My solution is simple: I want college athletes to receive the same labor rights we all enjoy as Americans.

It is unfair that coaches and everyone else can make as much money as possible without paying the labor. Can't have football games without football players.

Fuck Saban & Trump.

But, it's become an arms race right now and isn't sustainable.
These deep pocket donors are unlikely to pay year over year with the $ going up each year & only one team wins the championship.
Even the Saudis have turned down the faucet for the various sportswashing activities and they barely have a bottom to their pockets.
Some regulation seems in order. I don't know what it will look like, but there are people paid to figure these things out.
They want to pay me; I think I could come up with something workable.

Also the transfer portal to a lesser extent even though it hurt my team Arizona State at first by losing Jayden Daniels to LSU. I think it was because Herm Edwards was about to come under for Covid recruiting violations (same thing Michigan did with Harbaugh) but Edwards wasn't a fan of NIL like Saban but ASU replaced him with a coach that knows how to navigate those waters. Also Clemson still managed to build a team the old fashioned way by sticking with Cade Klubnik until he gained more experience.

Things were more boring when Tua & Jalen Hurts were on the same Alabama team with multiple NFL players at different positions and were always picked by the selection committee. I think there is more of a level playing field but even with that the Big Ten & SEC will continue to attract most of the best high school prospects. I think one thing that made college sports less interesting was all the conference realignment when there used to be more balance among the conferences instead of 2 but that is separate issue.

Also the old EA Sports college football game used to have just numbers instead of real names. You could get real names downloading user created rosters but that was still ripping off the players. Now thanks to NIL the EA Sports College Football game is back and now it is a lot more interesting with real player names. I think they're doubling the amount they're giving them which was like $600 and a free copy of the game but I still think they're being underpaid in that scenario because the game would be a lot worse without their name, image, and likeness.