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March Madness

The real March Madness: Why don't NCAA schools pay college athletes who make them billions?

Sen. Chris Murphy: I've introduced legislation to help the students, but let's be honest – the NCAA doesn't need our permission to do the right thing. Our laws already allow for this arrangement.

Chris Murphy
Opinion contributor

As a teenager, I organized a huge NCAA tournament bracket pool at my high school. This was well before online brackets, so I’m sure my grades dipped every March as I manually updated the standings every Thursday through Sunday.

For the past 30 years, I’ve been an obsessive college basketball fan. As a UConn fan, it has been an amazing ride, and I’ve marveled at how the tournament has grown, now bringing in $1 billion a year for all the adults – the coaches, the network bosses, the sports industry executives – who work in the college basketball industry.