Athletic competitions mesmerize because, being unscripted, their outcomes are unpredictable. But as college football season lumbers forward, a predictable but nonetheless entertaining event is occurring: Government and large, mostly state-run universities are collaborating to reestablish the cartel that for decades enabled the schools to reap billions from the negligibly compensated labor of “student athletes.”

That phrase, which has become risible regarding the best revenue-generating athletes (principally male football and basketball players) central to today’s drama, is clung to by the cartel that coined it. It puts a pretty patina on a business model that until 2021 suppressed what all cartels everywhere exist to minimize: costly competition. The cartels are the NCAA’s four “power con

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