How much do NIL roster budgets really matter for College Football Playoff teams?

College football does have a salary cap.

Every team’s budget is capped by how much its third-party NIL collective can raise and use to build its roster.

In the first 12-team College Football Playoff field, those roster budgets are believed to vary widely among participants. This year, teams in contention had budgets at $3 million or less or as high as around $20 million among rosters with 85 scholarship players, though attempting to get exact figures is almost as difficult as winning the Playoff itself.

Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork famously said this summer that the Buckeyes players received about $20 million in name, image and likeness funds over the past year, igniting a fascination with roster budgets across the sport.

OSU’s number, believed by those in the industry to be at or near the top of the market in the sport, became a consistent talking point both when the Buckeyes started 5-0 and ascended to No. 2 in the polls and when they closed the regular season with a fourth consecutive loss to Michigan to fall out of the Big Ten title game.

Was that $20 million the price of admission for Playoff access or to have a shot at winning the whole thing? Every dollar invested brings with it added expectation — and pressure.

Ohio State, Oregon and Texas figure to be somewhere at the top and Boise State somewhere far behind. Perhaps it’s not so different from the programs’ most recent publicly available total revenues, with Texas at $180.6 million and Boise at $24 million. This money, though, goes directly to players on the roster.

More money doesn’t guarantee success. Florida State went 2-10 this season and spent $12 million on its roster, The Athletic reported. Ole Miss spent between $10 million and $13 million, its collective director told The Athletic, believed to be in the top half of the SEC, and it narrowly missed the Playoff at 9-3.

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A full accounting of what collectives are paying the rosters they support is a difficult task, even as they can do so more openly after court rulings have prevented the NCAA from enforcing its own NIL guidelines.

The Athletic contacted each of the collectives that had teams competing for spots in the Playoff field during conference championship weekend. Only six agreed to on-the-record interviews, and when the subject of budgets arose, details became scarce.

Collectives want to be as prominent and front-facing as possible toward constituents and possible donors while keeping the finer details of their work tightly under wraps. Individual contracts are guarded like state secrets and bring expectations just like total roster numbers do. The Athletic reported in 2022 that incoming Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava had signed a deal worth around $2 million annually while he was still a high school senior. He’s helped Tennessee reach the Playoff in his first year as starter, but has done so while carrying the weight of those expectations.

Overall budgets, for the most part, are rumors.

“If your number is too low, everyone is concerned and it works against you in recruiting,” said Brittani Willett, the executive director of the Sun Angel Collective that supports Arizona State sports. “Another school might hear you only have $10 million and say, ‘We have $20 million over here.’ If your number is too high, then you have athletes you’re already working with saying, ‘Oh, you could afford to pay me more.’”

Beyond guarding financial figures, many collectives prefer to move discreetly.

Division Street, a collective associated with Oregon, is led by Rosemary St. Clair, who spent two decades as a marketing director and a vice president of various arms of Nike before leaving the global brand to lead Oregon’s NIL efforts. Division Street also employs FleishmanHillard as a PR agency, and through a spokesperson, St. Clair declined an interview for this story.

Division Street is regarded as one of the most well-funded collectives in college sports, but exactly what that looks like is unclear beyond tapping into Phil Knight and Nike in the Ducks’ backyard.

“People like rallying behind something they know they were able to collectively build together. So it’s frustrating with donors and fans who are like, ‘Hey, we want to know what we were able to do,’” Willett said. “But I think the downside outweighs that with how it can be used against us.”

Whenever firm numbers, which require taking leaders at their word, bubble to the surface, they are devoured.

Bryce Underwood, who committed to Michigan earlier this month, received a deal reportedly worth eight figures over four seasons. Nebraska coach Matt Rhule said last year that on the transfer market, quarterbacks cost between $1 million and $2 million.

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Collectives are private businesses and only the data from collectives’ non-profit arms are subject to public records. Sportico reported the nonprofit Texas collective raised $10.5 million and spent $13.3 million last year. Unlike coaching salaries and contracts or athletic department budgets that can easily be obtained via records requests that must be fulfilled (for public universities) to comply with federal law, collectives are under no such obligations.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to talk in terms of those numbers. We have put together a highly competitive roster,” said Chris Schoemann, the executive director of the Boulevard Collective that supports SMU, a private school. “We’ve gone about this in a very deliberate way, and the coaches of the programs we serve and work with, they feel they have a valued partner in us.”

Jen Ferrang, general manager of Happy Valley United that supports Penn State sports, confirmed that it has invested more than $10 million in the Nittany Lions roster but declined to comment on whether its investment exceeded $15 million.

Brent Blum, executive director of the We Will Collective that supports Iowa State sports, said it invested about $3 million in this year’s roster that won 10 games for the first time in school history. The Cyclones’ loss in the Big 12 Championship Game eliminated them from the Playoff. Blum said that number ranks “in the bottom third” of the Big 12 by his estimation.

Willett declined to offer numbers on Sun Angel’s efforts but said ASU’s collective ranks in the “middle to lower middle” of the Big 12’s 16 teams.

Everyone agrees: Winning is stellar for business in the world of collectives.

This year’s run to the CFP has produced exponential growth for Arizona State’s collective, especially after being picked last in the conference in preseason under second year coach Kenny Dillingham.

The same dynamic has happened to the Hoosier Connect, which has seen a windfall from Indiana’s 10-0 start, ascension into the top five and Playoff berth. Indiana, which finished 11-1 and will travel to Notre Dame for the first round on Friday, had won eight games just once since 1993 before coach Curt Cignetti’s whirlwind debut in Bloomington.

“I’d say (our budget) is probably five or six times what we were able to do this year vs. last year,” said Tyler Harris, executive director of Hoosiers Connect. “There’s been a lot more people get involved since the coaching change. … The athletic department really doesn’t want us talking (specifics) so I try to abide and stay in their good graces.”

Though major acquisitions like Ohio State landing Caleb Downs from Alabama and Quinshon Judkins from Ole Miss make bigger headlines during the offseason, every collective The Athletic spoke with said the majority of their money goes toward roster retention, rather than adding players through the transfer portal or in high school recruiting.

Blum described it as “95 percent” of We Will Collective’s mission, and last week, starting quarterback Rocco Becht elected to stay at Iowa State despite being pursued by multiple teams from the SEC and other conferences.

“Our group that started this was retention over everything. We didn’t get into this to be huge spenders in the portal and be buying players,” Blum said. “It all started because we lost our point guard Tyrese Hunter (Big 12 Freshman of the Year in 2022) to Texas. We realized, ‘Uh oh, if we don’t do something about this, we’ll just be the Royals to somebody else’s Yankees.’”

Ferrang said around 80 to 90 percent of Happy Valley United’s budget goes toward retention.

“We’re really not involved in recruiting,” she said. “We’re focused on retaining the current roster and giving the team opportunities across the board.”

Fundraising and roster management are the jobs every collective signed up for, but each is also having to wrestle with their roles in the future.

The House v. NCAA settlement is expected to go into effect as early as this summer, clearing the way for athletic departments to share television revenue with athletes. Schools can opt in to sharing around $20.5 million next year, and most major programs plan to. Opting in is one thing. Finding that money to make it reality is another.

The settlement also allows for collectives to be brought in house, which may or may not become reality on some campuses. Those questions are still being answered.

At Notre Dame, it means its collective Friends of the University of Notre Dame (FUND) — co-founded by former Irish quarterback Brady Quinn — will cease operations before the 2025-26 school year and stop accepting donations at the end of this year. Their efforts have transitioned toward a new collective called Rally, led by Kayla Rogers, that will work even more closely with the athletic department.

“Any Notre Dame athletes who are commits, we may reach out to and say, ‘Hey, we’d love to have an opportunity for you.’ Or there’s a form that athletes and prospective athletes can fill out, and if it looks like a promising athlete, we may reach out to them and offer an opportunity,” Rogers said.

Rally is still fundraising and focused on next year when it takes center stage and is aiming to have an additional $5 million-$10 million available for athletes on top of revenue sharing.

Its role may change. For other collectives, theirs may not.

Florida State’s failure, as well as Ole Miss missing the Playoff and Ohio State not winning the Big Ten, show college football isn’t as simple as buying success. The Buckeyes can still win the national title, but closing the regular season with a shocking loss to Michigan heated up coach Ryan Day’s seat in a hurry.

Greater odds of success can be bought, but success can’t be guaranteed.

And being outspent by conference mates doesn’t rule out upward mobility, as this year’s Big 12 title game between Arizona State and Iowa State proved.

Money has always talked in college sports but now, that conversation is bleeding onto the field more than ever.

 (Photo: Jason Mowry / Getty Images)