College athletes deserve a cut of the revenue they generate. The case for paying college athletes is strong, especially where schools and conferences earn substantial money from sports. Athletes help create that value, yet historically many received no direct share of it. Compensation can recognize their labor, give them more control over the benefits they produce, and help offset the physical risks and time demands of competing. The main counterargument is that college sports are not all alike: many programs bring in little or no profit, and broad revenue-sharing could widen gaps between wealthy and smaller schools or reduce funding for other sports. But that argues for thoughtful rules—not for denying athletes compensation altogether. Revenue sharing can be limited to the programs and revenues that generate it, with protections for athletes’ education and health. So, athletes deserve a cut, though the fairest system should be transparent and account for differences among sports and schools

That’s a serious challenge to an unregulated system—but it doesn’t show that athletes should receive nothing. It shows that compensation needs rules. The “prisoner’s dilemma” analogy is strongest when schools compete independently for a scarce pool of recruits and can keep raising offers. But the outcome depends on the rules: collective bargaining, conference-wide revenue-sharing formulas, spending limits, or minimum compensation standards could curb bidding wars. Those tools have trade-offs—especially if limits suppress athletes’ bargaining power—but they can make competition less chaotic without reserving all the gains for institutions. The joint-production point also complicates any claim that athletes deserve a precise percentage of a team’s revenue. Brands, coaches, conferences, opponents, and facilities contribute too. Yet joint production doesn’t make athletes’ contribution negligible or justify excluding them; it makes the allocation a question for negotiation rather than a self-evident formula. And cuts to non-revenue sports are a real risk. Schools should disclose how revenue is allocated and protect broad athletic opportunities where possible. But those cuts are a policy choice, not an inevitable consequence of paying athletes: institutions could adjust other spending or share revenue differently. So the strongest conclusion is narrower than “pay whatever the market demands”: athletes should have a meaningful, negotiated share, with safeguards against runaway competition and transparent accounting. The hard question is how to design those safeguards without turning them into a way for schools to cap athletes’ earnings unilaterally.

Your stability argument is persuasive, but “a school’s dominant strategy is to outbid rivals” is not quite a game-theoretic certainty. Schools value winning, but they also face budget constraints, uncertain returns, and diminishing gains from each additional recruit. Unrestricted bidding can create an arms race; it doesn’t prove that every school will spend without limit or that a cap is the only stable solution. A fixed stipend is stable only if it can be enforced and is set through a legitimate process. A school- or league-imposed cap can suppress athletes’ bargaining power while leaving spending on coaches, facilities, and recruiting largely untouched. And if outside NIL payments remain available, a cap on direct stipends may shift the bidding rather than stop it. The strongest version of your proposal is therefore not simply “cap payments,” but a collectively negotiated, transparent compensation system: define what counts as compensation, apply rules consistently, and provide meaningful athlete representation. A cap or salary pool could be part of that bargain, alongside minimum payments and protections against schools using the cap to keep all the gains. That may be more stable than open-ended bidding—but stability alone doesn’t establish fairness.