Jay Bilas Makes the Protest of the Year

Manziel could be suspended for profiting off his own name

Let's all give Jay Bilas a hand. Seriously, how awesome has he been today? In light of the Johnny Manziel controversy that the Texas A&M quarterback profited off of autographs he signed for brokers, Bilas took to Twitter to expose the NCAA Shop for profiting off of players' names.

As he pointed out 14 times on his account, by searching a player's name in the search bar (i.e.-Manziel, Zeller, Muhammad) shopNCAAsports.com will turn back results with all of their jerseys. This hardly seems fair. In fact, it's not fair one bit. There's a possibility that Manziel could be suspended for the season because of this. It's about time these athletes get paid for the NCAA using their name for profit.

This is nothing new in the world of college athletics. The debate on the NCAA using players' likeness has raged on for years (see "Fab 5 Michigan"), but it has heated up recently and the Manziel story comes at the perfect time. Find a way to explain how it's fair that someone can search "Johnny Manziel" on a NCAA website and get back results with any kind of Texas A&M #2 jersey? The NCAA sees all of that money, but Manziel won't see a dime.

So, just to make sure we're clear here, Manziel doesn't own his own name. The NCAA owns his name for the time that he spends in college. Johnny Football can win the Heisman and be apart of dozens of functions that make the NCAA money, but Johnny Manziel can't make any money off his own performance. So, what it really comes down to, is that the NCAA encourages/wants Johnny Manziel to be as big of a business as he can, but if that business includes himself then it's the wrong kind in the NCAA's eyes.

What a shame because Texas A&M is rolling in the dough due to Manziel's celebrity. How many millions of dollars has the school made because of television revenue and bowl game payoffs that was mostly generated my Manziel? Too many too count, but the quarterback won't see any of it. Sure, they will thank him after this year is over, pat him on the back and hope the door doesn't hit him on the way out. Then they will wait for the next Johnny Manziel to come along and get the Benjamins flowing again because that's the way college athletics works.

It's a flawed and corrupt business. The ones who are making the money for the NCAA aren't seeing any of it and it's about time that changed. Props to Jay Bilas for exposing part of the corrupt nature of the NCAA and, in fact, he exposed them so badly that they disabled the search bar halfway through the day.

Problem is, their next move will most likely be to disable Manziel's attempt at a Heisman repeat and national championship run. Just because the guy thought he owned his own name. Silly him right?

Jay Bilas' Twitter account: https://twitter.com/JayBilas