"When the NCAA Tournament starts in earnest, the basketball will be more efficient and polished and beautiful than the stuff that hooked me decades ago, as befits the fact that players are now getting paid for their labor in ways that can finally be acknowledged officially. If there is something unsettled and unsettling about the contemporary college game, it comes down to watching it become optimized in the same degrading contempo-style free-market ways that you'll recognize from every other corner of public life."
"College basketball is driven by a vigorous gray market in teenage wing players; that market is overseen to no great effect by an irredeemable, corrupt, and badly diminished regulatory authority, and dictated from one moment to the next by the whims of sour monied alumni and local car dealership types and sneaker companies. That has been true for more or less my whole life, and what feels new amounts to an increasing refinement and liberation of that old pursuit."
College basketball's evolution reflects broader commercialization trends in American public life. The sport has become more efficient, polished, and beautiful as players now receive official compensation for their labor. However, this optimization comes with a sense of loss—the game has shed its scruffier, janky qualities that once defined it. The underlying structure remains unchanged: a gray market in teenage wing players overseen by a corrupt regulatory authority, influenced by wealthy alumni, local business interests, and sneaker companies. What feels genuinely new is not the corruption itself but rather its increasing refinement and open acknowledgment, transforming college basketball into a tiered independent minor-league enterprise.
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