Is it time to uncap the market in college sports? Top industry brass already pushing for major change
- - Is it time to uncap the market in college sports? Top industry brass already pushing for major change
Ross Dellenger January 18, 2026 at 2:04 AM
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CORAL GABLES, Fla. — For years now, especially during the era of athlete compensation, few universities have been the target of more criticism than the University of Miami.
One of the program’s mega-boosters, Nevin Shapiro, spent time in prison, after all. Another, John Ruiz, landed the program in one of the last wide-ranging NCAA investigations a couple years ago.
And just last year, the University of Wisconsin filed suit against Miami for tampering with an athlete who had signed a revenue-share agreement.
Maybe all of this can be solved in one way: uncap the market.
“The idea of capping compensation has never worked in this industry,” said Miami athletic director Dan Radakovich, speaking to Yahoo Sports from his second-floor office on campus Friday morning. “The model we have right now is really difficult to enforce. People who feel like they want to invest, should have the ability to invest.”
Radakovich is the latest and, perhaps, the boldest to publicly encourage an uncapped market of athlete compensation.
As schools strategize to exceed the new $20.5 million roster cap in a variety of ways, many college officials believe that enforcement is “really difficult,” Radakovich says, and that the act of restricting earnings — even within the House settlement’s injunction — is not a way forward.
“Over time, if we have this kind of open system, economics will bring things back to a more normal circumstance,” Radakovich said. “This model would allow this to be fair to those who want to invest and allow the market to settle. It will settle over time. It always has.”
Would removing the cap fix the new problems in college sports or just create new issues? (Grant Thomas/Yahoo Sports)
Roughly six months into college sports’ new revenue-share era, many of the highest-ranking college administrators are supporting abandoning the roster spending limit.
In an interview earlier this week, Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork said college sports “cannot govern the money any longer” and should consider an unlimited spend. Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua, in an interview last month, said very bluntly, “I think the cap is too low.”
But wouldn’t an uncapped market mean that the wealthiest programs in the country would outspend others?
“Aren’t they now?” Radakovich replied. He estimates that an uncapped market would mean football rosters at $35-40 million and reaching, in a couple years, the $50 million mark.
“We’ve never been successful to a large extent at legislating competitive equity,” he said.
Radakovich’s comments come three days before Miami meets Indiana here in the national championship game and on the very day that a potential transaction unfolded in college sports’ unruly free agency market. Duke quarterback Darian Mensah plans to enter the transfer portal and, according to the Miami Herald, will sign with the Hurricanes despite being under contract with the Blue Devils as part of a two-year, $8 million deal he signed last year.
Radakovich and other Miami officials did not comment on Saturday about the potential transaction. Mensah is expected to appear in the portal next week, at which point UM’s staff can legally contact him, though communication has likely already happened with Mensah’s representatives.
In what is standard language in many revenue-share agreements, Mensah’s contract with Duke prohibits another university to use his name, image and likeness, potentially impacting his compensation or participation at any other school. It’s a legal entanglement that may be necessary to resolve, likely through a financial settlement between the schools or legal action.
The situation shines a light on the messy circumstances in college athletics, where an industry is slowly evolving from amateur to professional and where a lack of national enforcement has even resulted in some conferences — the SEC — to consider a league-only model.
Some believe enforcement from the College Sports Commission — the new policing arm created by the power conferences — is around the corner. In fact, the CSC is in the process of notifying several programs of inquiries into unreported third-party NIL contracts or NIL guarantees to athletes — which is against the rules — that may eventually be denied by the CSC’s NIL Go clearinghouse. If a player accepts compensation of a denied deal, they are deemed ineligible.
“Student athletes appear to be being promised NIL deals and it’s not clear that they will actually get through NIL Go,” CSC CEO Bryan Seeley said earlier this week from the NCAA convention.
At the root of all of this is the NCAA’s landmark decision in May of 2024 to settle three antitrust cases, most commonly referred to as the House settlement. The agreement — blessed by a federal judge — features a concept of permitting schools to share revenue with athletes under a spending cap.
In a negotiated resolution between plaintiff lawyers and NCAA/conference administrators, the Year 1 cap was established at $20.5 million — an amount meant for all athletes at each school. The $20.5 million represents 22% of certain athletic department revenues among the 68 power conference programs. That figure, when coupled with scholarship and other benefits, nets to near 50% of an average of athletic department revenues to achieve a 50-50 split similar to an NFL model.
However, budgets even in the power conferences vary widely. Ohio State’s $250 million budget, for instance, is more than twice the amount of at least two dozen fellow power league schools. If the cap were set on an individual school basis, the Buckeyes’ cap would likely exceed $40 million annually — or twice the current spending limit.
It’s part of why schools are creating third-party deals — exempt from the cap — to exceed the limit, as reported recently at Yahoo Sports.
“We have a soft cap,” Bjork said. “The 22 percent was settled three years ago. The market went way beyond 22 percent. The House case settlement did not keep up with the market. In some ways, we need to overcorrect the House settlement in terms of the money piece.
“When you restrict the money, you cause people to do things against the rules, go underground or wire things. We’re hearing all kinds of stories,” Bjork continued.
From the NCAA convention this past week, NCAA president Charlie Baker described the revenue-sharing portion of the settlement as a “dramatic departure from the status quo” and something in which stakeholders should be patient about.
“I think we’ll know a lot more about this over the course of the next 12 months or so, but I do believe that some of the things that are messy actually creates clarity,” Baker said.
In the meantime, here in Miami, the Hurricanes continue to rock the collective college sports boat — on and off the field.
“Everyone is looking to get an edge on everyone else as this industry has done forever,” Radakovich says. “They are going to spend X so we are going to spend 2X.”
Source: “AOL Sports”
