"It will never happen": Urban Meyer scraps Deion Sanders' proposal for salary cap in college football with blunt take

Former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer isn't buying Deion Sanders’ pitch for uniformity in college football with an NFL-like structure for paying athletes. Even though the House vs. NCAA settlement allows a fixed maximum fund of $20.5 million for schools to pay their athletes, they can continue to earn more with private endorsements.

More or less, it would be similar to the current ecosystem, with the only change being that the deals need to be approved by NIL Go, a watchdog to regulate third-party NIL contracts.

Meyer was speaking on the "Triple Option" podcast earlier this week, where he shared his response to Deion Sanders’ proposal.

Meyer mentioned that it was not feasible to implement an NFL-like pay cap structure since the college structure is designed in such a way that players and schools could funnel extra funds through private deals.

Trying to bring Ohio State and Alabama to Colorado’s level isn't happening since the collectives and NIL boosters would never allow that.

“I could care less. I mean, this is, I think, the 780th time we’ve talked about this, but it will never happen,” Meyer said on Thursday (Timestamp - 6:07). “It will never happen because Colorado is not the same as Ohio State and Alabama and big market cities that have alumni that are willing to do that.

“But in a perfect world, you’d like it to be like the NFL, but it’s not. It’s like Major League Baseball. And we said this over and over again: you’ve got the starting left side of the infield for the Dodgers making more than most major league teams. That’s going to happen,” he added.

Deion Sanders criticized parity in college football teams' roster spending

The expenditure to build rosters in the SEC, Big Ten and Big 12 sees a massive gap every year. Teams like Ohio State reportedly spend almost $20 million to build the team, while schools like Colorado and other Big 12 programs move with just 10% of their counterparts' roster funds.

While speaking to the reporters at Big 12 media day on July 9, Sanders pointed out this very fact and called for uniformity.

“It’s kind of hard to compete with somebody who’s giving $25 or $30 million to a darn freshman class,” Sanders said.

While the sports commission is considering more revisions to the current model, it is highly unlikely that college sports will ever see a fixed cap for programs in the foreseeable future.