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We’re in a new age of college athletics and Thursday morning was another reminder of that. Before athletes were allowed to capitalize on their name, image and likeness, brand events and outside endorsement opportunities were not publicly endorsed.

However, walking into Elite Training Academy and seeing all nine of LSU’s commits in the 2026 class from Louisiana walking around to different local businesses, trying out products and conducting various interviews and photoshoots was yet another dose of reality of where we now are in college sports.

Among the businesses that the athletes spent the better part of three hours learning about, Raising Canes, Voyager, Tanger Outlets, Retief Windows, Boot Krewe Media, Reliable Roofing, Poppi soda and LSU Snacks all had stations set up. The pitch to the Tigers’ commits was pretty straightforward in talking with multiple players out there. 

“They’re just showing me all of the resources that I have here and being a Tiger. I’m pretty sure most of them were Tigers too. Just some resources here in Baton Rouge Louisiana businesses to help us build our brands,” Lamar Brown said. 

“Really just getting to promote these brands and ourselves as well. Just having a fun time getting together as commits and really enjoying the family environment,” Jabari Mack said. “Just getting a connection with LSU’s sponsors and really let them promote us as commits.”

“Come support a few brands for NIL, having fun with some of the other recruits, building bonds,” Richard Anderson said. “Coming here today, everything’s about building bonds. Having a brotherhood.”

In addition to those three, Brysten Martinez, Aiden Hall, Kenny Darby, Dezyrian Ellis, Isaiah Washington and Jalan Chapman were all in attendance. This was the first event of its kind that was organized for these high school commits to explore different brand opportunities here locally in Baton Rouge. The players moved from station to station, hearing different pitches from the local business partners, wore different gear, tried various snack and soda products and spent time around each other as well. 

Every recruiting class at LSU has a healthy dose of Louisiana talent and with six months until signing day, a lot of these players are getting to know each other while others have spent quite a bit of time around each other already. Brown, Mack and Hall all played on the same AAU team growing up and a lot of these commits have played against one another in high school as well. 

But building a brand is something that’s new to all of these players and doing it together is something they were all keen on doing. 

Revenue sharing went into effect back on July 1 and preparing for that has been at the forefront of the NIL planning for LSU going back to the end of the 2025 signing class and transfer portal window in the winter of 2024. But outside endorsement deals are at the heart of where NIL was supposed to lean when it was first allowed by the NCAA. 

These top high school recruits are getting an early lesson on what that looks like and opportunities like the one on Thursday will only continue to grow in years to come. 

“I feel like it’s great. With NIL there’s some bad ways but some good ways but I feel like it’s great for young guys like me. I know I’m going to invest what I get and make sure I’m surrounding myself with the people to help me,” Brown said. 

Indiana was the surprise of the college football world last season when it reached the College Football Playoff with Ohio transfer Kurtis Rourke showing enough at quarterback to be a seventh-round NFL draft pick.

Now the Hoosiers have a quarterback in Fernando Mendoza who has a higher ceiling after transferring from Cal to play for head coach Curt Cignetti, and the NFL will be paying attention.

“I really liked Mendoza’s tape,” an NFC scout said, per ESPN’s Jordan Reid. “He’s the one to circle that could be a bigger riser, and Cignetti has a great track record with transfer QBs.”

Reid highlighted his “strong arm with plus mobility for his size” at 6’5″, which allows him to “stand and deliver in the pocket with ease” and make plays outside of the pocket when on the move.

While he was not included in the first round of an April mock draft from B/R’s NFL Scouting Department, Mendoza will have the opportunity to play his way up draft boards under the spotlight the Big Ten presents.

Indiana faces Penn State, Oregon, Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa, among others, and could once again be a factor in the CFP race if Mendoza improves on what he did at Cal.

He completed 68.7 percent of his passes for 3,004 yards, 16 touchdowns and six interceptions while adding 105 yards and two scores on the ground as a runner. He seemed to improve as the season progressed and threw for 364 yards and two touchdowns in a win over Oregon State and 299 yards and three touchdowns in a win over rival Stanford.

The Hoosiers were surely intrigued by that finish to the season and brought him into the Big Ten.

And now the NFL might be intrigued if he can play even better in 2025.

I’ve been a fan of EA Sports College Football since childhood, spending countless hours playing on old gaming systems and even battling against my friends. When the series went away in 2013, I stopped gaming altogether until last year, when I couldn’t resist buying a PS5 and EA Sports College Football 2025. Now the 2026 edition is here, and after putting in plenty of hours, here’s my full review of the latest game.

New Playbooks

As someone who coached football for 15 years, I enjoy different playbooks to call plays with. Last year’s version, I thought, had good playbooks, but this year’s version is even better. Playbooks have lots of uses for motion for different skill positions. Plus, there is a greater variety of plays. For instance, I love different passing concepts, and now you can run those different passing concepts with motion, formations, and with different personnel. Plus, you see a major difference between different colleges’ playbooks.

Graphics are better then ever

The graphics are incredible. Just the realism of the players is unreal. As an Ohio State fan, I have started a dynasty with Ohio State and Ohio State’s band performing like it looks on TV. I played a game with Texas, and Bevo, the Texas mascot, is in the game. The subtle details of college football are in this game.

300 Coaches in the game

Over 300 coaches have signed up to be in the game. The pictures are not always accurate, but still, it is cool to see different coaches you can play against and coach with. An example was that I beat Clemson, and I was happy to see Dabo Swinney upset after the game.

The Road to Glory is back

This is a popular feature where gamers can create a high school football player and have them earn a scholarship. You must create a character and have them earn a scholarship by going through a series of games. You don’t play an entire game but play key moments. This is a fun feature to see if you can earn a scholarship and become a legend at the College Level.

Dynasty mode is updated

Dynasty mode is like last year, but you can also just be the offensive and defensive coordinator, along with being the head coach. You can still change conferences and make individual schedules, which is relatable to real life in an era defined by Conference realignment. Recruiting is similar as well, but it is easier to lose players in the transfer portal if you don’t meet their expectations.

Ultimate team is a new feature

You can once again play a series of challenges to create an ultimate team of current and former players. Then the more success you have, the higher you move through the challenges. It is a fun new feature of the game.

Final Thoughts

The new EA Sports 2026 College Football game is great. If you are a college football fan and you love to play college football games, this is the game for you, even if your wife may resent you buying it.

More College Football News:

Jimmy Barbarise was made for this.

The pride of Centereach, creator and star of the hit mob show “Capo: Rise to Power,” was named the first Long Island University women’s flag football coach ahead of the Sharks’ inaugural season.

“The beauty of being the executive producer is that I can fit this into my schedule,” Barbarise, an LI flag football hall of fame inductee, told The Post.

“I’ve been asked to be on some other shows, some major shows. I politely turned them down because of the fact that coaching is really important to me.”

The local legend, who led the University of Tampa team to a top-three nationwide ranking, said he turned down five other offers so that he could return to LI from the Sunshine State.

“What would be a better opportunity than to go back home and coach the first D-I school offering women’s football on the island? It was just a perfect match,” said Jimmy the coach, who wrote alternate endings to “The Godfather” as a boy.

Barbarise’s late brother, who died of cancer nearly a decade ago, reminded him of the boyhood passion not just for the silver screen but also his love for flag football that began at age 10.

“He said, ‘There’s no tomorrow for me, but you’ve always had a dream,’ ” Barbarise said. “He encouraged me to go chase that.”

The next step is to build a powerhouse roster, which should come naturally on Long Island given the area’s growing reputation as a flag football powerhouse at the high school level.

“I’m already inundated with inboxes and the announcement isn’t even a week old. … I have hundreds of messages from girls who want to stay home [on Long Island] and play flag on the college level.”

NIL deal for teen soccer star

She’s the biggest thing in Syosset since Natalie Portman.

Soccer phenom Loradana Paletta just inked her first name, image, and likeness (NIL) deal at the ripe old age of 14.

The midfielder, who plays on the U.S. Soccer under-16 girls national team and the NYCFC youth under-14 academy boys team, now proudly represents the Italian sportswear brand Lotto as she continues to strive for greatness on the North Shore.

“This just feels really natural,” Paletta, proudly of Italian descent, told The Post.

“Once a year, my family has one special day just to make tomato sauce — homemade tomato sauce. We would gather buckets of tomatoes, we would clean them, and we all would spend quality time together.”

Although the Syosset High School-bound ninth-grader won’t be able to play varsity due to her other pressing athletic commitments, she’s all for rooting on the girls in red.

“I’d love to give them pointers here and there, and I would definitely go and watch their games.”

There were times during his days at Mississippi State and Florida when UNLV coach Dan Mullen would host parties at his house for his freshman class.

Mullen would look around the backyard and think about how good the group would be after playing together for three or four years.

Now that he’s back on the sidelines in a new era of college football, Mullen may instead look around and wonder how many of those players will still be on his team the following season.

The landscape has changed dramatically the last few years with relaxed transfer rules, the proliferation of name, image and likeness deals and now revenue sharing with athletes.

Mullen watched most of those developments happen from afar as a television analyst, leading him to believe he has a good understanding of what he’s walking into.

“I think being away from it helped rather than being in it,” Mullen said Thursday during Mountain West media days at Circa. “Talking to some coaches, it gets changed from one year to the next to the next and they’re always constantly changing and I kind of let a lot of the change happen and got to see that from a 30,000-foot view and kind of get to grips with where it is and how we’d have to adjust and change our program in the new world of college football.”

The landscape shifted again not long after Mullen took the UNLV job in December. The House vs. NCAA settlement that was approved in June allows schools to pay their athletes directly.

“It’s always changing,” Mullen said. “I think it was all in the foundation stages when I left, but coming back to it, you just kind of have to look at it as the program is the program. Your program and what you do on the field and in the building is not going to change as the head coach, other than not really having that thought about developing your team for three years out when half your roster is going to be all new every season.

“I think that is such a major change, even more than where the NIL money is coming from and the league and the transition and how it’s going to be administratively done. I think we’ll adapt to that other stuff pretty easily.”

UNLV ‘confident’ in plan

UNLV athletic director Erick Harper will be tasked with managing a lot of that change.

He acknowledged there may still be more questions than answers about how to handle the new rules. But he believes the Rebels are prepared for the new era.

“I’m very confident,” Harper said. “Anybody who says they’ve got it all figured out is full of it because we will still be trying to figure it out a year from now and a year from then.”

Things may take another dramatic turn sooner than later.

More litigation is expected. There is already a dispute between the parties involved in the House settlement about whether NIL deals done through collectives should still be allowed moving forward.

“It’s been fast and furious,” Mountain West commissioner Gloria Nevarez said. “Certainly I agree that the House settlement is a good set of parameters, but it’s going to be a bumpy road. We’ve only lived in it for a few weeks and we’re already hearing stories about tampering and deals not being approved. There is a growth period, but I’m optimistic this sets us up to have a more stable environment than the wild, wild west we’ve been living in.”

Politicians may get involved soon as well. President Donald Trump is considering an executive order that could set a national standard for college athletics going forward.

“The important part is when you look at the landscape of college athletics right now is that you have to have a large level of flexibility and be able to understand that this is fluid,” Harper said. “If you’re cooking one way today, you might be cooking another way tomorrow. But you’re trying to arrive at the same conclusion at the end of the day and that’s to take care of the student athletes.”

‘Have to get a hold of it’

There are no easy solutions.

Hawaii coach Timmy Chang, a former star quarterback, believes more adjustments are necessary.

He said the current transfer rules and payment system are like NFL free agency, except colleges also have to deal with admissions offices and class schedules.

“I don’t think we in college football have wrapped our heads around a conclusion where it works best for us,” Chang said. “We probably have to get a hold of it fast.”

Chang said some kids are being taken advantage of with all the backroom dealing going on. They’re getting promised things that aren’t ultimately delivered.

He hopes all levels of college football will give input on potential solutions, instead of the top programs making decisions for everybody.

“Everybody is trying to figure it out,” Chang said. “What I hope is the guys making decisions at the top think about everyone, not just those at the top of the food chain.”

Focus on the field

Most Mountain West players said while they are thrilled to be able to earn more money, their focus remains on the field.

“It’s a thing where you like it because it’s revenue sharing and we’re finally getting this great opportunity, but you don’t want to get your head too buried in it,” Boise State offensive lineman Kage Casey said. “We’re here to play football and that’s where I want to focus my time. I don’t want to be going to photo shoots or appearances every day or taking meetings with someone that I may possibly be able to do an NIL deal with.”

Nevarez doesn’t believe college football is facing an existential crisis. Yet.

“I don’t even know what’s next,” Nevarez said. “But I do think if we can hit the implementation (of the clearinghouse) NIL Go and revenue sharing and all the parameters created by the House settlement in even stride and get comfortable there, I think we have a good shot of keeping college athletics going.”

Contact Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ on X.