during the first round of the 2017 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament at Vivint Smart Home Arena on March 16, 2017 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The NCAA announced changes to their amateur athlete model allowing college players to make money from their name, image, and likeness. To be ratified January 2021, the changes will give college players more freedom to make money based on their standing as an athlete.

Obviously, there are guidelines and restrictions, and it’s still not a form of revenue sharing among the NCAA and their athletes who play in revenue generating sports like football and basketball but it’s a step in the right direction. The decision also inspired hope from many that there would be a video game. The vastly popular NCAA Football and Basketball series ended in 2013 and 2009 respectively but diehard fans have held out hope that they would come back one day, even on various gaming servers ( you can visit their site for further information on servers). Based on what’s been revealed, the NCAA’s announcement may have inspired false hope.

The group who suggested changes to the NCAA haven’t recommended that they make changes to allow athletes to group together and package their names, images, and likenesses.

In other words, the NCAA doesn’t want the players to form any type of a union. The ability for players to pool their resources together would make them stronger as a group than as individuals. And because that might result in them achieving more and more power in the future, that’s something the NCAA doesn’t want happening, whether they explicitly say that or not.

In addition, the NCAA’s changes only apply to “third party endorsements” that doesn’t involve the school or conference or their trademarks and logos. So in other words, an athlete can be compensated to do an autograph signing or a commercial as long as that person isn’t referred as playing for the school or conference they play for or wear any school branded apparel.

Those two things would directly go against the idea of making a video game. In this day and age, we’re all grasping on any and all hope regardless of where it comes but if you’re looking forward to a new NCAA video game, it’s not going to happen with these upcoming changes.

[NCAA]

About Phillip Bupp

Producer/editor of the Awful Announcing Podcast and Short and to the Point. News editor for The Comeback and Awful Announcing. Highlight consultant for Major League Soccer as well as a freelance writer for hire. Opinions are my own but feel free to agree with them.

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