Why Politics And Sports Aren’t Separate

In the summer of 2014, I packed into an Oakland federal courtroom every day, along with a raft of other legal-affairs and sports reporters, to cover the trial in O’Bannon v. NCAA. Former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon sued the NCAA on behalf of his fellow college athletes, claiming that the NCAA’s refusal to pay players was an antitrust violation. And, in large part, the athletes won.

In the course of the trial, the judge and the audience learned a great deal about how the college-athletics sausage is made. Skilled players — usually Latino and black kids — are recruited at the high-school level. Colleges spend vast sums of money to nab the best players, because having a stellar sports team is very lucrative, especially the money that comes from bigger events like March Madness and football championships. The athletes, often from lower-income backgrounds, are offered scholarships in exchange for the opportunity to attend college and continue to play sports. They are put up in luxurious living quarters with game rooms and theaters, and they practice in state-of-the-art fitness centers with fancy hot tubs.

Cushy, right? But college athletes routinely are routed into bogus paths of study, easy classes with little education and no homework so they’ll have plenty of time to train. They often train harder than their bodies can handle, and sustain…