ESPN'S JAY BILAS EXPOSES NCAA AND 2 DAYS LATER IT HALTS JERSEY SELLING OF COLLEGE PLAYERS ONLINE

MARK EMMERT

Two days after ESPN analyst Jay Bilas exposed the ridiculousness of the NCAA’s online shop selling jerseys of their sports’ star players, the NCAA will halt that practice."We recognize why that could be seen as hypocritical,” NCAA President Mark Emmert said in a conference call Thursday. “We're going to exit that business immediately."

The controversy started when ESPN reported on Monday that Heisman winner Johnny Manziel received money from an autograph broker, and was being investigated by the NCAA.

On Tuesday, Bilas showed on Twitter how searching “Johnny Manziel” on NCAAOnlineShop.com led to pages of jerseys and athletic gear even some shirts that had Manziel’s “Football” nickname.

Bilas then showed how the same search proved useful when searching for other NCAA stars like South Carolina’s Jadeveon Clowney and Clemson’s Tahj Boyd. That forced the NCAA to remove the search bar from the website. And Thursday they went a step further.

"We haven't determined what to do [entirely] with that site,” Emmert said, according to CBSSports.com. “No compelling reason why [we] should be reselling jerseys from [schools]."

Bilas, a former Duke basketball player, hopes that ultimately players will be allowed to get paid in some form.

“I don’t agree in any way it would be chaos or the Wild Wild West …,” he said on “Outside the Lines” Thursday. “ Every time we talk about this we got Armageddon or the doomsday scenario … It wouldn’t be that big of a deal. There’s no data to support it and I don’t buy it.”