Please indulge me for a bit. While I gave up on the idea of sports writing for a living after my ninth grade year, every now and again I still get the urge to write way more words than are actually needed on a subject about which I don't know nearly enough. Feel free to critique mercilessly. As a Hog fan I am used to soul crushing defeats.
It is Sunday, March 19th, 1995. Julian Winfield has just hit an inside basket to give the Missouri Tigers a 74-73 lead over West Region #1 seed UCLA with 4.8 seconds remaining. What has been a relatively disappointing season for Mizzou up until this point seems headed for redemption in the form of a Sweet Sixteen appearance, only the fifth time in program history for the Tigers to advance beyond the second round of March Madness. All that stands in the way of a meeting with the 18th ranked Bulldogs of Mississippi State is a routine defensive stop, likely meaning preventing the college basketball equivalent of a Hail Mary or a repeat of U.S. Reed’s 1981 heroics.
Then Tyus Edney happened.
Missouri allowed an unimpeded inbounds pass to the diminutive by college basketball standards UCLA point guard, who dribbled unmolested for approximately ninety feet before sinking an uncontested four-footer off the glass to bail out the Bruins. UCLA went on to breeze through the rest of the tournament, defeating the defending champion Arkansas Razorbacks in Seattle for their record tenth NCAA crown.
The above noted sequence of events changed the trajectory of two of the three aforementioned programs. Missouri made it to only twelve of the next twenty-six NCAA tournaments, after participating in nine of the previous ten. The Tigers only advanced past the second round once in that time, making it to the Elite Eight in 2009. The Edney game survives today in Missouri athletics lore, vying for the most disappointing moment along with their football team’s fifth down loss to eventual champion Colorado in 1990. Arkansas has yet to reach another Final Four since 1995, and has also only made it to March Madness twelve times since the UCLA defeat after getting there fifteen of seventeen prior years. Had Missouri played even the tiniest bit of defense against Edney, denied the inbound pass, or made him at least change directions a couple of times, they very well could have made it to their only Final Four. A Missouri victory would have also knocked out the only remaining team that presented a match up problem for Arkansas, enabling the Razorbacks to inch closer to blue blood status and perhaps prevent the descent into mediocrity that has only recently been arrested by the performance of current coach Eric Musselman. Yet as impactful as the UCLA win over Missouri was for those schools, the most lasting effect, which some would call a kill shot for amateurism in collegiate athletics, was to come later.
Enter Ed O’Bannon, star forward for the Bruins 1995 championship squad. O’Bannon went into private business after a brief NBA career. In or around 2009, he noticed that the EA Sports game NCAA Basketball 09 featured several all-time teams, one of which was the 1995 UCLA squad. On this squad was an unnamed player that bore a striking resemblance to O’Bannon, with similar features, attributes, and the same jersey number. O’Bannon, along with other former basketball stars, filed a lawsuit against the NCAA, Collegiate Licensing Company (which handled marketing rights for schools), and EA Sports, alleging that their likenesses had been used without permission and that the defendants had profited without compensating the plaintiffs. Without getting too deep into the specifics of the lawsuit or its resolution, the latter two defendants settled with the group allowing payments of nearly $4,000 to each member of the class action. Part of this meant that schools would no longer allow their mascots, facilities, fight songs, and player attributes to be used in future NCAA franchise games, effectively ending the EA Sports college line following the 2014 season.
Depending on your point of view, the words Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) represent either the first semblance of fairness to college athletes or the end of amateurism. The lawsuits against the NCAA that followed the O’Bannon ruling eventually led to all college athletes being allowed to receive income from outside sources such as advertising and promotional work and merchandising. While student-athletes are still not compensated directly by schools outside of cost of attendance payments, the actual performers in the show are now able to share indirectly in the multibillion dollar business of big-time collegiate athletics. The effects of NIL are overwhelmingly positive for the athletes, obviously. Some schools also benefit if they have enough willing boosters and/or corporate partners who are willing to compensate their program’s participants at a fair market or greater rate. Others are unable to compete, and regularly lose star players to the more prominent programs that are able to facilitate NIL deals for their players. In spite of the current NCAA rules prohibiting NIL from being used as an enticement for recruits, some schools are clearly finding ways around this restriction and offering deals allegedly up to eight figures to get star prospects to campus. While many argue that the game is better for the changes, and it is unquestionably more fair to the athletes, no one can dispute that the game is far different than it was even a few short years ago.
Which brings us back to Missouri. Suppose they had defended more aggressively for that final 4.8 seconds against UCLA, and held on for the win. Regardless of how the remainder of the tournament played out, the only certainty would be that the 1995 Bruins would not have been considered an all-time great team worthy of enshrinement in a video game fourteen years later. Ed O’Bannon would not have discovered his likeness in the EA Sports game, and would have had no motivation to pursue his lawsuit. It is possible, maybe even probable that another athlete or group of athletes would have formed a class action suit and forced the same changes. Those changes may have been delayed for years, if not decades. Perhaps they would have found a less sympathetic judicial system in a different era.
By all means continue to blame the NCAA for the mess college athletics has become. The organization is an abomination and deserves your scorn and contempt. Dump on O’Bannon for his greed too. I hope you spent that $4,000 wisely, Ed. But always reserve a little frustration and angst for the 1995 Missouri Tigers. All you had to do was not completely suck for almost four seconds.
It is Sunday, March 19th, 1995. Julian Winfield has just hit an inside basket to give the Missouri Tigers a 74-73 lead over West Region #1 seed UCLA with 4.8 seconds remaining. What has been a relatively disappointing season for Mizzou up until this point seems headed for redemption in the form of a Sweet Sixteen appearance, only the fifth time in program history for the Tigers to advance beyond the second round of March Madness. All that stands in the way of a meeting with the 18th ranked Bulldogs of Mississippi State is a routine defensive stop, likely meaning preventing the college basketball equivalent of a Hail Mary or a repeat of U.S. Reed’s 1981 heroics.
Then Tyus Edney happened.
Missouri allowed an unimpeded inbounds pass to the diminutive by college basketball standards UCLA point guard, who dribbled unmolested for approximately ninety feet before sinking an uncontested four-footer off the glass to bail out the Bruins. UCLA went on to breeze through the rest of the tournament, defeating the defending champion Arkansas Razorbacks in Seattle for their record tenth NCAA crown.
The above noted sequence of events changed the trajectory of two of the three aforementioned programs. Missouri made it to only twelve of the next twenty-six NCAA tournaments, after participating in nine of the previous ten. The Tigers only advanced past the second round once in that time, making it to the Elite Eight in 2009. The Edney game survives today in Missouri athletics lore, vying for the most disappointing moment along with their football team’s fifth down loss to eventual champion Colorado in 1990. Arkansas has yet to reach another Final Four since 1995, and has also only made it to March Madness twelve times since the UCLA defeat after getting there fifteen of seventeen prior years. Had Missouri played even the tiniest bit of defense against Edney, denied the inbound pass, or made him at least change directions a couple of times, they very well could have made it to their only Final Four. A Missouri victory would have also knocked out the only remaining team that presented a match up problem for Arkansas, enabling the Razorbacks to inch closer to blue blood status and perhaps prevent the descent into mediocrity that has only recently been arrested by the performance of current coach Eric Musselman. Yet as impactful as the UCLA win over Missouri was for those schools, the most lasting effect, which some would call a kill shot for amateurism in collegiate athletics, was to come later.
Enter Ed O’Bannon, star forward for the Bruins 1995 championship squad. O’Bannon went into private business after a brief NBA career. In or around 2009, he noticed that the EA Sports game NCAA Basketball 09 featured several all-time teams, one of which was the 1995 UCLA squad. On this squad was an unnamed player that bore a striking resemblance to O’Bannon, with similar features, attributes, and the same jersey number. O’Bannon, along with other former basketball stars, filed a lawsuit against the NCAA, Collegiate Licensing Company (which handled marketing rights for schools), and EA Sports, alleging that their likenesses had been used without permission and that the defendants had profited without compensating the plaintiffs. Without getting too deep into the specifics of the lawsuit or its resolution, the latter two defendants settled with the group allowing payments of nearly $4,000 to each member of the class action. Part of this meant that schools would no longer allow their mascots, facilities, fight songs, and player attributes to be used in future NCAA franchise games, effectively ending the EA Sports college line following the 2014 season.
Depending on your point of view, the words Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) represent either the first semblance of fairness to college athletes or the end of amateurism. The lawsuits against the NCAA that followed the O’Bannon ruling eventually led to all college athletes being allowed to receive income from outside sources such as advertising and promotional work and merchandising. While student-athletes are still not compensated directly by schools outside of cost of attendance payments, the actual performers in the show are now able to share indirectly in the multibillion dollar business of big-time collegiate athletics. The effects of NIL are overwhelmingly positive for the athletes, obviously. Some schools also benefit if they have enough willing boosters and/or corporate partners who are willing to compensate their program’s participants at a fair market or greater rate. Others are unable to compete, and regularly lose star players to the more prominent programs that are able to facilitate NIL deals for their players. In spite of the current NCAA rules prohibiting NIL from being used as an enticement for recruits, some schools are clearly finding ways around this restriction and offering deals allegedly up to eight figures to get star prospects to campus. While many argue that the game is better for the changes, and it is unquestionably more fair to the athletes, no one can dispute that the game is far different than it was even a few short years ago.
Which brings us back to Missouri. Suppose they had defended more aggressively for that final 4.8 seconds against UCLA, and held on for the win. Regardless of how the remainder of the tournament played out, the only certainty would be that the 1995 Bruins would not have been considered an all-time great team worthy of enshrinement in a video game fourteen years later. Ed O’Bannon would not have discovered his likeness in the EA Sports game, and would have had no motivation to pursue his lawsuit. It is possible, maybe even probable that another athlete or group of athletes would have formed a class action suit and forced the same changes. Those changes may have been delayed for years, if not decades. Perhaps they would have found a less sympathetic judicial system in a different era.
By all means continue to blame the NCAA for the mess college athletics has become. The organization is an abomination and deserves your scorn and contempt. Dump on O’Bannon for his greed too. I hope you spent that $4,000 wisely, Ed. But always reserve a little frustration and angst for the 1995 Missouri Tigers. All you had to do was not completely suck for almost four seconds.
