Odd article, odder response here.
I think deep down we can all recognize that college athletics, specifically college football and to a lesser extent college basketball, operate as a weird hybrid of a professional league (with major television contracts, licensing rights, high priced coaches, ticket revenue, etc) that is comprised of amateur athletes that see little, if any, financial windfall associated with that revenue. College football players are not "amateurs" in the same sense that 1980's ice skaters or track stars were because their talents are sold at a premium as a spectator sport. Further, the NCAA has operated as a de-facto farm league for the NFL for as long as the NFL has been around, hence the reason that the NFL draft exists in the first place.
But there's no reason that a fan of college athletics needs to get defensive about that, or bristle at the suggestion that college athletes, specifically revenue-generating college athletes, should get a financial piece of the massive revenue generated by the product that they produce, because it is not the college systems fault that such a situation exists. Placing the blame for that situation on the NCAA or the colleges is really weird. Colleges have very little to do with that. The number one culprit for the situation has absolutely nothing to do with college. It's not the NCAA that says you can't enter the NFL before you're three years out of high school. The blame for this situation falls very solely in one place: The NFLPA, which sets the age limit restrictions on who can enter the league. As I understand it, they could say 18 year olds are draft eligible tomorrow, and the NCAA would be absolutely powerless to stop them.
As far as professional football for players that have yet to reach draft-eligible age, here's the fact that nobody wants to talk about: There's no market for professional minor leagues anywhere in the US. Nobody will watch professional minor league football without the college brands associated with it. The last 35 years shows that time and time and time again. USFL, WLAF, NFL Europe, XFL, UFL, AAFL, all of them massive failures (and sorry 30 for 30, the USFL was dead in the water long before Donald Trump threw the Hail Mary of a fall schedule). Nobody watches Minor League Baseball. Nobody watches NBA D-League. We wouldn't watch minor league football. Without the college brand associated with NCAA Football, which is what we'd be talking about if these players were to separate from the NCAA, a professional minor league football would be on par with AAA baseball.
So we wouldn't be looking at a "Fair market value" of half a million or whatever, because the predominate source of that value isn't the players themselves it's the college logo on the helmet. Take that logo away, and you're looking at long bus rides and $29k a year. Sweet.