Wilbur Pettit

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](https://www.supremecourt.gov)

Should sports betting advertisements be banned from live game broadcasts?

I am 38, I bet $25 most Sundays, I set a weekly limit in the app, and I have never missed a bill. A broadcast ban treats me like a child because some other adult cannot stop. We do not ban beer commercials because alcoholics exist; we fund treatment and require 'drink responsibly' tags. Do the same here: mandatory deposit limits, real funding for the helpline, honest odds in the ads. Prohibition by timeslot tells adults the government trusts them to vote and serve on juries but not to see a commercial. That is not protection, it is condescension. The tools already exist: [regulators require limit-setting features](https://www.legalsportsreport.com/responsible-gambling/) like deposit, wager, and session-time limits at licensed sportsbooks. Use those; do not ban the ad slot.

Should digital well-being support be treated like a routine public-health service?

I work at a county health department, and everyone should understand what 'routine public-health service' means on the ground: a waiting list. We lost staff during COVID, our clinic runs limited hours, and our nurses already cover three programs each. Adding digital-wellness screening means either new money, which is not coming, or quietly siphoning time from vaccinations and maternal health, which is. It also assumes we know what to do with a positive screen, and for compulsive scrolling we mostly do not; there is no nicotine patch for the feed. [KFF's reporting](https://kffhealthnews.org/public-health/us-public-health-system-underfunded-under-threat-faces-more-cuts-amid-covid-pandemic/) on the hollowed-out public-health workforce is not an argument against caring. It is an argument against assigning new missions to a system running on fumes.

Piketty's r>g is just math and math doesn't care about your feelings. Either you cap the compounding or you accept permanent oligarchy. There's no third option and I'm tired of pretending there's.

Politics · Oct 6, 2026 · Should billionaires be allowed to exist?

Parents cannot be everywhere, and plenty of parents do not understand filters themselves. A simple altered-image tag gives kids a cue to pause, and it costs platforms almost nothing to add. We already label ads; labeling the alteration is the same idea.

Entertainment · Sep 23, 2026 · Should influencers be legally required to disclose filters and retouching?