We're coming to the point sadly where many long time big Husker fans, like me, are starting to question whether we even want to engage in this anymore past just enjoying all of the games on TV.
I'm not trying to disparage anything you said above and in the context of where things are now, you're spot on in many ways. The biggest problem is that this has become just too exhausting for many of the fans. For the past 3 years, we've essentially done what was patently illegal and disgraceful in the past, shoveling booster money to players to get them to come to your school. We did this under the fraudulent notion that it's NIL money, when in fact, except for some Ads using certain players, it's just laundered booster money. SMU was given the death penalty in the 80s for what is done openly at every school now.
Now the NCAA is making a feeble attempt at bringing some order to this by letting the schools directly pay athletes up to I believe $20.5 million a year for all sports combined and then somehow thinking that they can approve NIL deals before they can be accepted to make sure they're legitimate. Lets see how long that lasts before the first lawsuit comes out challenging a denial of a NIL deal. Then the NCAA will cave again and we'll have direct paying players and booster money laundering too!
The only way the NCAA could have avoided this is to stand by their extra benefit rules in court and fight it to the death, making the case that playing sports in college is elective and if you don't like the rules, you can choose not to participate and go straight to the pros. They then could tell the NBA and the NFL that they need to accept players out of high school at their discretion and create minor league systems for these players who can and want to be paid now, but the NCAA will not bring on pro players. They then could have argued that there is no collective bargaining agreement with the players in college sports no more so than there's a collective bargaining agreement with a graduate student in Engineering who works under a $10 million grant or payment from some business.
But the NCAA lawyers are 1) cowards, and 2) stocked with people who actually think the current shit show was a good idea.
Same with you, sorry this was long.