Pre-House vs NCAA SEC Booster Payrolls...vs BIG10 Collectives, how big is the gap?
Back in the day, like 4 years ago, boosters would help build SEC rosters by paying players under the table.
Now with Collectives we've heard that OSU had a 20 million dollar team last year, with fans being able to send money to the collectives.
It sounds like the big SEC teams have not been able to keep up with schools with big collectives.
How big do you guys think this gap is? Is an Alabama/Georgia/LSU collective that much smaller than OSU/Scum/Indiana?
I'm a bit surprised that oil money SEC teams like aTm, Texas, and Arkansas along with the ultimate oil money team, SMU haven't run away with things. Maybe tech and finance money is bigger than oil money these days.
Replies to: Pre-House vs NCAA SEC Booster Payrolls...vs BIG10 Collectives, how big is the gap?
It’s less about the SEC keeping up
And more that they aren’t the only ones now. When they were cheating, it was easy. Now everyone is on the same playing field and parity is setting in.
Where I think the bigger reason the Big 10 has won 3 in a row is that the 3 teams were talented, but they were experienced and mature.
I asked Perplexity....
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.
Specific schools
All figures below are 2025‑26 football roster cost estimates unless noted otherwise.
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.
SEC reference points
The NIL‑NCAA CFP table plus its conference revenue‑sharing section give anchor points for SEC football roster costs.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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