discussion/argument. On the one hand, the athletes are already being paid with a tax free scholarship, athletic wardrobe, some stipends, top tier room and board and, as needed, high level tutoring. Depending upon the school the total compensation can range from, on the very low end, $35,000 per year at a public institution to over $100,000 at private schools...not too bad for, in many cases, a part time job for an undereducated 18-22 year old. Add in that many of those athletes are not high performers or difference makers on the field or at the turnstiles for their respective program and you have a system that has worked for over a 100 years.
The biggest complication is most college athletes don't deserve any more than the "league minimum" described above. If you move beyond the top tier programs in football, basketball and, to a certain extent, baseball and hockey, you will find a wasteland of empty stadiums and stretched athletic department budgets figuring out how to get their men's and women's swim teams from California to New Jersey for a swim meet.
If you look at most professional sports leagues and teams, over 60% of the athletes are tenuously earning the league minimum and are happy they got it. The same issue applies to college athletes...the top 20% of players in high revenue sports are making a difference with the top 5-10% truly deserving of additional compensation and that only applies to the schools with high attendance figures for revenue sports...maybe 35% of D1 programs--too many schools are forced to make money by being paid to be cannon fodder for powerhouse programs. If all athletes were "paid", most schools would start dropping sports and the number of scholarships granted.
NIL is a step in the right direction with, unfortunately, too many ethical loopholes currently for it to work for everyone. Star college athletes should be compensated for their jersey sales at the bookstore or in national retailers, appearances in commercials or work with promotional partners of the respective athletic program, and even some form of "performance" bonus for being a true difference maker on the field. The fact is 90%+ of scholarship athletes do not deserve any additional compensation beyond what they are already getting and, if truth be told, many of them don't even "earn" the full value of their scholarship.
Tweak the system, don't overturn it; otherwise, the final result will be a "super" division of school's that are purely minor leagues for the pros and the athletes being employees, not students.