Writing this column on Monday afternoon, I can only guess at the final score of the big game between Ohio State and Oregon. But I certainly know who the winners are in this first ever “true” national championship college football game.

ESPN, which bought the rights to the four-team College Football Playoff ($7.3 billion for 12 years) is a winner. The two bowl games in the first round of the playoffs, which were played on New Year’s Day, were the two highest-rated shows in the history of cable television. For Monday night’s championship game, ESPN charged $1 million for a 30-second ad.

The five “power conferences” are winners. For years, they resisted a college football playoff, partly because they feared it would lessen the importance of the regular season. It is already obvious that the College Football Playoff has made this season more exciting and . to sweeten the deal . far more lucrative, netting each conference some $50 million a year.

The coaches for the two teams are winners: Oregon’s Mark Helfrich, who makes $2 million a year, plus up to $1.1 million in bonuses, will get an extra $250,000 if his Ducks win. Ohio State’s Urban Meyer, who makes $4.5 million a year, got a big bonus just for making the four-team playoff. Phil Knight, the co-founder of Nike, is a winner. Both Ohio State and Oregon wear Nike gear. Plus, Knight has spent more than $300 million over the years ensuring that his beloved Ducks . he’s an Oregon native . have the best of everything. The game Monday night was his reward.

In the long march to maximize revenue in college sports, there has never been an event quite so nakedly about money as the College Football Playoff. Even the March Madness basketball championship tournament, which nets the N.C.A.A. around $800 million annually, has a certain charm that arises from those inevitable, and wonderful, early-round upsets.

On media day . yes, the College Football Playoff held a media day, just like the pros do in advance of the Super Bowl . several players noted all the money swirling around them, and wondered why they weren’t getting any of it. Bill Plaschke, the longtime sports columnist for The Los Angeles Times, wrote afterward that the playoff system had changed his view that a college education was reward enough for college athletes. He described media day as “the day college football officially turned pro,” and he added that it “truly seems ridiculous that the players are not sharing even a small piece of this value they create.”Paradoxically, this emphasis on money-above-all-else, while creating unimaginable riches for the people who administer college sports, has also created a sense of crisis. Idealistic reformers are calling for universities to re-emphasize education. These reformers appear to have the ear of the White House. (Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, who played basketball at Harvard, is allied with this group.) There is talk of a presidential commission on college sports.

Meanwhile, USA Today reports that the conference commissioners, and other members of the college sports industrial complex, have formed a group called the Coalition to Save College Sports. Its goal is to get out the message that college athletes already have a good deal . without compensation. “Thanks to the way college sports are run,” their leaders wrote in an email, “student-athletes gain an education, learn skills, and have opportunities in life.” In other words, now that we’ve gotten ours, we want to make sure the players don’t get theirs.

The central conundrum is that universities are simply not built to run a multibillion-dollar entertainment industry. The only way they can do it is by looking the other way at certain practices, and making allowances for good athletes who don’t care much about college itself. One of the reasons I advocate paying football and men’s basketball players is that it would at least ensure that they got something for their efforts.

The starting quarterback for Ohio State in Monday night’s championship game was Cardale Jones. He would seem to be exactly the kind of athlete that the college sports industrial complex points to when it talks about how a college scholarship can help a “student athlete” better his life.

Cardale, a sophomore at Ohio State, grew up in a rough neighborhood in Cleveland, the youngest of six children raised by a single mother. Until recently, he was the team’s third-string quarterback; indeed, the only reason he was getting to starting the game was because the two quarterbacks in front of him were hurt. Unlikely to have a pro career, you’d think he would embrace the opportunity to get a free education.

Yet a few years ago, Jones tweeted, “Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain’t come to play SCHOOL classes are POINTLESS.”That is the circle that can’t be squared, no matter how many presidential commissions . or coalitions to save college sports . try.