NIL has dramatically altered the college sports landscape. Now that colleges are allowed to pay student-athletes, players can often go to the highest bidder — usually a Power 5 program. That’s why Colorado head coach and Pro Football Hall of Famer Deion Sanders is calling for a salary cap in college football.
Speaking at Big 12 Media Day on Wednesday, Sanders explained why schools without deep financial resources are at a disadvantage when trying to attract elite talent.
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“I wish there was a cap. 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,” said Sanders.
“So the problem is, you got a guy that’s not that darn good, but he could go to another school and they give him a half-a-million dollars. You can’t compete with that. And it don’t make sense.”
Sanders pointed to the programs that routinely make the College Football Playoff — like Alabama, Texas, and Ohio State — as examples of schools that can afford to spend tens of millions on incoming freshman classes. That kind of financial muscle, he said, creates a lopsided playing field
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“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,” he said. “It’s kind of hard to compete with somebody who’s giving $25–30 million to a darn freshman class. It’s crazy.”
Sanders continued: “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 the end, with somebody who sneaks up in there, but the teams that pays the most is going to be there in the end.”
Colorado had two of the highest NIL earners in college football in 2024 in Travis Hunter and Shedeur Sanders, who are now in the NFL with the Jacksonville Jaguars and Cleveland Browns, respectively. The university also shut down its NIL collective before the House v. NCAA settlement, which now allows schools to directly pay athletes across all sports a combined $22 million annually.
In his second season at Colorado, Deion Sanders led the Buffaloes to a 9–4 record after going 4–8 in his first year. It was a solid 2024 campaign — Hunter won the Heisman Trophy, and Colorado finished 25th in the final AP Top 25 poll. However, with the departures of Hunter and Shedeur Sanders, expectations have cooled for the 2025 season.
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