EA Sports' NCAA Football Game Will Be Back If The NCAA Loses In Court

After covering the National Collegiate Athletic Association federal antitrust lawsuit beat for more than a year, I've learned two things:

1.College sports fans don't really care about the nitty-gritty legal details of Ed O'Bannon versus the NCAA;

2.Those same fans, really, really care about whether a resolution of the the case will lead to a revival of their favorite video game.

Last year, EA Sports discontinued its wildly-popular NCAA Football video game series, much to the dismay of, well, just about everyone. The legal climate was simply too risky. Too hostile. After all, the O'Bannon lawsuit started when the former UCLA basketball star noticed his likeness was being used in an EA Sports college basketball game— and neither he nor any of the suspiciously true-to-life athletes in the game were being compensated.

Still, NCAA Football fans haven't forgotten. To the contrary, they're pining. Holding out hope. At Big Ten Media Days last week, one player brought up unprompted that he wanted the game back. Over at Grantland, Andrew Sharp wrote an entire heartsick column about how the game needs to make a return.

The good news for gamers? There's actually a path for a NCAA Football to return. Not right away. But eventually. Here's what needs to happen:

The Road Back

I'll keep this simple for the tl;dr crowd. There are essentially three steps between now and a NCAA Football TK YEAR disc spinning in your PS4:

1.EA Sports has to want to bring the game back, even if it costs more for them to license player name, image and likeness (NIL) rights.

2.The NCAA has to drop—voluntarily or otherwise— its ban on paying players.

3.Players themselves need to license out their (NIL) rights.

This might seem complicated, but really, there's only one step that's still in doubt. Number two. Problem is, the NCAA is spending millions of dollars on lawyers and in court to make sure it never happens.

EA Sports: Fired Up, Ready to Go

If EA Sports wasn't interested in bringing the game back—if the company didn't think it could turn a profit on a fully-licensed game—then all of this would be moot. A lawsuit brought by former college football player Sam Keller, which will retroactively force the NCAA to pay former players who appeared in the game a combined total of $20 million, ensures that players will be paid for their NILs appearing in any future college sports game.

That means a heftier price tag for EA Sports. Given the terms of the settlement, it's likely the company would have to pay more than a million dollars for NIL rights. Maybe much more. But that would still make sense for the company, because NCAA Football brought in $80 MILLION PER YEAR. In fact, EA executive Joel Linzer testified at the O'Bannon trial last summer that his company made a "long, sustained effort" to pay players.

Of course, the NCAA and its member schools said no.

The NCAA: Not On Our Watch

The NCAA had no problem with EA Sports paying schools and conferences for logos and other licensed college sports accoutrements. That's just good business, like making sure sponsored drink cups—and only sponsored drink cups—appear on the sidelines during the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

Paying players is different. The association is willing to die on Amateurism Hill. (Actually, the NCAA would prefer that player advocates and their lawyers die on said hill, but you get the point). The association is so steadfast in its moral crusade to "protect college athletes from commercial exploitation"—yes, NCAA officials have said that in court; yes, it's okay to do a spit take—that when it settled the Keller case to avoid an outright loss, it claimed that in paying players who appeared in video games because of their athletics participation, it still was not paying them because of their athletic performance.

O'Bannon is often blamed for the cancellation of NCAA video games, but he had no issues with using player NILs for commercial purposes. He simply felt it was unfair for those same players to not get a financial cut when everyone else was making money. The NCAA feels differently, and it's the association's intransigence on amateurism that's leaving gamers out in the cold.

Who To Root For: Jeffrey Kessler, Nigel Hayes and EA Sports

Last year's O'Bannon case decision by federal judge Claudia Wilken opened the door for college athletes being compensated for the use of their NILs in video games and during television broadcasts. However, Wilken's decision currently is being appealed by the NCAA, which means even the possibility of paying current players to appear in a new NCAA Football game is on hold.

A second, current antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA led by sports litigator Jeffrey Kessler could open everything up. The Kessler suit seeks to eliminate all restrictions against college athletes being paid, freeing players and EA Sports to strike whatever NIL deal they find mutually agreeable.

Kessler is hellbent on changing the NCAA system, and he's widely regarded as arguably the best sports antitrust attorney in the country. Although his case has yet to go to trial, college administrators in a recent CBS poll named him the sixth most influential person in college sports.

If Kessler wins, gamers win. And if you don't want to root for an attorney, you can root for Nigel Hayes, the fun-loving star of the University of Wisconsin basketball team who joined the Kessler suit—officially named the Jenkins suit for Clemson University football player Martin Jenkins—as a plaintiff.

One of the keys for Kessler will be to prove that there is a market for paying athletes. He will undoubtedly call an EA Sports executive to the stand to explain just how much they'd be happy to pay players to bring back the game. The more EA Sports wants the game back, and the more it shares that view at an eventual trial, the better.

Who to Root Against: The NCAA

If you want the NCAA Football back, then you want the people who killed the game to lose. The only way for the game to return is for players to get paid, and the only way for players to get paid is if the NCAA loses in court.

When Could the Game Return?

No one knows. The NCAA has said it will appeal the O'Bannon decision all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Kessler case doesn't yet have a trial date. My best guess? You're probably never going to see NCAA Football 17, but NCAA Football 18 and NCAA Football 19 are distinct possibilities. Get your VR Goggles ready.