THey're trying to stop the bleeding after California passed their bill. The NCAA wants to stop it from becoming the Wild Wild West, but it's too late. They got greedy and said no way is anyone allowed to make money, California called their bluff, and now the NCAA is going to have to pay the piper.
And honestly, F 'em. They should have been more reasonable to begin with and it probably wouldn't have gotten to this point.
i would compare California to Andy Messersmith in 1975.
Major league baseball owners had gotten rich off the players for many decades by not letting the players bid their services relative to the market (free agency). Not rich by today's standards, but rich enough, especially when a typical player was making 50-100k. Andy Messersmith and several other players started the 1975 season without contracts, holding out for more money, and to challenge the reserve clause, but most of them backed down and signed as the year went on.
Not Messersmith. He was going to stay the course. Then when the Dodgers owner saw that the long sacred reserve clause was headed for a third party arbitrator, and that the owners could lose, they tried to bribe Andy by sweetening their initial offer. Messersmith basically said to go piss up a rope. He had come this far, he might as well go all the way with this.
Talk about calling someone's bluff! In late 1975 the arbitrator ruled in favor of the players, and free agency was born. Marvin Miller, who should be mentioned in the prayers of every modern day baseball player, then fleeced the owners of everything but their Buster Browns. He came up with the absolutely brilliant idea of requiring a player to have six years of major league service before they could file for free agency. This kept the supply down, but drove the demand way up. Now players with proper service time could sell their services to the highest bidder, and owners who were smart, like George Steinbrenner, were soon lining their office walls with pennants and championships. The rest is history, still evolving and reverberating to this day, thanks in large part to an insignificant and unassuming, but stubborn as a mule, pitcher near the end of his career.
Now the landscape is about to change for NCAA sports. And the schools that figure out how to use this to their advantage are going to be the George Steinbrenners of NCAA sports.