Steve Sarkisian answers the $50 million question about Texas

Steve Sarkisian has answered the $50 million question surrounding the Texas Longhorns.

The cost of building a top-quality college football team is increasing these days. Convincing players to transfer to your program — or preventing the good ones from transferring away to another school — can cost over $1 million per player for the high-end athletes. Multiply that by twenty or thirty, and you can easily see how expensive a roster can get.

On Wednesday, The Athletic published a study that guessed the amount of money each college football program is spending on its football roster. They produced a range of money they think each program is budgeting for their football roster, and Texas was estimated to have the highest ceiling of $55 million. Note that Oregon ($48 million) and Ohio State ($48 million) both had higher estimated floors than Texas.

When asked at a press conference Thursday about having a potential $50 million payroll, Sarkisian called the report “inaccurate.”

“That is inaccurate. I think The Athletic and different outlets make, you know, I guess the valuations on players of what they think players are worth and not worth,” Sarkisian said.

The truth is there are very few people within football programs who know the exact payroll amounts of programs, so the best outsiders can do is make an informed guess. Sarkisian recognizes that. But fans and media outlets can make strong inferences on what they think a program’s payroll is, and it’s probably a pretty good guess.

In the case of a No. 1 team like Texas, the number is likely pretty high, and pretty close to the estimates, even if Sarkisian won’t confirm it. What we do know is that prices have gone up significantly in the last few years.