A few sports at a few U.S. universities generate billions of dollars in total. The rest hemorrhage money. For decades, this was an easy circle for schools to square: The money from football and basketball was spent on sports such as squash, water polo, rowing, tennis, golf, and field hockey.

But this system was monumentally unfair. The football and basketball players, disproportionately Black and poor, entranced millions of TV viewers and enriched their universities. Rather than compensating them, administrators turned around and spent much of the money subsidizing teams that go largely unwatched …

Allowing colleges to pay revenue-generating athletes is long overdue. If that means cutting the diving team because athletic budgets are finite, so be it.