With March Madness  coming to town tomorrow, now’s  a good time to reread a piece that former St. Louisan Russell Roberts wrote last month about the business side of college sports. Roberts, writing in the Boston Globe, notes that college sports have  come to look a lot like the pros, with huge coaching salaries and multimillion-dollar stadiums and arenas. And, he notes, fans complain about “excesses” like the $4 million salary lavished on University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban:

The complaints come from the fans of college football who are having trouble feeling romantic about a team led by a $4 million man.

But if those fans want to find someone to blame they should look in the mirror. They are the source of that salary they find so exorbitant. Their desire to revel in victory is what drives the university to pay not an exorbitant salary but merely the going wage, what it takes to attract a talented coach away from other universities and the professional ranks.

In a related blog post at Cafe Hayek,  Roberts explores the NCAA’s role as a cartel that prevents teams from taking obvious market-based actions — like paying their players — to improve their competitive standing. And he has a wonderful conclusion:

College sports is a big business. I have no problem with that. (Though whether it should be tax exempt is another question. The threat of removing that exemption does limit the venality.) But it is a big business built on the bizarre illusion that it’s not a big business. It’s a big business we like to pretend is a game.   To pretend it’s a game and complain it acts like a business is human but illogical.

Roberts, by the way, formerly taught economics at Washington University. He’s now at George Mason, a mid-major that hoops fans recognize more for last year’s Final Four than for its economics prowess.