As the college football season ends with the Jan. 19 championship game, there's lingering uncertainty about the future of all college sports in the wake of some recent rule changes.

Those rule changes allow college athletes to be compensated in a couple of very different ways. Unfortunately, much of the debate about the new rules is driven by a fundamental misunderstanding of what has actually changed.

At the center of the confusion is the tendency to confuse two very different concepts into one conversation: name, image and likeness (known as NIL) and pay-for-play. 

NIL rights did not fully create the instability now facing college sports. Instead, the “NIL era” has exposed a system that had been operating without a modern economic framework for decades.

NIL is the right of an athlete to be compensated when his or her name, image or likeness is used commercially. It is comparable to how actors, musicians or other creators are paid when a brand uses their identities.

Pay-for-play, on the other hand, is about compensation for on-field performance within a revenue-generating enterprise.

These are related topics yet disparate in effect, and treating them as the same issue has led to distorted policy decisions and muddled public perception.

When a young actor appears in a national commercial, for example, no one questions whether he should be paid. When a........

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