Should college athletes be employees of their universities?

The term "student-athlete" was coined in the 1950s by the NCAA's first executive director specifically to beat a workers' compensation claim from the widow of a football player who died from a game injury. That's the origin story of amateurism: a legal dodge, not a philosophy. Everything since has been decoration on that foundation. The Atlantic documented this history years ago in its investigation of the NCAA. Once you know that, the whole moral panic about professionalism sounds different. The Olympics dropped amateurism decades ago and nobody claims the Games lost their soul. College sports survived every previous so-called existential threat, from freshman eligibility to NIL, and each time the sport got more popular and the money got bigger. The amateurism ideal people are defending was never about purity. It was about payroll. The Atlantic