[This probably belongs in a thread that already exists on amateurism, but I was only willing to dig so far to find it before giving up and coming here:]
There's one "pay the players" strategy I've supported for years: Don't pay them directly. Just let them chase their own market value from third parties. Whatever they get is commensurate with their value and deserved. And that plan is finally reaching US Congress.
https://www.si.com/college-basketball/2019/03/07/ncaa-student-athletes-profit-name-use-bill-introduced-mark-walker
Because if we live in America and can fix an injustice with capitalism, why wouldn't we? And for those who argue there is no injustice, no worries, if the bill passes and you're right, no one will ever give these kids money, because if you're right, their market value is zero bits greater than room/board/tuition. Would be fun to run that experiment.
As far as fairness to the players is concerned, I get this as a strategy. It seems odd to not allow them to get some level of likeness rights and retain amateurism.
The bigger concern to me, however, has to do with the fairness and parity in the sport, which already suffers quite a bit. And the reason for that is that the name on the front of the uniform generates much higher likeness rights than the name on the back.
Purdue's Rondale Moore could make a fair bit of money based on his likeness. He'd make a lot MORE at Purdue than he would if he was playing for, say, Ball State. And he'd make a lot LESS than if he was playing for, say, OSU.
Of course, this is an issue in professional sports as well. Players on good teams in good markets would tend to have more valuable likeness rights than players on crappy teams in small markets. You'll sell a lot more jerseys with your name on the back if they're Yankees jerseys than if they're Twins jerseys.
But the difference in professional sports is that there is a MUCH more equitable way to select players. There's a draft. Players under contract can't decide if or when they'll be traded. There's a salary cap for free agency. Teams have constraints to work within, and those constraints are EXPLICITLY there to help get as close as we can to parity within leagues. So much that there's a big hoopla going on in the NBA right now about players trying to publicly "recruit" other players to their team, as if "recruit" is a dirty word.
In college athletics, recruiting is key. And the helmet teams already have enormous recruiting advantages over non-helmets. Add this into the fold, and those advantages get even bigger. While I'm not one to throw out "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" in economic terms, because economics is rarely a fixed pie, in this case we're talking about absolutely a zero sum game. The quantity of talented players is finite, and if the helmets take all of them, the rest of the teams might as well not even show up.
