After thinking about this more, I believe we’re completely missing the point on this. Aside from the small number of athletic programs that self-fund (OSU, Texas, Alabama, etc.) the overwhelming majority of college athletics even in the power 5 schools, are funded through general tuition dollars and government subsidies. Most college athletics programs don't make money for the university.
So what we're potentially looking at here are students who are going into massive debt to go to college, funding athletic programs that provide full scholarships, training, and more, and then the athletes get paid on top of it? Doesn't make much logic sense, especially when a general student can't dictate where ther tuition is going.
This Washington Post article further illustrates the point.
Excerpt:
"At Texas A&M University, the president’s proposal to charge all 50,000 students $72 a year to help pay for a $450 million football stadium renovation brought protests.
At Clemson University, the athletic director’s idea to charge all 17,000 students $350 a year to help him keep up with competition brought pushback from student government.
At the University of Kansas, a walk-on golfer’s push to eliminate a $50 fee all 17,000 students paid the increasingly wealthy athletic department brought a strong — and to some students, vindictive — response from administrators.
And at many of America’s largest public universities, athletic departments making millions more every year from surging television contracts, luxury suite sales and endorsements continue to take money from tens of thousands of students who will never set foot in stadiums or arenas."
Given the student loan crisis in this country, this is going to become a much larger can of worms when it's all said and done. Not sure how much this winds up actually helping.