Sports Business: A Way to Start Paying College Athletes

I wrote my first article for The New York Times about the N.C.A.A. four years ago. Appearing in the magazine, it was headlined, “Let’s Start Paying College Athletes.” Although I had been a college basketball fan all my life, I had never paid much attention to the inner workings of the N.C.A.A. But my research woke me up to the inequities faced by college football and men’s basketball players, and compelled me to begin writing regularly about how the N.C.A.A. and the college sports establishment exploit the players who generate the billions that the grown-ups pocket.