I think that in the end, if you tried to pay football players and not other athletes in other collegian sports, particularly women’s sports, it will end up in court and the women will win. Besides that, if you pay players only in sports that are in the black, the other sports cannot survive because the money from football and in some cases basketball pays for all the other sports at many schools. If the money that would normally go to these sports is instead paid to players of the major sports, these minor sports would fold and this would violate Title IX. Since most women’s sports would have to be cut or scaled back, this would constitute major a major violation of the existing law. Even if you managed to somehow survive the court battles over Title IX, I can quarantine there will be new laws to protect women sports and football and other money making sports will have to pay for them.
In short, that is a dumb idea.