There was a time when we thought we knew what an amateur is.

He is the guy who doesn't get paid. Or, more accurately, the guy who isn't supposed to get paid.

When I was at Louisiana State University in the 1970s, we knew about the running back who drove a Corvette and the point guard whose father had somehow acquired a job at the university. Maybe there were innocent explanations. Certainly there was plausible deniability.

The modern amateur ideal came down to us largely from 19th-century Britain, where gentlemen played games for love while grubby professionals played for money. The distinction was supposed to be moral, though it helped enormously if the gentleman possessed enough money that he didn't need any more.

By the time I arrived at LSU, we had democratized the hypocrisy. Big-time college athletics preserved the appearance of amateurism while accommodating the inconvenient fact that talented young athletes possessed considerable monetary value. Boosters found jobs. Cars appeared. Envelopes changed hands. Rules said one thing. Reality dictated another.

What's happened since is that we gave up pretending it isn't there.

Now my old school is involved in an argument that would have been difficult to explain to us then.

Two former Ole Miss football players, Zxavian Harris and Dae'Quan Wright, tried professional football after last season. Harris signed as an undrafted free agent with the New Orleans Saints; Wright signed with the Philadelphia Eagles before being claimed by the Cleveland Browns. Both were waived. Both then sought to play college football again at LSU for their former Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin.

A Louisiana judge issued a preliminary injunction preventing the NCAA and Southeastern Conference from blocking their return, but the SEC........

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