John Oliver mercilessly tackles March Madness, student athletes, and the NCAA's shady business model

John Oliver takes on the NCAA and March Madness

(Image credit: Last Week Tonight)

published 16 March 2015

College basketball's March Madness tournament, which starts Tuesday, will earn more than $1 billion in TV ad revenue for the NCAA — more than the Super Bowl, John Oliver noted on Sunday's Last Week Tonight. "There is nothing inherently wrong with a sporting tournament making huge amounts of money," he said, "but there is something slightly troubling about a $1 billion sports enterprise where the athletes are not paid a penny."

At this point you will probably be raising objections in your head, and Oliver will probably try to explain why those objections are baseless. "If it truly is all about the romance of amateurism, that's fine," Oliver concluded, making a hard bit of sense. "Give up the sponsorships and the TV deals, stop paying the coaches, and have the teams run by an asthmatic anthropology professor with a whistle."

The last two minutes of the segment are a tragicomic faux ad for a video game, March Sadness 2015, about being an "amateur" student athlete. And if you see the hashtag "SoybeanWind on your Twitter or Facebook feed, that's Oliver trolling Clemson basketball coach Dabo Swinney, who earns more than $3 million a year and is worried about student-athlete "entitlement." Be warned, the censor missed a few F-bombs, and there is other NSFW language. —Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.