I am watching with a mixture of delight and uncertainty as the NCAA gets taken to school. On the eve of our most truly national holiday, March Madness, a heretofore little-noticed lawsuit took a dramatic turn when a magistrate judge in California denied the NCAA’s motion to bar current college athletes from joining their ex-comrades-in-shorts in a class action seeking a share of television and licensing revenues from college sports.

Although this ruling is merely a preliminary step, the lawsuit itself has the potential to sound the death knell for the current economic structure of major college sports — and I don’t know whether to cheer or cry.