The price of a championship roster in college football keeps going up. The revenue-sharing cap is generally understood as a suggestion by the most resource-rich programs in the country, and their massive NIL warchests outside of that $20+ million cap means massive paydays for the best players that enter the Transfer Portal each offseason.
Often, the gaudy numbers are going to the top quarterbacks on the market, and rest assured, Brendan Sorsby, Sam Leavitt, and Darian Mensah are doing alright financially, but this offseason, a wide receiver commanded one of the biggest deals in the country.
Former Auburn wide receiver Cam Coleman chose Texas over Alabama and Texas A&M, and while the official number isn’t public, On3’s Pete Nakos reported on Tuesday that whichever team, presumably, finished as the runner-up had offered him a “blank check.”
“Cam Coleman had a blank check from us,” an SEC general manager told On3. “Trust me, he wasn’t going [to Texas] for less. He got paid a ton.” https://t.co/772aDHXcxP
— Andy Staples (@AndyStaples) February 24, 2026
Alabama doesn’t have the deep pockets it needs to compete in the portal
While it’s not confirmed which SEC general manager made those comments to On3, it feels safe to assume it was not Courtney Morgan, Alabama’s GM. More likely, it was Texas A&M’s GM, Derek Miller. The Aggies have near-unlimited resources and have leveraged them repeatedly to emerge in recent seasons as a conference and national contender.
Coleman wasn’t the only top portal player to spurn the Tide for Texas. Alabama was also outbid for top running back Hollywood Smothers, who originally committed to Alabama before flipping to the Longhorns.
In what is likely Arch Manning’s final college season, Texas is going all out to put a championship roster around him, and that’s largely been done by paying the premium it takes to pluck proven veterans out of the Transfer Portal. Meanwhile, DeBoer and Morgan have been forced to pivot to high school recruiting as their primary means of talent acquisition.
Under DeBoer and Morgan, Alabama has landed back-to-back top-five high school classes, which aren’t cheap. The Tide clearly have a strong donor base and enough financial backing to stay near the top of the heap in the SEC, but with the oil money in Texas flowing to the Longhorns, Aggies, and even Texas Tech Red Raiders in the Big 12, for the first time in the program’s history, Alabama may have to learn how to do more with less.
Alabama can write big checks, the Texas schools can write blank ones, and while that hasn’t led to a title for any program from the Lone Star State in the NIL era yet, it’s only a matter of time before one of the three breaks through with their embarrassment of riches.