The preseason Big Ten title odds equate to Nebraska being the 10th-best team in the Big Ten. Conference sports writers picked the Huskers 11th. The Massey composite rankings—a roundup of more than 20 predictive models—slots NU at 10th as well.
Those are all just projections, and we’re close now to finding out how accurate they are. But in today’s college football, unfortunately, we also must consider another factor in our perception of teams—the spend.
If 10th-best in an 18-team league is close to a consensus expectation for 2026 Nebraska, you’d hope the Huskers are at least getting what they’re paying for from a roster perspective. If NU was 10th while ranking 15th in roster spend, that’d be great. If it was 10th while ranking fifth, that’d be awful. But 10th while ranking 10th is a square deal.
According to The NIL Standard, Nebraska ranks ninth in the Big Ten for 2026 with a roster valued at $23.7 million. That’s a projection, too, because maybe the most ridiculous thing right now about what has always been our most ridiculous sport1 is that while every coach in the country is lobbying for more money for their roster, we don’t actually know what the teams are spending. The coaches are all telling us it’s the most important front in today’s game, and yet we get very few reports, real information, from the frontlines.
I put some stock in The NIL Standard’s numbers because a) it does incorporate those real reports when they’re available, and b) it’s remarkably transparent about what it does when those reports aren’t available. This is probably the best available estimate for the thing nobody talks about with any specificity.
Today, we’re thinking about the upcoming Nebraska season through the lens of $23.7 million dollars.
