When I wrote my 2014 article on the two major schools of thought on how to fix the NCAA ( https://deadspin.com/how-not-to-reform-the-ncaa-1614553705), I had views like this in mind as the opposite of my approach. @azimbalitw thinks the answer is more caps, not fewer. I obviously disagree. https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewzimbalist/2021/01/16/the-ncaa-cant-make-up-its-mind-heres-some-help/

Quick summary of the differences. The two Andys (Z and S) agree that if athletes' pay for services could be set by a competitive market, the excess paid to coaches (and for facilities) would revert to the appropriate market rate. But ...

Andy Z argues for keeping the money the athletes would earn and just making sure coaches don't get it. In essence, the collusion that extracts the value continues, but the beneficiary changes from coach to university.

In contrast, I argue for ending the collusive extraction.

Though I came to this originally from a dry theory perspective, over time, I've come to feel that denying athletes the value they would earn in a competitive market is not just contrary to antitrust principles, but also denies athletes their full personhood. By which I mean...

if you start with the idea that the athletes' right to compensation is as strong or stronger than the university's right to extract value through collusion then the idea of continuing the collusion seems ridiculous, even if there are more worthy beneficiaries.

(where "worthy" of course is in the eye of the beholder).

The full personhood approach takes the decision of who is most worthy of the $ out and replaces it with "whose rights deserve to be respected as superior to others' preferences"

To expand away from this Zimbalist piece, much of the debate over athlete compensation suffers from a disconnect b/w those who see athletes as possessing full personhood, and those who do not. If you do not, it's easy to think of the value athletes create as up for grabs/debate.

Why shouldn't academia get a slice of this unclaimed money.

But from a rights perspective, the money isn't unclaimed -- it's absconded with by others but it belongs where the market would assign it under competition -- to the athletes.