A Yahoo Sports report described an SEC proposal to limit roster spending through a luxury tax rather than a hard ceiling. It starts at the $21 million House settlement figure, and spending above that would draw a tiered fine climbing from around 1 percent, so a $70 million roster would owe roughly $10 million on top of what the players were paid. The Big Ten is pushing something similar.
The Locked On SEC host who convened the panel kept returning to one objection: a ceiling in any form limits what the players can earn. He also pressed the problem underneath it — it cannot be called a salary cap, he argued, because there is no salary and the players are not employees.
The Locked On Bama host argued the plan cannot be judged until someone says what it taxes: revenue sharing comes out of an athletic department, while name-image-likeness money comes from fans, boosters and booster-owned companies. He said it reads closer to Major League Baseball’s luxury tax than to the hard caps the NFL and NBA run.
The Locked On Sooners host put the structural objection most directly. The worst thing the SEC could do, he said, is impose a limit nobody else adopts, because the conference would then be outspent everywhere. He did not see it passing unless every school agreed, and argued money has bought little this season, pointing to Wake Forest at one loss and an unbeaten UCLA.
The panel closed on Saturday at Oklahoma. The Locked On Bama host said the marquee matchup is framed wrongly, that it belongs on Oklahoma’s offense against Ole Miss’s defense, not Oklahoma’s defense against Trinidad Chambliss. The Locked On Sooners host took Oklahoma. Asked for a show of hands on Oklahoma at home, nobody else would raise one.
Photo: Cam Clark, September 26, 2026, at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Matt Pendleton-Imagn Images.
Adapted from the November 12, 2026 SEC Squad episode carried on Locked On Ole Miss, part of the Locked On Podcast Network. Watch the full episode.