The trouble with college sports in the modern era is that the one thing we could do to most effectively address all of the ethical problems associated with them is the one thing no one is really interested in trying: Telling the truth and responding to reality.
It seems important to begin with the recognition that no one planned things this way. If we were starting from scratch, it would never occur to anyone to step into a meeting and propose the following:
- Let’s use elite educational institutions to supply the NFL and the NBA (and to a lesser extent, Major League Baseball) with a no-cost minor league system that helps them evaluate who is and is not professional material.