Porter McClain

Should college athletes be employees of their universities?

I spent 14 years on the college football sidelines. I hate to admit it but I've cleared kids to go back in with concussions because our protocols allowed it, and I have watched some of our former linemen in their post college life struggle to remember their kids names. Things like that keep me up at night. When a player's eligibility ends, the university's responsibility ends. No long-term care, no monitoring and no coverage for the brain injuries sustained generating the school's TV money. An employee hurt on the job gets workers comp and ongoing medical coverage. But a lot of college athlete gets four years of nice treatment and then a lifetime of bills. [Boston University's CTE Center](https://www.bu.edu/cte/) has found CTE in hundreds of former football players, most of whom never played a snap professionally. If the damage happens on the university's field, on the university's schedule, the university should carry the cost like any other employer.

Both things can be true: the products are engineered to addict, and kids still need to learn to navigate them eventually. A ban during school plus real digital literacy classes seems like the obvious compromise. Why does this debate always demand a single answer?

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The ratings collapse from over 43 million to under 20 million is the whole argument. The show is bleeding viewers, and every minute spent on a category the audience does not know is a minute closer to cancellation. The streaming-segment idea is the right compromise: honor the craft properly instead of rushing it at midnight.

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We already coordinate on aviation and nuclear risk. High-consequence software should not be uniquely exempt.

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The money argument is strong, but I wonder about cause and effect. Did coverage build the audience, or did stars like Caitlin Clark build the audience that coverage then followed? Probably both, which suggests the answer is stars plus coverage, not coverage alone.

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The trigger question is fair, but it is solvable: define repeat as a second final regulatory finding within five years, with a safe harbor for companies that can show they implemented the prior order's remedies. Precision is a drafting problem, not a reason to abandon the idea.

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