The Selective Spending Argument About Saving College Sports 

Written By Todd Graff

OPENING STATEMENTS

After watching and reading the reactions to Wednesday’s hearing on the Protect College Sports Act of 2026, I keep coming back to one question: if there’s belief that college sports has a cost problem, why are we so selective about which costs we are willing to confront? The conversation on Capitol Hill this week largely trained its fire on the one group that has only recently begun to benefit from decades of suppressed compensation. At the same time, Congress is moving toward a statutory scheme that invites immediate and serious legal challenge.

The Protect College Sports Act of 2026 seeks to cap student-athlete costs, while also limiting transfers and eligibility, and granting the NCAA a targeted antitrust exemption to enforce those rules. At the same time, the bill leaves untouched many other cost centers that have been skyrocketing over the last couple of decades. Coaching salaries, support‑staff headcounts, and facilities consume the largest share of athletic budgets and are growing at rates far above inflation. If the stated goal is cost control - of long-term health - the statute reads like a wage‑suppression bill aimed at one group, one with almost no representation: the athletes.

Let’s make this clear: we are in no way suggesting any sort of cap on coaching salaries. Rather, questioning why Congress and the NCAA – and all associated entities – are looking to control costs in one area – the area where they had artificially, and illegally, held down rightful compensation for decades. 

You need look no further than one of Wednesday’s lead speakers. Nick Saban’s first head‑coaching job at Toledo in 1990 paid $95,000; by the end of his career at Alabama he was earning nearly $13 million annually, a total increase of more than 13,268% or about 16.5% per year compounded annually. 

Saban is not an outlier. As of March 2026, the 13 highest‑paid college football coaches each earn at least $10 million per year, and head‑coaching salaries across the FBS have risen about 370% over 20 years.

The picture looks the same once you leave the head coach’s office.

These are the structural uses of new revenue in a nonprofit, zero‑sum competition model. And yet none is subject to a statutory cap.

So where does all of this line up in terms of allocation? The NCAA’s 2024 Division I finances report, using FY2023 data, shows that across all Division I athletic departments:

  • Coach compensation: 19% of total spending

  • Administrative compensation: 17-18%

  • Facilities and maintenance: 18%

  • Student‑athlete aid: 16%

  • Game and travel: 12%

  • Other expenses: 14%

  • Medical, recruiting, guarantees: the remaining sliver

Knight Commission projections show that by 2032, 25 of 54 public Autonomy‑5 schools will spend more on their 11 countable football coaches than on tuition, housing, food, books, stipends, medical costs, and insurance for every athlete in every sport..

Legally, the most consequential feature of the bill is its limited antitrust exemption. After NCAA v. Alston, the Supreme Court made clear that rules suppressing athlete compensation are subject to antitrust scrutiny, and Justice Kavanaugh warned explicitly against coordinated wage suppression. The Protect College Sports Act attempts to legislate around that holding by authorizing the NCAA and conferences, direct competitors for athlete labor, to agree on a hard cap on athlete pay. Congress is seeking only to immunize the coordination that holds down what athletes can earn. 

Taken together, the record from this landscape seems to beg the following:

  • If runaway spending is the emergency, why does the proposed remedy apply only to the expense category that comprises the smallest share of the budget among the five largest line items?

  • Why should athletes, those central to generating the revenue, be the only participants subject to a congressionally blessed wage cap, while coaches and administrators continue to compete freely in the market?

  • If an antitrust exemption is necessary for “stability,” why does that “stability” require only suppressing compensation for the one group whose pay has been systematically held below market and repeatedly vindicated in court?

  • And if buyout guarantees have already produced more than $1.1 billion, why are those obligations not part of any sustainability conversation before Congress?

To reinforce what we said above, if the health of college sports is really the objective here, why look at only one cost center. And then deny that cost center a voice.

EXHIBIT A

I don’t usually call attention to our firm’s filings in this newsletter, but I thought this one was important given its potential ramifications. Earlier today, we filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of 23 Quinnipiac University women’s rugby players, alleging long‑standing sex discrimination and asking for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to stop the University from eliminating their varsity program. Among other things, we believe this may be the first example of female athletes filing a lawsuit after falling victim to the results of the House settlement - which did not address Title IX. You can read more about it in Sportico.

EXHIBIT B

Saban may have finally caught up to where college athletes have been living for years. But he still misses the point. The problem isn’t that NIL money is turning “student-athletes” into professionals; it’s that “student-athlete” was always a PR shield to keep unpaid workers sounding cute and compliant while they built billion-dollar brands. As I mentioned in a newsletter earlier this year, and will reinforce here: We’re not in the amateurism era anymore; they’re college athletes and it’s long past time they were referred to that way.

ON THE DOCKET

Utah Athletics’ “reduction in force” as it marches toward finalizing its $500 million private equity deal with Otro Capital can be filed under: absolutely nobody should be surprised. When you invite Wall Street into campus, the spreadsheets show up before the mission statements; job cuts and restructurings are inevitable. The real question for 2026 and beyond is which athletic department will be next to decide future revenues (and people’s livelihoods) are just another asset class to be securitized.

FOOTNOTES

“If you look up the term ungovernable, I am convinced a handful of conference logos pop up and they're all autonomy logos.”

-MAC Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher on the inability of schools to abide by the rules

Todd Graff
Next

Title IX, Coaches and the Supreme Court’s Next Big Test