A small handful of schools could easily afford to pay players - Texas has so much money they just seem to spend it so their money bin doesn't fill up. Another handful could find the right donors if they felt it could give them a competitive advantage - someone from this group would probably be the first mover. But even among P5 schools, most don't seem to have money within their Athletic Department budget to pay players, or at least to pay them what many of them want (Pac12 attempted players union demanded 50% of athletic revenue be paid to athletes). I agree as much as anybody that the money is messed up in college athletics - coaches are compensated way too high relative to players and the players do deserve more compensation than they get. But the idea that all or most athletics departments are sitting on fat loads of cash is also BS.
IMO, it's wishful thinking to believe this will not end in players being paid. I feel like it makes sense and is in keeping with the spirit of NCAA athletics to allow NIL and maybe some kind of additional stipend or small salary ($10-20k for players in revenue sports beyond the current scholarship/education benefits - enough to make it so the athletes have plenty of money to spend on whatever they want relative to the average college student). But that's not how it will go down. There will be some student athletes who believe they are worth large salaries (and some probably objectively are) who will take it to court to get the pay they feel they deserve. And once that happens, and they win the court battle, players will be paid a market rate. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but it needs to happen in an orderly way by establishing rules like a salary cap for competitive balance and a transition schedule to help the industry restructure their budgets over time since a lot of the money is tied up in long term debt for facilities, etc.
