The only equitable solution for all athletes that play college sports is to make the system for efficient. Despite its warts and everyone pounding the drum of the NCAA's greed, the rules are in place to ensure fairness on all levels across all schools.
The NCAA rules were set way before college football exploded. The rules are tight because people have abused the rules, setting the competitive balance off kilter. The goal of the NCAA is to see that every athlete is treated the same, regardless of their sport and status, whether you deem this to be fair, that's up to you. It is not the NCAA's fault that there hasn't been a sufficient semi pro league created in this country. If it is, its because the NCAA is so successful. So, in theory, you are penalizing the NCAA for being successful, fair?
Everyone rips on the BCS because its "corrupt" and is rigged to help the big schools, in theory, because the big schools make the most money and therefore have the most pull in decisions. People bitch about the lack of competitive balance because of the power that the big schools have, that the smaller schools are being forced to leverage themselves beyond their means or die in the arms race to keep up.
Yet these same people complain about players not getting paid? That these players need to be paid their fair market value and yada yada yada. With what? Whose got the money for that? Only the big schools.
So lets say that the revenue sports are allowed to play players. So, now, our entitled society gets what they want, the NCAA is abolished and in essence the NCAA turns into the minor leagues. The competitive balance is now non existant as schools like Alabama ink deals with an NFL team as feeder program. Sure, they can afford it but what about smaller schools that can't afford to pay for good talent? If they want to win, they have to pull funding for non revenue programs and kids that are on scholarships lose the scholarships. The importance of college football, which has that unheard of unique relevance unheard of in any other college sport is relegated to that of the NBA D-League. The charm of college football is gone because the players don't give a damn anymore, they got paid already, but, yeah, we don't care, its fair right? Market value and all that, we ignore what happened when the NBA was paying kids right out of high school and keep beating that "fairness" drum of "market value".
We rationalize it still, despite the fact that college football sucks right now, all the money your school(which isn't in the top tier) used to get based on tv deals(which had to be rewritten after conferences disbanded) is gone and they drop down to 1-AA because the scholarship system is still active down there, the talent pool sucks and it sure seems a waste but what the hell, we had to give money to immature teenagers rather than try and give them a college education.
By the way, I've yet to see anyone, Jay Bilas included, go into depth on how they would pay players. How would the system work? Provide some detail. Or are we just complaining to complain and don't have a tangible solution other than "pay the players". Give me some actual depth.