RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Since NIL was introduced into college sports, we have consistently seen the budgets for teams, especially in Power 4 conferences, continue to grow. We’ve seen that firsthand for the Wisconsin Badgers, whose football roster’s budget is significantly more in 2026 than it was in 2025 and certainly in 2024.
The same has been the case for basketball, where we saw Kentucky reportedly have a budget of over $20 million in 2025. Things haven’t changed, as spending continued to increase this offseason, despite teams already having some major budgets last year.
The Athletic recently released an article, sharing the average budget for each conference from last year to this year, and it was no surprise that the SEC was at the top with an average budget of $18 million this year.
Interestingly, the Big East climbed above the Big Ten this offseason with an average budget of $14.5 million, while the latter had an average budget of $14 million.
All three of those figures are significantly increased from last season, when the SEC, Big East, and Big Ten had average budgets of $9.7 million, $8 million, and $8.5 million. So, overall, the average Big Ten budget grew 68.2 percent, while that figure was 81.3 percent for the Big East and 85.6 percent for the SEC.
It’s not like the other conferences are lacking either. The Big 12 has an average budget of $13.8 million this year, up from $8.6 million in 2025, which was actually the second-highest average for any conference. Meanwhile, the ACC jumped up from $8.2 million to $11.5 million, marking the lowest overall growth of the top five conferences.
According to The Athletic, teams believed that things would start to level out with the house settlement last year, but that has not happened.
“Last offseason, when revenue-sharing was officially introduced as a result of the House settlement, many coaches hoped that roster budgets were at (or nearing) their all-time peak,” The Athletic’s Brendan Marks and CJ Moore wrote. “That’s because teams were essentially working with two pots of money in the same offseason: any funds they’d already raised — and had to spend — before the adoption of the House settlement; and then whatever revenue-sharing money they received from their athletic departments.
“Everyone was trying to front-load, because that’s when you were going to feel the House stuff,” one ACC head coach said in the article. “You hear all the time that this is not sustainable, but every year the prices go up, so we need to stop saying that. Somehow we’ve been able to sustain it.”
Additionally, an SEC assistant believes there are three or four teams now in the $30 million range after Kentucky led the way with a reported $22 million roster last year.
One position whose value has skyrocketed is center, with prices reaching up to $5 million and more for the upcoming season. A big part of that has been due to the lack of high-end options at the position.
“Positionally, all 25 coaches agreed that the most expensive players this spring — via retention or the transfer portal — were centers, with point guards a close second,” Moore and Marks wrote. “Multiple coaches said that the starting rate for a high-major center was roughly $1.5 million, with some of the top earners set to make triple that.”
We saw this play out at Wisconsin, where the Badgers prioritized Nolan Winter as their top retention target, while John Blackwell departed and eventually transferred to Duke.
Head coach Greg Gard revealed earlier this offseason that he doesn’t expect Wisconsin to be in the top half of Big Ten spending this season, even though the Badgers’ budget grew this offseason. That’s because of the significant growth throughout the country in budgets.
We’ll see how things continue to transpire year-after-year, but that growth has not stopped when it comes to roster prices.
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