Who leads SEC recruiting spending, and where is the real money going?

Remember when college football was fun, back when players were being paid under the table? In the conference that began paying its players before it was legally required, the financial figures now seem a little bit confusing when it comes to understanding the real situation. Financial reports for the league’s 15 public schools, submitted to the NCAA and obtained by AL.

com through open records requests, show that one program spent far more on recruiting than the other programs combined could match individually. But off paper, the SEC has some schools assembling rosters that costs more than some NFL franchises. Welcome to the new economics of SEC Football, where the numbers you can actually measure tell you less and less about who is actually winning the recruiting arms race.

Tennessee's Streak at the Top For the second season in a row, Josh Heupel's Tennessee Volunteers led all the public schools in the SEC in football recruiting spending . According to the financial disclosures, the Vols spent $4. 6 million on football recruiting in the fiscal year 2025.

That number is actually down from its own record setting $5. 38 million in FY 2024, when Tennessee topped every public school in the country, including Alabama's $5. 27 million receipt.