Yup. Players are just getting donations from consumers of the sporting event. There is no owner of the team/business, and no actual ROI for your money. It is also not a charity, since there is profit made by the schools themselves, that is not distributed back to players or donors. And there is no official business between the NIL collectives and the teams, just middlemen with the players outside of the programs.
I can't think of anything similar like this. It is totally insane, and yet here we are. It certainly doesn't seem sustainable.
Now, if NIL collective members were able to get a piece of the revenue generated from said sport, that would be more interesting.
It is as much of a sham as the Green Bay Packers "shares" that people buy, but have 0 actual equity in the team.