Estimated Roster Costs – College Football Playoff teams 2025-26:
Here are our estimated roster costs for the 2025 College Football Playoff (CFP) teams. The term “roster cost” is used rather than “team payroll” since athletes are not considered employees of college athletic departments. Our estimated average is just under $ 26 million per team, of which approximately $ 15 million is directly paid by schools via revenue sharing and $ 11 million is paid via third-party NIL:
| Estimated Roster Costs CFP Teams 2025-26 * | Conference | Estimated 2025 Roster Cost ($) |
|
|---|---|---|---|
 |  | ||
| Texas A & M | SEC | $ 34,275,000 | |
| Ohio State | Big Ten | 33,500,000 | |
| Texas Tech | Big 12 | 28,000,000 | |
| Oregon | Big Ten | 26,100,000 | |
| Miami | ACC | 24,406,000 | |
| Oklahoma | SEC | 24,400,000 | |
| Mississippi | SEC | 23,800,000 | |
| Georgia | SEC | 22,600,000 | |
| Indiana | Big Ten | 21,100,000 | |
| Alabama | SEC | 20,900,000 | |
| Tulane | American | ** | |
| James Madison | Sun Belt | ** | |
| Average per team ** | 2025-26 | $ 25,800,000 |
* While estimates for revenue sharing payments are straightforward, estimate calculations of third-party NIL are challenging primarily because teams are very protective of this data. Using the best currently available supporting information, we made adjustments based on the following factors:
- Our estimated roster costs include only third-party NIL that is included the athlete’s compensation package as committed to by the school. A school’s offer to a player typically includes both revenue sharing and third-party NIL components. Additional third-party compensation received by an athlete beyond what the school has guaranteed is not included as a roster cost. This is one reason why our estimates are lower than some published estimates of football teams with “payrolls” supposedly exceeding $ 40 million.
- Revenue sharing began July 1, 2025 – this is also the starting date requiring submission of all third-party NIL payments exceeding $ 600 to the College Sports Commission (CSC) for approval. Consequently, many NIL collectives fully distributed their funds prior to July 1 to avoid having to submit these payments to the CSC for approval. Some of these payments also included compensation covering more than one season. This NIL Collective “money dump” is another reason why our estimates may be significantly lower than others – our estimates are specifically for the fiscal year July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026.
** We do not have sufficient revenue sharing data for the two non-power conference schools who received bids to the 2025 CFP. However the roster costs of these two teams would clearly be a fraction of the other ten … likely in the range of $ 4 million give or take.
As a side note, James Madison charges the highest amount of athletic fees of any school – over $ 55 million per most recent NCAA reporting. This works out to $ 2,456 per student for the 2025-26 school year and is mandatory. Conversely, power conference schools have much lower student fees, but rely heavily on booster contributions to support their athletic departments. But this stream of support may be severely tested during the revenue sharing & NIL era.
Questions on our data? Contact us at: NIL-NCAA.com
Statistics compiled & edited by Patrick O’Rourke, CPA Washington, DC 