$5 million budgets become $15 million and $10 million become $25 million in a market rife with NIL inflation.
A three-star high school prospect two years ago out of California, Darian Mensah hit the transfer portal with an eye-popping asking price that perhaps best illustrated what name, image and likeness has turned into within college football.
The Tulane redshirt freshman quarterback had a strong year, throwing for 2,723 yards, 22 touchdowns and six interceptions while leading the Green Wave to a 9-4 record. When he entered the transfer portal Dec. 8, amid rumors his coach, Jon Sumrall, could be on the move to another job, it was understandable to expect considerable interest in the young 6-foot-3, 200-pound quarterback. 247Sports ranked Mensah as the No. 7 quarterback and No. 72 overall prospect in the transfer portal.
What followed, however, speaks to a situation where money has flooded in from all corners and players hitting the market have never benefited more. According to sources around college football, Mensah received a deal from Duke that is believed to pay him $8 million over two years. A $4 million annual average would make him the highest-paid player in college football history, unofficially. A year ago, the going rate for a top-of-the-market quarterback like Cam Ward, who went from Washington State to Miami, or Riley Leonard, who left Duke for Notre Dame, was a little less than half that.
In college basketball, BYU is expected to pay top recruit AJ Dybantsa over $5 million for likely one year of his services in 2025-26. The NCAA was neutered earlier this year in its efforts to curb what has essentially become pay-for-play.
A $4 million annual salary would put Mensah on par or higher than nine base salaries of Power Four head coaches in 2024, according to USA Today’s coaching salary database. That includes Big 12-winning Arizona State coach Kenny Dillingham, Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea and the recently-fired West Virginia coach Neal Brown.
Basketball-crazed Duke, which went 9-3 this season under first-year coach Manny Diaz in one of the best years in program history, going this big in the portal and NIL market is a sign of the changing times. Sources have indicated the Blue Devils may have moved on from QB Maalik Murphy, who ended up at Oregon State, a cutthroat move after Murphy delivered one of the best seasons in recent Duke quarterback history — and a further indication of where college football has arrived.
«You take a contract and you multiply it by two, and that’s what you’re paying.»SEC director of player personnel
Mensah was repped by Young Money APAA Sports agents Noah Reisenfeld and Adie von Gontard on the deal. Darren Heitner, a well-known sports law attorney, assisted as legal counsel and called it «groundbreaking Darian Mensah NIL deals» with Duke and the NIL collective Durham Devils Club in a post on social media.
Duke and Mensah are just one example of a market that has exploded this transfer portal cycle. Washington State transfer quarterback John Mateer, the top-ranked QB in the 247Sports portal rankings, is believed to have commanded a deal in a similar neighborhood as Mensah to go to Oklahoma in an intense recruiting battle that included Miami and North Carolina. Mateer is not believed to have used a traditional agent to negotiate his deal.
It’s all part of a new money rush in college football this offseason, where the combination of soon-to-potentially-expire collective funds and the influx of revenue-share dollars are creating a market unlike anything we’ve seen before.
«I’m looking at the books from last year to this year and it’s not even close,» said a SEC director of player personnel. «You take a contract and you multiply it by two, and that’s what you’re paying. Everybody thinks they have money now, and they’ll figure it out on the backend. So everybody is trying to play fast.»