One of the most common questions among college sports fans is also one of the hardest to answer.<\/p>\n
How much are players getting paid?<\/p>\n
The answer is unverifiable because programs treat revenue-sharing documents as literal state secrets. The opacity means fans can\u2019t fully understand the issue causing seismic shifts across college sports \u2014 even if they\u2019re directly or indirectly paying for it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to know what we\u2019re getting for our investment,\u201d Louisiana attorney Scott Sternberg said.<\/p>\n
Sternberg\u2019s view shouldn\u2019t be controversial. Public schools that receive public money generally make their budgets public. Online databases can show you the salary of a janitor at UMass<\/a> ($44,000) or a surgery professor at Florida<\/a> ($1.35 million). A records request can get you the recruiting budget for North Carolina football ($2.6 million), food expenses for Houston men\u2019s basketball ($504,000) or Lane Kiffin\u2019s contract at LSU<\/a>.<\/p>\n But player compensation has been a black box.<\/p>\n The Athletic has requested payrolls and budgets from more than 70 schools since it became legal for them to pay players directly July 1. Only one \u2014 James Madison \u2014 provided a payroll with redacted names. Seven provided sport-by-sport breakdowns (football players got $1.5 million from San Diego State and $13.5 million from NC State) or aggregate figures ($11.6 million split among 536 athletes at UConn from July 1 to Dec. 31 last year). The rest have either ignored requests or denied them.<\/p>\n Sternberg sued LSU this month on behalf of three reporters seeking similar records. Comparable cases are ongoing in South Carolina and New Mexico.<\/p>\n Most schools claimed their release would violate student privacy laws or disclose trade secrets. Texas said the documents must be shielded to protect the Longhorns\u2019 \u201cability to compete with other top athletics programs.\u201d Wisconsin argued publicizing its budget \u201cwould jeopardize the competitive position of the university, weakening its athletic programs, and is detrimental to the public interest.\u201d<\/p>\n During a legislative hearing over a state bill that would formally shield revenue-sharing figures from the public, South Carolina athletic director Jeremiah Donati said that if Alabama knew the Gamecocks\u2019 football payroll was a hypothetical $17,000,000, the Crimson Tide would spend $17,000,001. The same logic apparently does not apply to coaches, athletic directors, presidents, chancellors, recruiting budgets, operating budgets, Nobel laureate faculty members, research grants or any of the contracts and dollar figures associated with fiercely competitive parts of a university.<\/p>\n It is true that if other teams knew Donati\u2019s best player was making $2 million, they could try to poach him for $2.1 million. But that\u2019s already common, and secret salaries are making things worse.<\/p>\n On a recent episode of \u201cThe Audible,\u201d<\/a> Bruce Feldman shared the frustrations of a Power 4 personnel director over an inability to fact-check contract demands in the transfer portal. Without transparency, the personnel director told Feldman, programs risk being extorted by often-uncertified agents inflating the market with offers that might not exist.<\/p>\n If unverifiable figures are driving up rates, programs are paying for it. One way or another, you might be, too.<\/p>\n Lawmakers in Hawaii<\/a> and New Mexico<\/a> have discussed steering state funds to player compensation. Kansas, according to a recent report from KCUR<\/a>, is using the university\u2019s general fund for revenue-sharing, while at least three Florida schools are tapping into university investment\/auxiliary funds. Ticket surcharges have popped up from Tennessee<\/a> to Illinois State<\/a>, and West Virginia increased student fees. <\/a>The general strain from an added expense of up to $20.5 million, as stipulated by the House v. NCAA settlement<\/a>, is fueling Utah<\/a> and other schools to consider private equity \u2014 a move that has upside <\/a>but risks that could spread beyond athletics if universities or taxpayers are left holding the bag.<\/p>\n Even for schools that separate player payments from tuition and state dollars, it\u2019s hard to keep the buckets of money from spilling into each other. If Wisconsin lawmakers give the Badgers $14.6 million to use for facilities debt<\/a>, that frees up $14.6 million to pay players.<\/p>\n As the father of a third-grader, I won\u2019t be happy if any of the money my wife and I have been putting into a 529 college savings account directly or indirectly supports six-figure salaries for our son\u2019s future classmates. Especially if I have no idea where that money is going and why.<\/p>\n \u201cYou just can\u2019t allow these public universities to have a secret checkbook,\u201d said Frank Heindel, whose September lawsuit against South Carolina over revenue-sharing contracts remains pending.<\/p>\n Some of the effects are hypothetical. Without a payroll to scrutinize, how do we know a school doesn\u2019t have sweetheart deals for the son of a coach or senator?<\/p>\n Others are much more practical. Is your team struggling because the coach stinks? Or did the front office overpay for the quarterback or point guard? Or is the school investing too much of the soft $20.5 million cap<\/a> (which is exceeded through NIL deals) in one sport and not enough in another? The answers will allow administrators to make better decisions and frustrated fans and boosters to direct their anger (and donations) to the right place. You might not agree with your school\u2019s decision to allocate more to basketball or softball than its peers, but you can at least know and understand it.<\/p>\n If relative transparency is hurting programs, it hasn\u2019t shown up much in the standings. Ohio State touting its $20 million NIL budget<\/a> didn\u2019t stop the Buckeyes from winning the 2024 national title, just as Texas Tech\u2019s openness with last season\u2019s $25 million payroll<\/a> didn\u2019t keep the Red Raiders from their best season ever. The only school that provided a detailed payroll through a records request \u2014 JMU \u2014 made the College Football Playoff.<\/p>\n The status quo is problematic enough that Brian Kelly<\/a>, Jim Larra\u00f1aga<\/a>\u00a0and Shane Beamer<\/a> have asked for transparency around NIL. Clemson athletic director Graham Neff conceded at a recent state hearing that it \u201ccould be beneficial\u201d to the industry as a whole.<\/p>\n Last week, Kentucky men\u2019s basketball coach Mark Pope said he was \u201cdumbfounded and befuddled\u201d by some reports around player compensation \u2014 presumably referencing a story from the Associated Press<\/a> that quoted Yaxel Lendeborg saying he was offered $7 million or more to transfer from UAB to Kentucky (Lendeborg landed at Michigan). Pope said he would \u201ccount on some responsible media member somewhere to actually kind of dig in and find out\u201d the truth. My inbox (mbaker@theathletic.com<\/a>) is open.<\/p>\n Opacity is an issue around tampering, too, even after Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney publicly detailed how Ole Miss poached transfer linebacker Luke Ferrelli in January<\/a>. The Athletic requested the corroborating documents along with Clemson\u2019s correspondence with Ole Miss, the NCAA and College Sports Commission. The school denied the request, citing student privacy and a state law preventing the disclosure of \u201cinformation of a personal nature.\u201d South Carolina similarly denied a request for its correspondence with Alabama officials regarding a transfer\u2019s buyout. The result is that tampering and de facto free agency \u2014 some of fans\u2019 biggest complaints \u2014 remain shrouded in secrecy. How can you fix problems we don\u2019t fully understand?<\/p>\n Even if you don\u2019t think buyout figures and contracts should be treated as educational records like transcripts or test scores, it\u2019s fair to raise privacy concerns. But how much should they apply at public schools if the top basketball player at JMU was paid like an associate dean ($140,000) or when quarterbacks now rank among many states\u2019 highest paid public workers? Disclosing salaries won\u2019t cause long-lost uncles to start preying on players because the top athletes\u2019 identities are already obvious. Teammates in the locker room know it, too.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s not a secret,\u201d Heindel said.<\/p>\n That hasn\u2019t stopped lawmakers in South Carolina and Wisconsin from sending anti-transparency bills to the governor (it was vetoed in South Carolina <\/a>and pending in Wisconsin<\/a>). Instead of continued secrecy, here\u2019s one common-sense compromise: Disclose sport-by-sport breakdowns and general contract language so fans and taxpayers have a baseline understanding of where their program stands. Non-profit groups must report the salaries of their highest-paid officials and other key employees on their public tax returns. Teams should, too. Set the bar for disclosure at athletes who are paid more than the school\u2019s top academic. If student privacy is really the chief concern, delay the publication until after the player leaves.<\/p>\n Some disclosure is better than no disclosure because the costs of the status quo are real. You\u2019re seeing them and paying for them as almost every major issue circles back to NIL\/revenue-sharing. It\u2019s not just rampant roster transience or Cinderellas being on life support<\/a> in March Madness. Athletic departments are pricing out the middle class <\/a>and thinking about abandoning history to squeeze more money from facilities<\/a>. We haven\u2019t seen the effects of private equity or the next round of conference realignment, but they\u2019re coming.<\/p>\n To be clear, the problem isn\u2019t that players are finally being paid. The problem is that athletic departments didn\u2019t or couldn\u2019t properly prepare for the eight-figure hits their budgets took when revenue-sharing became legal. That means they\u2019re still scrambling to balance spreadsheets.<\/p>\n Spreadsheets we aren\u2019t allowed to see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the most common questions among college sports fans is also one of the hardest to answer.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":834654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[331,339,7,5480,49,48,156],"class_list":{"0":"post-834653","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-college-football","9":"tag-college-sports","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-mens-college-basketball","12":"tag-ncaa","13":"tag-ncaa-football","14":"tag-sports-business"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=834653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/834654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}