ESPN analyst, lawyer and Toughness expert Jay Bilas spent his afternoon publicly pantsing the NCAA, showing the hypocrisy of their practices. Texas A&M QB Johnny Manziel is under scrutiny and under investigation for allegedly selling his autograph: a cardinal sin in the eyes of the NCAA. The main disconnect with Manziel not being able to legally profit from his own likeness is that the NCAA can blatantly profit from it as much as they want.
Bilas – a known NCAA critic and overall TRILL guy – began his NCAA shaming with a tweet showing that when "Manziel" is searched on shopNCAAsports.com, actual No. 2 Texas A&M jerseys appear. This same result occurs with "Braxton," "Denard," "Marqise," and even works with "Honey Badger." Here are a few:
Go to http://t.co/qpH4tNnIpH, type in "Manziel" in upper right search box, hit enter. This comes up. pic.twitter.com/N7KNvXIu24
— Jay Bilas (@JayBilas) August 6, 2013
Go to http://t.co/qpH4tNnIpH and type in "A.J. McCarron" in upper right search box, hit enter. This comes up. pic.twitter.com/LgTLKd7JkI
— Jay Bilas (@JayBilas) August 6, 2013
Go to http://t.co/qpH4tNnIpH and type "Deanthony Thomas" in upper right search box, then hit enter. This comes up. pic.twitter.com/ryf8wMBN0t
— Jay Bilas (@JayBilas) August 6, 2013
Bilas' tweeting tear went on for a few hours, ultimately resulting in the NCAA disabling their search function on the site. Unfortunately for them, you can still find player's jerseys by typing "shopNCAAsports.com/search/Clowney" or anything like that. The numbered jerseys are not supposed to represent any particular player, as to protect their amateurism, or something. But why does Ohio State No. 5 jersey come up when "Braxton" is searched? Or a player's nickname like Denard Robinson's "Shoelace" or Tyrann Mathieu's "Honey Badger?"
Someone had to have set the back end of the website to correspond with actual college athletes. While the NCAA official store has disabled their search bar, the NCAA mobile site, Amazon and Football Fanatics still link jerseys to names, according to Deadspin.
This exposes yet another discrepancy with the NCAA, and adds more fuel to the fire of the Ed O'Bannon v. NCAA and Collegiate Licensing lawsuit which is based on improper use of a player's image and likeness. Well done, Jay Bilas.
