Highest-Paid College Athletes 2026: $6.5M NIL Boom

$6.5 million. That’s the NIL valuation On3 attaches to Darian Mensah, Miami’s transfer quarterback — still the highest of any college athlete in America as of late October 2026, ahead of players who’ve spent years building a national brand.

The number itself is startling. What’s more startling is how normal it’s become to see one. Two years after the House v. NCAA settlement cleared the way for schools to pay athletes directly, college sports has quietly built a compensation system that pays some 19- and 20-year-olds more than most NFL rookies — through two separate pipelines running at once, not one.

Here’s who’s actually earning it, and why the math behind the numbers changed twice in the past two years.

Updated October 27, 2026: every valuation below was re-checked against On3. Arch Manning has fallen from $5.4 million to $2.5 million; Dante Moore, Trinidad Chambliss and four basketball players at $5 million join the list; and three athletes from our August version — AJ Dybantsa, Livvy Dunne and Flau’jae Johnson — have been removed because they are no longer college athletes.

1. Darian Mensah — $6.5 Million

Mensah transferred to Miami as one of the most sought-after quarterbacks in the portal, and his $6.5 million valuation is the highest figure On3 tracks in any sport, as reported by Sports Illustrated after On3’s July 1, 2026 switch to a deal-based model. That model reports what a school or collective is actually paying, not a projection of what Mensah could theoretically be worth to a brand.

2. Milan Momcilovic — $6 Million

Momcilovic shot an NCAA-best 48.7% from three-point range at Iowa State last season, then took his name out of the NBA Draft and re-entered the transfer portal — a decision that turned into a bidding process between Kentucky and Louisville. Kentucky won, and the 6-foot-8 forward sits No. 1 on On3’s college basketball NIL board at $6 million, flagged as a confirmed deal (board and profile updated October 26, 2026).

3. Flory Bidunga — $6 Million

Bidunga transferred from Kansas to Louisville and sits right behind Momcilovic at $6 million on the same On3 basketball board (October 26, 2026), part of a roster Louisville is reportedly spending roughly $20 million to build. Two basketball programs paying seven figures for a single transfer is itself a marker of how far the market has moved since the first NIL deals were signed in 2021.

4–10. Seven Players at $5 Million Each

Seven athletes share the next tier on On3’s NIL100 — three football players and four basketball players. Oregon quarterback Dante Moore, who passed on the NFL Draft to return for 2026, carries a $5 million valuation flagged as a confirmed deal on his On3 NIL profile (updated October 26, 2026), No. 4 in the NIL100. Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss is also at $5 million as a confirmed deal on his On3 profile (updated October 26, 2026), No. 10.

Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith is the only non-quarterback among the football players. His On3 profile lists the star receiver at $5 million as a confirmed deal, No. 5 in the NIL100 (updated October 26, 2026) — up from the $4.2 million figure in our August version, a jump Buckeye Sports reported at the start of the season — and On3’s Pete Nakos reported Smith turned down an offer of more than $10 million to enter the transfer portal.

The four basketball players, all listed as confirmed deals on their On3 profiles (updated October 26, 2026), are Kansas freshman forward Tyran Stokes (No. 6), Florida forward Thomas Haugh (No. 7), St. John’s forward Tounde Yessoufou (No. 8) and Gonzaga center Massamba Diop (No. 9). Counting Momcilovic and Bidunga, six of the NIL100’s top 10 are now basketball players.

The Faller: Arch Manning — $2.5 Million

Manning was the highest-valued player in any sport as recently as June 2026, at $5.4 million. His On3 profile now lists $2.5 million and No. 52 in the NIL100 (updated October 26, 2026). Part of that is methodology — the old number estimated brand value, the new one tracks deal value — and part is a choice: Texas reportedly paid Manning a reduced revenue-share amount so the program could spend elsewhere on the roster. His outside endorsements (Red Bull, Uber, Vuori, Warby Parker, Google Gemini and others) sit outside the deal-based figure, so his total income is higher than $2.5 million; the valuation just no longer counts it.

Who Left the List — and Why

Three names from our August 22 version are gone, and not because their valuations fell:

• AJ Dybantsa (BYU, $4.2 million) was the No. 1 pick in the 2026 NBA Draft, taken by the Washington Wizards on June 23, 2026. He’s a professional now.
• Flau’jae Johnson (LSU, $1.5 million) was drafted eighth overall in the April 13, 2026 WNBA Draft and traded to the Seattle Storm.
• Livvy Dunne (LSU gymnastics, $4.1 million) competed her fifth and final season in 2025. Her brand-built portfolio — American Eagle, Vuori, Motorola, Nautica, Passes — is still the template for female athletes earning without a revenue-share check, the same way the highest-paid female athletes built theirs.

As of October 26, 2026, On3’s women’s basketball and gymnastics valuation boards list no rankings at all under the deal-based model, so On3 currently names no top female college athlete — and we won’t print one from another source until it can be verified.

The Part That’s Actually New: Schools Are Now Paying Directly

NIL money — brands and collectives paying athletes for their name, image and likeness — has existed since 2021. What changed in July 2025 is the House v. NCAA settlement: schools that opt in can now pay athletes directly out of athletic-department revenue, up to a capped amount. That cap started at $20.5 million per school for 2025-26, per NBC News’ report on Judge Claudia Wilken’s June 6, 2025 approval, calculated as 22% of average Power Five athletic revenue. It rises to $21.3 million for 2026-27, per Sports Illustrated (February 12, 2026), and law firm Akerman projected in July 2026 that it will reach about $32.9 million by 2034-35. A new oversight arm, the College Sports Commission, polices it. The settlement also requires the NCAA and Power Five conferences to pay roughly $2.8 billion in back damages over a decade, per the same NBC News report, to athletes who were barred from NIL deals before 2021.

The critical detail most coverage glosses over: revenue sharing didn’t replace NIL — it stacked on top of it. An athlete can now collect a direct school payment and sign outside deals with brands or collectives simultaneously. That’s the actual reason valuations roughly doubled in a single cycle. It isn’t that one pool of money got bigger. It’s that two pools now run in parallel, and On3’s methodology finally caught up to measuring both at once.

Why On3’s Numbers Suddenly Look Different

On3, the industry’s dominant tracker, switched its NIL Valuation model on July 1, 2026 — from an algorithm estimating an athlete’s marketing potential to a deal-based model reporting contract value, flagged as a confirmed deal when a number is verified. It’s a meaningful shift: the old model measured what a brand might pay a given athlete. The new one measures what a school or collective actually did pay. That’s why the numbers moved in both directions at once — Mensah up to $6.5 million, Manning down to $2.5 million — and why none of them should be compared directly with the rankings from a year earlier. They’re not the same measurement.

The Actual Lesson in the List

None of these athletes have played a professional game. Several haven’t finished a full college season at their current school. What they’ve already built — verified contracts, brand portfolios, in Momcilovic’s and Bidunga’s cases entire transfer decisions driven by valuation math most front offices would recognize — is the exact instinct that separates the athletes who convert a playing career into lasting wealth from the roughly 80% of NFL retirees who face financial trouble within two years of their last game. The players on this list are negotiating like professionals before they’re eligible to be drafted as one. That head start compounds the same way Michael Jordan’s ownership stakes did — except it now starts at 19, not 40.

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