Caleb Pressley, a former quarterback and student assistant with the North Carolina football program, is selling t-shirts featuring the likeness of NCAA President Mark Emmert as a lucrative way of making a point about the NCAA's refusal to pay players for use of their likenesses.
Former UNC QB trolling NCAA President Mark Emmert with T-shirt
This is probably ending in litigation.
“I don’t know Mark Emmert on a personal basis,” Pressley said, “but I know him from afar and one thing that’s clear is that this guy is a huge proponent of making money off people’s likeness. So I was like, what can I do to pay this guy a tribute?
“Maybe I’ll make a T-shirt of him and make money off his likeness.”
The shirt features a caricature of Emmert standing between stacks of money.
Pressley says that his company nets $12.50 in profit from each shirt, which he keeps for himself because “I thought that’s what [Emmert] would do.”
Under Emmert’s leadership, the NCAA has been bombarded with lawsuits from former players for the organization’s use of player likenesses on television and in video games. Last year, the NCAA lost a lawsuit filed by former player Ed O’Bannon for use of his likeness without compensation. The NCAA and its member institutions make hundreds of millions of dollars each year from the sale of television rights and apparel. Players are prohibited from receiving any of that money beyond the cost of their scholarships.
Pressley’s company also sells shirts featuring caricatures of individual players. Pressley says he’ll hold the profits made from those shirts and give them to a “deserving person” at a later time. “It might take me one to two to three or four years - you never know how that stuff works.”
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