In building the Colorado football program, head coach Deion Sanders has always had the NFL in mind.<\/p>\n
Headlined by Sanders, the Buffs have a coaching staff loaded with more than 160 years of NFL experience. Sanders, running backs coach Marshall Faulk and defensive line assistant Warren Sapp are all Pro Football Hall of Famers.<\/p>\n
Sanders\u2019 program does a lot to help the players prepare for an NFL future, too.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately for Sanders and the Buffs, college football doesn\u2019t have an NFL model that levels the playing field financially, which can impact the ability to compete on the field.<\/p>\n
With the approval of the House v. NCAA settlement in June, colleges can now pay student-athletes through revenue sharing. Each school is capped at $20.5 million in revenue sharing for the 2025-26 academic year (to be spread out among various sports), but name, image and likeness (NIL) deals can go beyond that number, meaning the teams the wealthiest donors will likely continue to land the best players.<\/p>\n
\u201cEquality, man,\u201d Sanders said when asked during a coaches roundtable at Big 12 media days earlier this month how he\u2019d fix college football. \u201cWe have alumni, we have boosters (at CU) that are doing the best they darn could but sometimes they just can\u2019t compete with some of the other powers, and I wish it was truly equality.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Some say) it\u2019s equality, but it\u2019s not. Now they go back to doing stuff under the table, they go back to the agent. Now you got parents trying to be agents, you got the homeboys trying to be agent, you got the friends trying to be agent. You got a lot of bull junk going on and quite frankly (coaches) are sick of it. Nobody\u2019s saying it. I\u2019ll say it for everybody; we\u2019re sick of it and you\u2019re not gonna fix it unless you listen to these men with all this experience (the coaches).\u201d<\/p>\n
Some schools won\u2019t have to worry as much as others about coming up with the $20.5 million for revenue sharing. Some won\u2019t have any trouble coming up with NIL deals, either, that\u2019ll help to lure the top players.<\/p>\n
Many other schools, including CU, will have to get creative to compete financially, but Buffs athletic director Rick George said it helps that there will be rules in place that make sure the NIL deals are legitimate. Those rules haven\u2019t been in place over the past couple of years.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo put some teeth behind it, to have an enforcement group, a third-party enforcement group, I think will be helpful,\u201d George told BuffZone. \u201cYou have to disclose deals over $600. I think that\u2019s important.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even with NIL, though, Sanders and his peers would love to see a system that makes the financial playing field more level in terms of building a roster.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish it was a cap; like, the top of the line player makes this and if you\u2019re not that type of guy, you\u2019re not going to make that,\u201d Sanders said. \u201cThat\u2019s what the NFL does. The problem is (in college football), you got a guy that\u2019s not that darn good but he could go to another school and they give him a half a million dollars and you can\u2019t compete with that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy, sitting on the stage with Sanders, agreed and said, \u201cWe really need to get some guardrails to eliminate the things that are going on from a tampering standpoint, and players that are coming out of high school that are getting way too much money before they\u2019ve ever made a play on game day. I\u2019m OK with paying the players that are producing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tampering is when schools find a way to offer players not yet in the transfer portal a chunk of money to jump into the portal and leave their current team. The House settlement and some NIL rules could reduce some of the tampering that\u2019s been going on in recent years, but coaches agree that more needs to be done.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not the way to do business,\u201d Kansas head coach Lance Leipold said. \u201cI think we as coaches and leaders have to set the example of doing this with integrity once we get everything set.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a salary cap in the NFL, the teams that are smartest in building a quality roster within the cap will typically land in the playoffs and compete for a championship.<\/p>\n
Under the current rules in college football, there are certainly rewards for those coaches who are talented in finding and developing talent, but there\u2019s no question that the teams winning the most are likely going to be the teams with deep pockets.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re going to see the same teams darn near the end, with somebody who sneaks up in there (without a lot of money),\u201d Sanders said. \u201cBut the teams that pay the most is going to be there in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Originally Published: July 20, 2025 at 4:57 PM MDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In building the Colorado football program, head coach Deion Sanders has always had the NFL in mind. Headlined…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":79414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[4437,4438,4441,1428,1369,4439,1318,4440,1370,1317,1315,1316,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-79413","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-boulder","9":"tag-boulder-county","10":"tag-buffzone","11":"tag-college-football","12":"tag-college-sports","13":"tag-colorado","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-front-range","16":"tag-latest-headlines","17":"tag-ncaa","18":"tag-ncaa-football","19":"tag-ncaafootball","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114888620447728392","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}