First and foremost, this is all spit-balling off the top of my head so this all holds no water. Just where I'm sitting with and where I see things. (I'm not singling you out either ImperialO)
If CJ Fair is wearing number 5 for his 4 years in the university and the university sells, for example, 5,000 #5 jersey (home & away). Maybe he should be able to make a certain percentage of each of those jersey sales (albeit a low percentage). Now you could say past players have worn that number so you could then say, well, we will allocate half of the sales as a result of you wearing that jersey, not someone previously (and 50% is probably fairly low on that). So CJ would make a set percentage, say 5% for starters, of the 2,500 jerseys that he would be held responsible for in terms of what was agreed upon (the 50%). The jerseys are $75 so he would only be making $3.75 for each jersey sold, so multiply that by 2,500 and that is $9,375 before taxes. That's a lot of money for a college student and that's with me only allocating 5% of 50% of the strictly jersey sales and it only being 5,000 jerseys over a 4 year span.
Now, the problem with this is it would entice high school athletes to go toward schools with the larger fan bases to receive more money or the schools that have been selling the most jerseys or other memorabilia at a higher rate than those other schools. A lot of athletes choose schools with larger fan bases over smaller anyways. But a lot of those huge schools. with massive amounts of alumni who support the programs through thick and thin, already have donors willing to set the kids up with summer jobs to make bank or just pay them under the table. It's quite the conundrum.
I'm not saying that this is how it should be done, because I'd be so pumped to even get a full-ride. But, I'm also not making the university millions of dollars and essentially having my bio's sold to EA and not seeing a nickel of that. That would really frustrate me. I also have always had aspirations of pursuing a higher education, in college, but not every person/athlete wants that. I understand the whole free tuition and room & board thing but in comparison to how much revenue the athletic department and university is generating off of the players, I can really empathize with them wanting to be reimbursed for their efforts outside of the free education (which a lot of these high end players don't even really want anymore, there is just so few other options out there). They are forced to go to a place to work for what is basically a business, and not see the fruits of their labor. A minor league or semi-professional/developmental league really should be set up. But, the schools and NCAA don't want to change it because they are wiping their asses with money from it. The NCAA make an absurd amount of cash just from the NCAA basketball tournament alone.
I see both sides of the argument and I am happy I'll never be a judge who must rule on these lawsuits. I love college athletics the way they are today, but I know a few athletes and ex-athletes on the college level who aren't too happy about it and I can empathize with them too.
