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CBS Corp. announced at the end of July it would become the first Web site fantasy league host to use actual player names in its 2008 NCAA football season (it plans to do the same for the 2008-09 basketball season). Prior to using the actual names of NCAA players within fantasy leagues, CBS Sports and other hosting entities simply referred to NCAA players with generic labels. For instance, before this season Tim Tebow was listed as “Florida QB” and Chris Wells was referenced as “Ohio State RB.”

The issue up for argument is that NCAA players are of amateur status and naming names is a violation of NCAA bylaws that don’t allow the likeness or image of specific athletes to be used for profiting purposes. A recent case involving Major League Baseball and a fantasy sports league essentially cleared the way for CBS Sports to use college players’ names. The case, in which MLB players stated that a fantasy sports company should be forced to pay licensing fees for the use of players’ names and statistics, was rejected by the Supreme Court in June.

Previous courts had ruled that the players’ names and statistics are available to the public and therefore are not the private property of the players. Because the same argument—that players names and statistics are public information—can be used in the college arena as well, it is likely college players’ names are here to stay in fantasy leagues.

Texas Tech University running back Baron Batch has the same philosophy on college players’ names being public information. “Everybody knows it… you might as well put a name to it,” he told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

And Texas Tech Head Coach Mike Leach doesn’t take issue with CBS Sports’ decision, either.

“Things that kind of draw people in and make them excited about sports and just allow them some dimension of participation, I think’s positive,” Leach told the Journal. “If a bunch of fans are hanging out have fun doing it, I don’t see any harm in it. It seems to me like it’s a pretty good idea.”

One group not so agreeable to the change is the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. It’s co-chairs, William E. Kirwan, Chancellor of the university system of Maryland, and R. Gerald Turner, President of Southern Methodist University, penned a letter to the Los Angeles Times in August pleading for the NCAA and other colleges and universities to take a stand.

”…This ruling does not apply to amateur sports … all those groups should contact fantasy game operators to formally demand they stop using students' names in these games,” they wrote. “Unless the courts clearly decide that amateur athletes' names can be used without consent and for purely commercial purposes, the NCAA and universities have the responsibility to stand up for their athletes and the amateurism principles that should guide college sports.”

In a recent interpretation of its amateurism rules, the NCAA said that in order for players to retain their amateur status, if their name came up in a fantasy game, that player would have to contact the fantasy game host to have their name removed. But the Association has not yet taken any legal action, and it doesn’t appear that it will—at least for now.

Mark Vrooman is a senior Sports Media major at Ithaca College.