Just two days after ESPN announcer Jay Bilas lampooned the NCAA on his twitter feed with evidence that the governing body for college sports was selling merchandise searchable by the last names of its student-athletes, NCAA President Mark Emmert announced that the site will no longer sell team-related merchandise.
Check out shopncaasports.com while you can -- it won't look the same much longer.
"There's no compelling reason the NCAA should essentially be re-selling paraphernalia from institutions," Emmert told reporters in a media conference call. "I can't speak to why we entered that enterprise, but it's not appropriate for us, and we're going to exit it."
On Tuesday, Bilas posted images to his Twitter account, @JayBilas, showing that the last names of some of college football's biggest stars could be entered into the search field at shopncaasports.com and return a line of merchandise corresponding with that player's team colors and jersey number.
He then drove the point home with tweets like this:
A day later, the site's search field was removed.
The NCAA is embroiled in lawsuits about the use of the names and likenesses of its student-athletes. Emmert pointed out that the sales were merely an aggregation point for institutional profits, but said the site in the future will only market merchandise with the NCAA logo.
"I can certainly see how some people would think it's hypocritical," Emmert said.
Follow Chase Goodbread on Twitter @ChaseGoodbread.
