Curt Cignetti is sounding the alarm about the current state of college football, as Indiana's national champion coach is casting doubt on the long-term viability of the NIL market.
"The market is pretty expensive. Scary. Scary," Cignetti told Colin McMahon of The Hoosier On3 on Thursday. "I think players should get paid, but something is going to have to be done in the next 12-24 months, or universities aren't going to be able to handle this. College football won't exist the way we're going right now."
Cignetti's comments came shortly after the announcement of the bipartisan Protect College Sports Act, co-sponsored by Senators Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell. The legislation would offer the NCAA anti-trust protections to limit transfers and help cap NIL spending.
Since the introduction of NIL for student-athletes, spending has exploded across college sports. According to Matt Baker of The Athletic, last year's 12-team College Football Playoff field, which included Cignetti's Indiana, posted a combined $721 million in operating expenses for the prior year.
That influx of money is one of the key factors behind Cignetti's miraculous job in turning around Indiana. The Hoosiers had more all-time losses than any other program in the sport's history when Cignetti signed on before the 2024 season, and now they enter the 2026 campaign as the defending national champions. While Indiana wasn't among the top spenders, NIL opportunities undoubtedly helped Cignetti recruit high-performing transfers.
Cignetti wasn't the only coach to speak up this week, as numerous SEC frontmen have shared their thoughts at the conference meetings in Florida.
"If we don't get some level of regulation within the market, a lot of people are going to go bankrupt," Texas A&M's Mike Elko told David Hale of ESPN. "If it keeps going from where it's at up another 20% and another 20% - we're two-and-a-half years away from having an NIL budget that's more than the TV revenue for all of our universities. And when that happens, we're going to have some serious questions about how that gets funded."
