If college athletes were to be paid, a "responsible television executive" who received data of unfavorable fan reaction would prepare for a drop in TV ratings by at least 15 to 20 percent, former CBS Sports President Neal Pilson said.

Pilson made the prediction in a rebuttal report filed publicly by the NCAA last week in the Ed O'Bannon lawsuit. Pilson's estimate referred to a report by J. Michael Dennis, a market research expert the NCAA hired, that found 68.9 percent of respondents were "opposed to paying money to student-athletes on college football and men's basketball teams in addition to covering their college expenses."

The survey also found that 37.7 percent of respondents would be less likely to watch, listen to, or attend college football and men's basketball games if athletes were paid $20,000 per year. If provided with such information, Pilson wrote, "a responsible broadcasting executive would reduce the price a broadcaster might be willing to pay for the rights to telecast college sports if college players were to receive payments of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Back in 1984, television ratings dipped despite more college football telecasts after the Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA's restrictive football television package violated antitrust laws. Then, like now, people in college sports predicted the television paydays would be over and non-revenue sports would be hurt.

In a deposition, Pilson said he has not run an economic model on his prediction of a 15- to 20-percent ratings decline. He was asked if he predicted the lower viewership would last forever or simply be a dip like in 1984.

Pilson said there would be a "significant" immediate short-term impact. "Once you have that impact," he said, "the public's perception of the sport changes and you could have a situation where, frankly, there are a few sports that have either receded from the radar or have declined in value, and I would be concerned that college sports might -- might follow that pattern."

Pilson served 14 years as CBS Sports President and now operates Pilson Communications, where he continues to help negotiate contracts in all major sports. He has previously been an expert witness for the NBA and NFL in litigation involving television rights and noted the NCAA compensates him at his usual rate of $825 an hour.

The NCAA used Pilson to counter claims by the O'Bannon plaintiffs' experts, who have argued players should evenly share revenue based on professional sports leagues models. Pilson argued that's flawed in part because his understanding is NFL and NBA collective bargaining agreements do not require the licensing of players' names, images and likenesses depicted in live action.

Instead, the collective bargaining agreements generally contain detailed formulas that divides revenue into pools from multiple sources, Pilson wrote. Team owners then negotiate individual salaries for each player so a licensing fee from TV revenue indirectly is paid to NFL and NBA players.

Economist Roger Noll, an expert for the O'Bannon plaintiffs, previously argued that because some amateur sports permit some reimbursement of expenses or endorsements, the NCAA's amateurism rules prohibiting money from live TV can't survive antitrust scrutiny. If that's true, Pilson countered, "then the same rules in other amateur sports that are broadcast on television could not survive antitrust scrutiny."

Pilson said following that logic, every player in the Little League World Series would be entitled to an equal share of 50 percent of ESPN's $7.5 million annual licensing fee. That would be $16,741 for each 12-year-old appearing on TV, Pilson wrote.

Pilson made the argument that changes in technology and the structure of the broadcast industry -- not changes in NCAA rules or conferences' and schools' priorities -- caused significantly higher broadcast licensing fees in college sports.

In the 1970s, only three broadcasters bid for the rights to telecast major sporting events. Today, in addition to ABC, CBS, NBC and now Fox, cable television has multiple ESPN channels, CBS Sports Network, NBC Sports Network, Fox Sports 1 and regional cable networks, plus live streaming capabilities.

Pilson noted that in 2012, the viewing audience for the Notre Dame-USC football game and the Final Four was larger than Major League Baseball's All-Star Game, the average audience for each World Series game, and more than five times larger the avergage viewership for the Stanley Cup Finals. This popularity in college sports created competition and more valuable properties, Pilson said.

What the O'Bannon plaintiffs "call the 'commercialization' of college sports is nothing more than schools' decisions not to refuse revenues available to them," Pilson wrote.

Pilson's report suggests that college sports would become far less popular, and in some ways equivalent to minor league sports, if players are paid.

The idea that college athletes "play for the love of the game" is the core notion of college sports, Pilson said. "To the extent that the viewing public believes in this ideal, paying student-athletes would undermine the cornerstone of the viewing public's belief that student-athletes play for the love of the game," Pilson wrote.

Also, the perception that unpaid college players are a team rather than separate individuals grouped together for economic reasons "is critical in shifting the focus of college sports viewers from the student-athletes, who are less elite players, to the school the student-athlete plays for, which connotes tradition, loyalty and community," Pilson wrote.