ATHENS — College football starting quarterbacks have never been more important or valuable.
NIL legislation and transfer portal leniency have created a free agent market with little or no guardrails, often leaving teams no option but to invest heavily into their primary signal caller.
To no one’s surprise, 10 of the top 11 college football NIL earners, per On3, play the quarterback position.
A look at the richest estimated values is like a Who’s Who of college football playoff contending quarterbacks.
Outside of top earner Shedeur Sanders ($5.6 million), whose father coaches his Colorado team, the next seven NIL starting earners play quarterback on Top 10-ranked teams:
• Jalen Milroe, Alabama, $2.5 million
• Quinn Ewers, Texas, $2.1 million
• Jaxson Dart, Ole Miss, $2 million
• Cam Ward, Miami, Fla., $2 million
• Nico Lamaleava, Tennessee, $1.9 milion
• Carson Beck, Georgia, $1.8 million*
• Dillon Gabriel, Oregon, $1.7 million
Quarterback value
Florida coach Billy Napier explained the challenge that comes with recruiting and managing the position.
“We all know the value of the quarterback … at most levels of football, the importance of a guy that can produce not only on the field from a production standpoint,” Napier said, “but the intangibles, the leadership, kind of a guy that sets the tone for the entire organization and building.
“It’s extremely important; the big challenge now is how do you put a value on the evaluation of the player,” Napier said.
“Then what percentage of your cap goes to the quarterback. There’s a lot of variables in recruiting and roster management.”
College football teams don’t have a salary cap, though the pending legislation for revenue sharing calls for a set amount of money to be placed in each school’s NIL.
Still, to Napier’s point, there’s a delicate balance to establish and then manage.
As former Alabama coach Nick Saban famously said, “If you don’t pay the right guys, you’ll be shit out of luck.”
Carson Beck Bonus
Georgia made securing Beck a priority in the offseason, as some two weeks went by after the SEC title game before Beck announced his plans to return for the 2024 season.
UGA offensive coordinator Mike Bobo told a group of boosters in January that the Bulldogs had signed their biggest recruit in Beck, who entered the 2024 season as the nation’s leading returning passer and a Heisman Trophy favorite.
Beck’s deal is believed to be closer to holding $3 million in value, with other considerations factored in, per DawgNation sources, making him head and shoulders the highest paid Bulldogs’ player.
Georgia coach Kirby Smart has made sure to keep his locker room educated, to the point he’s not concerned that Beck’s earnings could become a distraction or chemistry issue.
“We show the NFL salary cap, we show the NFL minimum, we show in the NFL the highest thing you can get at each position in franchise players,” Smart said.
“It’s obvious what quarterbacks make as starting quarterbacks in the NFL …. our kids acknowledge and recognize that the quarterback is a different position when it comes to NIL, and Carson does a good job handling that.”
The SEC boasts eight of the top 11 NIL earners — all quarterbacks — including Beck, who at surface level was valued appropriately.
Brian Kelly’s better grip
LSU coach Brian Kelly explained entering the league the complications of determining player values and negotiating with recruits and potential transfers.
“What’s real and what is fiction?” Kelly said in Destin more than two years ago. “A kid could say, ‘I was offered $1.5 million to come to ‘X’ school, you better get on board or you’re not going to get me.”
Kelly said two years later that some player and position values have standardized, but without qualified third-party managers — agents — negotiations can still get sticky.
“We still run into some that think the mark is ‘X, and it’s really not,” Kelly said, “(but) generally speaking, there’s a little bit more awareness of what that market looks like.”
It’s certainly no accident LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier is slotted appropriate to his NIL value, ranking 11th overall at $1.5 million, per On3 Sports.
Nussmeier was recruited and signed out of high school by LSU, serving as an example of how a program can still develop talent.
The Tigers’ previous quarterback, however, was Arizona State transfer and last year’s Heisman Trophy winner, Jayden Daniels.
“The portal quarterbacks have had a ton of success, but also there have been a lot of good freshman players that have transitioned well,” said Napier, who starts Wisconsin transfer Graham Mertz at quarterback.
“You’re seeing more of a trend (of them) moving around late in their careers.”
NFL quarterback value
The NFL, like the collegiate ranks, places great value on the quarterback position via an elevated pay scale.
As much as quarterbacks like Milroe and Beck are fighting it out for SEC supremacy, there is also a race going on to the top of the NFL draft boards.
A sampling of NFL quarterback rookie salaries from the past two years explains why (sources Ian Rapport, Spotrac):
Number one pick (2024): Caleb Williams, 4-year guaranteed $39.49 million, $25.5 signing bonus
Number Two pick (2024): Jayden Daniels, 4-year guaranteed $37.75 million, $24.3 signing bonus
Number Eight pick (2024): Michael Penix Jr., 4-year guaranteed $22.8 million, plus $13.46 signing bonus
Number 12 pick (2024): Bo Nix, 4-year guaranteed, $18.6 million, $10.4 million signing bonus
Number 33 pick (second round, 2023) Will Levis, 4-year guaranteed, $9.54 million, $3.93 signing bonus
Number 68 pick (third round, 2023) Hendon Hooker, 4-year guaranteed, $5.72 million, $1.15 signing bonus.
Number 128 pick (fourth round, 2023) Stetson Bennett, 4-year guaranteed, $4.53 million, $699,000 signing bonus
Number 150 pick (fifth round, 2024): Spencer Rattler 4-year guaranteed, $4.35 million, $336,000 signing bonus
Georgia salary slots
NFL rookies have their salaries based on where they are selected in the draft, serving as an example of the guard rails the NFL has in place through its Collective Bargaining (labor contract) Agreement.
Collegiate sports have no such thing in place, as Saban pointed out more than two years ago when speaking on potential NIL complications — many of which have come to fruition.
“Look at the NFL model, they have contracts, they have free agency, they have a players association,” Saban said in June of 2022. “A lot of these things don’t exist and never really needed to exist in college football, but as soon as you start paying people, or people start earning money, then you’ve got to start thinking about how do you control these things in a way that creates uniform balance.”
That day has yet to arrive, but that hasn’t stopped Smart from working to install some system of balance and fairness in the UGA locker room.
Smart noted how the NFL has a salary cap to work with along with slotted rookie salaries and franchise tags to help manage rosters.
“We don’t have that much in-depth, I only know how we do it, and it’s not perfectly slotted,” Smart said. “You could say the starters are typically gonna get more, then guys get adjusted based on where they are and where they are playing.
“And the longer a guy is around and the more veteran he is, the better he’s playing and the more opportunities he has.”
Carson Beck value
Zeroing in on a player’s value is tricky, and it can get even harder when trying to predict how that will translate into the NFL.
Beck, at first glance, is certainly not having the sort of season he enjoyed last year: per The Athletic, through the first four games Beck has a higher off-target rate (8.9 in 2023, 9.8 in 2024) and his third-and-long conversion rate is down (38.5 in 2023, 34.8 percent in 2024).
But it’s certainly fair to say much of that has to do with NFL starters Brock Bowers and Ladd McConkey no longer in UGA’s pass-catching ranks.
And it wasn’t Beck who dropped a perfectly thrown 48-yard pass on Georgia’s opening possession — which, if caught, would have changed the pace of the game.
NFL analysts have taken note, including Mel Kiper Jr. who still gives Beck a 35-percent chance of being the first quarterback drafted next April.
“Yes, Beck had a slow start against Alabama and threw a late back-breaking pick, but he took command to bring the Bulldogs back from a 30-7 second-half hole, is very capable of making full-field reads and gets the ball out accurately and on time,” Kiper Jr. penned in a recent ESPN pay-site article.
“Plus, losing tight end Brock Bowers and receiver Ladd McConkey has hurt Beck. Georgia doesn’t have any playmakers of their caliber this season.”
ESPN NFL draft analyst Jordan Reid has a different take, giving Beck only a 5 percent chance of being the first QB off the board next April.
“He hasn’t looked like the same passer who we saw in 2023; Georgia’s offense has used a high percentage of underneath throws, resulting in some overly cautious play, and Beck has struggled with ball placement on deeper throws,” Reid notes.
“There’s plenty of time for him to recover, but with the play of Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders, Texas’ Quinn Ewers, Miami’s Cam Ward and Alabama’s Jalen Milroe, the race for QB1 is getting closer and closer.”
Indeed, and as closely as the programs will be followed in their quest to make the CFP, the quarterbacks will be monitored and scrutinized more than ever before as their values have elevated their stature to even more visible heights.
