College Football Players Projected To Earn $1.9B in 2025

It’s week 1 of college football season, which means new statistics are available on player compensation. This is the first year schools will directly share revenue with athletes (up to $20.5 million per school this year). However, we’ll still see the traditional name, image and likeness brand deals.

A brand new report from Opendorse, College Football Kickoff: How NIL is Reshaping the Game in 2025, offers insight into how much cash is flowing through college football this season.

College Football Is A $1.9 Billion Marketplace For Players

In 2021, college football players collectively earned about $393 million through NIL. Four years later, that figure could reach $1.9 billion in 2025, when you factor in revenue sharing.

Collectives—the booster-backed organizations that fueled NIL’s first wave in college football—peaked in 2024 at $853 million, but could drop significantly this year as schools take over some of the cash flowing to athletes now that revenue sharing is allowed. A whopping $1.4 billion is expected in revenue sharing this year, supplemented by $213.4 million from collectives and $290 million from commercial NIL deals.

Power 4 Vs. Group Of 6

Although Group of 6 institutions are expected to share less revenue with athletes than Power 4 programs, Opendorse’s research shows the revenue being shared as a percentage is nearly identical between the two groups: football athletes are projected to receive 13.1% of the revenue generated by Power 4 institutions, while that number is slightly higher at 13.3% in the Group of 6.

The Reality Of College Football Player Earnings

Headlines are dominated by news of million-dollar deals, but the numbers show that’s not the reality for most college football players:

• 66.5% earn less than $10,000 annually
• 7.4% fall between $50,000 and $99,000
• Only 0.3% clear $1 million

Breaking it down by conference, the Big 12 is giving the biggest slice of the revenue sharing pie to quarterbacks at 23.1%, compared to 14.4% in the Big Ten. The Big 12 also pays running backs more, while the SEC outspends the others in only one category: linebackers. All four conferences in the Power 4 spend more on offense than defense, but the SEC leads the way when it comes to defensive spending.

College Football Transfers Are Cashing In

The numbers show there’s a good financial reason for athletes to transfer. Athletes who transferred during the December window saw their earnings rise by 61.5%, while those in the spring portal window saw a 13.6% increase.

The Social Media Quarterbacks

Although much of the money for college football players flows through NIL deals with collectives and revenue sharing, athletes with large social followings can add even more with commercial NIL deals.

Oregon wide receiver Evan Stewart is the most-followed college football player with 2.1 million followers on TikTok, while Ole Miss defensive tackle Jon Seaton isn’t far behind with 1.8 million on TikTok.

Followers are an important metric, but engagement often matters even more to brands. Influencer Marketing Hub reports micro-influencers consistently deliver engagement rates of 3.86% compared to 1.21% for macro-influencers with over 1M followers.

Opendorse’s report found LSU’s Princeton Malbrue, with just 266,000 followers across social media, had 2.9 million engagements in the past 90 days—the highest in college football. He also has the ninth-fastest-growing following. Stewart and Seaton, although they are the most-followed, didn’t make the top ten in engagement.

High School Football NIL Is Here

Beginning Aug. 1, 2025, schools were officially permitted to present NIL and revenue-sharing offers to high school recruits. Opendorse projects $328 million in offers will flow to high school prospects in August alone.

The majority of states also now allow high school athletes to participate in commercial NIL deals, although the specifics of the rules surrounding this vary from state to state.

For decades, college football players generated billions for their schools with no ability to profit from it. Today, money is moving, but it doesn’t always move evenly.

The portal pays. Social media stardom translates directly to market value. And recruits are arriving on campus with six-figure offers already in hand.

College football has always been a big business. In 2025, it’s now a $1.9 billion business for players, too.