Crunched by Numbers

So the National Collegiate Athletic Association extended its TV deal for its annual men's basketball tournament with the CBS/Turner broadcasting companies. The networks will pay the NCAA $8.8 billion to air the games for the next eight years.

Coincidentally, 8.8 is the exact number that describes the amount of this revenue that will go to the athletes who enable everyone to make it. But instead of "billion" and shift-4, people typing the figure need to instead hit shift-5, because that's the key for "percent," and 8.8 percent of the total will benefit the students with whose sweat it is generated.

Exactly how that's anything other than grossly unfair is apparently not on the NCAA's class schedule this semester. But one of these days there's going to be a test over this material, and they'd better have come up with an answer by then.