Should college athletes be employees of their universities?

Follow the money and the amateurism argument collapses. The College Football Playoff's media deal is worth roughly $1.3 billion a year, the Big Ten's TV contracts approach a billion annually, and head coaches at top programs make $8 to $11 million a year. The players generating that product? Until NIL, they got tuition, a stipend, and a stern lecture about gratitude. The NCAA spent decades insisting this was about education while operating one of the most lucrative entertainment businesses in America on unpaid labor. Then the Supreme Court ruled unanimously against the NCAA in Alston in 2021, and Justice Kavanaugh wrote that the NCAA's business model would be "flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America." He was right. If a 19-year-old works 40-hour weeks under a coach's total control, wears the company uniform, and generates millions in revenue, every labor law in the country calls that an employee. The only industry with an exemption is the one that invented the word "student-athlete" to dodge workers' comp claims in the 1950s. Supreme Court: NCAA v. Alston