Everyone's already said it, but this decision and the concurrence are a BFD. The concurrence is also correct that the issue is more complicated than simply figuring out a market rate for major college football and men's basketball salaries. But figuring out that market rate, and how it fits into the various other laws governing colleges that receive federal funding (e.g., all of them that participate at the high levels of the NCAA), is coming--and fast.
I know this will hit some nerves, but one of the more interesting aspects of this is how revenue vs. non-revenue sports function. One of the big issues in women's sports right now is the argument that with similar promotion to the men's side, women's sports are perfectly capable of generating the same kind of revenue as men's sports. There is a lot of chatter right now on the finance side that there is a lot more growth available in women's sports, and that adequate marketing is one of the keys to making that happen.
How that plays under Title IX, and what it means as between the various "non-revenue" sports (many of which are revenue sports at certain schools). To be clear, this isn't just a gender issue. How much better would college baseball or tennis--or everyone's favorite sad-sack underdog: wrestling--do if they were robustly marketed?
Also, how does it implicate market drivers, like the media actors who control much of the marketing (I'm looking at you, Disney/ABC/ESPN)? It's not hard to imagine lawsuits against the networks for their failure to promote the traditionally non-revenue sports (women's or men's).
The Supreme Court's point about what constitutes amateurism is also a fascinating question--and one that I'm sure will be litigated to death in the near future. All sports have a tribal component to them. That's why even in EUFA club competition, they still talk about Spanish, English, French, and German (etc., etc.) nationals playing for the individual club teams. The University of Wisconsin athletic department owes a great deal of its financial success to being the premier state university for the state of Wisconsin. So people in Wisconsin, who have no affiliation with the university other than paying taxes and living in the state, rabidly support the school's athletics. Not as much as the Packers, Brewers, or Bucks--but they still do.
Also, there is tons of evidence that successful athletics programs raise the profile of a university and help it attract better academic talent. Notre Dame, Michigan, and even Wisconsin, all provide pretty good case stories. So the athletics and the academics are intertwined, but how, exactly, is going to be difficult to parse out into how to pay student-athletes.
How these tribal affiliations--including the status of the athletes as students--impact the marketing and financial success of collegiate sports is a fascinating, and undoubtedly complicated subject.
Finally (at least for now, from me), what is the tertiary impact on the sports themselves of a changing collegiate landscape. Unquestionably, the lure of a college scholarship has impacted who plays what sports as kids, and has helped built a youth sports industrial complex. How will the availability of college-level paychecks--and the potential disparity in paychecks between the sports--impact the development of youth sports?
All fascinating things to consider. Too bad I still have a day job and a mortgage to pay.