College football’s most closely guarded secret may be the sheer volume of money flowing to players on each roster. The financial resources a program allocates to build its team each offseason set expectations for the next season, yet precise figures remain elusive.
This summer, The Athletic‘s college football staff set out to find them.
In today’s game, nothing predicts big-picture success more reliably than the money a coach has available to spend on acquiring and retaining talent. As schools reconstruct their rosters each offseason, they must understand the market in which they’re competing.
We gathered as many independent, trustworthy estimates as possible from people inside and outside programs: those who broker deals, direct teams from the sidelines, and watch games from luxury boxes. We contacted at least one employee from each school to offer information about their roster budgets. Schools typically avoid making exact player compensation public, citing state laws, student privacy concerns, and competitive disadvantages, but many provided at least some input into the ranges below.
Estimated roster budgets of teams in the Power 4 conferences (and Notre Dame)
These figures represent the money a school had available to assemble its 2026 roster — excluding player income not managed by the football program, such as endorsements with national brands. The money comes from athletic department revenue, outside booster donations, and other sources that vary by institution.
Keep the following caveats in mind:
- Few people inside a college football program know their school’s exact numbers. Even if they do, many won’t share them, even anonymously.
- Coaches often undersell their own budgets. This may temper fans’ expectations or prevent players from demanding more money.
- School administrators have the opposite incentive. They want their number perceived as higher, which makes them look like effective fundraisers.
- Everyone associated with a program loves to cite competitors’ figures. This is especially true when they believe a rival has considerably more money — providing leverage to say, “See? We need more.” We examined such claims more skeptically.
That said, we believe our ranges represent the best and most detailed information available today.
The best teams are, on average, the ones paying players the most
Before name, image and likeness money and the transfer portal, the best predictor of success was usually high school recruiting class rankings. Today, it’s the roster budget. A program spending $40 million is expected to beat ones spending half that.
The data confirms this. The chart below shows average NIL budgets grouped by Austin Mock’s most recent forecast for College Football Playoff eligibility. Teams with the best shot at a Playoff berth are largely the ones with the biggest budgets.
Playoff estimates are according to Austin Mock’s projections as of Sept. 15. Ranges here represent the averages of each group’s minimum and maximum estimates. Only teams in the Power 4 conferences, plus Notre Dame, are included in these averages.
But there are exceptions. On Sept. 12, Oregon, believed to be spending around $50 million, lost to Oklahoma State, whose estimate is below $20 million. Clemson has the ACC’s second-highest estimate, yet lost last year to some of the league’s lowest spenders in Duke and Syracuse. The numbers can serve as a proxy for overachieving and underperforming teams.
Our estimates, conference by conference
Eleven of the top 20 spenders are in the SEC, compared to six in the Big Ten, including newcomers USC and Oregon.
Player investment was a way of life in the SEC long before the NCAA loosened its NIL rules. As bowl games’ importance and excitement have dwindled, the Playoff has become the only postseason that matters.
For those 11 schools, a trip to the ReliaQuest Bowl or the Music City Bowl isn’t enough of a return on investment.
If it feels like Alabama ($38-42 million) and Georgia ($31-34 million) aren’t quite as loaded as they were pre-NIL, these numbers offer a hint as to why. Crimson Tide coach Kalen DeBoer, and particularly Georgia’s Kirby Smart, don’t seem to be swimming in the same pool as other perceived national championship contenders.
After beating Miami in the national title game, Indiana coach Curt Cignetti said, “Our NIL is nowhere near where people think it is.” But in fact, the Hoosiers ($36-40 million) are top-five in the Big Ten, right in line with blue bloods Michigan and USC.
That Ohio State and Oregon are in a tier of their own should not surprise anyone who has followed the roster budget arms race. The Buckeyes consistently rank at or near the top of the national leaderboard in annual athletics revenue. Similarly, the Ducks have been on the cutting edge of college football’s resources battle for almost a generation.
Although the Big Ten’s highest spenders are at the top nationally, the gap from top to bottom is wider than its biggest rival conference. Half of our estimates for Big Ten teams are below $25 million, roughly the baseline for bottom-end SEC teams. Yet the Big Ten has flipped the conference supremacy narrative by winning three straight national championships with three different programs.
Miami is spending like a national title contender and getting results. The Hurricanes are deploying around $15 to $20 million more than any other team in the conference — essentially on par with the sport’s biggest spenders — and have a roster that looks the part.
Clemson and Florida State aren’t spending as much as Miami, but they’re near the front of the ACC pack and not seeing results so far this season, though it’s still early.
Why is the rest of the ACC so unpredictable? With this little separation in roster costs, it’s only natural there’s little separation on the field.
Some may be surprised that Texas Tech ($38-42 million) did not land in our highest spending tier and was actually behind bigger spenders like Notre Dame and Texas A&M. Keep in mind, though, Tech likely shaved $3-4 million when embattled quarterback Brendan Sorsby, a coveted transfer from Cincinnati found to have committed thousands of NCAA gambling violations, left the team this summer and abandoned a fight to retain his eligibility.
A whopping 12 of the 16 Big 12 teams have ranges starting below $20 million, compared with six in the ACC and four in the Big Ten.
The Big 12 also has three programs relatively new to the power conference landscape and the media revenue it offers. Cincinnati, Houston and UCF were all in the American in 2022 before joining the Big 12 in 2023.
Desperate to help stabilize the market, the NCAA and Power 4 continue to lobby Congress to pass the Protect College Sports Act. If passed in its current form, the bill would create a new parallel revenue sharing cap for roster retention of $22.5 million, plus $5 million reserved for women’s and Olympic sports.
All told, schools could be permitted to spend around $49 million. But of course, several football programs already spend more than that. And the list will likely be even longer next fall.
