The fast takeaway from the landmark $2.8 billion settlement that the N.C.A.A. and the most important athletic conferences accepted on Thursday was that it lower straight on the coronary heart of the group’s cherished mannequin of amateurism: Colleges can now pay their athletes straight.

However one other bedrock precept stays intact, and sustaining it’s more likely to be a precedence for the N.C.A.A.: that gamers who’re paid by the colleges should not employed by them, and subsequently should not have the precise to collectively cut price.

Congress should “set up that our athletes should not workers, however college students in search of faculty levels,” John I. Jenkins, the president of the College of Notre Dame, said in an announcement when the settlement was introduced.

It’s the N.C.A.A.’s try and salvage the final vestiges of its beginner mannequin, which for many years barred faculty athletes from being paid by colleges or anybody else with out risking their eligibility. That stance got here underneath higher authorized and political scrutiny lately, resulting in the settlement, which nonetheless requires approval by a choose.

On its face, the argument could appear peculiar. Over the previous decade, public strain and a collection of court docket rulings — to not point out the fact that faculty athletics generated billions of {dollars} in annual income and that athletes acquired none of it — have compelled the N.C.A.A. to unravel restrictions on participant compensation. A California regulation that made it unlawful to dam faculty athletes from identify, picture and likeness, or N.I.L., offers paved the best way for athletes to hunt compensation, a few of them receiving seven figures yearly.

On the identical time, faculty sports activities have develop into an more and more nationwide enterprise. Regional rivalries and traditions have been tossed apart as colleges have switched convention allegiances in pursuit of TV cash. Particular person conferences can now stretch from Palo Alto, Calif., to Chestnut Hill, Mass., which means many athletes in a wide range of sports activities are spending extra time touring to video games and fewer time on campus.

“I don’t understand how you wouldn’t name them workers at this level,” mentioned Adam Hoffer, director of Excise Tax Coverage on the Tax Basis and a former professor of economics on the College of Wisconsin-La Crosse. “The N.C.A.A. goes to look an increasing number of like knowledgeable league than it ever has earlier than.”

However the stance suits into the N.C.A.A.’s long-running place that the classification of athletes as workers is a possible loss of life knell for faculty sports activities. In February, the group’s president, Charlie Baker, said Congress wanted to enact laws to guard the “95 p.c” of faculty athletes who he contended could be harmed by a ruling that acknowledged them as workers. He mentioned that many universities, these exterior the so-called energy conferences, misplaced cash already on athletics and that spending extra to pay gamers may lead some to get rid of groups.

Lots stays unclear in regards to the settlement, which arose from an antitrust lawsuit. If a federal choose in California approves it, colleges will determine the way to divide up the income they put aside for sharing with athletes — as a lot as $20 million.

By settling, the N.C.A.A. is banking on receiving an antitrust exemption from Congress, which might shield it from additional lawsuits over compensation that’s says would damage its capacity to make its personal guidelines. In recent times, the group has spent thousands and thousands lobbying the federal government to create an antitrust exemption just like the one which skilled baseball enjoys.

The settlement can be an N.C.A.A. try and cap the amount of cash its establishments should pay athletes, mentioned William W. Berry III, a professor of regulation on the College of Mississippi who has studied the difficulty of participant compensation in faculty athletics. Beneath the method laid out by the plaintiffs within the case, the settlement would pay gamers round 22 p.c of future income. Mr. Berry famous that was a lot decrease than the shares paid to gamers in skilled leagues like Nationwide Soccer League and the Nationwide Basketball Affiliation.

“What they’ve finished with the settlement is that they’re saying, ‘We’re going to share a few of the income with you,’” Mr. Berry mentioned, including {that a} loss in court docket may have funneled much more cash to the gamers and been financially ruinous for the N.C.A.A.

On the heels of the allowance of N.I.L., athletes have sought to collectively cut price. In February, a federal choose in Boston dominated that gamers on the Dartmouth males’s basketball group had the precise to unionize and ought to be thought-about workers. Dartmouth is interesting the choice. On the College of Southern California, soccer and basketball gamers are in search of the precise to unionize and to be categorised as workers. The settlement may bolster these arguments.

“One of many hallmarks of employment is you get compensated on your companies,” mentioned Matthew Mitten, a professor of regulation at Marquette College and the chief director of the Nationwide Sports activities Legislation Institute.

However the settlement, by itself, is unlikely to deliver a couple of sweeping push for unionization in faculty athletics. Dartmouth is a small, personal college in New Hampshire, which has legal guidelines favorable to unionizing. Many soccer powerhouses, just like the College of Alabama and the College of Georgia, are in right-to-work states, the place unionization efforts face stiff authorized and political roadblocks.

And compensation with out unionization is likely to be the popular route for some athletes on the greatest revenue-generating colleges.

“I feel it’s fairly unlikely that the athletes on the Energy 4 colleges are going to wish to unionize,” Mr. Mitten mentioned, referring to the Atlantic Coast, Massive Ten, Massive 12 and Southeastern Conferences.

However the N.C.A.A. is going through a sea change, even when its athletes aren’t referred to as workers.

“The truth that colleges will possible be required to pay these gamers means the present enterprise mannequin has to alter,” Mr. Hoffer mentioned.