I can understand not being happy that the sport and school to which it's linked and that you've followed for years has changed and that money is now above the table. Change is never easy. But you're kidding yourself if you didn't understand that college sports (football and basketball) has been for decades a major industry, one that now rakes in billions of dollars every year. Billions. Everyone gets paid--the coaches make hundreds of thousands to millions annually, schools and leagues get billions for media rights and naming rights and a host of other things, support staff gets paid, athletic department executives make hundreds of thousands or more. Everybody except the players. Still don't. It's odd that fans have this nostalgic feeling for players as true amateurs on scholarship while those players stand next to coaches making millions and assistant coaches making hundreds of thousands or millions while everybody does their job inside the same stadiums or arenas that attract tens of millions in naming rights and concessions company bidding wars and millions of paying fans, surrounded by parking lots that generate even more revenue, all of it watched on TV and other services for which fans pay even more money.
Money, money, money. Tons of money everywhere. Just raking it in under this Frankenstein's monster of a big-bucks industry that the NCAA created and against all odds and ran for decades before it was called out for what it is. Justice Kavanagh giggled at the industry's claim that its defining characteristics is that it doesn't pay its employees.
Now NIL isn't the most direct response to this, which would be to pay the players. But that's only because the NCAA can't figure out how to run itself. Never could, maybe never will, unless some true visionaries join its leadership, or just take it over. So, for now, the players are left to profit only by their name and image. So be it. Something had to happen, and the NCAA wasn't going to do it on its own.
But if this has you ready to leave, you never knew what you were watching in the first place.