCAA for something as simple as trading his jersey for some tattoos, relegated to the ranks of a hanger-on in the NFL

It's simple, give the players a salary to play and make them pay their own tuition, meals, and lodging.

Kind of ridiculous. Sure, if the name is on the jersey, but numbers pass from player to player over the years. The numbers stay with the college.
i suggest dropping jersey numbers altogether and replacing them with player names. Now it makes sense.

“We started to talk about whether you’re taking advantage of a student-athlete, their likeness, their number,” he said, adding, “I think most people understand the landscape has changed a little bit, and we need to be smart.”

Gee, I don't want to sound too cynical, but it's amazing how the concern for taking advantage of "student-athletes" by using their numbers on merchandise has so closely paralleled legal developments that make it look like a college would have to pay those "non-employees" for doing so. It's getting tougher and tougher to make a living out there.

Or they could just pay the players. Y'know, like anyone else would think to do. Amateurism is a complete and total sham.