Big 12 Coach Calls for Major Change When Paying Players

(Nathan Breisinger, Pittsburgh Sports Now) – The landscape of college sports appears to be changing daily and one of the most polarizing head coaches in college football is calling for more changes to help deal with revenue sharing and NIL payments.

Colorado head coach Deion Sanders is advocating for a salary cap to provide an even playing field in a sport that is new to paying athletes.

“I wish there was a cap,” Sanders said during the Big 12 Media Days this week. “Like, the top-of-the-line player makes this, and if you’re not that type of guy, you know you’re not going to make that. That’s what the NFL does.

"All you gotta do is look at the [CFP] and see what those teams spent, and you'll understand darn well why they're in the playoffs."

Deion Sanders on NIL and the current state of college football. pic.twitter.com/y6A5C3dWUP

— ESPN (@espn) July 9, 2025

“So the problem is, you got a guy that’s not that darn good, but he could go to another school and they give him a half million dollars. You can’t compete with that. And it don’t make sense.”

Sanders, who is now in his third year with the Buffaloes, is looking for a system that resembles the NFL.

“I wish it was truly equality,” he said. “Now they go back to doing stuff under the table. They go back to the agents. Now you’ve got parents trying to be agents, you’ve got the homeboys trying to be agents, you’ve got the friends trying to be agents. You got a lot of bull junk going on. And quite frankly, we’re sick of it. I’ll say it for everybody: We’re sick of it.”

Starting on July 1, 2025, universities were allowed to start sharing revenue with student-athletes for the 2025-26 school year, per the House Settlement. Schools can share up to $20.5 million with a majority of athletic departments expected to allocate 75 percent of that to the football program.

WVU director of athletics Wren Baker recently detailed how West Virginia will distribute the money.

Wren Baker Details How WVU Will Distribute Money in Revenue Sharing Era

However, programs will still work with third-party NIL collectives to bring in bigger deals for student-athletes that can surpass the revenue-sharing money. ‘NIL Go’ was created by the College Sports Commission and Deloitte to help ensure fair market value for deals.

Most of this story initially appeared on our partner site Pittsburgh Sports Now.