Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Seemingly the late Pope John Paul II said that of all the unimportant things football is the most important

referring to European football course and arguably that could be extrapolated out to all of the other sports that people also invest much of their lives into following.

But it's not just for the importance that people put on sports that it becomes a good topic for a political

podcast, it's because the problems that arise within the systems of sports are the same problems

we all face everywhere, which makes them a good lens through which to understand the mechanisms

of broader society, the fight for fair pay,

both journalism and addictive games functioning under capitalism, and unfair benefits for billionaires

all resonate far beyond the bounds of the players,

owners, and fans of sports clubs.

Sources providing our top takes today include University of Iowa, the PBS News Hour, Brett Coleman, Labatard Show,

MSMBC Reports, Robert Reich, and The Current.

Then in the additional deeper dive half of the show,

there will be more on the new world of pay for play for college athletes,

the folly of taxpayer-funded stadiums,

sports journalism and capitalism, and the impact of addictive sports gambling.

I want to set the stage for the tectonic shift that is facing college

athletics right now. It didn't happen overnight and the path that has led to this

moment provides much needed context for a full discussion of the issues that we're going to have tonight.

I want to begin by going back to 1984. In that year, the NCAA lost an antitrust lawsuit known as the Board of

Regents case. In that case, the Supreme Court found that the NCAA's restrictions on the number of football games that could be televised each week were illegal restraints on trade and commerce under antitrust law.

But there was a silver lining for the NCAA

...