NCAA Schools Ask SportShooters To "Cease And Desist"

For the second time in three months, NCAA colleges and universities are at odds with SportsShooter.com.

Representatives from several NCAA schools have e-mailed photographers in recent days and asked them to remove images of student athletes from SportsShooter, a web site where photojournalists post their portfolios and discuss photography.

School athletic departments are worried that the NCAA considers a photojournalist's portfolio to be a promotional use - like a student athlete appearing in an ad endorsing a car dealer or a shoe company. Using an athlete's likeness commercially would compromise the athlete's amateur status, and NCAA rules require school athletic departments to contact anyone who uses a photo that way and ask them to stop.

"This is a misunderstanding of what SportsShooter is," says L. Scott Mann, a freelancer who shoots for Texas Tech University and who was asked by the university compliance director to take down his images. "It's not a place to promote your business. I've never sold a sports photo off SportsShooter. I've learned to be a better photographer from SportsShooter."

Many SportsShooter members thought this argument had been put to rest last November, after the NCAA advised Syracuse University that images on the site were an editorial use, and thus didn't compromise the amateur status of student athletes. (Related PDN story.)

But in the last week or so, different advice has surfaced. An e-mail circulating among NCAA compliance directors encourages individual schools to contact SportsShooter photographers and ask them to "cease and desist" using images of NCAA athletes on the web site.

NCAA spokesman Kent Barrett says the directive to contact SportsShooter didn't come from NCAA headquarters. However, he says NCAA members frequently contact the main office for advice on compliance matters and the discussions are held confidential. It's up to the individual schools to decide how to proceed, he says.

"Whether what's happening is something that we would deem use or misuse, I don't know," Barrett says.

Photographers on SportsShooter message boards say they've been contacted by the University of New Mexico, the University of Wisconsin, the University of North Carolina, Texas Tech, the University of Wyoming and others.

SportsShooter executive producer Grover Sanschagrin says the NCAA's apparent position is "bizarre," given that it would also ban photographers from using images of student athletes in their personal web sites and portfolios.

"I don't think they understand? how ridiculous that really is," he says. Still, he says, many photographers have taken down their NCAA images because they don't want to damage their relationships with the schools.

It's unclear what action the NCAA schools could take beyond sending a strongly worded letter, but in the Syracuse case, the athletic department threatened to revoke two photographers' press credentials to shoot in the school stadium.

Freelance photographer David Stluka, who takes sports photos for the University of Wisconsin, is one of the photographers who was asked to take his images off SportsShooter. He left them up, but is in dialogue with the compliance officer and hopes to hear more soon.

"I always ask and make sure I'm in compliance with everything," he says, adding that he has a license to sell University of Wisconsin images. "I'm not in a spot where I want to make waves."

The origin of these latest complaints against SportsShooter seems to be a series of messages sent out on an e-mail discussion group for compliance officers from the 31 regional NCAA conferences.

"There were a number of e-mails on that topic," says Carolayne Henry, associate commissioner for compliance for the Mountain West Conference.

A copy of one such message was posted on a SportsShooter message board this morning, though it is unclear on several points, including whether SportsShooter is a site for selling photographs (Sanschagrin says it isn't).

Sanschagrin says at least one NCAA conference, the Big 12, has plans to discuss the matter further in a conference call Monday.