Schools don't have to or need to go that far. There is a lot of money to be made for everyone. The sport just needs to have some guardrails as to how it is distributed. Also, making some money while being in an Educational environment has it benefits if properly used and maintained. There have been enough mistakes by all parties without pointing a finger. Hopefully Revenue Sharing will bring some sense to all this. There needs to be contracts and a salary structure just like mini-professional sport. College Athletics have long been a professional operation. Only the coaches were getting paid though. Once you can get some semblance of cost certainty, the sport will be fine. The traditionalists that long for the days of amateurism may still have a problem, but most people are resigned to the reality that the revenue sports in College Athletics will operate similar to the pros in the future.
I wasn't really speaking to P4 schools, but thinking more about the G5 and perhaps even FCS programs out there. I think it's important to remember what big time athletic programs are to schools: Marketing tools. It doesn't really matter if Ohio State's, A&M's, or even South Carolina's athletic departments turn a profit on paper, so long as they bring positive exposure to the school. You need only look at Clemson's and Georgia's growth in annual applications since they became regular CFP participants to understand the intangible benefits of successful revenue sports. A doubling of your applications over a 6 or 8 year period is not only a revenue generator for a school, but it also allows them to be more selective in who they admit - which is an easy way to boost a school's academic reputation without investing one bit in actual academics.
For the programs that can afford to compete at the P4 level, operating professional football and basketball programs makes sense. For the East Carolina's, Southern Miss's, Marshall's, and other G5s of the world, I think the cost/benefit analysis of operating in that manner becomes more difficult. This is especially true if the P4 essentially break away from the rest of the NCAA, taking the vast majority of TV exposure with them. Maybe they drop down to FCS or maybe some of them somewhere decide to drop scholarship athletics altogether, focusing purely on being an academic institution with club sports.
I'm not making predictions (other than one) as I admit I have no idea where all of this is leading. But I think almost anything is on the table and nobody else knows where all of this is leading either. My only prediction is that college football in 20 years will look a lot more different from today's college football than today's college football differs from the product of 20 years ago.
