Because y’all are talking about 2 different values. Value of athlete to school. Value of name/likeness to athlete. Garrett Gilbert was all world coming out of high school. Champion from Austin. Gatorade USA Today. Played for the Longhorns. Took snaps during a NCG game. Started for another Texas team in an affluent urban area. Is anybody in Austin or Dallas running out today to buy Gilbert jerseys, Gilbert sausage links, is he doing local radio or TV ads? The value of his name and likeness peaked somewhere in Sept/Oct 2010. He could win back to back to back AAF championships and it wouldn’t matter. The value of his name and likeness was greatest only due to the eyeballs on UT athletics. There are amazing athletes all over the world. Thousands capable of amazing feats I’ll never even know about. The ones that sell me drinks, chapstick, and wrangler jeans are household names, because they were on TV breaking records again and again so often they became household names, not because they had some amazing athletic potential at 18 yo leaving HS. They’re related values but different. The athletic ability is definitely worth something to the schools, but the athlete’s name, likeness, and fame is valuable due to the hours of free marketing the school/sport provide to argue otherwise is disingenuous.