The model puts Texas at the top around $48M, with Ohio State, Miami and Notre Dame next. Revenue-share capacity is public record; the NIL layer is our estimate, and the math is all here. Disagree with a number? Good. That is the point.
How these numbers are built
Estimated roster spend = revenue-share layer + third-party NIL layer. Every input is public or derived from published reporting.
Revenue-share layer: the House settlement lets each opted-in school share up to $20.5M with athletes in 2025-26. We estimate football's share of that pool for each program.
Third-party NIL layer: scaled from each school's athletics revenue in its federal EADA filing (2024-25, the most recent published year), then calibrated so the league-wide total and the top rosters land where credible published benchmarks put them. As verified deal reports accumulate in our ledger, this calibration re-fits automatically.
The band: collective money is not public, so the NIL layer carries an uncertainty range. Precision beyond that would be theater.
Portal columns: real 2026 transfer portal moves (players in, players out, and the net star rating of that traffic) from CollegeFootballData.
Top Model Price: the highest-priced player on each roster from our player-level model; where a real deal has been credibly reported, the reported number shows on the team page, labeled and sourced.
Our transparency deal: we show you every input and every source, and we grade our own misses in public as real numbers surface. The exact weights are ours. What we never do: republish other outlets' valuations or claim to know any locker room's actual payroll. Athletics revenue is fact; roster spend is an estimate you can argue with.