identify the problem. rational debate real discussion critical issues facing. are you ready to join the movement and walk there. today on larry king now the debate over the pavement of college athletes we welcome ed o'bannon the man leading the charge against the n.c. double a in a larry king now exclusive if you earn a certain mana dollars for your school for university and you have the right to that why does the n.c. delayed care if you sell a ball if your name on it it's all about control i think it's all about being able to put their thumb on your neck and you can only come up for air when we say you can't plus this is the most massive group of workers

who are being exploited in modern history all next on larry king now. welcome to larry king now very special show today in one thousand nine hundred five ed o'bannon took home the n.c. double a final four m.v.p. trophy after leaving the u.c.l.a. bruins to the men's basketball national championship he went on to play professionally for the new jersey nets the dallas mavericks and several foreign squads in two thousand and nine ed became the lead plaintiff in the o'bannon vs n.c. double a lawsuit a case alleging that the national collegiate athletic association and its members schools sold the images in like this is a former college athletes in violation of any trust laws on june twenty fourth.

nearly five years since its inception the case will go to trial ed o'bannon and his attorney michael house felde join us now in a larry king now exclusive to discuss o'bannon vs the n.c. double it is a landmark case that could result in a massive overhaul to collegiate sports what are you asking for. i am asking for. basically to right or wrong if we can continue to play the sport and bring in boat multibillions of dollars then i think that we should the kids should be able to share in the profit of the scholarship they got to go to school the scholarship is great and much appreciated to myself that's appreciated but i believe that if.

if you if you earn a certain amount of dollars for your school for your university then you have the right to that as well as my first initial thoughts. were my likeness was being used where the video game correct that's where you you know you saw this and said wait a minute i'm being dropped. yeah i mean pretty much i thought that you know i was at a friend's house. and his kid was planning a video game and my initial thought when i saw it i was pretty fired up i mean who wouldn't be excited to see your face on your likeness on a videogame so i saw that and then came to the conclusion that there was a profit being made and i had no share in it and i just figured you know what in

any other walk of life. i would have a share in that and that profit but in this particular case i didn't so i just felt like something needed to be changed are you seeking financial damages. yes but not not necessarily in any particular amount my biggest thing again is to right or wrong i think. if someone uses your lightness then you should be compensated for it why has it taken so long michael for this to come to trial because the n.c. doubleday has basically promulgated an image that it is protecting a noble tradition. that cannot and should not be challenged by anyone

so they've been filing motions all on for the last five years it finally got to they what are they trying to get it dismissed yes you're finally getting into court yes. their argument is what essentially that the athletes are amateurs and as amateurs in a paternalistic way the university and the athletic departments have to protect these young people from exploitation from others when in fact the very people that are exploiting them are the universities in the athletic departments themselves. and i you saying this on behalf of former athletes formally you're not you're not asking is for a current players dealing with former players well initially it was for former players. it has branched off and to many different. fields you know there's my my initial beef my initial. thought

process was for form or for former players and then once that happened once we got going on with that particular lawsuit then it all started to qana branch off and for lack of a better word take on a life of its own this will be historic will it not yes i mean this is this could change revolutionize sport as we know it in america it would revolutionize college sport because it doesn't clued current players as well as former players and we're as i understand a college basketball player can play professional baseball right he could earn money playing baseball and play basketball for his college is that true yes so he can earn money there yes i'll play but he can't sell his jersey to someone right correct what about money he can receive coming or going to drugstore under

and see double they will there's an absolute ban a prohibition on any athlete earning any money other than what the n.c. double a specifically exempts which is other sports it could be anything that they did they decide in their own profit and that's the difficulty and nobody knows exactly what it is we had one wrestler from the university of minnesota who is on the wrestling team who cut his own song and they prohibited him from. earning any compensation from that song because he was and then seat of a athlete and they told him that if he continued to use his name and singing his songs he would lose his eligibility when you were playing did you ever think that you were being used by your school in the sense your school was making a lot they giving you a scholarship correct but they were making a lot more money off of you and the scholarship they were giving you did you ever

feel that way. yeah i guess so but not not necessarily i didn't think the university was using me. i thought. look we're all aware of what's going on even as a student athlete back then i knew that i couldn't have a job i knew that the university i guess was using me using my name as well as my teammates but we didn't have a platform to speak up and i think that's the main thing here i believe that now. we have an opportunity to give the athlete and me a platform to speak their mind and that's that's my point that was another lawsuit filed the other day as a class action suit right for that and for injunctive relief well that drop in on you know will that become moot if you win yours absolutely they will win there's

automatically of you winning your yes now i understand in late february the judge ruled that the documents which you submitted his records to show contradictions in how the n.c. double a approach the use of athletes and their likenesses will be permitted for use in the trial right yes explain that. for the first time the n.c. double a was required compelled to produce documents from their internal set which in their own words revealed the hypocrisy of amateurism and the way that they treated the athletes the athletes have no voice whatsoever in the enterprise as a whole as to how long they practice when they practice how much the practice in the games interfere with their ability you know to study as well as denying them compensation for for injuries and leaving them as student athletes without any ability to cover. situations where they may suffer from concussions or becoming

paraplegic is this on the way to you think dad to a union and am going to union you know you can call it whatever you want as long as the athletes are together as long as they have a platform to voice their thoughts their opinions and concerns i think that's important. thus far the athletes weren't able to say anything and you know if you're if you're planning whatever sport you're playing you're playing and participating in you're told to keep your mouth keep your head down and be happy with what you've got and unfortunately it has been that way but. you know i think we're entering a phase now an era now where players can kind of stand up for themselves and

voice their concerns and i love it i love the fact that they can do it now how come this is never happened no one's ever challenge this before this is it was the same for example with curt flood even got a group of athletes who are focused on being athletes and not raising a voice in the organization which seeks to suppress that voice so it takes no pun intended a big man to be able to stand up and say the emperor is has no clothes he will look at why does the n.c. double a care why does it matter to them if you sell a bowl if your name on it why. i personally think it's it's all about control i think it's all about being able to.

put their thumb on your neck and you can only come up for air when we say you can. that's my personal opinion i know many athletes who feel the same way as i do but i think ultimately it's all about control because once you give up just a little bit of control a piece of that profit starts to kind of leak out and go to other places in particular the athletes they're also the farm system billion be a and the n.f.l. and the n.f.l. you think you agree with him that that's the reason they just want to strangle hold it. it's it's a paternalistic system that runs almost like a plantation mentality this is the most nassif group of workers who are being exploited in modern history there are tens of thousands of athletes

who go through the end seat of the way each year hundreds of thousands if you include the last decade and they have absolutely no voice in the enterprise which returns for the enterprise billions of dollars a year that's unheard of at sweatshop mentality if a zero if you win in the future can you see the u.c.l.a. is playing more than the troy state university's what you're saying there who'll pay more than the smaller schools of course and don't have that and you're saying now realignment you know in in now see the emergence of the five conferences separate from what the internally n.c.a.a. calls they have not schools. it's a matter of there are those schools that have the greater talent even within division one from those schools that don't book as it said for purposes of having a voice there has to be

a voice on behalf of all athletes not only division one division two division three and all sports we're going to be see some major witnesses in this trial yes like players formally bill russell on maybe not and current players as well not bet on the other side will they present coaches university coaches maybe don university presidents who then university presidents present a difficulty they cost i think. quietly they understand this is a have papa say and yet they they are silent in the face of that hypocrisy coming from institutions of higher learning in terms of teaching young people what principles should or should not prevail and that's kind of astounding in and of itself after the break we'll continue our discussion with obama of michael house felt it was an important trial night stay with us.

from. new. york.

it was a. very hard. to get along a lot of that back with the earthquake there. lives . of a. we're

back with ed o'bannon my go house fellas very very important to him maybe his star of case how all of this good trial going to last a long time three weeks ahead do you support the payment of current college athletes i do support that i think. the student athletes should get paid and interesting in statistics the revenue generated by college sports is greatly increased every year in an ordered report and see double a revenue total revenue in two thousand and twelve was eight hundred seventy two million expenses eight hundred one million so it was seventy one million in two thousand and eleven it was eight hundred forty six million a record year for the n.c. double it then make a lot of money absolutely and that is just when it comes as just poor profit pure profit yes it's licensing face and they divvy it up among the schools some of it yes some of that they keep themselves as the dump would claim is right the n.c.a.a.

to unsee double a tournament is about to wind up we have great memories that see a college days a great memories for you oh yeah absolutely my college days were fantastic first and foremost i met my wife in school and we had a class together but. you know what i have what i want people to understand is i love the game i love the college game i love the tournaments. i am in no way trying to get rid of it or. you know get rid of it basically i just want it to last a lot longer i want the experience of the athletes sued be good to be great and i feel that the athletes deserve more than what they're getting yes they're getting a scholarship and they are getting

a stipend but when you're making billions of dollars for vance it's a way in the universities there is a small portion of that pie that you deserve we're going to have a clip there from the. documentary school the price of college sports it featured taylor branch an author and historian who's written for the new york times the washington post and the new republic an advocate for the right of student athletes i don't doubt that people care about athletes but if you would care about somebody deal first with their right imagine this suppose the university were to say we're going to have amateurism for all the students on our campus so we can be consistent and that means that you can't get a job in the campus bookstore if you're an undergraduate that you can't be paid as a teaching assistant if you're a graduate student you're an amateur you would think it's preposterous to deny these people their rights and yet for one class of students the athletes we say

it's not up to you it's up to us if you are concerned with the athletes deal with their right everything else is an adjustment. right now we're not dealing with the rights and therefore from my point of view no matter how much you care about the athlete you're involved in a fraud and it's going to come crashing down sooner or later. you're going to be sure. you can hear at the end of the morning as you and a colleague to the ok you said it animals in the zoo i wouldn't i wouldn't put it that way. and i was taylor branch's quite a writer. a great guy what is the term student athlete a farce yes it's a farce it's a fiction it's. and taylor's words it's a fraud order the things you couldn't do right you couldn't work in the college bookstore right right. can

a coach why you would dinner not. coach couldn't buy you dinner. others and there's a number of things you told me there's a fortunate thing with a coach can give you a bagel but he can't put cream cheese on it yes that's a species of mines then toward dinner dinner and that that actually was a written rule and in the a.n.c. they will book the best that's one of of something that's insanity out of this they've always had this power yet i mean this has not changed what is this film about what intelligent leads to do you think think about this in the forty's you know the economy is different the game. is is different you know over the course of . you know fifty years forty years fifty years the game changes life changes the economy changes and in my opinion the rules need to change you know everything seems to have kind of. evolved and

gotten better i believe except for. the way the n.c. to a runs their business it is exactly the same. as it was when they first started should the you think they should be called employees they work you know at practice they work at games they work on travel and what they don't have time to do you know is work at their education and you do not have a good labor relationship if the enterprise owners refer to those that produce the revenue as the animals in the zoo but what's more it's a don't make money like shark of us where tennis doesn't make money i don't think baseball makes money at college and that these other sports support those sports is that it an answer to not paying athletes no because they're not really supporting

the other sports you see over time more and more schools dropping more and more of those other sports because they're not revenue generating in the schools cannot afford to maintain them also at the same time you're saying increased expenditures on bigger stadiums more coaches salaries like better training facilities so it's not necessarily doing what it's supposed to do and that's opening up other sports. as well as women's sports we reached out to the n.c. double a for a comment and here's what they had to say college sports today are valued by the student athletes who compete and all of us who support them. however the plaintiff's lawyers in this case now want to make this about professionalizing a few current student athletes only those that play football and men's basketball to the detriment of all others there's a game to play

a small number of student athletes threatens college sports as we know it and see double a schools give more than ninety percent of n.c. double a revenue directly back to schools and student athletes the broadcast revenue is used in part to provide student athletes championship opportunities in eighty nine n.c. double a sports more than eleven hundred colleges and universities provide more than two point seven billion dollars in athletics scholarships and education opportunities for more than four hundred fifty thousand student athletes across three divisions this statement was given to us by the n.c. the relays chief legal officer donald remy. northwestern university's football players are the first in sports to seek union representation northwestern courses a fight they regarded school less the school as well the make of that i think it's great i think the fact that. they are again coming together.

getting on the same page and speaking out and speaking up for themselves. you know it has a starts somewhere someone has to do it. it's about time and for the northwestern football team to do that i think it's it's admirable i think they're. doing a great thing i'm so this is a sidelight do ok so intimate how do you view this in regard to your case michael in order to exercise a voice you have to first realize that you have a voice and that is a step basically as as an offshoot you know of as efforts you know in the litigation to bring the athletes together to say yes i have rights and i'm going to start talking about having a voice in those rights even though the teams will struggle of doing i'm not sure other teams will but clearly that there is an effort that is gaining momentum to

form an association of athletes at the college level across divisions and across sports so that they can have a level playing field and balance the enterprise itself with an equal voice on behalf of the athletes in addition to money if you're a college athlete and if you're injured on the court they pay all your medical expenses right. yes what if you get appendicitis or pneumonia. do you have health benefits no you don't know that they don't in fact there are a number of students particularly and in football for example that have become pappa digits in the costs of tackles on the field and they're denied workman's compensation because they are not employees they are amateurs as well as israel and these are the recent pay they can but they if they don't they don't have there's never been a school that's been generous to pay do you truly believe that they have the

athletes best interests at heart and they say that i don't think so no not at all there's is this is money i absolutely understand it's all about. it's all about making money it's all about the mighty dollar simple as that you think amateurism makes them a better person. who wouldn't drive you out do you think i mean the fact is it tinges if they're paid it's the same sport it's the same you know the ball's going to go in a basket and speaking basketball you're boss and go in a basket whether you're paid or not at least a good incurred fraud what they're really doing this is for others you know personally had may not benefit from this at all. well he's going to help those coming along don't you think yes and no and that's the fundamental objective and that's to change the system to present as it did you know says that level of

fairness. we will follow this closely thank you have your this was all thank you thanks to my guests ed o'bannon and his attorney michael household what was to another we were in the lightning top of the station regarding the old baton worsens and c double a lawsuit and the debate surrounding the right of payment of college athletes trial is june ninth in overland california ninth district a member you can find me on twitter at kings things see that's something.

i'm at it. a site that i think corporation kind of can. do and frankly i think all that. money and other families take for college this is right and right. parents are to lead. by. cop. your friend posts a photo from a vacation you can't afford. and different. the boss repeats the same old joke of course he like.