Skip to main content
Inside The Huskies

What's It Worth to Play UW Football? It Remains Guesswork

Numbers were published online that threw out some dubious claims.
Dan Raley|
Jedd Fisch meets with his team post Spring Game.
Jedd Fisch meets with his team post Spring Game. | Dave Sizer photo

Every once in a while, someone will say or do something that offers a glimpse into what the money game might be for University of Washington football players, information that otherwise remains classified for competitive or privacy reasons.

Everything is kept top secret with both in-house and outside parameters in mind.

People paying out large sums of money don't want teammates jealous of each other and relationships strained.

Nor do they want opposing schools armed with any financial reporting either to better facilitate flipping a player elsewhere.

Yet in his post Spring Game interview, Husky coach Jedd Fisch had a few throwaway lines that teased and just begged for more explanation -- that wasn't forthcoming.

"We're going to have some amazing competition this fall -- we're going to embrace it," Fisch said. "We're going to play young or old. It doesn't matter. The guys that make money, the guys that make very little money. It doesn't matter. We're just going to play the guys who want to compete."

While the NCAA doesn't require schools to make public how player compensation is doled out, what we are left with are estimates, if not wild rumors, of who gets what.

College Front Office, touting itself as an analytical site with 1,000 paid subscribers, is the latest to venture into this arena, throwing out some numbers on Sunday that in many cases seemed dubious.

Overall, the roster valuation of the UW football team supposedly is $28.45 million, according to the website. If that would be substantially less than others.

College Front Office published estimates for 22 potential UW starters that ranged from quarterback Demond Williams Jr. receiving $4,500,000 to wide receiver Rashid Williams getting $391,701 in annual reimbursements.

While a $4 million-plus figure for Demond Williams also emerged from a document release when he briefly entered the transfer portal in January and considered leaving, other money numbers seem ridiculous.

The site suggests the junior quarterback is one of three Husky millionaires, with senior edge rushers Jacob Lane and Isaiah Ward supposedly earning $1,131,900 and $1,058,400, respectively.

That's questionable at best for the defenders. Ward started two games in 2025.

Junior offensive tackle Soane Faasolo supposedly receives $565,110 and he hasn't started a game since 2024. That would number be higher than sophomore offensive guard John Mills, a freshman All-America selection, an 11-game starter in 2025 and possibly the top NFL prospect on the roster, who is said to be receiving $540,328.

John Mills signs an autograph for a young fan.
John Mills signs an autograph for a young fan. | Dave Sizer photo

Even lower on this compensation totem pole is senior linebacker Jacob Manu, who quite possibly had the best spring of anyone, and supposedly receives $392,437.

The only thing certain from this exercise is we're probably no closer to learning what the real UW money breakdown is than we were before.

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Loading recommendations... Please wait while we load personalized content recommendations

Published
Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

Home/Football