Stop courting corruption

Last week’s arrests of 10 people, including four NCAA basketball coaches, should forever explode the fiction that the nation’s biggest college sports programs put players first — and point the way to a new paradigm. No, we’re not calling for student-athletes to get salaries atop their already valuable scholarships, but simply for equal treatment between those who play ball and every other college kid who’s free to make money on the side. Today, the double-standard is glaring. Schools these days are brimming with young people who leverage their talents and (ugh, we know) personal brands into cash.

College kids are app entrepreneurs, musicians and YouTube stars. The five founders of trickshot pioneers Dude Perfect started a YouTube channel as juniors at Texas A&M in 2009, launching a $20 million entertainment brand.

Yet for student-athletes, promotional deals are verboten, because the NCAA forbids making money on the side — in the farcical name of protecting the purity of amateur sports.

That’s a special insult given that many recruits come from underprivileged backgrounds. A University of Central Florida player this year was pressured into quitting the football team because his video channel, per the NCAA, couldn’t monetize his “athletics reputation, prestige or ability.”

As long as millions tune in to see college sports on TV, they’ll generate billions for schools — distorting priorities and inviting bad behavior.

But agents, shoe companies and others would have far less power to drag young people into the morass if the young people were empowered to be free agents in the private economy.

On the court, keep them amateurs. Outside it, let them profit like any other college kid.