NIL
NCAA, CFP, NIL Draw Attention of Boyle, Shapiro, State House Leader
You have heard of the NCAA. But are you familiar with the CFP? How about NIL? Did you know that Judge Claudia Wilken is one of the most important people in college sports today? Why is that? What is this House v. NCAA case you are hearing so much about? Remember when college football and […]

You have heard of the NCAA. But are you familiar with the CFP? How about NIL?
Did you know that Judge Claudia Wilken is one of the most important people in college sports today? Why is that? What is this House v. NCAA case you are hearing so much about?
Remember when college football and collegiate sports was easy. At least four Pennsylvania elected officials do and want to ensure that Penn State, Pitt, and Temple students that participate in college athletics get a fair shake.
Congressman Brendan Boyle (D-02) is concerned that the power structure among the Power 4 conferences in Division I – led by the Big Ten (B1G) and the Southeastern Conferences (SEC) – might be “rigging the system” to reduce postseason football opportunities for those in the Atlantic Coast and Big XII conferences.
Reps. Jesse Topper (R-Bedford/Fulton) and Perry Stambaugh (R-Juniata/Perry) are planning to introduce legislation in the State House that would protect athletes “from poor financial decisions when being paid for name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights.”
And Gov. Josh Shapiro says that NIL, combined with the “transfer portal” which permits students participating in athletics freedom to transfer among schools, is “out of control” and thinks that “real reform” in that space is needed.
The NCAA – or National Collegiate Athletic Association – is currently facing a significant amount of scrutiny under antitrust laws, primarily due to rules restricting athlete compensation and eligibility. The House v. NCAA settlement, which provides for $2.8 billion in back payments to athletes, also allows schools to share a portion of athletic revenue with students with a cap of $20.5 million per school.
Colleges and universities in NCAA Division I – the highest playing level within the 1,100-school association – are scrambling to find ways to pay their students. The largest pile of cash comes from broadcast networks such as Fox, ESPN, Warner Bros. Discovery, and NBC, not only for broadcast rights for regular-season games, but also for the postseason College Football Playoff (CFP).
It was not that long ago when the postseason championships structure in the FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) consisted of a two-team playoff. Beginning in 2014, the CFP was created and expanded the field to four teams. Last season, the powers-that-be agreed to a 12-team bracket, and in 2026, because things such as this seldom shrink, the field may expand again.
The B1G, of which Penn State is a member institution, and the SEC are holding the best cards in negotiations over the format for 2026 and beyond, as the ACC, which includes Pitt as a member, and Big XII have ceded control to those leagues. That is where Boyle comes in.
College sports officials have spent the last four years seeking federal legislation to regulate the booming market for college athletes without running afoul of federal antitrust restrictions. To the northeast Philadelphia congressman, that causes problems.
Boyle explained his tweet during the PoliticsPA podcast, “Voices of Reason.”
“What I was taking issue with, and what so many others have taken issue with, is what the Big 10 and SEC are proposing to do,” he said. “The roughly 34 or so member institutions in those two conferences would break away from the other 100 colleges and universities and, before the season begins, guarantee themselves eight of these 16 spots (in the 2026 CFP playoff). This would be unprecedented and this would be the first sign of essentially a breakaway within major college sports. It would, and I’m not the first one to use this as others have said, this would be rigging the system literally before the season begins.”
It is a fair question to ask why a Congressman who, supposedly has more important things to concern himself with, is spending time on college football? Especially Boyle, who is the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee.
“First I can chew gum and walk at the same time,” he shared. “In the last few weeks I have pulled three all-nighters on the House floor as the budget committee ranking member, the lead Democrat on the budget committee, basically leading the opposition to the reconciliation bill. I was able to do that and still take the 10 seconds to issue the tweet that I did in order to get the Big 10 and SEC’s attention, so that’s number one, these things are not mutually exclusive.
“Number two as to why would a government official and a member of Congress even offer an opinion on these subjects … well, first, anyone who follows my social media knows I’m a passionate Philly sports fan and passionate Notre Dame football fan so I often will opine on sports and express my views.
“But on a more serious point, this is a multi-billion dollar industry,” Boyle continued. “If you were to take the 10-year value of some recent TV contracts, literally over a $1 trillion dollar industry … point to me any other multi-billion dollar or trillion-dollar industry in which government doesn’t have a role in regulating. I think it is appropriate, especially if there’s going to be real harm done to a wide swath of major colleges and universities which, make no mistake about it, would be the impact of the Big 10 and SEC essentially giving the Heisman to the rest of college athletics and separating themselves.”
The House judgment, which has yet to be approved by Wilken, who sits on the 9th District Circuit Court in California, is expected by college administrators any day now. This development has drawn the legislative pen of Topper and Stambaugh, as a lot of money will be flowing to those who have not had it before.
Topper, the state’s House Republican leader, and Stambaugh are introducing legislation that “seeks to minimize student-athlete vulnerabilities and provide stronger institutional frameworks to protect student-athletes’ financial interests. It balances athlete empowerment with reasonable protections.”
Their language will state that institutions of higher education will be required to offer all student-athletes the option to place a portion of their revenue sharing or NIL earnings into trust accounts. The institutions may partner with established financial institutions experienced in educational trust management to minimize administrative overhead. Additionally, institutions will be mandated to provide financial literacy education and resources to their student-athletes.
“NIL is one of the most dynamic and evolving spaces in the national sports market that has become a life-changing positive for many student-athletes and families. As the NIL landscape continues to advance at the federal level, it is appropriate for state legal supplements to ensure student-athletes are protected at a vulnerable time in their lives,” Topper said.
“It’s the wild, wild west in college sports,” said Stambaugh on the current state of college athletics. “It’s probably the biggest change in college sports since the NCAA was created 120 years ago. “This is something Pennsylvania needs to address, and we need to address it right now.”
Shapiro, a huge sports fan, said Wednesday that he has yet to see Topper and Stambaugh’s proposed legislation, but said that he believes that students who participate in college athletics should be able to get paid.
“I think student athletes should be able to have the freedom to pick which college they want to attend and where they want to bring their talents,” the governor said. “So those underlying principles have to be part of this. But what we have to do is make sure there is some ability for all schools to be able to compete in this space, in all sports, and that it not be the situation where we end up losing athletics for both men and women as a result of this process. The NIL can drive a lot of dollars into one particular sport and choke off others, or one particular area and choke off others. I think it is important that we’re in a position where we’re able to really compete.”
There are states that have codified laws that enable their FBS institutions to not be obligated to follow NCAA rules that are deemed anticompetitive. Tennessee signed Senate Bill 536 into law, giving major protection to college sports programs in the state, including the flagship University of Tennessee, a member of the SEC, as they traverse the new, chaotic NIL landscape. It is one of the most “athlete-friendly” NIL laws in the country, as the law will protect UT and others in the state from antitrust lawsuits while taking some shots at the terms within the settlement.
“I don’t want to do anything that limits their ability to compete,” said Shapiro. “What I want to do is see how we can get schools to be lifted up. I know that there’s been a lot of talk about a broader settlement in this space, in the NCAA. I think that’s a piece of it. I’ve talked to Senator (Cory) Booker, who’s been a leader on this at the federal level. I know they’re thinking about something to do, but I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to exploring what we could do here in the Commonwealth.”
Boyle echoed that sentiment while also sounding a warning about a power play by the B1G and the SEC could drastically hurt two Pennsylvania FBS schools.
“The schools that really have to be nervously watching this, frankly, are schools like Pitt and Temple and the other 100 colleges and universities that are outside the Big 10 and SEC,” he said. “Besides the fact their second class status would now be established for the first time ever, this would really limit their ability to make the playoff which means it would limit their ability to earn a pretty significant amount of revenue.”
Boyle also reinforced why this is becoming more of an issue in Washington, D.C.
“A number of colleges and universities – actually all of them basically – and the major conferences have been coming to Congress asking us to pass legislation on these issues,” he said. “So, in my tweet and in other conversations, I have reminded them that if you’re coming to Congress expecting help, and then you’re turning around and rigging the system and trying to exclude most of the other colleges and universities and doing so in a grotesquely patently unfair way, don’t be surprised if you find an unsympathetic audience in Congress.”
When asked what the end game might be, Boyle sided more with the fan than with the schools. And colleagues on the other side of the aisle agree with his line of thinking.
“If I can make one generalization of what I’m looking out for, I want what is in the best interest for the game,” he said, “the students, and the fans whose passion for all of this is what has led to to all of this money. Any conference or conferences who are going to act in a completely selfish monopolistic way or duopolistic way, that is where I draw the line and have a real problem with. The ramifications of that will not just be for 2026. They will be for many years and and decades to come.”
NIL
Deion Sanders calls for rev-share cap, points out spending among College Football Playoff teams
With the revenue-sharing era well underway in college football, coaches are evaluating the state of the landscape. Schools are now able to directly share up to $20.5 million with athletes as part of the House v. NCAA settlement. Colorado coach Deion Sanders sees a way to further settle things, though. Speaking during a roundtable at […]

With the revenue-sharing era well underway in college football, coaches are evaluating the state of the landscape. Schools are now able to directly share up to $20.5 million with athletes as part of the House v. NCAA settlement.
Colorado coach Deion Sanders sees a way to further settle things, though. Speaking during a roundtable at Big 12 Media Days on Wednesday, Coach Prime called for a cap on rev-share dollars to shift things toward an NFL-like operation.
To illustrate his point, Sanders pointed out last year’s College Football Playoff and the conversations around roster costs. National champion Ohio State made headlines with its roster, worth upward of $20 million.
“I wish there was a cap,” Sanders said during the panel. “Like, the top-of-the-line player makes this and if you’re not that type of guy, you know you’re not going to make that. That’s what the NFL does. The problem is, you’ve got a guy that’s not that darn good, but he could go to another school and they give him another half a million dollars. You can’t compete with that. It don’t make sense.
“You talk about equality … all you have to do is look at the playoffs and see what those teams spent, and you understand darn near why they’re in the playoffs. It’s kind of hard to compete with somebody who’s giving $25, $30 million to a darn freshman class. It’s crazy.”
Ohio State’s 2024 roster was considered one of the more expensive rosters in college football last season as the Buckeyes took down Notre Dame to win the national championship. This year, though, roster costs continued to grow as teams braced for the House v. NCAA settlement.
On3’s Pete Nakos previously reported those figures soared toward $25 to $30 million on the higher end before the settlement’s approval. Once Judge Claudia Wilken issued her order, the NIL Go clearinghouse went into effect for deals worth at least $600. That led to frontloading of deals during recruitments prior to final approval.
But even with the rising costs of rosters and the ever-changing landscape, Deion Sanders said coaches still have to develop players. That said, he also reiterated what spending big money on a roster can do when the postseason comes around.
“We’re not complaining, because all these coaches up here can coach their butts off and given the right opportunity with the right players and to play here and there, you’ll be there,” Sanders said. “But what’s going on right now don’t make sense. We want to say stuff, but we’re trying to be professional.
“But you’re going to see the same teams darn near at the end, and with somebody who sneaks up in there, the team that pays the most is going to be there in the end.”
NIL
CFB revenue-sharing causing massive shift in NIL collectives, private equity money
The world of college sports has shifted more in the last few years than it has in almost its entire existence. With NIL, the transfer portal, and more popping up and changing in the blink of an eye, it can be hard to keep up with everything happening. With the most recent change, or adjustment, […]

The world of college sports has shifted more in the last few years than it has in almost its entire existence. With NIL, the transfer portal, and more popping up and changing in the blink of an eye, it can be hard to keep up with everything happening.
With the most recent change, or adjustment, the House settled with the NCAA and ruled that colleges and universities could directly pay their athletes, a virtual pay-to-play situation for college athletes.
You might be thinking, “How is that any different from the NIL collectives and funds that have been in place for the past couple of years?”
Honestly, that’s a really great question, one that even some college athletic departments are trying to grapple with as we speak. These universities built million-dollar funds through boosters, donations, NIL deals, and more.
Now, those funds are rapidly getting cut as schools no longer have to use a “workaround” to get their players the most amount of money possible. Yet another shift in college sports.
The NIL Go Clearinghouse was created within the House settlement as a virtual vetting system for various NIL deals that continue to pop up, even with programs directly paying athletes, and is run by the brand-new College Sports Commission.
Beyond NIL deals and getting a paycheck signed over to them by their teams, college athletes now have a big question surrounding them:
“Is it possible for private equity funds to pay collegiate athletes without crossing any of the House settlement lines?
For now, the answer is still unknown. Colleges are having to look between the lines to ensure that they aren’t walking themselves or their players into a sticky situation, mainly because this has never been a situation before.
Currently, the Texas Tech Red Raiders are the frontrunners in the learning curve, already writing a three-year $5.1 million check over to five-star offensive tackle Felix Ojo, and preparing to write an even bigger one to land LaDamion Guyton, the No. 1 prospect in the class of 2027.
To put it simply, most questions you’re possibly asking are being asked by everyone else, including the bigwigs in the NCAA and athletic departments. Most of the answers to those questions are still unknown, and may be for quite a while.
NIL
NIL Spending Influences College Football Playoff, Says Deion Sanders
During Big 12 Media Days, Colorado head coach Deion Sanders made headlines with his staunch critique of the current NIL landscape in college football. He expressed concerns that the unregulated spending on athletes creates an imbalance, favoring wealthier programs. Sanders argued that the teams with the biggest financial resources, not necessarily the best coaching or […]

During Big 12 Media Days, Colorado head coach Deion Sanders made headlines with his staunch critique of the current NIL landscape in college football. He expressed concerns that the unregulated spending on athletes creates an imbalance, favoring wealthier programs. Sanders argued that the teams with the biggest financial resources, not necessarily the best coaching or player development, dominate the College Football Playoff. He noted that programs are investing exorbitantly into recruiting, leading to a competitive hierarchy rooted in financial backing rather than merit. His comments highlight the pressing need for a structured approach to NIL compensation in college sports.
By the Numbers
- Some programs are reportedly offering 25–30 million for a single freshman recruiting class.
- Sanders’ Colorado Buffaloes finished last season with a record of 9-4, including a bowl loss to BYU.
State of Play
- Various college football programs are engaging in a financial arms race to attract top talent.
- Sanders’ comments reflect a growing concern among coaches and players about the influence of money in recruiting.
What’s Next
As the dialogue around NIL spending intensifies, it could prompt discussions among NCAA leadership regarding potential regulations or caps on compensation. This tension may lead programs to either invest more heavily in recruiting or advocate for more equitable compensation structures. The outcome could redefine competitive balance and strategy in college football.
Bottom Line
Deion Sanders’ remarks underscore a critical crossroads for college football, where financial power is eclipsing traditional values of skill and teamwork. His call for regulations highlights an urgent need for reform to ensure that competition remains fair and based on athletic ability rather than budget size. The future of college sports hangs in the balance as stakeholders weigh the implications of endless NIL spending.
NIL
John Calipari heads into his second season at Arkansas trying to balance old and new
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — John Calipari admits he is still navigating the “new” college basketball, a world in which the 66-year-old’s traditional recruiting style is no longer the norm. But Calipari made it work last season, his first with the Razorbacks, and proved naysayers wrong. But the Arkansas basketball coach isn’t interested in doing things the […]
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — John Calipari admits he is still navigating the “new” college basketball, a world in which the 66-year-old’s traditional recruiting style is no longer the norm.
But Calipari made it work last season, his first with the Razorbacks, and proved naysayers wrong. But the Arkansas basketball coach isn’t interested in doing things the same way moving forward.
Calipari spoke about his first year at Arkansas on Wednesday.
The Razorbacks started Southeastern Conference play last season with five straight losses. But Arkansas ultimately reached the Sweet 16. Now, Calipari has taken a different approach in rebuilding the Razorbacks’ roster heading into his second year in Fayetteville.
“I came here saying I want eight or nine guys because of NIL (name, image, likeness). I can’t pick 12,” Calipari said. “Now I’m like ‘Let’s have eight or nine that know,’ but you have other players we’re developing.”
Calipari has long been known as a master recruiter of high school players, regularly collecting top-10 classes at Kentucky and Memphis before that.
Now, the transfer portal has changed things. High school recruiting is not irrelevant, but preps players aren’t as big a focus. Now, it’s about veterans with college experience.
Arkansas had one returning player last season, forward Trevon Brazile, who is also back for his final season. Calipari built the rest of the roster and used a nine-player rotation. The other five team members played 23 minutes total.
Injuries sapped the Razorbacks of their two leading scorers. Guard Boogie Fland, who has transferred to Florida, played in 21 games, and forward Adou Thiero, who was selected in the NBA draft, played in 26. The two played less than 10 minutes in Arkansas’ season-ending loss to Texas Tech in the NCAA Tournament. Also gone are center Jonas Aidoo, forward Zvonimir Ivisic and guard Johnell Davis.
Now, the Razorbacks have two 6-foot-10 transfers in Nick Pringle from Alabama and Malique Ewin from Florida State. And there are three perimeter freshmen. Guards Meleek Thomas and Darius Acuff Jr. were five-star recruits, and wing Isaiah Sealy ranked as a four-star.
On Wednesday, Calipari had practically a full contingent to run through 5-on-5 work, which rarely happened last season.
“Last year, we were always together, but as injuries started peeling off guys, they understood how much they needed each other. The way this is, you probably need to play more people,” Calipari said.
Arkansas reached the Sweet 16 for the fourth time in five years after entering the NCAA Tournament as a No. 10 seed and starting SEC play at 1-5 for the third straight season. That start came as the least experienced team in the league, Calipari said.
This season, Arkansas returns the most production in the SEC, increasing expectations and stakes.
“It’s only 45%, but it’s still the most in our league,” Calipari said.
DJ Wagner is the only returner who averaged double figure scoring. Karter Knox tested the NBA waters before returning, and Billy Richmond saw plenty of key minutes. There is also Brazile, once considered a possible first round NBA pick before a torn ACL three seasons ago. In his final seven games last season, Brazile averaged 12.6 points and 9.7 rebounds.
“I’d tell you he (Brazile) is playing the best ball since I’ve coached him,” Calipari said. “If he’s the guy I’m seeing, you’re talking about someone that we have one or two like that, then this thing is on. He’s that good. Now you’ve got to find out who are the other couple that can make differences in the game.”
Arkansas’ mix of young and old looks familiar to Calipari — and anyone who saw his teams at Kentucky. Whether or not the new-old approach to roster building comes to fruition, even Calipari is unsure.
“None of us know,” he said. “We’re trying to figure out how this is going to work.”
NIL
What Jay Paterno’s bookshelf teaches about NIL, revenue-sharing, and college football
A bookshelf, among the trinkets and clutter that we have nowhere else put, contains stories and memories; some our own, some passed down from family members or legends, immortalized for the words they wrote or the many written about them. Sometimes those legends are family. A bookshelf is where Jay Paterno keeps Steve Spurrier’s visor […]

A bookshelf, among the trinkets and clutter that we have nowhere else put, contains stories and memories; some our own, some passed down from family members or legends, immortalized for the words they wrote or the many written about them.
Sometimes those legends are family. A bookshelf is where Jay Paterno keeps Steve Spurrier’s visor from the 1998 Citrus Bowl, the same place that his father, Joe, once kept it after losing that game, and a friendly wager with his friend that required him to wear it off the field.
Penn State had national championship aspirations that season and was the No. 1 or 2-ranked team in the country until a Week 11 loss to Michigan and a Week 14 loss to Michigan State.
The Nittany Lions settled for the Citrus Bowl meeting with Florida, which also spent time at No. 1 that year. Paterno and Spurrier, who were close friends, agreed that if Penn State won, Spurrier would wear Paterno’s glasses off the field, and if Florida did, Paterno would have to wear the visor.
The visor, white with the script “Gators” across the front in blue with orange piping, served as an important mnemonic for Joe and a lesson that still echoes in his son’s head.
“Going into that game, we had a couple of players that were eligible to play, but had kind of broken some team rules, and Joe left them home,” Paterno, then the tight ends and running backs coach on his father’s staff, recalled in an exclusive interview with Soaring to Glory. “Joe took that visor and always had it inside of his bookshelf at home because it was a reminder that he was willing to potentially risk losing a football game to try to do the right thing for the general health of the program.”
Paterno still plays a role in overseeing the health of Penn State football, as a member of the Board of Trustees, but his latest endeavor concerns the health of college football writ large.
Paterno is the author of Blitzed!: The All-Out Pressure of College Football’s New Era. A story that follows fictional Ohio State head coach Ed Hart as he navigates the increased demands and new challenges of the NIL and transfer portal era, based on real stories. Stories about how coaches with bags of cash and a handgun quickly became legitimate financial agreements, and every way in which the job is different from when his father did it for 46 years in Happy Valley.
“Recruiting has always been a big deal, but recruiting now is identifying high school talent, identifying talent at other schools that’s entering the transfer portal, but also recruiting your own players to stay on your roster,” Paterno said, echoing a common refrain from frustrated coaches who have either left the sport, or like Chip Kelly and Jeff Hafley, resigned from head coaching jobs to become coordinators either in the college ranks or the NFL.
However, Paterno, contrary to the message that many college football doomsday preppers began to trumpet when Kelly left UCLA and Hafley left Boston College, doesn’t foresee any mass exodus from college football coaching, or even many other coaches viewing the NFL as a life raft off NIL island.
“I think as long as we’re paying college coaches the kind of money that we’re paying them right now, head coaches, I think there’s going to be a real incentive for them to stick it out,” Paterno said, tongue planted firmly in cheek. “When you talk about the business model of college football, you have some head coaches at schools making 10 percent of total revenue of the program, not profit, but revenue. That’s hard to find in any business anywhere in the world.”
And what does that money buy? Well, in many cases, some of the best rule breakers (or evaders if you don’t get caught), in sports.
“As a coach, your job is constantly to find loopholes. Ohio State has a certain type of defense, I have got to find a hole in that defense, if the NCAA passes a certain rule as it relates to NIL, I have got to find what I can do that’s not forbidden… We’re going to see some very creative stuff because this profession does attract some very creative minds.”
Creativity is a necessity in the profession, even for a fictional character like Coach Hart leading the Buckeyes. Because even within the pages of Paterno’s college football fantasy, winning is everything.
“Let’s be realistic about what we’re dealing with here. We’re dealing with a bunch of people for whom winning at all costs carries a significant financial reward,” Paterno acknowledged, addressing the perpetual line-stepping throughout the history of the sport. “We’re not giving coaches big six-figure bonuses if they graduate 85 percent of players.”
While he’s taken a coach’s perspective throughout the book, if you’re searching for sympathy for the most highly-paid figures in the sport, look elsewhere. Paterno is a vocal advocate of the players and their involvement in solving college football’s most existential issues.
There aren’t many people involved in modern college football as connected to the sport in its previous form as the son of a man who coached from 1966 until 2011, and Paterno, like many traditionalists, is not a fan of the “implosion of the amatuer model” as he calls it in the description of his book. But that may be the only part of the issue where he and other old-school college football minds find common ground.
“We need to be realistic about what we’re doing here,” Paterno said, referencing the boom in television contracts and revenue generated by the Power Conferences and NCAA’s major events like March Madness. “This is not an extra-curricular activity that guys come to school to play for ‘Dear Old State’ or whatever it may be.
“This has become a business, and when you start talking about coaches making the kind of money that they’re making – I think the one thing I would change is with the revenue-sharing, I think coaches’ salaries should come down and revenue sharing for players in all the sports should come up, but I don’t think that’ll happen anytime soon.”
Revenue-sharing is the latest monkey wrench thrown into college athletics, part of the House vs. NCAA settlement that went into effect on July 1, 2025. The settlement allows schools to pay athletes directly from a pool of revenue-sharing money that in Year 1 will total about $20.5 million.
It’s the result of three federal antitrust lawsuits that claimed the NCAA was illegally limiting the earning power of college athletes. It also requires the NCAA to pay $2.8 billion in back damages to athletes from 2016 through the time of the settlement, over the next 10 years.
It’s a step in the right direction, but Paterno and many of its detractors agree that it’s merely a half measure. He believes that college football needs something more… revolutionary.
“It’s time for a constitutional convention,” Paterno said. Like the visor that loomed large over his right shoulder, a bit of history informing his vision for the future of college football. “The governing bodies of these schools should be part of this process, as should student-athletes. When you look at the College Football Playoff, every year they make changes, and the student-athletes aren’t at the table to say, ‘wait a minute, maybe we don’t want to play four more games or five more games without getting a chunk of the money.”
Then, like a true former college football coach, Paterno proceeded to find every potential loophole in the current deal; the state laws that can override its validity, the future lawsuit from a new star player who wasn’t represented in these class action suits, who doesn’t want their earning power artificially capped by this agreement, and the old-fashioned bags of cash that could make their triumphant return to the sport to skirt the NIL clearinghouse.
Then, Paterno addressed the elephant that has wedged itself into every room where the future of college football is discussed.
“I think collective bargaining has to show up. I think it’s going to happen. They’re going to have to be treated as employees. Let’s be realistic about that,” Paterno said. “You’re giving somebody a 1099 form for $1.5 million to play football at your school, it’s hard to argue that they’re not employees.”
Paterno’s fictional Coach Hart may not make the same argument, but for someone so entrenched in the history of the sport, Paterno is uniquely pragmatic about its future. Coaches must adapt, and players deserve more power. Most of the powers in college football will resist these necessary changes as long as they can. Instead, maybe they should take a lesson from the Paternos and Spurriers’ famous visor, and sacrifice this game for the long-term health of the sport.
NIL
Colorado’s Deion Sanders says NIL spending decides who makes the College Football Playoff at Big 12 Media Days
Deion Sanders is never short on opinions, and during Wednesday’s Big 12 Media Days in Dallas, the Colorado head coach had plenty to say — from the state of his program to his expectations in year two. But it was his unfiltered take on the current landscape of NIL in college football that stole the […]

Deion Sanders is never short on opinions, and during Wednesday’s Big 12 Media Days in Dallas, the Colorado head coach had plenty to say — from the state of his program to his expectations in year two. But it was his unfiltered take on the current landscape of NIL in college football that stole the spotlight.
“I wish it was capped,” Sanders said when asked how he would regulate NIL (via Ari Meirov). “You know, like, the top of the line player makes this, and if you’re not the type of guy, you know you’re not going to make that. That’s what the NFL does.”
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Sanders, who has embraced the new era of athlete compensation, wasn’t complaining about players making money — but he made it clear that the lack of structure is turning college football into a financial arms race.
“The problem is, you got a guy that’s not that dern good and he could go to another school and they give him a half-a-million dollars and you can’t compete with that.”
That sentiment quickly escalated into a broader critique of the sport’s competitive balance. Sanders pointed directly at the College Football Playoff as a reflection of where the money is going — and who it’s benefitting.
“All you gotta do is look at the College Football Playoff and see what those teams spent, and you’ll understand darn well why they’re in the playoffs,” he said. “It’s kind of hard to compete with somebody who’s given 25–30 million to a dern freshmen class.”
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“What’s going on right now don’t make sense. And we want to say stuff but we’re trying to be professional. But you’re going to see the same teams, darn near at the end… But the teams that pay the most are going to be there in the end.”
It’s not the first time Sanders has called out structural flaws in college football. And it won’t be the last. While his Buffaloes have drawn national attention for flashy moves and media buzz, they’ve yet to match that with postseason results — finishing 9-4 last season and bowl loss to BYU.
And though Sanders touched on a wide range of topics Wednesday, including the quarterback competition between Kaidon Salter and JuJu Lewis, it was his NIL comments that cut deepest.
Sanders’ frustration isn’t just philosophical. As he tries to rebuild a winner in Boulder, he’s competing against schools with NIL budgets that may dwarf Colorado’s. And in his view, that’s leading to a college football hierarchy that’s no longer about coaching or culture — it’s about cash.
As always with Coach Prime, the message was clear. Now it’s up to the rest of college football to decide whether to keep spending — or start listening.
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