Colorado head football coach Deion Sanders announced he is introducing an NFL-like fine structure to his Buffaloes team. The system includes a $500 fine for being late to practice and a $2,500 fine for failing to attend.
Players are fined $2,000 for not attending a meeting or film session. The most costly fines are up to $2,500 for team rules violations and up to $5,000 for any social media misconduct.
Per the Colorado athletic department, fines are not connected to name, image and likeness agreements and are not related to on-field performance. For that reason, the program can set them however they want. Sanders has set fines for previous teams but increased them for the 2026 season.
In other sports, such as the NFL, fines are set by the collective bargaining agreement between the league and the player's association. These punishments are part of the agreement for payment structure set between the players, teams and league.
With college football teams paying players more and more through both NIL payments and the revenue sharing model, athletes could soon be classified as employees. That status would open up the door for collective bargaining and allow a streamlined set of fines similar to those in the NFL or other major sports leagues.
For that to happen, both players and schools would have to give up benefits they enjoy in the current system. Players are able to freely transfer with no binding terms able to hold them to one school for multiple years. Additionally, there is no real earnings cap aside from what any school is willing to pay for their team. In a time where teams are willing to spend as much is necessary, any salary cap could see high-end players make less money than before.
Teams currently have the benefit of not needing to have multi-year plans for players and are readily able to tailor their rosters to their needs. They can move a player's salary up or down based on their value and can essentially force players out that are unwanted. Additionally, teams do not have to bear the increased costs of employment status and do not have to manage CBA terms.
The benefits for athletes under an employment model come from having collectively bargained terms for all payment contracts and likely having multi-year deals, increasing stability. Graduation rates would likely increase if players were still going to school at the same institution for multiple years.
Teams would also have stability through multi-year deals and could cap costs with a negotiated salary cap. Having set terms would benefit teams that cannot spend as much by putting them on a more level playing field with high-earning teams. Limiting movement would also help teams make more money by having fans root for the same players year after year.
A fine structure similar to the one Sanders introduced at Colorado would also be part of a CBA. But with the players having the power to leave any school essentially for free, fines likely will not become widespread in college football.