, Columnist
It's Business, NCAA. Pay the Players.
Only the magic of the market can cure what ails college sports.
Focus!
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There is a famous story1507841070933 about Sonny Vaccaro, the anti-NCAA crusader, that seems worth retelling.
As a Nike marketer in the 1970s, Vaccaro invented the practice of having Nike pay a college coach to have his players wear the company's shoes. Those sneaker deals eventually morphed into deals with athletic departments worth tens of millions of dollars, which athletic-wear companies happily paid to have all of a school's teams wear their gear.