Where college football compensation stands right now

We're well into college football season. It's a huge pull for universities in terms of bragging rights and money.

Just how much of that money goes to the athletes actually playing the game, however, is a closely held secret of the various sports programs.

But reporters from The Athletic went digging and came up with some numbers on just how much schools are paying their football roster. There's a huge range: Some teams spend as little as $8 million to pay players, while others pay more than $50 million.

Sam Khan Jr. is a senior writer at The Athletic and contributed to the project. He recently joined “Marketplace Morning Report” host Kimberly Adams to discuss more. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Kimberly Adams: College football players have only been allowed to be paid directly since like 2021, and schools can now pay them up to about $20 million. But your reporting shows top programs are spending as much as three times more. How are schools getting around that limit?

Sam Khan Jr.: There's two different buckets of money that players can be paid from in college sports. One, there's the direct revenue sharing, which went into effect in 2025 after the House vs. NCAA settlement cleared the way for schools to directly pay players. Because up until that point, schools were not allowed to pay players directly; they had to funnel it through third party, and even that only started, as you mentioned, in 2021, and that's the name, image, and likeness — the NIL — bucket. Now, the House settlement in 2025 allowed schools to pay directly and with a cap initially of $20.5 million. This year, it's up to $21.3 million. Anything above that has to be through third-party NIL, which is subject to approval from the College Sports Commission, the governing body that enforces and overviews these deals.

Adams: So, what did you actually find, though?

Khan: When you look at the schools in the top 15, top 20 of this list, that's where most of the schools that are going to contend for the college football playoff and contend for national championship are going to come from. The schools at the bottom, are there going to be some that are going to be able to make it? Sure. And if you're able to have a set of circumstances that enable you to get there, that's absolutely possible every year. But there's no doubt that if you have more money and you have more resources, you're going to be able to attract the better players, and if you're going to attract the better players, that gives you a better chance to win bottom line.

Adams: There's a bill in Congress, the Protect College Sports Act, that would let schools spend an additional $22 million on player compensation. But given your reporting that some of these schools are already spending $50 million, what would this legislation actually change?

Khan: Basically, it would put a cap — a hard cap, essentially — on what a school can spend. It would basically turn the revenue-sharing cap that we have, keep that in place, and then add a cap for how much they can fund beyond that. If the bill were to pass, which I think there are still a lot of hurdles to get that done, the hope from leadership that is trying to pass this is that it would slow down and potentially hard-cap what the spending could be at all levels.

Adams: Now, critics are arguing that this legislation hands conferences even more control over athletes, just as they were starting to gain more financial leverage. What provisions in particular are they concerned about?

Khan: In pro sports like the NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball, there are players' unions that are representing the players and that can negotiate at the bargaining table for what they want and make concessions or make assertions of what they want. If this bill passes, it doesn't necessarily eliminate it because there's nothing in the bill that prevents collective bargaining from happening, but I think there's a fear from opponents of this bill that it would essentially squash any shot that athletes would have to have a voice at the table when it comes to setting the rules of play and the structure of the sport.