NIL expenditures have skyrocketed over the past few seasons in college football, with the nation’s top programs all struggling to keep up with one another.
As spending has grown, so has the debate surrounding the current state of NIL in sports.
Even the President of the United States has gotten involved in the discourse.
There are various opinions circulating about what needs to be done moving forward. A common theme among them seems to be that while student athletes deserve to get paid, there needs to be some level of structure in the system to preserve the long-term viability of college athletics as a whole.
The upcoming House vs. NCAA settlement ruling could offer some guidelines to the NIL landscape. However, until the settlement is approved, spending will only continue to skyrocket, particularly among the upper echelons of college football.
Recently-extended Illinois Fighting Illini head coach Bret Bielema has a pretty good idea of what the nation’s top teams are shelling out, and he recently touched on the topic in an interview.
According to 247Sports’ Carter Spahn, Bielema made a pretty astonishing prediction.
“You’re going to see teams this year in college football — just because I know the landscape that I’m dealing with — that are probably in the neighborhood of 30-35,” Bielema said. “Maybe even some of them close to $40 million rosters, which is insanity at its best, but it’s also awesome for our kids.”
Bielema has long supported NIL but acknowledges that not every team has the same resources. After all, the Fighting Illini are far from a football powerhouse, so while teams like Ohio State may be able to afford to spend $40 million, Bielema doesn’t have that luxury.
“Last year, we finished fifth in our 18-team conference,” Bielema said. “We had about a $5 million pool that we were working off of, but the four teams ahead of us, I think, were north of $20 million. You can pull that off once in a while, but to pull that off year in and year out is just not in the deck of cards that we’re dealt.”
College football, in many ways, has always been a story of the “haves” and the “have-nots.”
Elite programs have always had an easier time hoarding top talent, but NIL has seemingly grown this disparity far more than ever.
$40 million in NIL may seem absurd now, but without some change in the near future, that figure could end up looking like small potatoes five years down the line.
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