College football has always been a big business, but now that those numbers are out in the open, the average fan is seeing just how much money is getting thrown around at some of the top programs across the country.
It used to be that you had to recruit players to come to your school by pitching both your ability to win and your program’s ability to develop them. It was also about the university and school pride. Sure, now and then, a player would get a McDonald’s bag full of cash, and sometimes people would get in trouble. That was just the cost of doing business, now.
Now, the cost of business, while out in the open, has risen. Not only are schools having to pay players via revenue sharing, but they’re lining up major NIL deals for them as well. Millions of dollars are changing hands, and sometimes the player, whether a recruit or transfer portal target, won’t even pan out and stay at the school.
It’s the wild, wild west, and if a guy as entrenched in the culture of college football as Miami Hurricanes head coach Mario Cristobal can’t figure it out, how are the rest of us supposed to?
That’s exactly the case for Cristobal, though. Schools are having to pay upward of $40 million to roster a team. How is that even sustainable?
“The market is set by whatever the market thinks it’s supposed to be at,” Cristobal said on “The Triple Option” podcast (h/t On3). “We’re about as far away from structure as you can possibly be as it relates to that, in my opinion.”