How much does a college quarterback really cost?

In college football, where depth charts and personnel decisions are shrouded in secrecy befitting a Dan Brown novel, coaches, general managers, and recruiting directors suddenly are asking one another a direct question.

What’s the going rate for an established player at quarterback? Defensive tackle? Offensive linemen?  Any of the 22 offensive and defensive positions, not to mention specialists?

What’s the house selling for? Nobody cares about the list price. 

Not the outliers, either. A collective in Knoxville or a player’s family member in California or Timbuktu wants to leak a player deal that on its front end might be worth up to $8 million, in the case of Spyre Sports and Nico Iamaleava and Tennessee.

Or, in reality, a deal that ends up a fraction of that when the player in question transfers out after just one season as the starting quarterback and countless NIL opportunities remain unfulfilled in the dustbin.

Mike Tannenbaum actually knows this world from his own nascent days in the NFL, balancing Tulane law school with his initial foray into pro football as an intern for the New Orleans Saints’ personnel department.

“I actually lived it,” Tannenbaum, former general manager of the New York Jets and executive vice president for the Miami Dolphins, told FootballScoop. “I can answer that question not in the hypothetical. My first job was to collect information in the marketplace and sit and look at data. Invariably, it led to more questions. Why do teams do certain structures, why pay positions a certain way?

“I think we’re seeing that now in college football. Why are some schools doing one- and two-year deals for players? Without collective bargaining for colleges, it’s very challenging.”

Into this gulf – not gap – of inconsistent deals, nebulous incentives and erratic operations techniques, Tannenbuam is injecting his 33rd Team crew as a third-party advisory resource to college athletics departments and specifically their football programs.

Teaming primarily with 33rd Team Director of Advisory Services Ethan Young, a former top personnel executive for Chip Kelly’s UCLA regime, as well as Trey Scott, who owns more than a decade of NFL experience primarily with the Raiders franchise as well as a year in Washington, the 33rd Team crew is emerging as a consultative source with depth of data matched by few. 

Consider the data collected firsthand by the 33rd Team for this:

→ More than 700 player deals comprised of information from more than 55 teams

→ A whopping 75% of the “all-in” budgets from the Power 4 schools

→ College football’s “real numbers,” such as knowing a $12 million revenue-sharing/NIL busdget right now is “the lower end in the P4 conferences.”

→ Access to the College Sports Commission’s NIL Deal Flow Report. “When we know what a school is paying a defensive end, a linebacker and a running back, for example, and know the budget, we can pretty easily project what their going rate is for another position,” Young explained.

Specifically, the 33rd Team tells its NCAA clients that it provides the following:

“As the collegiate landscape evolves, The 33rd Team helps universities and conferences navigate the complexities of NIL, revenue sharing, and other shifting regulations. Our advisors include former NFL executives, coaches, and data analysts who understand how to build winning programs while ensuring compliance. We deliver practical, experience-based strategies to strengthen recruiting, enhance roster management, and maximize opportunities in a rapidly changing environment.”

It’s very data-intensive consulting with everything from raw player costs based on the aforementioned (and still being gathered) financial numbers to “Acquisition ROI Metrics” in the picture below:

Young brings to the 33rd Team’s consultancy component not only the lived experience and knowledge from his time as UCLA’s director of player personnel when NIL first was passed by the NCAA in 2021, but also an understanding of how it has evolved.

Not to mention he knows that lurking in every player-school negotiation is a poker hand that isn’t a royal flush, no matter how strong the bluff.

Check the house’s foundation. 

“It was such a pain-point for me, even in the early days of NIL,” Young, also a former NFL NextGen stats analyst, told FootballScoop. “That’s kind of our mission, right? It is such a need in college football, and we did this to kind of serve their need, more so than anything.

“Mike always relates it really well to the NFL, back dealing with the (Collective Bargaining Agreement) for the first time, there was no information. Contracts were all internal.”

The 33rd Team approach is to provide the hard data but protect the institution-specific information as to not generate some help-harm scenario.

“This is an opportunity for us to help bridge that gap,” Young said, “and aggregate data but protects our clients. To aggregate that data and help them get the full picture of what is going on is immensely valuable and something we take a lot of pride in.”

Young’s fresh enough from the college game to have direct knowledge of some of the biggest recruitments in college football the past half-decade, including that of one of the sport’s current breakout-stars.

“I remember it felt like a switch went off from one recruiting class to the next, where no money was discussed to being on the phone with an agent claiming, ‘This school is giving this player X amount of money,’” Young said. “Then you have to decide how much you trust the other person? Are they playing me? Hearsay and the street agents, what kids are saying they’re getting versus what they’re actually getting, there’s just so many layers to it. I found so often when negotiating with a player or an agent, it wasn’t real. They were motivated to drive up the number.”

What Tannenbaum, the 33rd Team founder who also works with ESPN and lectures at Columbia University, lacks in direct college athletics experience is replaced by a quarter-century in the NFL and around some of the sport’s most prolific coaches and most intricate contracts.

“I think, for me, I tell people all the time, I’m very fortunate to have been around hall of famers, like Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick, and I’ve been fortunate to run two teams a long time,” he said. “I think the challenge so many colleges have now, they have to make decisions in constraint system. Now, literally, every dolllar matters from a competitive standpoint. We try to be great listeners and help solve problems.”

To have, well, the mean of the deals around the sport and not just the headlines.

“A lot of this is just people need the information to have a starting point, the real information,” Young said. “They need real context to start having the conversations that lead to making decisions.”