Why the NFL Can Have a Salary Cap — and College Football Can’t (Yet)

[Steamboat Willie]

The NFL salary cap exists for one reason and one reason only — the players agreed to it. The league has a union, collective bargaining, and a negotiated trade-off: limits on pay in exchange for revenue sharing, benefits, minimum salaries, free agency rules, and long-term protections. That’s not a loophole. That is the legal foundation.

College football has none of that. No union. No CBA. No negotiated cap. No revenue-sharing agreement. So when the NCAA or conferences try to impose NIL “guardrails,” soft caps, or clearinghouses, courts view it as exactly what it is: price-fixing by a cartel without labor consent.

You can’t violate a salary cap that doesn’t legally exist. You can’t enforce a “market value” standard that no one agreed to. And you can’t copy-paste pro sports rules into an amateur system that refuses to acknowledge its players as employees.

Until players collectively bargain, every NIL restriction is just compliance theater — and the courts have been very clear about that.