And my dark forecast:
1. I do not think this is a foregone conclusion - a union requires that athletes be defined as workers and I believe that is a long way from being established. If it gets to the current supreme court (and it would) I doubt it survives.
2. While the university is taking in royalties on merchandise, that is a far cry from making profit and the proceeds are being plowed back into the athletic department to pay for benefits being provided to athletes - there are maybe 10 or 20 athletic departments that make a profit each year and that profit is either put into a infrastructure reserve for future upgrades, or put back into the university as scholarship funding or other benefits for the students. Every other athletic department takes money from their university to meet their expenses in fees applied to the general student population or from the university general fund, or in the case of state schools from the state's revenue (taxes.) Now you can look at some of the salaries of coaches and say ... that is an outrageous amount of money for them to be making when the players aren't getting paid but ask the Alabama players if they want to fire the coach and search for a replacement at a reasonable salary of say $200,000 and i suspect you would have a landslide in favor of keeping their coach.
(NB - I figure a football player is getting compensated about $200,000 per year in scholarship, facilities, coaching, training, gear, etc. the scholarship is just the tip of the cost to the university for supporting an athlete.)
What you may end up with, and I really do think this is headed in that direction is 'college' football teams being separated from the actual school as an incorporated entity so that they no longer have to support the rest of the athletic department - except they will have to lease the facilities. And then the Athletic departments will shrink to unrecognizable size - Men's and women's basketball which will balance for title IX at most schools, and maybe a few other teams here and there - the rest turned into club sports.
And a number of those separate entities will fold after ten years of losing seasons and 'conferences' will realign, and scholarship will disappear into pay, and if players actually want to get an education ... sorry, better do it in the off season because I am paying you and that means you are here 8-5 during the season. And then you have a minor league system for the NFL. You want to sell your own Jersey and make money - great, but there is a royalty payment on each jersey to the university to use the name.