College football now plays under a totally different media system than 20 years ago. No one can argue that, right? The fact some schools, like Alabama, are critical drivers of media companies' bottom lines goes a long freakin' way in this entire scheme.
If NBC had been even a quarter as powerful as Disney/ESPN/CBS when they struck their '91 deal with Notre Dame, would anyone argue that didn't provide Notre Dame with cover to do virtually anything they liked?
The argument here can go on forever, but it cannot be reasonably argued today's landscape is anything like it was when I started following recruiting in 1996-97 out of a **** computer lab in my old school.