If you’ve ever purchased an NCAA video game, bought a college basketball player’s jersey as sports memorabilia, or watched a televised NCAA championship with commercials, it might have occurred to you that you’re paying for something that the players themselves (sometimes still teenagers) aren’t getting any compensation for. There’s a pretty striking level of injustice going on at the NCAA and Taylor Branch’s exhaustive feature in The Atlantic starts to get to the bottom of it.
The only consolation? Their tyrannical reign may soon be over.