“Fucking Nike!” I thought, after Duke’s star player Zion Williamson ripped through his shoe and injured his knee while hard pivoting during last night’s marquee Duke-UNC college basketball game.  “Can’t Nike, with all its billions, make a goddamn shoe that doesn’t explode!” I screamed at the TV.  Zion limped off the court, and with him went Duke’s chances of victory, the team shell-shocked by its star’s sudden injury and departure.

At first, I was pissed for Duke’s loss, which I naturally feel as mine own as a result of my super fandom.  And when I recovered from my pity party, I thought more about Zion himself, Duke’s freshman force of nature and budding superstar.  Forced to go to college by the NBA collective bargaining agreement that requires that players be 19 years old before entering the league.  Even more complicit is the NCAA, which profits off of these players’ indentured servitude while refusing to even remotely fairly compensate them for their mandatory apprenticeships.

In just about any other economic arena beside college basketball and football, Zion Williamson and his similarly-skilled compatriots would be compensated handsomely for their talents.  A star computer programmer need not go to college before gaining employment.  A day trader never has to set foot on a college campus if they have the requisite insight and skills.  And a slick real estate agent has no need of a university degree if they can move properties and close deals.  Yes, many industries have gate-keeping devices like licensing tests or professional associations, but the vast majority don’t require years of unpaid apprenticeships.  That the best American basketball or football players must pass through universities and provide services which net these schools millions of dollars while not seeing any percentage of this windfall is scandalous.  And immoral.  And patently unjust.  It’s akin to indentured servitude.  Put in your time, pay off your debt, and then—and only then—you can take on gainful employment.

As Zion’s cleaved Nike PG 2.5s laid there on the court, I thought about those shoes and what they represented.  Nike pours billions of dollars into college athletics, as do many of their rivals.  This money goes to the university and to the famous coaches who can also ink lucrative deals with these shoddy (pun intended) companies.  But again, none of these billions find their way to the players themselves.  I love Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski (AKA Coach K) and genuinely believe that he cares about his charges and making them better players and people.  But it is an egregious miscarriage of economic justice that he can profit off his players while they cannot sniff a dime of these revenues.  Yes, the players get scholarships and don’t have to pay the sky-high tuition rates that their peers do.  And they get free gear (when it doesn’t malfunction), room, and board.  But what would be so terrible about granting these “amateurs” their likeness rights to make a small profit off of their athletic careers while still in college?  Would it undermine the purity of the system?  Inject a pay-for-play attitude that frankly already exists at many universities (see the Adidas scandal)?  Turn the NCAA into a mere farm system for the pros, devaluing academics in the process?  All of the feared deleterious effects are already present.  Academics at many institutions for the premier athletes are a joke (see the 20-year academic fraud scandal at Duke’s underhanded rival The University of North Carolina).  Everyone knows that the NCAA is a glorified feeder and vetting system for the professional leagues.  And the athletes themselves are the only ones with no say, no representation, and no pay.

So how do we revamp this outdated, broken system, when it remains true that some student-athletes still undoubtedly benefit from the scholarships and opportunities provided by the universities?  For 98% of student-athletes, the system works as designed, whereby the students compete for the university, and the university fairly compensates them by covering tuition, room, and board.  But for those other 2%, from whom the university profits enormously, changes must be made.  To begin with, student-athletes must be allowed to be compensated when the market exists.  The easiest and lowest-hanging fruit here is likeness rights.  If a jersey is sold with their name or number or if the player is included in a video game, for example (see the Ed O’Bannon lawsuit from a few years back), they should be able to reap a percentage of the financial rewards.  Furthermore, student-athletes should get a stipend that represents some fraction of the revenues that they bring in.  Yes, football and basketball pay for scholarships in other, less-profitable sports.  But surely the profits at major schools (Alabama and Clemson football and Duke and Kentucky basketball, to name the most well-known) far outstrip costs, even when other scholarships are factored in.  Where extra-normal profits exist, players should be paid.

In terms of age or other requirements, athletes should not be coerced by the NBA or NCAA to take unpaid apprenticeships.  Yes, basketball players can go to the G-League, Europe, or China or a year or two and be paid before coming to the NBA.  But this unfairly harms their value by not allowing them into the league when they are ready and qualified to join.  The NBA and NCAA are complicit in this, with the NCAA only too happy to rent the best players for a year while the NBA gets a free one-year audition for its most promising prospects.  Players should be allowed to go directly into the NBA from high school.  Period.  And those other players, not ready for prime time, can enter college.  With the understanding that they will provide a minimum two- or three-year commitment.  This will allow the players who are supremely talented to skip college and begin making a living.  And those players who want to develop their skills (and hopefully their brains as well) to do so in the NCAAs.  They will also have to attend classes and make progress on their degrees, instead of the current farce of attending a university for nine months and then leaving, as most one-and-done’s now do.  If a player breaks out and becomes desirable to the professional leagues after his or her first or second year, they should still be allowed to leave the university early but should be contractually obliged to reimburse the university for all costs associated with their education.  Again, the NCAA shouldn’t be in the business of indentured servitude.

All kinds of experts and talking heads are now weighing in on what Zion should do.  “Zion should pack it in and not play another minute of college basketball,” many are advising.  And maybe he should do just this.  College football players not playing in championship bowl games now routinely do this.  College basketball, with its 68-team March Madness tournament, is an entirely different beast, which gives numerous teams the chance at winning it all.  Zion would undoubtedly be criticized for not wanting to win badly enough, or being a sellout, were here to take this route.  Selfishly, of course, I want Zion to come back to my #1-ranked Blue Devils and lead us to a national championship.  But I couldn’t really begrudge him his choice to take the cautious route.  I’m sure his marketing would suffer initially, but whatever pro team drafted him (likely #1) would be quick to forgive him once he donned their colors and performed his unique brand of aerial magic.  And Nike will certainly want to ink Zion to a massive contract when he leaves Duke, though at this point he might be looking for a better-quality company, more commensurate with his talents.  And one that can actually produce a shoe that doesn’t explode upon impact.