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NCAA literally has the slave model and most likely has origins in that mentality. Just like a race horse can't ask for money because it is a property of its owner, student athletes are not any different from NCAA perspective. It is strange to think that such rule existed for so long in the "free" society.

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I'd say this is confusing where we've ended up with where we started.

In the beginning, the "amateur" in "amateur athletics" was taken quite seriously; college athletics was seen and treated as part of the education system.

There's been considerable erosion of this ideal, and at this point it's better to treat college athletes as minor leaguers who happen to be affiliated with colleges.

The history of how we got here is very odd. The NCAA's worship of amateurism has it's roots in Ivy League gentleman amateurs, and for many, many years was explicitly racially segregated.

The roots were very much more in the public's insistence that college students had to stop dying while playing football. Lots of players were paid in the old Ivy League days. Those like Theodore Roosevelt who "saved" the game did so mostly by not letting students handle the payments. Only much later (1940s and '50s) did NCAA take on the form it has today.

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