Court Justice: The Inside Story of My Battle Against the NCAA
Court Justice: The Inside Story of My Battle Against the NCAA
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Overview
In 2009, Ed O’Bannon, once a star for the 1995 NCAA Champion UCLA Bruins and a first-round NBA draft pick, thought he’d made peace with the NCAA’s exploitive system of “amateurism.” College athletes generated huge profits, yet—training nearly full-time, forced to tailor coursework around sports, often pawns in corrupt investigations—they saw little from those riches other than revocable scholarships and miniscule chances of going pro. Still, that was all in O’Bannon’s past…until he saw the video game NCAA Basketball 09. As avatars of their college selves—their likenesses, achievements, and playing styles—O’Bannon and his teammates were still making money for the NCAA. So, when asked to fight the system for players past, present, and future—and seeking no personal financial reward, but rather the chance to make college sports more fair—he agreed to be the face of what became a landmark class-action lawsuit.
Court Justice brings readers to the front lines of a critical battle in the long fight for players’ rights while also offering O’Bannon’s unique perspective on today’s NCAA recruiting scandals. From the basketball court to the court of law facing NCAA executives, athletic directors, and “expert” witnesses; and finally to his innovative ideas for reform, O’Bannon breaks down history’s most important victory yet against the inequitable model of multi-billion-dollar “amateur” sports.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781635762617 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Diversion Books |
| Publication date: | 02/13/2018 |
| Series: | Inside Story of My Battle Against the NCAA |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Sales rank: | 586,954 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Ed O'Bannon led the UCLA men's basketball team to the 1995 NCAA Basketball Championship. He received the NCAA Tournament's Most Outstanding Player Award and won numerous other awards, including the John Wooden Award, which recognizes the best college basketball player in the country. O'Bannon was the ninth player selected in the 1995 NBA Draft and enjoyed a 10-year professional basketball career. After retiring from the game, O'Bannon entered the car dealership industry. In 2009, O'Bannon filed a federal lawsuit against the NCAA and Electronic Arts. In a landmark decision, which was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals, O'Bannon defeated the NCAA. O'Bannon received no compensation from the case. O'Bannon, who is from Los Angeles, now resides in Henderson, Nevada with his wife, Rosa. They have three children.
Michael McCann is Sports Illustrated's Legal Analyst and has authored more than 600 articles for SI. He is also a Professor of Law, with tenure, and Director of the Sports and Entertainment Law Institute at the University of New Hampshire School of Law. He is the Editor of the forthcoming Handbook of American Sports Law and has authored articles in the Yale Law Journal, Boston College Law Review and Harvard Journal of Sports and Entertainment among other top law reviews. He holds degrees from Harvard Law School, the University of Virginia School of Law, and Georgetown University. He resides in his hometown of Andover,
Massachusetts with his wife, Kara.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Clarion Call
I sell cars. Among other things, that means I give out my cell phone number to a lot of people. Hopefully some of those people end up buying a car from me.
It was no surprise when my phone rang that morning in early May 2009 while I was sitting at my desk at Findlay Toyota in Henderson, Nevada, looking over details about new cars coming in.
But I was pleasantly surprised by the area code. 818 is Los Angeles. I'm an LA guy through and through. I know my people.
I also knew the name of the caller.
"Hello?" I answered.
"Mr. O'Bannon, how are you, my friend?"
The voice was like no other. Despite being 818, it was East Coast. It was fast. It was endearing. It was Mr. Sonny Vaccaro.
I knew Mr. Vaccaro — and he will always be Mr. Vaccaro to me — from the summer between my sophomore and junior years in high school. I attended Nike's annual "Academic Betterment and Career Development" or ABCD camp, which Mr. Vaccaro and his wife, Pam, ran at Princeton University. The camp featured high school basketball stars from across the country. There were there by invitation only. It was at Princeton where I realized I had a chance of becoming an NBA player. I was even named Most Valuable Player of Mr. Vaccaro's camp in 1988.
Back in the day, Mr. Vaccaro would tell me, "You have a chance to do something really special, Eddie. But you need to take basketball seriously. Don't blow it."
You can bet I listened to him. He was the man who brought Michael Jordan to Nike. He's the one who brought Patrick Ewing and Alonzo Mourning to Georgetown and other young stars to other big schools. He's the one who made college coaches rich by paying them to instruct their players to wear Nike sneakers. Years later, he'd work on behalf of Adidas and then Reebok with the same core mission. There's a reason why he's known as "The Sole Man." He's the real deal.
Mr. Vaccaro also "fought the fight" for young basketball players. He demanded that players receive part of the pie of wealth generated by their labor. He knew about amateurism rules that told those players "no you cannot," but he didn't care.
The methods and consequences of this kind of philosophy are dramatically different these days. Last September, Justice Department officials announced that they were prosecuting sneaker executives, college coaches, and investment advisors for bribery, fraud, and other felony charges. The Justice Department's basic theory is that college coaches bribed or received bribes to influence where star recruits would attend college and whom college stars would hire as NBA investment advisors.
We're not talking about free sneakers and discounted apparel here. Nor is this about rinky-dink NCAA violations.
This concerns hundreds of thousands of dollars changing hands in payoffs. And it concerns educated, middle-aged men breaking federal criminal statutes.
If these guys are convicted — and none of them have been as of this writing — they could spend decades behind bars.
It was reported in the New York Times, Washington Post, Sports Illustrated, and more. And some heavy hitters in college basketball have been charged. Among them are Adidas director of global marketing Jim Gatto — the point man for huge sneaker deals — and Auburn University associate head coach and former NBA rookie of the year Chuck Person.
Although he wasn't charged with a crime, Rick Pitino was fired as head coach of the University of Louisville in the aftermath of the indictments. Prosecutors claim that an unnamed recruit — widely believed to be Brian Bowen, a five-star recruit — received $100,000 in inducement money to attend Louisville.
Pitino says he never knew about it.
Hmm.
Look, I realize it's too early to know where this case is headed. The defendants have hired top defense attorneys, who insist that the government is trying to unfairly criminalize NCAA rules. The charges may or may not stick, and it will be quite a while before we know how it all shakes out. Even if these guys go down in court, there will be appeals. The end game is years away.
Still, I wonder if these so-called "bribes" were at least partly the result of amateur players not being fairly compensated. If players were able to use their likeness and be paid off their own brand, maybe some of these "under the table" transactions wouldn't have transpired.
Imagine that kind world for a moment.
Instead of being stigmatized for taking "under the table bribes," these young men — almost all of whom are black — would receive royalties and fees over the table. Then they would lawfully report those payments to the I.R.S. You know, like the rest of us do each year with our taxes? Heaven forbid the NCAA lets young athletes become legitimate earners of money.
Anyway, back when I played, "bribes" and "payoffs" weren't in style, but we did see free sneakers and other people picking up the tab for meals. Ultimately that very approach of "giving" cost Mr. Vaccaro his high-paying jobs. Sneaker companies began to view Mr. Vaccaro more as a conduit for social disruption and less as a facilitator of new business. Over time he'd also become unpopular with journalists who enjoyed close ties to the NCAA. They'd badmouth him in articles and try to connect him to corruption. My fellow young basketball players and I, however, believed in Mr. Vaccaro. We trusted him. He looked out for the interests of others when doing so was to his personal detriment. So, again, when he talked basketball, you can be darn sure we listened.
But Mr. Vaccaro was more than just a basketball guidance counselor to me. He's one of those "very important persons," if you know what I mean. I got the impression that he doesn't talk to irrelevant people and certainly doesn't suffer fools.
Over the years we had lost touch. Then in 2007, we ran into each other at a high school basketball tournament he organized in Vegas. From that point on we'd periodically call each other to say hello so we wouldn't lose touch again.
Well that day on the phone in my office, after we exchanged pleasantries, Mr. Vaccaro revealed that he wasn't just calling to catch up.
"So Eddie, I'm actually calling with an idea that I want to run by you. Now hear me out."
"Okay, sure Mr. Vaccaro, I'm listening."
"You know those video games with college basketball players and those ESPN Classic broadcasts and all of those trading cards?"
"Ahh, yeah, why?"
"So I've been talking to some lawyers and I'm thinking about suing the NCAA and Electronic Arts, the company that makes those games. You see, former players — like you, I've seen you in these games — should have been getting paid for their images and likenesses all these years."
I'm not sure if Mr. Vaccaro heard me chuckle about the coincidence.
"It's funny you say that," I told Mr. Vaccaro, "because a few weeks ago I saw myself in this video game and I was like, what the heck is this?"
Mr. Vaccaro then asked me to share all of the details about my encounter with the Curtis family and their Xbox 360. He also revealed that he had already reached out to a number of former college basketball stars to see if they would be willing to serve as the lead plaintiff.
He hadn't found any takers — yet.
"Eddie, the thing is, you should be the lead plaintiff. You're the perfect guy for this. You were a superstar in college, you're educated, you have a successful post-playing career, and you've always been a good guy, a family first guy. And you know first-hand that you've been wronged. You've seen it with your own eyes."
I had seen "it" with my own eyes. And it's not just a video game, either. I had seen "it" during my time at UCLA.
*
Before I go further I should acknowledge something important: my four years at UCLA were awesome.
I met Rosa there, and I started a family while I was there, too. I made lifelong friends that are some of the best people I've encountered. Plus, as a star athlete, there are certainly fringe benefits. You grab the attention of the beautiful girls (and at UCLA, there are a lot of them!). You get to jump in front of the line at the cafeteria and at clubs. People you don't know at all throw parties for you and make you out to be a national hero because you're good at basketball. Everyone walking by you on campus says "hi" and smiles because they know who you are and they want you to be their friend.
My time at UCLA included being captain of a team that won a national title in 1995. The title run began immediately following the 1993-94 season, which had a very disappointing ending. We started that season like gangbusters, winning our first 14 games. We really believed we'd win the national championship. ESPN and other national media thought so, too.
But we were upset by Tulsa in the first round of the 1994 March Madness tournament. Our fans were shocked. We felt embarrassed, especially by the way we played defense or, more accurately put, didn't play defense. Never again, we pledged.
To that end, between the summer of my junior and senior years, I took my game to a different level. Instead of shooting 1,000 shots a day, I didn't stop shooting until Imade 1,000 shots. I basically lived in the gym, with specific purpose, two goals and two visions: to lead my team to a national championship and to be named college basketball player of the year.
I also committed to undertaking a greater leadership role. I had been the captain of my high school team and knew how to lead. We needed a leader, too. At times, our game was more like that of five individual guys who happened to be wearing the same style of uniform than that of a team of five. I also thought some of our younger guys would benefit from constructive criticism. Some of them wanted to freelance on the court for individual stats more than do whatever was necessary to help us win. I knew it all might make me unpopular. But instead, my teammates responded by naming me one of the captains going into the 1994-95 season.
I remained focused on basketball as the fall semester arrived. You may be wondering how I found time to study. I'm not going to lie — after basketball, there wasn't much in the way of study time. But I attended my classes and, by and large, did my readings and did fine.
The school, of course, had an incentive to make it all work. Under NCAA rules, college athletes must take a full course load and must maintain at least a 2.0 grade point average.
UCLA, like other schools, used "clustering" to help make that happen.
Athletes were encouraged, if not, for all practical purposes, required, to take less-than-challenging classes that are scheduled around games and practices. Clustering has been going on for years at basically every college with a major sports program. Through this concept, college athletes find ways to balance 50 hours a week of sports work with a full-time class schedule.
I remember this way of life like it was yesterday. I spent far more than 50 hours a week on basketball, that's for sure. And in truth, I loved almost every minute of it — especially during our magical 1994-95 season. We went 31-2 that year and finished by winning 19 straight. It ended when we defeated the University of Arkansas Razorbacks in the NCAA championship game. What a way to spend my senior year of college.
*
Our winning streak began after we had suffered an embarrassing mid-season loss at home to Cal Berkeley. On the evening of January 28, 1995, more than 12,000 Bruins fans watched us stink up the joint. Two days earlier, we had pulled out a rough, slug 'em out win against Stanford. Maybe we were tired. Maybe we had underestimated Berkeley. Either way, they had a chip on their shoulder that should have woken us up.
But it didn't.
Everything we did that night was a step too slow or a jump too short. It was like we were stuck in the mud and couldn't figure a way out. Eventually frustration set in, and it came from our captain: me. I directed it at one particular teammate. His name was Charles. He was a sophomore and our starting small forward.
He was also my brother.
It all came to a head when Charles was dunked on. He should have been angry. He should have yelled. Heck, I would have taken a smirk or even a frown. Instead, Charles had this nonchalant expression on face that communicated, "I don't give a damn." Man, it raked my nerves to no end. I needed to blow up. Unfortunately for my brother, he would be my target.
The opportunity to explode came when our coach, Jim Harrick, called a timeout. As we walked over to the sidelines, I grabbed Charles's arm and got right up to his ear. With our teammates, coaches and thousands of strangers watching, I screamed, "Man what the hell is your problem? You need to wake the f--- up! I raised you better than this!"
Now, I hadn't raised Charles like a parent — our parents did that. But when Mom and Dad were at work, Charles was my responsibility. And he understood what I meant. I had taken him to the playgrounds when we were kids. We had played with the "cats" in the neighborhood. He knew the right way to play and he sure wasn't doing that.
Charles got real upset after I got in his face. Tears welled up in his eyes and that almost never happened to him. But then he regained his composure, clenched his jaw and looked like he was ready to tear somebody's head off.
It would be another decade before Denzel Washington starred in the movie Man on Fire. But on that night in 1995, and for the rest of the season, Charles was that guy. He was truly a man on fire.
Indeed, Charles became our backbone for the next few months — our heart and our soul, if you will. He was our stopper on defense and would lock down the other team's best perimeter offensive player. He rebounded extremely well, too, and was fearless going for the boards. Charles always played above the rim, flying up and flying down. And, man, could he hit open jump shots — he had such a beautiful stroke.
So we went on a roll for the rest of the season and never looked back. That's not to say it was without bumps. During the NCAA tournament we were the number one seed in the West Bracket. In the second round we faced an eight-seed University of Missouri team that did one thing extremely well: shoot the ball.
Our game against the Tigers was one where we played well but still almost lost. We contested their shots, but they just keep draining threes or driving right by us. I remember trying to stop Paul O'Liney on one particular play. Paul was an impressive kid. He rose from being a walk-on to being the team's superstar. Late in the third quarter, I literally had both hands on his face for like 28 seconds. Then I slipped ever so slightly, and he blew right past me like Jordan. O'Liney was something else that night. If this had been a video game, he would have been on fire.
But we still pulled it out. And we can thank our lightening quick point guard, Tyus Edney, for that. We were trailing by 1 point with 4.8 seconds to go on the game clock. Missouri thought they had an upset wrapped up. Then Tyus sprinted coast-to-coast and saved our season. He literally covered 94 feet in less than 5 seconds. To cap it off, Tyus took to the air from the paint and then, without a hint of desperation, banked the ball high off the backboard. Two points. Buzzer rings. UCLA 75. Missouri 74. We had practiced the play and it was based on Jerry West's days with the Lakers. To see it executed so perfectly and at such a critical moment was truly special.
So we didn't lose our focus or get dispirited. That's how championship teams handle adversity. No team cruises to a title. Sometimes there are serious roadblocks. You need to stick together and that's what we did.
And we sure had a cohesive and talented team. Take Tyus. He was one of the best point guards in the country and badly underrated by the so-called experts. On defense, Tyus could put on a full court press by himself. On the other end, he was like a running back weaving through defenders, shifting left, shifting right. Nobody could stop Tyus, who grew up near me in Los Angeles. If Tyus could be a superhero, he would definitely be The Flash.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Court Justice"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Edward C. O'Bannon, Jr. and Michael A. McCann.
Excerpted by permission of Diversion Publishing Corp..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword vii
Prologue: It's in the Game 1
1 The Clarion Call 7
2 From One to Many 26
3 Trust the Process 37
4 Tip-Off Nears 59
5 Game Time 73
6 The Two Faces of College Sports 83
7 The Real Jurors 95
8 The Many Ways of Valuing College Athletes' Identities 112
9 Judging the Judge 128
10 Hoops Economics 140
11 Closure 152
12 The Win, the Appeal and the Wait 170
13 Victory at Last 194
14 Call to Action: My Twelve Ideas for Fixing College Sports 209
Epilogue 253
Acknowledgments 257
Index 259