While proper compensation for college student-athletes was long overdue, the current Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) system has created an incredibly uneven playing field. It's one in which Kansas, and many Power 4 schools will struggle to compete.
A report published by The Athletic, which the outlet provided as a free article, found that eight of the top 10 schools in the latest AP Poll spend between $38 million (11th-ranked Alabama) and $54 million (6th-ranked Ohio State) in NIL money. Oregon (21st), Texas (1st), LSU (7th), Texas A&M (9th), Miami (5th), Notre Dame (3rd), Tennessee (15th), Ole Miss (8th), and Texas Tech (13th) are the biggest spenders.
How much did your team spend on its roster?
— David Ubben (@davidubben) September 16, 2026
Our staff @TheAthletic spent months and talked to countless people inside and outside of every Power 4 program in search of the answer.
Here's what we found. Free story: https://t.co/21A5tayYyj
Not counting the three armed forces schools—Army, Navy, and Air Force, which don't pay athletes—Kansas football has the sixth lowest NIL payroll for football. Three other Big 12 schools are also in the bottom six, including Cincinnati, Iowa State, and Arizona. Duke and Boston College spend the least on their football programs via NIL.
Kansas football will struggle to compete in the current NIL system
It will be nearly impossible for schools like Kansas to compete for players that would be difference makers for KU. The Jayhawks' coaching staff has to shop from the bargain bins for players, looking for diamonds in the rough. And if those rough diamonds become polished, chances are, some other school will be able to woo them away with a bigger bag of cash.
It won't matter what improvements Kansas makes to its stadium and facilities. It won't matter how good the coaching staff is. If Kansas can't compete financially with the bulk of the Power Four conferences, the chances of Kansas being competitive season after season are incredibly slim.
The best Kansas can hope for is to be at least mediocre, with an occasional good season thrown in now and then. The last three seasons at Kansas are what things will look like: 9-4, 5-7, and 5-7.
The system is broken. The NCAA had decades of warning that the old status quo of tuition, books, room and board, and $25 per week wasn't enough for athletes. Not when the schools and conferences were raking in big bucks. The NCAA was content to bury its oversized head in the sand and stick with its stance that college athletics was strictly an amateur endeavor for athletes.
Instead of being proactive and working with student-athletes, coaches, and administrators to build a workable model, the NCAA wanted to stand on its pulpit and preach an incredibly outdated message. And now there is chaos.
The NCAA has become a toothless entity that continues to lose battles in courts and is now begging the federal government to step in and save them. The most reasonable thing would be for the power conferences to separate completely from the NCAA, form their own independent entity, and work with athletes and the schools to establish a set of rules that can benefit all sides.
The current system isn't sustainable. Sure, some schools may have limitless donors willing to pony up money for the next several years, but that won't work for most of them. Streaming revenues and apparel companies can help build the war chests, but that ocean of money isn't bottomless or equal either.
And this is just football. NIL money for basketball has to exist too. That doesn't leave much else for any other athletes playing sports that drive little-to-no revenue.
Something needs to happen soon, or the chasm between the haves and the have-nots will only grow bigger, making it less likely that schools like Kansas will ever be able to scratch their way toward the top. Money hasn't been the great equalizer; it's had the opposite effect.
The graphic from The Athletic says it all. The biggest spenders will have the best teams. Occasionally, some schools will have an anomalous big season, but the outlook for most of the 68 power conference schools will be fighting for mediocrity while the overall sport suffers.
Players deserve to be fairly compensated. They deserve to be paid if the name, image, or likeness is used to make money, but the system has to provide some sort of equality among the schools. College sports shouldn't be an open market.
What is going on now isn't the answer. Kansas, as well as many other schools, just won't have much of a chance to compete, and that's just sad.
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