For Kacie Breeding, this was never about dollars. It was about sense.

“This isn’t about football and basketball,” said Breeding, a Boulder resident, engineer and former Vanderbilt runner who’s one of eight plaintiffs who filed an appeal against the NCAA’s historic antitrust settlement. “I hope you get your bag.

“But we all were athletes at this school … there were not rules in place that we were on different pay rates. We should all be getting paid the same. You think about Caitlin Clark or Livvy Dunne, they’re superstars in their own right. Are you going to pay them minimum wage because they weren’t born male and went into football and basketball?”

Are you a university that receives federal financial aid? Fine. You’re subject to Title IX. Do you insist that your athletes are not entertainers, not contractors, and certainly not employees, because they go to class? Groovy. Then they’re students. Which means they’re subject to Title IX, too.

Look, the “House” settlement, which finally made it over the line last week, is a victory for student-athletes. Anything that pokes a hole in the NCAA’s cartel is a win for college sports.

Yet when you read the fine print, it’s also a fail when it comes to Title IX, the federal mandate preventing discrimination in education that was enacted in 1972. Which is where Breeding’s appeal, filed last Wednesday by the Boulder firm of Hutchinson Black and Cook, comes in.

“(People), if they don’t understand this case, they would say, ‘You’re in this for a money grab,’” Breeding told me Friday. “And I am someone of very strong moral convictions, not someone that would get into something just for the press.

“It’s not going to be a huge payout. This is more of a statement to say, ‘Look, if you’re going to pay reparations, why not pay them to the letter of the law?’”

She also wants to make a couple of things clear. The appeal of last Friday’s “House vs. NCAA” ruling, which will allow colleges to pay student-athletes directly starting July 1, won’t stop the money going to current athletes. What it will do is freeze the $2.8 billion in back damages sent to students who played from 2016-2024.

Because what’s on the table, to Breeding, isn’t Title IX compliant. CBSSports.com reported that distributions are expected to “mirror” the same formula as the back payments: 75% of future revenue will be shared with football players, 15% with men’s basketball players, 5% with women’s basketball players and the remaining 5% to all other sports.

“This settlement as a whole is a response to the commercialization of college sports,” Ashlyn Hare, one of the attorneys representing Breeding and the other seven athletes listed in the appeal, told The Post. “All the (Power 4) schools have made a decision that they’re going to treat their athletes and their sports like big business. And that’s what they want to do; that’s perfectly fine. But they’re still subject to education-related laws like Title IX.”

The Department of Education under former President Joe Biden had suggested, in anticipation of the settlement, that revenue-sharing would be subject to Title IX compliance. That recommendation was rescinded in February when the Trump administration took over the department.

To be compliant with Title IX, a university has to provide opportunities, financial aid and/or scholarships proportionate, by gender, to the campus population as a whole.

In fall 2024, for example, CU reported an undergraduate female enrollment rate of 46.8%. Which is a heck of a lot more than the 10%-ish of revenue sharing on the table. As “House” currently stands, how is the ratio of payments consistent with the law? Or with the core academic mission of a university?

“I think it’s perfectly plausible that we get a court ruling that says Title IX is going to regulate these payments,” Hare said. “(But) I can never predict what the Trump administration is going to do.”

This isn’t the first Title IX rodeo for Hare — or for her peers at Hutchinson Black and Cook, which specializes in federal gender equity law. They’ve taken on some massive cases over the years, most notably the sexual assault case involving CU football roughly 20 years ago, as well as one filed against New York Giants quarterback Jameis Winston when he was at Florida State.

“I would be ashamed to admit how many hours of sleep I got this week,” Hare cracked. “We’ve been extremely busy.”

Their opening brief for the appeal is due on Sept. 3. When I asked how many more Title IX lawsuits were coming now that “House” is official, Hare let out an almost pensive chuckle.

“A lot,” she replied. “I can’t give out an exact number. But it’s going to be a lot.”

After decades of winking, nodding, Teflon and kid gloves, the NCAA’s definition of amateurism is toast. The question is what emerges from the ashes.

Some sort of unionization of student-athletes would open the door for collective bargaining. With players, that’s a chance to codify uniform standards for financial compensation, short-term and long-term health care, workplace standards, hours, et cetera.

For schools, such bargaining might be the only way to get some roster control back when it comes to the transfer portal — contracts to remain at an institution for “X” amount of seasons would be legally binding. Free agency (via the portal) could require a certain amount of tenure first, the way it does in the pros. Everything has to be on the table now.

“I think unionizing college sports would do a lot to alleviate the antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA,” Hare said. “If you have a union, you’re not subject to antitrust suits, at least (within) the realm of employee compensation.”

And athletic directors, administrators and coaches are still employees of a college — not a sports and entertainment academy.

Even with the Deion Sanders Effect, CU athletics still hasn’t been entirely self-sufficient. In the university’s most recent report to the state auditor’s office for the ’23-24 fiscal year that ended last June 30, of the $146.6 million reported in athletics revenues, $27 million of that was categorized as coming from “direct institutional support.” Another $1.6 million stemmed from student fees.

At the same time, football ticket sales provided the single-biggest revenue line item on CU’s ’24 fiscal year — $31.2 million for the fall of 2023. No other Buffs sport reported more than $3 million in ticket revenue. Among women’s sports, only women’s basketball reported more than $125,000.

“Amateurism is dead and gone,” Hare said. “It would be great for athletes to have the ability to be paid by schools. But it’s important to figure out how Title IX is going to factor into that.”

Look, Breeding understands the counterarguments, too. That “House,” at its core, is a framework for economics, not societal gatekeeping. She gets that football is the tide that has to lift all boats. That most women’s sports don’t make money. Why should they receive it?

“That’s a good question,” Breeding said. “Why do we deserve to get paid equally? Because it’s the law. It may not be fair, but if you want to make it fair, you need to change the law.”