They are separate. However, they are definitely related as NIL has been applied
Before NIL: Bag men at some schools paid some players in an illicit manner
With NIL: While intended to essentially allow endorsements, it opened the door to legalize the bag men money and bring in tons of other money through donations to simply play players for enrolling in a university and putting on pads. It essentially legalized private booster money to pay players.
With Collective Bargaining: Players would be paid by the university. NIL will still exist. There are obvious questions of how you determine comp, and how a CB agreement would handle comp for a 5star QB vs 3-star OL. The ultimate question raised by PSUSignore's post is how a university's ability to play players would impact funding and importance of NIL.
NIL was supposed to allow kids to get paid for signing autographs, endorsing something, or having a youtube channel, for example. It is being used as a way to recruit and pay players for playing football directly. NIL collectives solicit donations specifically for this purpose. Depending on the structure of the CBA, if the university is going to pay players, they can solicit donations to the university (and not some private collective) for this purpose. Does the CBA lessen the need for collectives to hand out bags of cash? Does the CBA include a control that all NIL contracts need to pass a fair market value test (ie a player can receive a $1M for endorsing Dr Pepper, but $1M to show up for 3 hours at a local car dealer is obvously not FMV). I'm of the belief that CFB will implode if it continues on the current trajectory. So whatever happens, I'd like to see NIL be what it was intended to be - a kid can be paid for use of his/her Name, Image, or Likeness (Sign autographs, endorse a business, let EA Sports include your name/likeness in it's NCAA video game, have a social media channel, etc.) I don't think anyone begrudges a kid making some money while in college. I do think that amateurs acting like professionals will lessen interest and is not a viable business model in the long run. Yes Lando, I know you say that the numbers disagree and the youngsters especially, don't care, but IMHO things have changed so quickly that the market hasn't caught up yet. Time will tell. It doesn't need to be rehashed here yet again.