How does IU basketball compare in 2026 when it comes to its resources available to pay players?
CBS Sports says it contacted more than 100 sources to dive deep into what NIL looks like in college basketball this season.
But we before we go any further — we interrupt this article with caveats.
All attempts to estimate school-by-school spending on revenue sharing and name, image and likeness should be met with a high degree of skepticism.
Because no one outside the programs know the details with any real measure of precision. So whether it’s one source, 100 or 1,000, what CBS has compiled can at best be called a directional indicator, or a swag (sophisticated wild-ass guess) if you prefer.
But this is at least better than what we see often — some random social media account using AI to cobble together slop.
CBS says 11 men’s college basketball programs are projected to spend more than $20 million on their rosters during the 2026-27 campaign — Texas Tech, Kentucky, Illinois, Texas, Florida, St. John’s, Louisville, Duke, Tennessee, North Carolina and Michigan.
Indiana is one of four schools CBS says is in Tier 2 at “just under $20 million,” along with UConn, Arkansas, and Kansas.
For IU, this does seems directionally correct based on what we know about Indiana’s roster and spending habits. Is it $17, 18 or 19 million? Nobody on the outside really knows that — and for that matter — very few on the inside know. Schools don’t want the details to get out, so the information is closely guarded.
To this point, IU hasn’t been getting a strong return on its player investments. And ahead of the 2026-27 campaign, CBS suggests Indiana has overspent relative to its preseason standing.
“Indiana was a big spender ahead of a big second season for Darian DeVries, but despite many a Big Ten foe believing otherwise, IU did not hit the $20 million mark,” the report says. “Will the investment pay off with a team worthy of Top 25 status more weeks than not this season? The Hoosiers are one of only two teams that comfortably rank in the top 15 in spending but are not ranked in the preseason AP Top 25. (North Carolina, under a first-year coach, is the other.)”
CBS says the average cost of a Big Ten roster is $12.7 million. Michigan and Illinois are the lone schools ahead of Indiana. They’re both in the north of $20 million first tier.
You have to go all the way down to Tier 6, at $7-9.9 million to find Purdue. They’re there with Penn State, Northwestern, Rutgers and Iowa as the lowest-budget teams in the Big Ten.
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