It will never happen and really can't for a lot of reasons, but I have always thought how fun it would be fun to watch a scenario like this play out:

College athletics has a draft for every sport structured much like the MLB draft. Each school has a pool of money they can allot to signing bonuses, but that pool has a strict cap, so if you want to throw the bank at one player you may not have enough for the rest of your players. The "league minimum" salary is the cost of admission/living for a college student. However, players drafted will also have slot salaries based on their round and pick in the draft. If a player is drafted by a school and they don't wish to sign, then must sit out one year and then they can walk-on to the school of their choosing the following year but would be solely responsible for all costs of attendance that first year. Let's say the draft would have 20 rounds with 65 picks in each round to accommodate all P5 schools (the P5 and G5 split in my hypo) If you are not drafted at all, you may sign a base contract with any school you choose and are eligible to play immediately.

In this scenario, players wouldn't be required to go to school, but they would be contract employees of the university. If they choose to go to school, then they are solely responsible for paying their own way. If they want to "transfer" or leave for whatever reason, there would be liquidated damages clauses in the contracts that would be the sole responsibility of the player. If players are not enrolled in schools, they may also be traded in this scenario at any time and without warning. If players are full-time students and in good academic standing, they cannot be traded.

I know there are A LOT of loose ends here and this would be impossible to implement, but basically what I'd like to see is a system where athletes get paid but also have skin in the game. They want all the free shite they get now (probably valued in the range of a couple hundred grand a year) plus more money. That's just a non-starter for me dawg. If they want to go out and earn a living by themselves, go for it, I don't think the NCAA should prevent them from doing that, but if they unionize and try to extort money from universities, then they can frick right on off.

This post was edited on 2/9/21 at 11:43 am