Every player gets a Model Price: what he should cost on the open market, computed from production, pedigree, role and his program's money, with the math public. Where a real deal has been credibly reported, that number shows instead, tagged with its source. Two kinds of truth, clearly labeled.
Think a number is nuts? Every input is listed right here, and we grade our misses in public as real deals surface. Team totals reconcile to our roster spend bands.
All
The scorecard: how wrong are we?
We grade every price against reality, in public. Whenever a real dollar figure surfaces, we log what the model said BEFORE it knew, and show the miss. Two kinds of receipts:
Season
Player
Pos
Team
Model Said
Reality Paid
Verdict
Read the verdicts carefully: a gap is not always our miss. Nico Iamaleava's reported $1.2M sat far under our number, and he held out and left over that exact deal. Sometimes the model is grading the market. Caveats: the public record oversamples stars, quarterbacks and deals that blew up, and reported amounts themselves are rough. That is exactly why so few of these numbers exist, and why we keep score anyway.
How Model Price works
Model Price is built from four inputs, kept consistent with our team-level roster spend estimates. What goes in is public; the exact weights are ours.
Position market: what starters, rotation players and depth actually cost at each position, from published market reporting (GM surveys, position salary charts) blended with our ledger of real reported deals. Every new verified deal automatically re-fits these rates.
Talent: for skill players, where his projected production ranks among peers in our college fantasy model (the same model with a public track record). For everyone else, recruiting pedigree.
Program: a school's athletics revenue (public federal filings) raises what its players command.
Class: underclassmen carry a small premium (more years to buy), seniors a small discount.
REPORTED badge: a credible outlet reported this actual deal for the current season; the number links to the source and replaces the model for that player. Stale vintages, declined offers and rumors never override.
Honesty box: nobody outside the building knows real payrolls, including the sites that publish exact figures. These are estimates with the inputs exposed, corrected by the public record as it accumulates, and we grade our own misses in public. Argue with the inputs; that is what they are for.