NCAA’s Era of Exploiting College Athletes Is Ending: Joe Nocera

The dam has broken. College athletes are going to be paid — eventually. And it’s about time.

The Supreme Court on Monday confirmed unanimously that the National Collegiate Athletic Association is a business that has to conform to the same antitrust rules as any other business. That means its days of operating a multibillion-dollar industry on the backs of an unpaid labor force — the players — are dwindling rapidly.

The issue in NCAA v. Alston, which was argued before the court in March, was narrower than we NCAA critics might have liked. In 2019, a district court judge, Claudia Wilken, ruled ...