Agree with most everything you said, but I do think that one of the fallacies in the whole "pay the players" mob that's been out there from the beginning is this illusion that there's a billionaire at the top of the football mountain like Amazon, Walmart, or any other global corporation. There's not.
We can talk about head coaches being overpaid, but they average out at around $3.5M, we can talk about NCAA execs making too much, but Mark Emmert topped out at just over $3M, and most ADs don't make that. The vast majority of this multi-billion dollar pie that keeps getting talked about doesn't go to billionaires. It goes back into the universities to build stadiums, build practice facilities, fund hundreds of other collegiate sport teams, and pay the salaries of the thousands of individuals that work within NCAA athletics.
Now, as you said, the problem is that no one wants to listen to reason or actually look through athletic budgets when talking about NIL, so we're in the midst of one giant "well, y'all figure it out" era of college sports. And who's getting to figure it out for NIL? You said it perfectly. The fans