I had always loved sport. Growing up just outside New York City in an immigrant family, sandlot baseball and asphalt basketball were great levelers. You got to compete, test your skills, and develop lifelong friendships.

I read the daily news sports page habitually. I admired the Duke, Willie and Mickey. I never thought much about money and big contracts. Heck, Dodger stars such as Carl Furillo and Don Newcombe even had summer jobs to help pay the bills. So taking a job in Arkansas only bewildered me at first, with the total state dominance of the Razorbacks and the concept of the depth chart. But I became a fan, sometimes lukewarm, maybe even hostile, because they would not play any in-state teams. When that barrier broke, I was all-in, and as the 2025 football season ended, I replayed a season lost that began with so much promise.

But there was a much bigger loss in the sport as the playoff season began. A coach abandoned a team that had a chance to win a national championship for a multimillion-dollar contract. And as football morphed into basketball, I learned that universities were enrolling former pro players as well as paying, in some cases, high six-figure NIL deals.

That's when I wondered what Arnie Berman would think.

I had met Arnie while a graduate student outside the Rockefeller Library at Brown. Working on a dissertation,........

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