As college football enters its salary cap era, the sport’s head coaches and general managers are turning to the NFL as a starting point for how to allocate their money.
But it’s complicated – by the vast difference in the roster size and cap total, the presence of collectives and other third-party payments in college and talent acquisition pathways available at each level.
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The riddle that college programs in the Atlantic Coast Conference and other top football-playing leagues are trying to solve: How best to distribute their roughly $13 million to $15 million in revenue-sharing payments to their roster of nearly 100 players?
“The cap is your budget,” Duke coach Manny Diaz said. “Whether you’re giving out $10 or $100 or whatever, you still break things down by percentages. That’s really where we leaned on the pro model in terms of where the money would be allocated over the course of a roster, similar to the pros where there are certain positions that generally command larger salaries at that level. We tried to mirror that when possible.”
The NFL first introduced its salary cap in 1994. It was $34.6 million then, barely enough to pay for a quality starting quarterback in today’s league. The cap for the 2025 season is $279.2 million.
What the league values is the passing game. The highest-paid players, on offense and defense, reflect that. Top quarterbacks, offensive tackles, pass rushers, wide receivers and cornerbacks – all positions key to moving the ball through the air or stopping it – earn the largest percentage of the cap. Fullbacks, punters, kickers, running backs, tight ends and safeties command smaller salaries.
A new era for college sports
For the first time, college athletic departments can directly share up to $20.5 million with athletes for the 2025-26 season, though that figure is impacted by the number of additional scholarship or education-related expense payments the departments choose to award across their sports.
Football is getting roughly 75% of that revenue-share figure, though again, it varies from school to school. North Carolina, for example, pledged $13 million in revenue sharing for football as part of its contract with coach Bill Belichick.
Revenue share is separate from traditional name, image and likeness payments, either through a third-party brand or a team-associated collectives. Those deals, spending “above the cap,” are still allowed, though agreements over $600 must meet “valid business purpose” and “range of compensation” standards.
Unlike the NFL, where team officials, player agents and, generally, the public have access to official contract data, accurate information is scarce in college football.
The hope is that the reporting requirements put in place by the College Sports Commission, which is charged with tracking and enforcing revenue-sharing limits and third-party NIL deals, eventually generates a useful picture of the marketplace for both teams and players.
“You’ll see it maybe by conference, maybe by sport, which is an aggregate,” North Carolina athletics director Bubba Cunningham said. “You won’t see an individual player [salary], but hopefully we’ll say, ‘OK, an average quarterback in the ACC is paid this, a running back that.’ You get some sense of what is the marketplace for those particular positions.”
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In the absence of such data, schools have tried to piece it together on their own.
NC State coach Dave Doeren said his program’s general manager, Andy Vaughn, researched what NFL and Power 4 college conferences are paying players at different positions. He called other coaches and agents that the Wolfpack trust to build their own database.
“We did a lot of homework, and it’s taken time to accumulate data,” Doeren said. “And then we sit down as a staff: What do we value? We value the left tackle, we value the quarterback. This is how they do it in the NFL. This is how they’re doing it at whatever school. And we’re coming up with what we think is best for NC State.”
Some numbers do become public. Duke quarterback Darian Mensah reportedly signed a two-year, $8-million contract to transfer from Tulane. UNC quarterback Gio Lopez reportedly got a two-year, $4 million deal to transfer from South Alabama. Both of those deals came before revenue sharing became official, so they don’t necessarily count against the cap.
Outside deals will still be allowed, and everyone will find ways to either circumvent the cap or generate above-the-cap deals. But with revenue sharing in place moving forward, there won’t be a rush of frontloaded deals that the sport saw in advance of this season.
“The economics are going to change significantly from ‘25 to ‘26,” said Belichick, who spent his entire career in the NFL before taking the North Carolina job in December.
NFL influence grows
Belichick hired former NFL general manager Michael Lombardi to the same position in Chapel Hill, part of an influx of those with NFL experience into college football. Lombardi’s $1.5 million annual salary is one of, if not the highest, among general managers. Former NFL quarterback Andrew Luck is Stanford’s general manager. Former NFL head coach Ron Rivera is Cal’s GM.
The complexity of team building – free and unlimited transfers after the season and again after spring practice means that every college football player, including your own, is potentially available. Plus, there is high school recruiting for multiple classes. Recruiting with the emergence of the transfer portal has necessitated larger and larger front offices across the sport.
“Team building requires more than just one person,” Lombardi said. “In the day, when I first started in the league, it didn’t because we didn’t have much player movement, much volatility.”
The Tar Heels have 70 players that weren’t on last year’s team, the type of roster turnover that is becoming more common during coaching changes. Lombardi said the key is evaluating and placing a value on talent – the players on your roster and ones you’re looking to add.
“You have to have a subjective way of determining how to handle money and how to place a value,” Lombardi said. “You have to remove bias. I think that’s the biggest challenge in pro football is there’s bias built in internally. I want this player, I want that player.
He continued: “If you’re a starter on the team, there’s going to be a certain value placed on what level starter you are,” he said. “That’s why you have to have a grading system. You can’t just arbitrarily say, ‘I like this guy, I like that guy.’ We’re not picking fruit here. You got to have a grading system. Then the grading reflects what you pay.”
Keeping roster intact
Frontline starters could be making millions from revenue sharing and additional NIL deals, while those at the end of the roster may not be making anything. Coaches have expressed concern about freshmen or newcomers being paid more than those who have helped teams win games in the past.
The NFL now has a rookie wage scale. First-rounders make more than seventh-rounders, but even the No. 1 pick in 2025 – who is guaranteed nearly $50 million over his first four years in the league – makes less than a solid veteran would.
“A guy that’s been on a team three years, that’s playing well, that’s earned it on the field, should make more than a guy coming in the door,” Doeren said. “I think that’s the proper way to do business. But, right now, common sense is not prevailing in college football.”
Boston College coach Bill O’Brien, another former NFL coach, said his program has an “earn-it philosophy” and that freshmen all basically make the same amount with the Eagles.
“From that point forward, they're going to earn everything they get – going to class, being on time for meetings,” O’Brien said. “Don't necessarily have to be an All-American right away, just got to be a good guy, good locker room guy, good teammate, somebody that's a contributing member of the team, and if you do that, you'll earn more and more as you go through your career at BC.”
Teams are also willing to spend more to retain players they’ve developed, valuing continuity among their roster, especially for important pieces. Securing players in the transfer portal is an open competition, sometimes driving prices up and bringing in a player without experience in your system.
“The best teams in the pros that we spoke to are the ones that do the greatest job in terms of retention and keeping their own,” said Diaz, who went 9-4 in his first season with the Blue Devils.
He said: “Our best guys, despite multiple offers and usually higher offers, chose to stay at Duke, which says a lot about our program.”
Different approaches to team building
The allocation of those dollars also depends a great deal on the composition of the roster. If an NFL team needs a left tackle, for example, it can draft one or more. It can trade for one. College players, though, get to choose which team they play for. So even if programs start with an NFL-based model, it gets adjusted.
“We’re going to pay the left tackle,” Cal coach Justin Wilcox said. “He’s the second-highest paid guy on the team or third or whatever. Great. You can make it in there. What if you’re not able to recruit a left tackle of that caliber? Are you going to, by default, pay your starting left tackle that amount of money? No.
“So you start there [with the NFL model], and we identify these positions as the most critical, and you’re willing to, I guess, spend on those positions. However, they chose you. So you have to be ready to pivot. Ok, what are our top players? How do we build this team this year with the money we have available? And maybe that fits that [NFL] model, but maybe it doesn’t.”
Lombardi has said repeatedly since becoming UNC’s general manager that the Tar Heels want to build through the offensive and defensive lines, pointing to the success of the Super Bowl-champion Philadelphia Eagles. That means spending at those spots, which the NFL typically doesn’t do for interior positions like defensive tackle or offensive center and guard.
The Eagles also had a stellar group of skill position players on their Super Bowl team. Belichick said the program won’t lose good players over a small amount of money simply to maintain a pre-set positional budget.
“Offensive, defensive lines are important,” said Belichick, who won six Super Bowl titles as head coach of the New England Patriots. “You got to have that. You got to have a quarterback. You got to somebody that can rush a passer. You need somebody that can cover. You need somebody that can score. The guards don't score, all right. So somebody's got to be able to score points.
“It's not just that [good lines], but if you don't have that, it makes everything else a lot harder. In the end, you want to build a balanced team that can win on offense, defense and special teams because at some point you're going to need plays from each of those units to win critical situations in close games.”