“This whole area of name and likeness and the NCAA is a disaster leading to catastrophe as far as I can tell,” wrote Perlman, a former member of the NCAA Board of Directors and law professor specializing in intellectual property. “I’m still trying to figure out by what authority the NCAA licenses these rights to the game makers and others. I looked at what our student athletes sign by way of waiver and it doesn’t come close.”
The NCAA can sell the likeness of any former college player it wants, with zero compensation to the “student-athlete”, but if that same student were to sell his own image, he would lose his eligibility.