I don’t usually lead my bio with this, but when I was 14 years old, I set the Guinness World Record for eating hamburgers. This wasn’t the record for teenagers; it was the actual record for most quarter-pound hamburgers eaten in 30 minutes. A little more than a year later, the Burger Chef company (which was eventually purchased by Hardee’s) offered me a job travelling across the country to do in-store appearances to promote the introduction of a new sandwich.

By this time, I was an oversized 16-year-old, being recruited by a few colleges to play football. Recruiting coordinators at multiple schools warned me that accepting the Burger Chef offer was a violation of NCAA rules and would jeopardize my college eligibility.

I was a teenage NIL victim.

Although I managed to survive the loss of whatever income I would have earned from Burger Chef, I’m sure the experience of being a travelling celebrity hamburger eater would have been a fun way to spend the summer of 1979.

At the time, I didn’t think much about it; there wasn’t exactly a great career path for professional hamburger eaters. But I did eventually realize that the NCAA is – and remains – one of the three most morally corrupt organizations on earth.

Honorable mention this year goes to the North Carolina State Board of Education, which adopted a policy in June prohibiting athletes in the state’s public schools from making money through endorsements and other types of Name Image and Likeness (NIL) arrangements.

The mother of high school quarterback and Tennessee commit Fazion Brandon has filed a lawsuit against the state, claiming that North Carolina’s policy has prevented her son from accepting an offer from a national trading card company to sign a certain volume of signed memorabilia prior to his high school graduation in exchange for a “substantial sum of money.”

There are no legal or moral grounds on which a state employee can tell a teenager that he can’t be paid to perform a legal service. We’re talking about signing autographs, not selling meth in the school parking lot.

Do I think most 17-year-olds can handle large sums of money? No, but neither can a lot of 37-year-olds. This is an issue for parents to manage, not the state.

Assuming it doesn’t settle the suit before trial, North Carolina will lose this lawsuit, exposing that control, exacerbated by the petty jealousy of mid-level career bureaucrats and masquerading as protective paternalism, was always the true motivation. It was no different 45 years ago.

David Moon is president of Moon Capital Management. A version of this piece originally appeared in the USA TODAY NETWORK.