The Athletic Report: Does your college football roster cost $8M or $50M?

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College football’s most carefully guarded secret is the amount of money flowing to the players on each roster. The financial resources a program allocates to build its team each offseason dictate fair expectations for the next season, but precise figures are hard to come by.

This summer, The Athletic’s college football staff tried to find them.

In today’s game, nothing is a better predictor of big-picture success than the money a coach has available to spend on acquiring and retaining talented players. And as schools reconstruct their rosters each offseason, they have to do their homework to understand the market in which they’re competing.

We worked to get as many independent, trustworthy estimates as possible from people inside and outside a program: those who broker the deals, direct the teams from the sidelines on Saturdays and watch the games from luxury boxes. We contacted at least one employee from each school to give them an opportunity to offer information about their roster budgets. Schools typically avoid making their exact player compensation information public, citing everything from state laws to student privacy concerns to competitive disadvantages, but many (though not all) provided at least some input into the ranges below.

The numbers here refer to the amount of money a school had at its disposal to assemble its 2026 roster — setting aside any player income not managed or controlled by the football program, such as endorsements with national brands. The money comes from a combination of athletic department revenue, outside booster donations and other sources that vary from school to school.

Some more context to keep in mind:

Few people inside a college football program building know their school’s exact numbers. And even if they do, many don’t feel comfortable sharing it, even anonymously.

Even if they do talk to a reporter, coaches will often undersell their own budgets. This may be to temper fans’ expectations or to keep their players from asking for even more money.

School administrators, on the other hand, have the opposite incentive. They want people to think their number is higher than it really is, which makes them look like great fundraisers.

And in the background, seemingly everyone associated with a program loves to tell you how much their competitors have. This is especially the case if they believe a rival program has considerably more money than they do — so they can go back to their bosses or boosters and say, “See? We need more.” We examined their figures more skeptically when developing our estimates.

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