NIL salary cap has been a major issue for all college football teams when it comes to bringing players into the team. The number becomes unrealistic, like quarterback Bryce Underwood getting $10.5 million before even taking a single snap on the field. That’s exactly why Michigan’s head coach wants to mirror the NFL-like model to survive in this NIL era.

“I think it’s got to be an NFL minor league model where we have a salary cap,” Whittingham said on the Rich Eisen show. “The players are employees. I think, as distasteful as some of that is, I don’t think there’s any other way that is better than that. And right now it’s out of control.

“I mean, we’re going to have probably a dozen teams in the next recruiting cycle with $50 million rosters, and there’s such a disparity between the haves and the have-nots. And I think that the only way to get that evened out and level the playing field is to go ahead and pattern it after a minor league NFL model, a super-league, if you will.”

In an NFL-style system, every team has a spending limit, called a salary cap, to, pay its players. So, if College Football brings it into their league, it would stop the richest schools from spending far more than everyone else and give smaller programs a fairer chance to compete. This will also stop tampering with players, as it happened with Clemson’s linebacker Luke Ferelli, who moved to Ole Miss.

Right now, schools with the most money can spend much more on their football teams. For example, Ohio State reportedly spent around $20 million on its roster and went on to win the 2024 national championship. So, this way the entire power shifts towards one team as they can get better players with more money.

An NFL-style salary cap would change that. Every team would have the same spending limit, so no school could build a stronger roster simply by spending more money.

Plus, in an NFL-like system, players would also no longer be treated only as student-athletes. Instead, they would become employees of their school or the league and they will have a group to represent them just like the NFL Players Association.

This group would negotiate with the league on salary. This rule can bring in some chaos as players can still negotiate their salaries, but it will keep them all in line.