As the college football world struggled to understand how Indiana coach Curt Cignetti orchestrated the greatest turnaround in the history of sports, a wave of unfounded allegations ensued.
One popular cope for fans of other teams was that Cignetti and Indiana bought their way to a 16-0 season and a national title.
That noise intensified enough that just moments after winning the championship game in Miami, Cignetti addressed his team’s roster budget in the opening remarks of his postgame press conference.
“I would like to say our NIL is nowhere near what people think it is, so you can throw that out,” he said to laughter in the room.
And a week ago Cignetti quoted a post on X to emphasize his program was nowhere near the top of the heap in spending on name, image and likeness.
Correct, not even close.#GOIU #IUFB https://t.co/vWbhErIZ7M
— Curt Cignetti (@CCignettiIU) April 16, 2026
That X post came in response to Alabama football GM Courtney Morgan telling Front Office Sports it costs $40M to build a championship roster in the NIL era.
There are all sorts of estimates out there for who spent what in NIL in 2025. All of it should be taken with a grain of salt because the schools and players are not required to, and do not report such information.
But the schools repeatedly thought to have the biggest budgets in the sport have consistently been Texas Tech, Texas, Ohio State, Oregon, and Texas A&M. They were all thought to have corralled in the neighborhood of $30 to 40 million to fund last year’s teams, and those top-end numbers appear to be going up substantially in 2026.
Let’s be clear: Indiana has been competitive financially over the last two years, if not near the top. Multi-billionaire alumnus Mark Cuban has stated openly he’s given large sums to the athletic department to help the cause in this new wild west era of the sport. And he’s not the only one.
But how much did IU have available to build its 2025 national championship roster?
Cignetti won’t say the precise number, but he did give a range this week.
“What I will tell you honestly is that our final number was closer to $15 million than $40 million,” Cignetti said Wednesday on the Andy & Ari podcast. “Now obviously it was somewhere in between.”
Cignetti’s comment means Indiana’s final number was between $15 million and 27.5 million. We’ll probably never learn a more precise range than that.
But what it clearly means is IU was nowhere near the top of what was spent to build rosters in 2025. Most observers already knew this, even as frustration and jealousy artificially inflated Indiana’s budget as last season progressed.
Again, IU is not in the poor house right now. No one is claiming that.
But above all else, the IU turnaround story is exactly what you thought it was: Elite talent evaluation, elite culture, and elite game preparation, scheming and execution — all supercharged by staff and player continuity.
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