College athletes across the country are now receiving direct revenue-sharing payouts, fueling everything from luxury shopping sprees and impulsive spending to investments, charity, and family support. Their choices reveal how a generation of 18-to-22-year-olds is navigating sudden wealth in a rapidly shifting era where college sports now function like big-league business.
Places called Babylon don’t usually meet excellent ends: Tom Lin on Babylon, South Dakota
In the midst of his small office on the fourth floor of the EPB, looking out onto the Stanley Museum of Art, surrounded by two well-populated book shelves and a Kym Day painting of a cowboy feeding a horse Lo Mein, Tom Lin reclines in his swivelback chair and invites me to take a seat.










