Basketball fever grips the nation as collegiate athletes create a palpable excitement topped by Warren Buffet’s promise to give a billion dollars to the individual with the perfect selection bracket. The billion dollars were lost early in the tournament, but the challenges remain.
Unfortunately the madness goes beyond the courts with former college athletes suing the NCAA — the governing body of college sports in the U.S. — for creating a cartel and controlling and misusing billions of dollars of sports revenue.
There is something fundamentally wrong with an enterprise system that the people who generate the greatest amount of money make close to nothing. While the universities and the NCAA rake in obscene amounts of cash, and pay coaches millions of dollars in annual contracts, the athletes barely survive. America has this totally backwards.
The stark reality? For every college athlete who makes it to the pros, thousands wallow in mediocrity. This is the norm. Not the exception.
Imagine working hard, getting a great job, acquiring special skills and being blessed with God given talents — and the payoff goes to the neighbors!
Let’s leave the madness on the court of play, and as for the NCAA?
Time to end the exploitation, and time to bust the cartel.
About Hemant Rustogi