Questions, we've got questions

 OK, soooo ... now what?

Now that the NCAA and its five power conferences have at last all but admitted the obvious -- that they're a wholly for-profit corporate entity -- where does college athletics go from here?

Question No. 1.

Now that they've settled three pending antitrust suits by agreeing to cough up $2.7 billion over 10 years to the college athletes who made the power fives a wholly for-profit corporate entity to begin with, who foots the bill?

Question No. 2.

And ... now that the NCAA and its five power conferences have agreed to a revenue-sharing plan separate from the Name, Image and Likeness deals that have turned college athletics into a largely unrestricted marketplace, how will that work, exactly?

Question No. 3.

Others: How do Title IX regs fit into all this? Ditto the non-power five conferences that by necessity operate under entirely different economic strictures? How much of this $2.7 billion legal burden will they have to shoulder, and why the hell should they be asked to shoulder any of it given that it's the power conferences driving this bus?

How much revenue does, say, a Ball State-Eastern Michigan football game on a lovely fall afternoon generate? How much TV money? And if Ball State and Eastern Michigan have to dip into that assumed pittance as part of the settlement, how do Ball State and Eastern Michigan have enough left over to fund, I don't know, women's softball or men's golf?

And, OK, so maybe that's not how this will work. I'll be the first to profess to a certain cluelessness in that regard. But that's the problem here, is it not?

Everyone's pretty much clueless, at this point. No one knows exactly how the dominos will fall. It remains extremely murky how the NCAA is going to satisfy the power fives' unending lust for Everests of cash -- which got them into this mess to begin with -- and still serve the interests of the 22 or so other conferences who operate in an utterly different economic reality.

In exchange for stacks of guarantee money, after all, the Ball States and Eastern Michigans already serve up their football players as a live sacrifice to Alabama Inc. and Georgia Inc. and Michigan/Ohio State/Etc. Inc. Everyone wins in those deals, theoretically: The Inc.'s get to feed their endlessly needy alumni a few satisfying ass-whuppin's, and the ass-whupped Ball States and Eastern Michigans get to limp home with some desperately needed cash.

How does this settlement remedy that? NCAA is still laboring under the same old delusions. Public statements from officials involved made that painfully clear: NCAA capo Charlie Baker said the settlement will "provide clarity in college athletics across all divisions for years to come"; Notre Dame president John Jenkins, meanwhile, said it will provide "temporary stability," and that now it's up to Congress to pass legislation establishing that "our athletes are not employees, but students seeking college degrees."

Apparently he missed the part about the revenue-sharing, which basically establishes that those "students seeking college degrees" are, in fact, employees. Because why would you share revenue with someone unless they were the generators of that revenue, and not just divinity majors playing intercollegiate sports for funsies?

Yet another question.