The composers of the University of Michigan’s iconic “Let’s Go Blue” marching band fight song have settled legal claims over a synch placement in the College Football video game franchise.
A Monday (Nov. 2) court filing, obtained and first reported by Billboard, says a settlement has been reached resolving “all issues” in the music licensing dispute that began this past March. Deal terms were not disclosed.
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The lawsuit stemmed from a license inked by music publishers Theodore Presser and Carl Fischer with Electronic Arts (EA) in 2024 to feature “Let’s Go Blue” in the popular video game College Football, which returned that year from a long hiatus after the NCAA loosened player restrictions on name, image and likeness rights.
Presser and Fischer claimed they’d had continuous rights to administer “Let’s Go Blue” since signing a publishing deal with co-writers Albert Ahronheim and Joe Carl in 1978. But Ahronheim and Carl, who composed the song as students at Michigan, said the composition rights actually reverted back to them years ago — and they weren’t happy to find out the publishers had unilaterally licensed out “Let’s Go Blue” for what they called a “shockingly low” synch fee of just $1,000.
Ahronheim and Carl demanded that EA remove the synch from College Football, and the video game juggernaut complied. This led Presser and Fischer to file a contract interference lawsuit against the composers, who then countersued for copyright infringement. EA itself was not involved in the litigation or accused of any wrongdoing.
Each side sought financial damages from the other, and both wanted a judge to step in and decide the rightful owner of “Let’s Go Blue.” The dispute turned on the termination right, a provision of copyright law that allows authors to claw back intellectual property decades after signing it away. Ahronheim and Carl said they successfully exercised their termination rights in 2013, while the publishers claimed the composers skipped a key technical step in this legal process and therefore did not get the composition reverted.
Reached for comment on the settlement Monday, the publishers’ attorney Brian Caplan told Billboard his clients “are happy that they were able to resolve their differences with Messrs. Ahronheim and Carl, the authors of the iconic song ‘Let’s Go Blue,’ and are looking forward to a mutually beneficial working relationship with the authors.”
Caplan did not say how the settlement resolved the song ownership question or whether “Let’s Go Blue” will now be added back to College Football. Lawyers for Ahronheim and Carl did not return a request for comment. EA declined to comment.
