The SEC Thinks it's Above EA Sports NCAA Football

Although the SEC might be college football's premier conference, it's arrogance is ridiculous.

ESPN.com-The Southeastern Conference has joined the NCAA in announcing it will no longer license its trademarks in the EA Sports NCAA football video game.

The move comes a month after the NCAA said it would not license its trademarks, either. That ruling, however, allowed each individual institution and conference to license its trademarks with EA Sports for future college football games.

"Each school makes its own individual decision regarding whether or not to license their trademarks for use in the EA Sports game(s)," the SEC said in a statement. "The Southeastern Conference has chosen not to do so moving forward.

"Neither the SEC, its member universities, nor the NCAA have ever licensed the right to use the name or likeness of any student to EA Sports."

The Collegiate Licensing Company recently announced it completed licensing agreements for approximately 150 of the institutions it represents, including some SEC institutions.

The NCAA's statement last month included similar language about current student athletes, but cited legal costs as the reason for not renewing its contract with EA Sports.

"We are confident in our legal position regarding the use of our trademarks in video games," the NCAA said. "But given the current business climate and costs of litigation, we determined participating in this game is not in the best interests of the NCAA."

-Article here by Kristi Dosch

We've seen this before with players in MLB games like Barry Bonds, Kevin Millar and Sammy Sosa. We're seeing it go before the court in the case of Ed O'Bannon. Now we're seeing an entire conference abandon likenesses in a video game. EA Sports will certainly survive without the SEC, but will this become a snowball effect?

I get that the SEC is the premier college football conference and that it doesn't financially need any likeness contracts, but it's sort of ridiculous. The video game experience only enhances a school or conference's reputation with a user seeing the name repeatedly. This decision only removes the SEC logo and likenesses associated with it (i.e. the SEC championship) but it can easily be replicated because the school's engage in a totally different likeness agreement.

What is the conference trying to accomplish here? Well I think it has something to do with ego-pumping (why they need an ego pump I have no idea) and separating itself from the rest of college football off-the-field. We all know about the SEC's dominance over the past seven years, but do they really need to take that on-field arrogance, and in this case dismissiveness, to the video game sphere? Absolutely not. That's the how the SEC rolls, however, and now it's big head might hurt its reputation.

"Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown."

Honestly, I doubt there will be any SEC BCS Title streak breakers this year or for the foreseeable future, but wouldn't that be great if the another conference won the title this year? I mean someone has to get through to the conference that, although they might be above the rest of the sport, they aren't above a video game that only further portrays its domination in a positive manner.

My biggest concern? The rest of the conferences will follow suit and the NCAA Football game, as a whole, will take a huge hit and possibly disappear. I think it's one of EA Sports best products and I'm disappointed that it has a cloudy future.

This is just another issue that the NCAA and its respective conferences have to deal with it. Hopefully one day they'll be a different governing body that doesn't allow petty, unnecessary actions like this to be taken on top of all the other ridiculous stuff they pull.