[fiftyfifty]

We saw during Covid that as soon as there was a tiny bit of financial stress on athletic departments they immediately started cutting non-revenue sports, here's a fairly complete list from the last year:

https://businessofcollegesports.com/tracker-college-sports-p...

You can see from that list that the vast majority of sports that were cut were non-revenue, men's sports. $1.05M lost to paying the football team could just as likely be covered by cutting one or two non-revenue sports as it is by raising ticket prices. The reality is attendance of college football games was already down before Covid, even for powerhouse schools like the University of Georgia:

https://ugawire.usatoday.com/2019/03/27/college-football-gam...

It is extremely unlikely that even the biggest football schools will be able to cover the cost of paying their players through increase ticket prices when they are already concerned about filling seats.

[hervature]

I wouldn't constitute COVID "a tiny bit of financial stress". That list is clearly temporary cuts. Stanford "cut" all sports programs and now they are all back. Your second article states that fans just prefer to watch on TV. Thus, the schools will make it back in more lucrative TV contracts.

But your entire argument lacks the essential point that salaries will be market driven. That, already, most programs cannot pay for their athletes. That scholarships and world class facilities and coaching are more than sufficient compensation. Scholarships again being pennies on the dollar for the university. We're talking on the order of a dozen schools that are willing to pay and 100 players that will realistically get any type of meaningful compensation.