Pay Ranges for College Football Positions

Came across this ESPN article from August 2025. A link to the article is below. It underscores that GMs need to manage their team’s budget based on their needs. Pay more for one position means paying less for another to stay within budget. Elite talent will be even higher than these ranges.

Quarterback - $1M to $2M
Running Back - $300,000 to $700,000
Wide Receiver - $400,000 to $800,000
Tight End - $200,000 to $400,000
Offensive Tackle - $500,000 to $1M
Center and Offensive Guard - $300,000 to $700,000
Edge Rusher - $500,000 to $1M
Defensive Tackle - $300,000 to $800,000
Linebacker - $200,000 to $500,000
Cornerback - $300,000 to $800,000
Safety - $300,000 to $700,000

UH’s revenue cap for 2025-2026 is $20.5M for all sports, with 68-69% ($13.9-$14 million) for football. This excludes private funded NILs.

General Manager Wes Fritz has his work cut out for him.

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NIL was an awful idea

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thanks for this.

at most of those positions, they should be able to retire if they play 4 years at those ranges, those pre med and engineering studaents gotta be real happy they are working their butts off and still have decades to get to those amounts.

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Did you prefer the time when uta, atm and all other so called blue blood paid players under the table?
Do you remember when Cam Newton got anywhere from $180k to $400k in 2009?
Guess how much money auburn gave to the rest of the team? YUP, this how college football has operated for decades.

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Do you honestly believe that most schools did not pay players prior to NIL?

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Of course they did. What we needed was enforcement, not indulgence

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I think you can see those who didn’t are having more success now because they can.

A few big 12 teams fall into this

They all did. The difference today is that the ncaa can’t go after teams for paying players. The ncaa was in bed with some blue bloods for decades. That is undeniable. These ncaa mofos put us in mutlitple probations while uta, atm and many others got a slap on the butt.
Today teetech is able to do what the osu, michigan, bama, goergia, uta and atm have done for decades.
The main difference for me is if you “recruit” wisely you can actually built a National program. Campbell being an ex player is paramount when you “profile” a possible recruit. Money has never been the main reason you win. If it had been the case uta and atm would have won most championships in the last 20 years.
A HC like HCWF “grooms” builds up players. They become better players because of how HCWF and his staff coaches. That is major when you have a three stars players. That player might end up being a five stars player when they graduate. That is how great coaching makes a huge difference.

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Lol I love seeing my co-workers’ faces when I tell them how much some of these 17-22 yr old kids are making

They’re making as much as (if not more than) a Fortune 500 CEO makes annually.

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Enforcement would be cheaper

So students pull out loans to go into debt to pay football players that don’t go to classes.got it.

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It didn’t matter, they would be and have been getting paid under the table for years NIL or not nothing has changed it’s just supposedly all in the open yeah right lol

You missed:

Waterboy - $10 to $12 per hour

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Enforcement how?

Disagree. Let the market dictate what these player earn. For far too long coaches were paid outrageous sum, administrators channeled cash to their own pockets and built Taj Mahals on the back of these players.

These guys deserves every single penny. Pay them or get out of the way.

Capitalism at its finest :man_shrugging:

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NIL was inevitable, it is the wild west aspect of it that needs revision. You need collective bargaining to create some guardrails. No one can agree on what collective bargaining looks like, so college sports suffers.

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Can we all agree that most programs and especially blue blood programs paid players under the table prior to the NIL?
This question is at the core of this NIL perception. Some of you need to realize that there were never amateur programs. Who made sure that this was kept quiet? You can easily figure it out.

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Well you see there was this time that SMU couldn’t have a team for a couple of years. We couldn’t be on tv or go to a bowl. Lots of teams have suffered fines and scholarship reductions. Our current basketball coach had to leave the college game for 5 years just for text messages.

Enforcement is clearly possible, the answer is do more and take down some of the whales rather than just the small fry to send the message and get the poor behavior to stop.

Also, get rid of the bad incentive of giant tv revenue deals and out of control coaching salaries.

But no, we’ll just give in.

You missed the main point Trent.
uta committed the same exact violations that we did.
We almost got the death penalty…and consequently we landed in c-usa, our administration was so fed up they wanted to shut down our football program. We barely survived.
uta? They got a slap on the wrist.
These happened multiple times. Every single time when we were ascending. uta had implants inside the ncaa. uta knew what they were doing.
The nil puts everybody on the same page…that is exactly why the so called blue bloods are against it.

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