The 2487th hearing to discuss the issues surrounding college sports was held on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, and it led to one Senator calling salaries earned by major college head coaches "ridiculous," and probably the one you'd least expect.
As covered by Yahoo's Ross Dellenger, Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Tommy Tuberville, the former college head coach-turned-Republican Senator from Alabama, had an exchange that bare the issue vexing the college sports industry. In short, it's this: How do you legally limit the mobility and earnings of the athletes while keeping everything else the same?
To start, Murphy and Tuberville both brought up valid points.
Murphy said he saw no issue with the current, unregulated system of athlete compensation because for the first time it showed "how valuable these high-performing athletes are. I’m not somebody who sheds a tear over the fact that, for the first time ever, these athletes are making something close to their worth."
On the flip side, Tuberville argued that unlimited movement along with an unregulated market left athletes with zero incentive to actually pursue a college degree. "We are ruining these kids coming through today," he said.
That led to an exchange that cut to the heart of the entire issue. Tuberville called for President Trump to write an Executive Order that would eliminate athletes' ability to collect NIL payments and limit them to a single transfer before having to serve a one-year penalty.
"Coaches, too?" Murphy asked.
Tuberville paused. Then admitted, "You got me there, Murphy."
And therein lies the rub. Any efforts to limit athlete compensation invites scrutiny to limit coaches compensation. None other than Tuberville himself admitted as much.
“I was making money. Not as much as they are making now. Why do they make that much money?" he asked. "It’s ridiculous to be paying $9-10 million to coaches when a lot of that money can go to players.”
Tuberville earned $2.625 million in his final year at Auburn, 2007. He would have made $3.8 million had he remained on the job through the life of the contract, which expired in 2013. (Interestingly, Tuberville earned more in real dollars at Auburn than he did in subsequent roles at Texas Tech and Cincinnati.) That $3.8 million salary on the books for 2013 would have been worth $5.3 million in 2026 dollars. In reality, Alex Golesh will earn $6.75 million in base salary in his first year as Auburn's head coach in 2026. In short, Auburn is paying $1.45 million more to a first-year head coach than it would have paid Tuberville in his 15th season to coach the exact same team. That 27 percent spread -- the difference between Tuberville's inflation-adjusted hypothetical salary and Golesh's actual salary -- is the free market at work.
The free market has continued doing free market things even in the era of NIL and rev share, with the top end for coaches now pushing past $13 million a year. Thirteen coaches earned at least $9 million in 2025, per the USA Today database.
How do you keep one free market going while stopping another? It's a question no one has an answer to right now.