The Conservative Court, Coming Through

 "HUZZAH"!, as folks used to say during the Civil War era, for the U.S. Supreme court, the hard wired hard packed conservative Supreme Court, conservative by design and by deceit. (Remember Merrick Garland). One again, as it often has during the last few sessions, it has been demonstrated that placing right wing magistrates  on the high court by a gang of Republican legislators attempting to use the court to implement their conservative agenda is a futile tactic, since a good jurist will often render reasonable decisions, despite the nefarious intentions of the far right court-packing law makers. A conservative court upheld Obamacare and legalized gay marriage, for example, because doing so was proper and constitutional, albeit progressive in nature. Now, conservative court members have once again come through in the clutch, outlawing the enslavement of college athletes, athletes who for over a hundred years have labored in a state of essential bondage, making billions for their corporate masters, working for free, almost. This reminds the serious sports fan of the time forty five years ago when the court gave major league baseball players their freedom, eliminating the exemption from anti-trust legislation enjoyed by team owners for over a century, who used the "reserve clause" to bind a player to one team for eternity, depriving him of the fundamental right to sell his labor on the free market. When the reserve clause was ruled illegal, the billionaire baseball team owners predicted dire consequences, ranging from bankruptcy to abandonment by the fans, to utter chaos and destruction of the sport. Nothing of the sort happened. Instead, professional baseball entered a period of unprecedented prosperity, where today it remains.  Now, the multi-millionaires who run the NCAA are screaming the same tired, false bloody murder; as if allowing athletes to actually benefit financially from corporate use of their name and image instead of sucking all the money into the coffers of the respective universities will spell doom. It will not. The traditional condition of college athletes is to barely scratch by, relying on checks from home, making it through the week by eating in the school cafeteria and walking to class from the athletic dormitory. (Athletic dormitories are now illegal). One of my students, a  superior athlete destined for a lucrative professional career but at the time still struggling to get by in college, informed me one day that he had become a bit tired of seeing hundreds of other students around campus wearing his jersey with his number on it, while he had thirteen dollars in his pocket, which he must make last through the week. I told him to just hang in there a couple of years, and his ship would come in, which it eventually did. But the college kids who never make it to the pros are still responsible for tens of millions of dollars of revenue, revenue which should be shared with those responsible for it, as well as the coaches, administrators, and attorneys. Our glorious conservative Supreme Court pointed out that college football coaches do very well for themselves, as do college administrators. Huzzah! for the conservative court!