You make several good points. Yes, UConn basketball has 2 collectives as well as an “NIL store” where fans can purchase player jerseys and other gear. While I presume that players earn a percentage of sales from the NIL store, I can not find any information on the amount players are compensated by the collectives.
As you point out, for players that are fortunate enough to earn money on social media or from advertisers, that’s their own money. The concern with collectives is that it’s becoming an arms race, with schools increasingly offering ever greater compensation to top players. Recall that a short time before he retired, Nick Saban called on Alabama alumni to substantially increase funding to their collective because the Crimson Tide were falling behind other big time football schools when it came to player compensation.
There’s an obvious danger to competitive college sports. Unless the NCAA or Congress establishes some maximum guidelines to payments by collectives to athletes, we could be looking at the end of college sports as we know it. To some degree, that’s already happening as the P5 increasingly looks like it’s becoming the P2. We all remember what happened to, “The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg.”