NCAA pitch: Let D-I schools pay athletes via NIL

Little by little, it adds up. A day of missing a team workout program is becoming a more prolonged absence. The time away is being spent with a foe of the team. Another star contemplates retirement, and won’t come near the team in the meantime, as long as it’s not mandatory. And within the rigid, tightly monitored system that Bill Belichick lords over, the cracks appear. The drama, as it always seems around the Patriots, resides in subtlety. The latest passive-aggression is a report out of ESPN that Tom Brady will not be a “regular participant� in the team’s offseason program, even after he returns from his trip to Qatar. The trip, for his charity, was his reason for missing the start of the