Is There a Salary Cap in College Football? NIL and Revenue Sharing Explained

The question of whether a college football salary cap exists has a two-part answer in 2026: revenue sharing from schools is capped, while name, image and likeness (NIL) money from outside sources has no overall limit.

Schools that opted into the House settlement can share up to $21.58 million with athletes across all sports in 2026-27. Outside NIL deals come on top of that figure, and a CBS Sports survey found that several football rosters now cost $40 million or more.

How does college football’s cap work?

Hurricanes quarterback Darian Mensah — Miami quarterback Darian Mensah (10) is reported to be the highest-paid college football player in 2026, with a valuation of $6.5 million. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

The cap applies only to money that comes directly from a school. All 319 Division I schools that opted in operate under the same limit, and it covers football, basketball and every other sport on campus. Many Power Four schools planned to send roughly 75% of that money to football when revenue sharing began in July 2025.

Third-party NIL deals sit outside the cap and have no overall dollar limit. Athletes have to report any outside deal worth more than $600 through NIL Go. The College Sports Commission then reviews whether the deal reflects fair market value and serves a legitimate business purpose, or whether it’s really a payment to attend a particular school.

NIL deals push rosters past cap

Third-party deals are why the cap looks smaller on paper than it is in practice. NIL company Opendorse found that the average Power Four school offered athletes $13.5 million in third-party deals above the revenue-sharing cap during the system’s first year.

Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard criticized the Big Ten and SEC in May for not following rules their own commissioners helped create. “We entered into a billion dollar settlement within college athletics that said there was going to be a cap in revenue sharing and the cap became the floor,” Pollard said.

The commission is now testing how far its enforcement power reaches. It has questioned between five and 10 Power Four programs about possible cap violations tied to third-party payments. It also has the authority to issue postseason bans and to restrict what a school can spend under the revenue-sharing cap.

Why not an NFL-style cap?

Senator Ted Cruz, a sponsor of the Protect College Sports Act, walks onto the field before the game between the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Texas Longhorns. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

College football can’t copy the NFL’s hard cap, because the NFL’s cap comes from a collective bargaining agreement with the NFL Players Association. That same agreement requires teams to meet minimum cash spending of 90% of the cap over multi-year periods. College athletes have no union or bargaining agreement. So schools that jointly limit player pay face antitrust lawsuits, the same kind of legal challenge that produced the House settlement.

The Protect College Sports Act is Congress’ attempt to address that. The Senate passed the bill 77-22 on Sept. 28. The bill would write the House settlement’s cap into federal law and give schools, conferences and the NCAA limited antitrust protection to enforce it.

It also creates a retention fund that lets schools spend up to $22.5 million more each year to keep their own athletes, plus another $5 million for non-revenue sports. That would roughly double what a school can pay directly. It still wouldn’t work as a football payroll cap, because the limits cover every sport.

The bill also stays neutral on whether athletes are employees, which keeps employee status and collective bargaining possible. The House isn’t expected to vote on it until after the November midterm elections.

Who benefits from a spending cap?

The first year of revenue-sharing data shows how uneven Division I already is. Of the 307 schools that paid athletes in 2025-26, exactly 68 reached the $20.5 million cap or came within 5% of it, the same number as the Power Four’s membership. Those 68 schools paid at least $1.32 billion of the $1.77 billion total. That left the other 239 schools averaging less than $1.9 million each.

A ceiling only restrains the schools that can reach it. Suppose football had its own $20 million cap. A program spending $35 million would have to cut $15 million, while a program with a $4 million budget would still have only $4 million to spend.

A stricter cap would help the programs just below the top tier the most. UCLA’s $55.2 million in total football spending ranked sixth in the Big Ten in fiscal year 2025. But its $13.5 million in football donor contributions ranked 14th in the 18-team league, well short of the $34.1 million median. Tighter limits on outside money would help the Bruins, who are chasing their first College Football Playoff berth, compete with the conference’s top spenders. They wouldn’t give smaller programs any more money to spend, though.

A cap also limits athlete earnings without moving any savings to schools that can’t afford current prices. That’s why a ceiling works better when paired with wider revenue distribution and a funded spending floor, like the NFL’s minimum spending requirement.

The Protect College Sports Act takes a step toward the first piece by letting schools pool and sell media rights together if at least 75% of Football Bowl Subdivision programs join, though participation is voluntary. Whether a cap creates any parity depends on whether the Big Ten and SEC agree to share more of their media revenue with the rest of Division I.

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