There’s a good chance, if you’re reading here, you are some kind of college sports fan, a follower of football or basketball. And if that’s true, you already know about FBI investigations into and wiretaps revealing corruption in that realm, about ongoing trials that include daily testimony regarding payments made by this coach or that, about money filtered to this recruit and that assistant coach. You’ve heard about cash funneled, or, more accurately, flushed to amateur athletes and their relatives from shoe company executives and agents and financial advisers and other go-betweens.
Those payments blast far beyond benefits that hover in the neighborhood of, say, a paid-for pizza here or a bought tattoo there.