Instead, players becoming employees of the university (via a players union and collective bargaining) and receiving a "fair" salary is where this is headed. NIL is just a bump in the road that highlights that the "free market" of college football is still not "free" yet and consequently "perverse" market forces are in command.

It started with the universities being greedy, deciding they wouldn't share any of their revenue with the student athletes that generate it, and instead awarding themselves with big fat salaries. Really poor leadership at the NCAA offices (Emmert $3.5M/year), conference commissioner level (Larry Scott $5.3M/year), and the AD's (Rick George $1M/year).

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"Kavanaugh gave the concurring opinion after Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the initial opinion. He said the NCAA’s compensation rules raise "serious questions under antitrust laws" and gave three points on the matter. He went against the NCAA’s argument that the lack of compensation levels the playing field. He wrote the NCAA’s argument was "circular and unpersuasive" and the organization was engaged in "price-fixing labor" and called the matter a "textbook antitrust problem."

"The bottom line is that the NCAA and its member colleges are suppressing the pay of student athletes who collectively generate billions of dollars in revenues for colleges every year. Those enormous sums of money flow to seemingly everyone except the student athletes. College presidents, athletic directors, coaches, conference commissioners, and NCAA executives take in six- and seven-figure salaries. Colleges build lavish new facilities. But the student athletes who generate the revenues, many of whom are African American and from lower-income backgrounds, end up with little or nothing," he wrote.

In conclusion, Kavanaugh noted the longstanding traditions in the NCAA could not disqualify the organization from any potential antitrust issues.

"To be sure, the NCAA and its member colleges maintain important traditions that have become part of the fabric of America—game days in Tuscaloosa and South Bend; the packed gyms in Storrs and Durham; the women’s and men’s lacrosse championships on Memorial Day weekend; track and field meets in Eugene; the spring softball and baseball World Series in Oklahoma City and Omaha; the list goes on. But those traditions alone cannot justify the NCAA’s decision to build a massive money-raising enterprise on the backs of student athletes who are not fairly compensated. Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate. And under ordinary principles of antitrust law, it is not evident why college sports should be any different. The NCAA is not above the law."

Kavanaugh's opinion tears into the NCAA's assertion that amateurism is, as he wrote, "the defining feature of college sports." Such "innocuous labels," as Kavanaugh called them, "cannot disguise the reality: The NCAA’s business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America."

"All of the restaurants in a region cannot come together to cut cooks’ wages on the theory that 'customers prefer' to eat food from low-paid cooks. Law firms cannot conspire to cabin lawyers’ salaries in the name of providing legal services out of a 'love of the law.' Hospitals cannot agree to cap nurses’ income in order to create a 'purer' form of helping the sick. News organizations cannot join forces to curtail pay to reporters to preserve a 'tradition' of public-minded journalism. Movie studios cannot collude to slash benefits to camera crews to kindle a 'spirit of amateurism” in Hollywood.

"Price-fixing labor is price-fixing labor. And price-fixing labor is ordinarily a textbook antitrust problem because it extinguishes the free market in which individuals can otherwise obtain fair compensation for their work."

The current NCAA model is "suppressing the pay of student athletes who collectively generate billions of dollars in revenues for colleges every year," Kavanaugh wrote.