4 Years Into Name-Image-Likeness Era, College Cash Gaining On NBA/NFL Money
By David Glenn
Beginning with the 2025-26 season, for the first time in history, even some projected first-round draft picks will be able to make as much money (and sometimes more) as college athletes than they would make as first-year professionals in the National Basketball Association or the National Football League.
In college basketball, for example, Texas Tech forward JT Toppin reportedly will receive approximately $4 million in Name-Image-Likeness compensation to remain with the Red Raiders for his upcoming junior season. As a sophomore, Toppin was a consensus second-team All-American and the Big 12 Player of the Year, while averaging 18 points and nine rebounds per game.
In the NBA, first-round draft picks are compensated according to a predetermined scale, with a different dollar amount assigned to each draft slot and some wiggle room for negotiation between a player and the team that selects him. (A player can sign for as little as 80 percent, or as much as 120 percent, of the dollar amount assigned to that slot.) For the 2025-26 season, the top slot’s number is about $11.5 million, while the 30th/final slot in the first round has a number that’s slightly less than $2.3 million.
Texas Tech forward JT Toppin drives past Arizona State center Shawn Phillips Jr. (9) during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game, Saturday, March 8, 2025, in Tempe, Ariz. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)
If Toppin were selected in the first half of the NBA’s first round, he’d be virtually assured of making more than $4 million per year just in salary (before endorsements, etc.), and he’d also have the security of a guaranteed two-year contract in which his second-year compensation is even higher.
However, if Toppin were selected in the latter part of the first round — according to a majority of NBA draft projections, that would be his most likely scenario this year if he made himself eligible — his $4 million compensation at Texas Tech actually would be higher than his first-year NBA salary.
This development represents a major change, even from the first four years of NIL payments (they started with the 2021-22 season) for NCAA athletes, and a brand-new threshold in the history of college athletics.
To be clear, colleges are still not even close to competing with the mind-boggling money the NBA and NFL throw at their highest draft picks.
Duke star Cooper Flagg, for example, is expected to be the #1 overall pick in this year’s NBA draft. After the wiggle-room negotiations mentioned above, that slot likely will translate into a guaranteed two-year contract worth about $28 million, with escalating team options for Flagg’s third and fourth pro seasons.
Earlier this week, Flagg actually was noncommittal about his upcoming stay-or-go decision. Under NBA rules, college underclassmen and qualified international players have until April 26 to declare themselves eligible for this year’s draft. Under NCAA rules, college players who enter the draft then have until May 28 to withdraw if they want to continue their college career without eligibility complications.
“I’m just going through the process,” Flagg said. “Really, we haven’t had that much time to talk about it yet. … I’m not in a particular rush. I’m just going through the process, going to talk with everybody I need to, and we’ll make a decision on what’s best for me.”
Duke coach Jon Scheyer, though, said on the Dan Patrick Show that a lengthy conversation with Flagg is completely unnecessary.
“I can dream about that (Flagg returning to Duke), but I think that’s all it is in this case. I think it’s a dream,” Scheyer said, laughing. “I think he’s got to take the next dream in his life and be the top pick in the NBA draft and start his professional career.”
Similarly, in the NFL, the top numbers are astronomical, even as compared to the quickly growing NIL numbers at the college level.
The #1 pick in the 2025 NFL draft will receive a four-year contract worth more than $43 million, with his massive signing bonus and some other compensation guaranteed. For the #10 overall pick, that four-year number is almost $24 million.
In the latter part of the NFL’s first round, though, the first-year salary drops to less than $3 million. Again, with the surging availability of big NIL dollars at the college level (Duke’s new starting quarterback, Tulane transfer Darian Mensah, reportedly will make $4 million per year for the next two seasons), that presents a new type of stay-or-go decision for elite, draft-eligible college players.
In a recent, casual survey of head coaches and assistant coaches at Atlantic Coast Conference men’s basketball programs, the most frequently mentioned price range for an elite player (a potential All-American in 2025-26) was $3 to $4 million per season. The range for a surefire, starting-caliber player was $750,000 to $1.5 million per season. Even some ACC players expected to come off the bench are now getting more than $500,000 per year.
Those numbers are way up, even from last year.
This massive, recent escalation in college NIL money is largely a byproduct of the ongoing House vs. NCAA lawsuit, which is expected to be resolved on a spring timetable that enables a brand-new framework for major college sports beginning with the upcoming 2025-26 season.
For the past four years, all NIL money has come from third parties — think shoe/apparel or food/beverage companies, hotel chains, auto dealerships, restaurants, etc. — and not directly from the universities themselves.
The pending House settlement, a $2.8 billion agreement that hopes to resolve a series of antitrust lawsuits filed against the NCAA, the ACC and the other power conferences, would allow — for the first time — universities to pay their own athletes NIL-style money in the form of revenue sharing.
If the House settlement is approved this spring, as expected, universities will be able to distribute up to roughly $20.5 million of their own athletics-related revenue to their own athletes during the 2025-26 academic year, which will begin July 1. (The $20.5 million is a cap, not a requirement, so some schools may spend less.) The annual cap number will rise annually in an attempt to keep up with inflation.
Third-party NIL money still will be allowed, too, creating a brand-new economic environment that has enabled major colleges and their sports-minded supporters to throw money around this spring in a way that reflects another enormous step away from the NCAA’s century-old amateurism model and another gigantic step toward direct competition with the NBA and NFL for all but the very best professional prospects.
David Glenn (DavidGlennShow.com, @DavidGlennShow) is an award-winning author, broadcaster, editor, entrepreneur, publisher, speaker, writer and university lecturer (now at UNC Wilmington) who has covered sports in North Carolina since 1987.
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