If Nike wants to hire Notre Dame nation posters to come post on a NIke based site should we stop them because it's a waste of money?

If Nike wants to pay people/schools money, that's their business. I'm sure other schools could terminate their relationship with Nike and Nike would be free to go into a one school agreement and only work with Oregon. I suspect that Nike wouldn't be in a big hurry to lose all those other relationships, but who knows? Maybe Oregon is just worth that much to them.

Maybe Nike shareholders would be totally fine with that arrangement; I mean, when a publicly traded company spends a lot of money on players that might not pan out, that would effect their earnings in the short term at least. Maybe in order to offset that, Phil Knight can come up with the billions and billions required to buy back all of that stock and take the company private again, all for the sole (pun not intended) purpose of making sure Oregon won more football games.

When does the boogey man scenario cease making practical sense?

... of a level playing field. I'm not worried about a company's shareholders.

The NFL attempts to provide a level playing field through drafts and salary caps. Direct payments to players for their "likeness" eliminates any NCAA limitation analogous to a salary cap. The schools with the richest alumni win. You can't institute a draft in the NCAA because you can't have schools picking where athletes go to school.

Are places like LA and New York more attractive to professional athletes because of the greater exposure and possibility of endorsements? Sure, but the salary cap limits the effect of that, as do the high NFL salaries.

I have no problem with a developmental league or minor league system where players are paid and can receive endorsements. But none of those leagues provide players with an unfettered right to contract and all of those leagues have systems that ensure a level playing field. I also have no problem with players receiving payments from schools (including some type of collective endorsement deal), so long as such a system is is equally applied to all schools. Let the athletes pick which limitations they would prefer -- endorsements while being told, at least initially, where they must play, or no endorsements (or sharing endorsements) while giving them freedom to pick their school.

I'm definitely not saying the NCAA is perfect. I am all for paying players and giving players more freedom of mobility. Unfettered endorsement deals would cause more problems than solutions, including endorsement equivalents to coaches pulling scholarships.

it's not a level playing field anyway. If people are going to waste their money on signing kids to endorsement deals, then that's just the way the world will work. You've got schools offering 300-400 kids, oversigning, non-committable offers, and all this other bullshit going on out there in recruiting and you think that adding a booster into the mix that is going to pay a kid $100 to sign an autograph is a problem? Hey, you think that they're going to offer every single one of those 400 kids with an offer that same $100?

I tend to doubt it would happen in large scale, but hey, let's keep on with the current corrupt system and see where it leads us.