NCAA Under Fire After Deion Sanders Advocates for NIL Cap in College Football originally appeared on Athlon Sports.
The NCAA received some criticism after Colorado Buffaloes coach Deion Sanders proposed a solution to one of college football’s rising concerns.
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Coach Prime said he wants to create an NIL salary cap similar to the system used in the NFL to create equal spending opportunities. Sanders came up with this idea after witnessing numerous SEC and Big 10 schools spend millions to recruit incoming freshmen.
“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 million dollars,” Sanders said during the Big 12 media days on Wednesday. “You can’t compete with that. And it don’t make sense.”
Colorado Buffaloes head coach Deion Sanders reacts against the Arizona State Sun DevilsMark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
The Alabama Crimson Tide raised its spending by 82% in 2024. Due to these schools having high amounts or spending Sanders thinks this has created a disparity because programs like Colorado don’t receive as much funding as the Crimson Tide, making it harder for them to attract recruits.
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“You understand darn near why they’re in the playoffs,” Sanders added. “It’s kind of hard to compete with somebody who’s giving $25-30 million to a freshman class. It’s crazy.”
Furthermore, due to the House v NCAA settlement, schools can pay their athletes through a revenue-sharing pool, capped at $20.5 million. However, that amount could rise to $30 million by 2035 as schools begin putting more money into their NIL funds.
According to NFL reporter Albert Breer, some see this outcome as a failure on the NCAA’s end because they could have organized a system to properly send out NIL funding.
“I think there was an opportunity over the last 20 years for the NCAA [and] the conferences to get a hold of this early and create some sort of order, rules and guard rails,” Breer said during a recent episode of “The Herd with Colin Cowherd.”
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“And unfortunately, there wasn’t the leadership at the NCAA level with guys like Mark Emmert to do that. Those guys were more concerned with collecting every check until the money train stopped rolling, so now everybody else was left to pick up the pieces. And I think it’s sort of unpredictable which way that will all go.”
Related: Deion Sanders Delivers Verdict on Deion Sanders Jr.’s Recent Nike Collaboration
This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jul 11, 2025, where it first appeared.