UHND.com - Notre Dame Football, Basketball, & Recruiting

A lot of guesswork, so I wouldn't get hung up on any specific numbers..... Once again, college football is in serious need of leadership. I thought the CSC was supposed to enforce some guardrails.

For 2025‑26, the best published “team payroll” proxies are the NIL‑NCAA estimated football roster costs (revenue sharing + committed NIL) plus a few supplemental NIL reports; these are directional, not audited.
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Specific schools
All figures below are 2025‑26 football roster cost estimates unless noted otherwise.
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Ohio State: $33.5M.
​Texas Tech: $28.0M; media reports describe Texas Tech as a national NIL spender with football NIL in roughly the $20–30M range inside a broader $50M+ athletic NIL push.
​Miami (FL): $24.406M.
​Indiana: $21.1M.
​Notre Dame: Notre Dame is an FBS independent and is not in the CFP‑team roster‑cost table; the same NIL‑NCAA report estimates independent FBS revenue‑sharing authority at about $19.25M per school, implying a low‑ to mid‑20s millions effective football roster cost once third‑party NIL is layered on.
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SEC reference points
The NIL‑NCAA CFP table plus its conference revenue‑sharing section give anchor points for SEC football roster costs.
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For 2025‑26, each SEC school is projected to pay the full $20.5M revenue‑sharing cap to athletes, with roughly 75% (~$15.3M) allocated to football on average.
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Estimated CFP‑team roster costs for 2025‑26 SEC programs in that table are:

Texas A&M: $34.275M.
​Oklahoma: $24.4M.
​Ole Miss: $23.8M.
​Georgia: $22.6M.
​Alabama: $20.9M.
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Using those data points plus the conference‑wide revenue‑sharing cap, the implied typical SEC football roster “payroll” band in 2025‑26 is roughly $20–35M per team, with the biggest brands (A&M, Georgia, Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas, LSU) at or near the top of that range and lower‑tier programs (e.g., Vanderbilt, Mississippi State) closer to the low‑20s.
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Important caveats
These numbers are estimates, built from known revenue‑sharing caps, public financials and best‑guess third‑party NIL commitments; schools and collectives do not publish exact payrolls.
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Some ADs/agents and NIL analysts have described true top‑end football roster spending (including pre‑July 2025 “money dump” NIL) approaching $40–50M for the absolute elite, which sits above the conservative NIL‑NCAA fiscal‑year estimates.
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