Senate to Codify Amateurism as a 'Lifestyle Choice' for Collegiate Indentured Servants

In a move lauded by literally dozens of university presidents (all currently vacationing on private islands funded by booster donations), the U.S. Senate has bravely ventured into the 'Wild West' of collegiate athletics. Sources close to the deliberations, primarily a potted plant outside Senatorial chambers, confirmed that the proposed legislation aims to bring much-needed order to the chaotic landscape where student-athletes might accidentally earn enough money to, say, afford a full meal or pay for their own textbooks. Critics, who presumably hate capitalism and freedom, have suggested the bill is merely a thinly veiled attempt to ensure institutions and their coaching staff retain their current financial dominion while presenting 'student-athletes' with the exciting new opportunity to be legally classified as 'enthusiastic volunteers.' The bill, which one aide mistakenly referred to as the 'Keep the Jocks Poor and Happy Act,' promises to streamline the process of denying athletes fair compensation by creating a new federal bureaucracy specifically tasked with interpreting 'amateur status' with the rigor usually reserved for Cold War-era espionage. Experts predict this will lead to an unprecedented boom in campus-based compliance officers, each earning six-figure salaries, whose sole job will be to meticulously audit a player's grandma for illicit cookie-sale profits. The goal, apparently, is to preserve the 'purity' of collegiate sports, which, as everyone knows, is best represented by multi-billion-dollar TV deals and coaches earning more than the GDP of small nations. It's about protecting the dream, primarily the dream of athletic departments maintaining unfettered control.