Does Your College Football Roster Cost $8M or $50M?

The Athletic conducted a comprehensive study of how much money teams spend on college football rosters. It is a lot. They spoke with as many people as possible across the programs to establish basic number ranges.

I wasn’t surprised by Illinois’s number ($19- $23M). I was surprised by how low it is compared to others in the conference. Illinois is below the conference average, with only Minnesota, Iowa, and Purdue spending less.

Unsurprisingly, the best teams are, on average, the ones paying players the most.

Back in the days before name, image and likeness money and the transfer portal, the best predictor of a team’s success was usually its high school recruiting class ranking. Today, it’s the roster budget. A program spending $40 million is expected to beat ones spending half that.

This is clear in the data. The chart below shows the average NIL budgets grouped by Austin Mock’s most recent forecast for whether a school will make the College Football Playoff. The teams with the best shot at a Playoff berth are, by and large, the ones with the biggest budgets

If you want college football to go back to the way it was before, that ship has sailed. Today’s college football is the haves and the have-nots.

Finding donors and the money to acquire the talent needed to succeed is all that matters. Amazing facilities are a given. World-class nutrition and staff are a given. Championship-caliber coaches are a given. The fourth leg on that stool is a $50 million roster budget year after year.