6/30/2014 update:
Aaron Kasinitz has the rather moving story in the Oregonian, here. And this is a relatively good outcome for a Duck football player. If O’Bannon wins his lawsuit, Thomas might be able to collect some money from the NCAA cartel, someday.
And right on time, here’s news on a partial settlement of the O’Bannon lawsuit. Perhaps UO’s chief sports lawyer and FAR wannabe Rob Illig will comment?
“The filing of settlement terms today signifies an opportunity to provide complete closure to the video game plaintiffs, but should not be considered pay for performance,” NCAA chief legal officer Donald Remy said in a statement.”
Robert Carey, an attorney for the Keller and Alston plaintiffs, said that if a player appeared as an avatar in four different years of the game, he potentially could end up with $20,000 – or $5,000 per appearance year. But if such a player’s photograph also was used in two different years, he could get another $10,000 – again $5,000 per appearance year – for a total of $30,000.
9/5/2012 update: Unpaid internships, but with brain damage.
A paper in the journal Neurology today reports that NFL players are 3x more likely than average to contract Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. And in today’s story on college football brain injuries Ron Richmond of the RG reports that
Dr. Greg Skaggs, the UO director of athletic medicine, also declined a request through an athletic department spokesman to be interviewed for this series.
Not exactly consistent with UO’s academic mission.