When the legal threats to amateurism began to emerge about a dozen years ago, the NCAA’s main strategy was to claim that college sports would become less popular if athletes earned money.
Administrators said it repeatedly in the media. They said it in court. They even threatened to take their ball and go home if schools had to pay the athletes who help generate hundreds of millions of dollars playing college football and basketball.
And now they all need to admit that they were wrong. Historically, spectacularly, wrong.
A new national survey commissioned by Sportico in cooperation with The Harris Poll found that 67 percent of American adults believe college athletes should be paid — not just through name, image and likeness payments but in direct compensation from the school.