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College athletics were once casual and fun, more like a club sport than a serious endeavor. But “over the past 75 years, NCAA sports has become ever more professionalized,” Marc Novicoff wrote recently. “Football and men’s basketball began to generate eye-watering sums of money, incentivizing colleges to invest more resources in them.”
Now, recent court cases have allowed athletes to get paid by advertisers, fans, and their schools. As college athletes’ status changes, both their careers and the experience of college-level sports are starting to look different. Today’s reading list explores the meaning of school sports.
On College Sports
The End of Niche College Sports
By Marc Novicoff
Letting schools pay revenue-generating athletes is long overdue. If that means letting squash and water polo die, so be it.
College Sports Are Affirmative Action for Rich White Students
By Saahil Desai
Athletes are often held to a lower standard by admissions officers, and in the Ivy League, 65 percent of players are white. (From 2018)
The Logical End Point of College Sports
By Marc Novicoff
If players are workers, schools will have to pay them.
Still Curious?
Meritocracy is killing high-school sports: Athletics are supposed to be great equalizers in American life. But they’re being hijacked by the wealthy, Derek Thompson wrote in 2019.Do sports matter?: In 2022, readers weighed in on the role of athletics in today’s society—and if they should have one at all.
Other Diversions
What we gain when we stop caringA tale of sex and intrigue in imperial Kyoto Alexandra Pertri: Donald Trump’s guide to museums
P.S.
Courtesy of Nancy Farese
I recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. Nancy Farese sent this photo “of my cold dip buddies who brave the icy temperatures of the SF Bay at 7am on Sunday mornings.” She adds: “It's a time of fellowship (we circle up and read Mary Oliver's Why I Wake Early) and courage, the glossy heads of seals, the clatter of gulls, and the cloak of fog rolling back under the Golden Gate Bridge as the sun is rising.”
I’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.
— Isabel
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