The new California law allowing college athletes to profit off their likenesses has reignited a fiery debate about whether or not NCAA student-athletes should be allowed to make money. One camp argues that college sports have become a multi-billion dollar industry; it’s only logical that the actual players should get a part of the profits. The opposing side counters that paying student-athletes would fundamentally alter the makeup of college sports. I’m not here to sway you to one side or the other. I’m just here to tell you a story of tragedy, or perhaps comedy. It’s the story of a Division III golfer going up against the NCAA, and losing, winning, then losing much, much worse. It’s a story about dumb rules and bureaucracy and Jay Bilas and Florida water hazards. Even worse, it’s a story about me. One week in the spring of 2013 was meant to be, for better or worse, the climax of my athletic career. This was my junior year on the golf team at Williams College, a Division III school in western Massachusetts, and we’d squeaked past rival Trinity College to win our conference tournament by two nervy shots. For the first time in my college career, the Williams Ephs (an Eph is a purple cow, don’t ask) were headed to the national championship. Around this same time, ESPN analyst Jay Bilas came to speak at Williams, most specifically on the issues of college athlete compensation. This was a big get for our little school; Bilas is a big deal and drew a large crowd of student and townspeople alike.

Bilas’ general stance on compensating college athletes is simple: Do it! In his remarks to the packed-house Bronfman Science Center auditorium, he pointed out the hypocrisy of the NCAA and the amount of money flowing through college athletics. He also explained that non-athletes in college were free to make money in any number of different ways. If a student started a business, or drew a painting, or wrote a book, nothing would stop them from making money based on their skills. At that, I got a few glances from friends. I had written a book that was scheduled to come out in less than two weeks; I’d never considered it could affect my eligibility. Still, we forgot about it almost immediately. I’d done nothing wrong, and more to the point, I was a DIII golfer. There was no way anybody would care. Or so I thought. Bilas had spoken to the ridiculousness of these rules. How they didn’t make sense. But one member of the audience (a point-misser, in my eyes) called our athletic department, mentioning they’d heard I was writing a book and thought it could be in violation. Our interim athletic director, who was trying to look out for my best interests, called the NCAA to ask if they had any advice for an author who was also a student-athlete. Instead, she got a strange call back, which she relayed to me secondhand a short time later: I had been kicked out of the NCAA. The process behind this quick-trigger decision was never fully explained, but by my best understanding a straw poll had been taken around the NCAA’s compliance offices. Nobody had spoken to me (they never did) and had no real idea what they were suspending me for, but no matter. What I was doing sounded like it was probably in violation. That was enough.

Two important notes on timing: My indefinite suspension was handed down May 6. My book, 18 in America (more on this in a second), was set to come out one week later, on May 13. It hadn’t even come out yet! Obviously nobody at the NCAA had read it, which meant I was suspended for a hypothetical. Worse yet, the NCAA Championships were set to begin May 14. We were set to fly to Florida in just five days. Instead, effective immediately, I was no longer allowed to practice with the team. We also suddenly had to select someone to go in my place. That piece of the saga played out disastrously. We’d had a five-man rotation set for the entire season; suddenly we had to find a sixth player to go in my place, and everyone thought he had a legitimate case. Who do you plug into a lineup? The talented, unproven freshman? The semi-injured junior? We settled on bringing our senior captain, who was stoic on the course and possessed a ton of game, even though he hadn’t played much tournament golf of late. It was a thankless decision, though — even within our tight-knit team, rifts formed overnight.