Short version: On October 30, 2026, the College Sports Commission published the first pay tables for college athletes, by sport and position. At ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC schools, the middle quarterback is set to get $75,000 from his school in 2026. The middle baseball player at the same schools got $0.
$0. That's the middle revenue-sharing payment for a baseball player at an ACC, Big 12, Big Ten or SEC school in 2025-26, the first year of revenue sharing.
Same conferences, different position. The middle quarterback is set to get $75,000 from his school in 2026. Among the quarterbacks who get paid at all, about one in ten is at $1,611,000 or more.
Who published this
The College Sports Commission, the CSC, was set up in 2025 to enforce the pay rules in college sports. That covers revenue sharing, which is money from the school itself, and deals with anyone outside the school.
It runs two systems built under the House v. NCAA settlement. CAPS, the College Athlete Payment System, records what schools pay athletes. NIL Go is the clearinghouse for deals with third parties.
The tables don't name anyone. The CSC says "No individual student-athlete, school or individual deal is identified." Its CEO, Bryan Seeley, said "This is the first time compensation data of this kind has been published for college sports."
The first year in totals
In the year that ended June 30, 2026, CAPS recorded $1.77 billion in direct payments from schools to athletes. Separately, NIL Go cleared 46,478 outside deals worth $582.49 million through August 31, 2026.
The CSC's October 1 release breaks the school money down. CAPS tracked $1,975,973,365 in all. That's $1,770,453,776 in revenue sharing, $42,034,090 in Alston Awards and $163,485,499 in new and added scholarship spending.
Of 319 schools that opted in, 307 paid athletes directly. The money reached 34,915 athletes at those 307 schools, across 33 conferences and 45 sports. A school could share up to $20.5 million in 2025-26, and 68 reached that cap or came within 5 percent of it. For 2026-27, the cap is $21.58 million.
Reading the tables
The tables use percentiles. The 50th percentile is the median, the middle: about half the group is at or below it. The 90th percentile is the level that about 90 percent of the group is at or below. The letter "n" is how many athletes are in the group.
The revenue-sharing tables come two ways, and the difference is the whole story. "With $0" counts every athlete in the group, paid or not. "Without $0" counts only the athletes who got, or are scheduled to get, a payment.
So the gap between the two "n" numbers is the number of athletes who got nothing from the school in that window.
Football
The CSC's football tables cover payments made or scheduled in calendar year 2026, under agreements as of September 30. At ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC schools, which the CSC calls the A4, the table counts 367 quarterbacks. 257 of them got, or are set to get, a payment.
Counting all 367, the middle is $75,000. Counting only the 257 who get paid, the middle is $230,000, and the 90th percentile is $1,611,000.
Outside the A4, the table counts 829 quarterbacks, and 256 get a payment. Counting all of them, the middle is $0. Among the ones who get paid, it's $31,000.
Offensive linemen are a surprise. At A4 schools, 1,105 of 1,398 get a payment, and the middle across all of them is $75,500, a little above the quarterbacks' $75,000.
One catch the CSC spells out. During the season, CAPS counts nearly every promised performance incentive as a scheduled payment, "even if the performance benchmark has yet to be reached." A bonus that hasn't been earned yet is in the number.
Basketball
Basketball covers payments made from July 1, 2025, to April 6, 2026. Payments due after April 6 aren't in it.
For men, counting everyone, the middle was $100,000 in the Big 12, $48,000 in the Big Ten and $38,000 in the ACC. In the SEC it was $0. 114 of the 253 SEC players in the table got a payment by April 6, and the middle among them was $175,000. Outside the A4, the middle across all 3,667 players was $8,500.
For women, counting everyone, the middle was $31,000 in the Big Ten, $11,500 in the Big 12 and $10,000 in the ACC. In the SEC and outside the A4, it was $0. Among Big Ten players who got paid, the middle was $50,000.
Most other sports
For every sport besides football and basketball, the window is the 2025-26 cap year, July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026.
At A4 schools, 712 of 2,498 baseball players got a revenue-sharing payment. The middle across all of them was $0, and the 75th percentile was $500. Among the 712, the middle was $12,000.
Softball at A4 schools: 310 of 1,362 got a payment. Counting everyone, the 90th percentile was $7,500. Women's soccer: 315 of 1,878. Counting everyone, the 90th percentile was $500.
The middle baseball player at an ACC, Big 12, Big Ten or SEC school got $0 from revenue sharing. The middle quarterback is set to get $75,000.
Deals from outside the school
The NIL Go tables measure something else. They count only athletes who had at least one deal cleared, and each figure is the full contracted amount of those deals. The CSC says deals run for different lengths, so the figures "are not annualized earnings."
A4 quarterbacks with a cleared deal from January 1 to September 30, 2026: 194 of them, with a middle of $65,550 and a 90th percentile of $996,049. Outside the A4, the middle for 130 quarterbacks was $1,570.
For men's basketball deals cleared from June 11, 2025, to April 6, 2026, the middle was $10,320 in the SEC, $10,000 in the Big 12, $9,100 in the Big Ten, $6,250 in the ACC and $5,000 outside the A4.
For women's basketball, it was $8,820 in the Big Ten, $7,370 in the SEC, $7,130 in the ACC, $6,250 in the Big 12 and $1,250 outside the A4.
Small deals can be in there too. Athletes sometimes submit deals under $600, and those may be counted even though the CSC doesn't review them unless they add up to $600. How NIL Go reviews the bigger ones is on our rates page.
What the tables leave out
Scholarships, cost-of-attendance stipends and Alston payments aren't in these tables. Some sports aren't reported at all, because there isn't enough data to publish and still keep athletes anonymous.
The windows differ by sport, so a football number and a softball number don't cover the same months. The CSC says the data may be updated as more comes in. We read these tables on November 7, 2026.
On3's Nick Schultz and FootballScoop's Zach Barnett wrote up the football numbers the day they came out. Barnett wrote that "on Friday the CSC did something very useful."
Why a middle number matters
The CSC calls this the first data of its kind in college sports. For the first time, a figure in an offer has a public middle beside it, by sport, by position and by conference, from the commission that oversees the payments. Whether that middle is the right one for a given deal is a different question, and the tables don't answer it.
What sits under the number is in the contract: when it's paid, what's guaranteed, and what depends on a benchmark. Our earlier post covers how much of college sports money reached players before revenue sharing. The rules for your state are on our college page, and how athletes read deals without an agent is in our guide.
What Leave does with this
Upload a revenue-sharing agreement or an outside deal and Leave reads it back in plain words: the amount, the payment dates, and what the school or the brand gets from you in return.
Leave takes 0 percent of anything you sign. You decide what to sign.
Questions people ask
Does the report name any school or player?
No. The College Sports Commission says no individual athlete, school or deal is identified. Sports with too little data to stay anonymous are left out, and a dash marks a percentile the group is too small to publish.
Do the numbers include scholarships?
No. The CSC says the data leaves out scholarships, cost-of-attendance stipends and Alston payments. The tables cover revenue-sharing payments from schools and third-party deals cleared through NIL Go.
Why do football numbers cover a different year?
Football counts revenue-sharing payments made or scheduled in calendar year 2026 for 2026 rosters. During the season, the CSC counts promised performance incentives as if they will be paid, even before the player reaches them.
Will these numbers change?
They can. The CSC says the data may be updated as more information comes in. The figures in this post were read from the CSC's tables on November 7, 2026.
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