This is natural, because sports are a designated world where fans escape to cheer and boo as they please. Intrusions from real life can break the spell, provoking resentful cries for pampered athletes to shut up and play. Sports-think gives fans a presumptive stake to say how college sports should be run, oblivious that the whole NCAA production rests on players who have no voice at all.
Athletes become urgently important for moments on the screen, but we force their fundamental rights to fit our entertainment and convenience. Surely this perspective is backward. College athletes are young adults who love a sport they have played all their lives. Sparks of courage are needed. Fans, being also citizens, should engage the larger arena of fairness. Nonfans should stop wishing for commercial sports to vanish, as though Plato might rescue the academy, and address sports corruption and dishonesty at the heart of our vital universities.
My hope for March Madness, now and in the future, is some small sign of agitation over basic rights. Contact us at letters time. By Taylor Branch. TIME Ideas hosts the world's leading voices, providing commentary on events in news, society, and culture. We welcome outside contributions. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors. Related Stories. America Needs to Get Back to Facts. Already a print subscriber?
Go here to link your subscription. In the current system, athletes get paid from four basic entities. There are the shoe companies wanting to curry favor when they turn pro. The best prospects and players in the marquee sports get the most money, just like in the free market.
Adam Smith would be proud. Good luck balancing that. Aztecs grind out opening victory against UC Riverside. Sports Columnists. Column: As Padres ponder offseason, Dodgers and Giants positioned to consider big moves. Free agency could reshape teams that combined for victories in Union-Tribune columnist grades Chargers after their victory at Philadelphia.
Real Estate News. Hot Property. About Us. Advocates often sound like eager Brits advocating for Brexit, with little notion of how it would actually work, and what the unintended side effects might be. It might also help make public what many schools are already doing privately. Why would this matter? You can debate whether fans should feel romantic about college football, but there is little doubt that many fans do. Despite quadrupling the number of bowl games, creating league championship games, and setting up a bonafide playoff system, attendance has been going steadily down nationwide for years.
When did you last attend a boxing match or a horse race? If the bottom can fall out of those once robust sports, it can happen to college football, too. Karl Marx, the ultimate champion of the working class, knew that whoever controls the means of production has the power. Despite the many good reasons to let boosters pay the players, I think there are better reasons not to — and a better way to fix the problem that paying the players is intended to fix.
We already know: Just check out college hockey. The players who would rather have a paycheck than a scholarship can jump straight to the minor leagues — and they do.
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