"An unmistakable whiff of the plantation"

NYT, not able to come up with its own stories, writes about the piece historian Taylor Branch did for the Atlantic, The Shame of College Sports.  Here's the fighting words part which pissed people off:

“We should all recognize that the rules that forbid the athletes from being paid are unfounded and don’t have any basis and are an embarrassment and should be phased out,” Branch said. “They don’t have any force. I think the colleges should be free to give athletes less than a full scholarship, no scholarship and more than a scholarship. And the athletes should be free to bargain.”

Branch wrote that the N.C.A.A. was a “classic cartel” that has never had any real power and that the terms “amateurism” and “student-athlete” were “cynical hoaxes, legalistic confections propagated by the universities so they can exploit the skills and fame of young athletes.”

He also wrote that there “is an unmistakable whiff of the plantation” in the revenue-generating sports of major-college football and men’s basketball. He added, “College sports, as overseen by the N.C.A.A., is a system imposed by well-meaning paternalists and rationalized with hoary sentiments about caring for the well-being of the colonized.”