It was a fairly successful first season for Wake Forest under new head coach Jake Dickert.

The Demon Deacons finished the regular season 8-4 overall (4-4 ACC), qualifying for a bowl game for the first time since 2022.

After a shaky 2-2 start, the Demon Deacons won six of their last eight games, marking a major in-season turnaround. They notched quality wins over No. 14 Virginia and SMU, but fell to Duke in their final game of the season.

It was a remarkable turnaround for Dickert, who took over the program after back-to-back 4-8 seasons under Dave Clawson. Dickert accepted the position after four seasons at Washington State, where he compiled a 23-20 overall record.

The Demon Deacons have one final game left against Mississippi State in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, but that hasn’t deterred multiple players from announcing their intentions to enter the transfer portal.

According to 247Sports, the Demon Deacons have had 15 players enter the transfer portal as of Dec. 18. Most recently, freshman quarterback Elijiah Oehlke announced he will be entering the portal when it opens on Jan. 2, joining a host of other former Demon Deacons.

One of the most notable losses for the Demon Deacons was freshman wide receiver Chris Barnes, who announced his transfer decision on Dec. 14. Barnes led Wake Forest with 39 receptions for 547 receiving yards and three touchdowns. He was named an All-ACC honorable mention as a wide receiver, while earning third-team honors as a return specialist.

Only two days later, sophomore wide receiver Micah Mays also announced his intentions to enter the transfer portal. He finished the year with 18 catches for 302 receiving yards and two scores, averaging 16.8 yards per reception. Both Barnes and Mays were promising young offensive stars, making both major losses for the program.

Another key loss was defensive tackle Mateen Ibirogba, who transferred from Georgetown to Wake Forest before the 2023 season. He stepped into a bigger role this season, totaling 21 tackles, 3.5 tackles for loss, and two sacks for the Demon Deacons.

Along with the names above, tight end Harry Lodge, safety Jacob Cosby-Mosley, defensive lineman Ka’Shawn Thomas, wide receiver EJ Reid, offensive lineman Derrell Johnson II, and offensive tackle Nathan Pahanich are some other players who have announced their decision to enter the transfer portal.

It’s important to note that the NCAA transfer portal does not open until Jan. 2, 2026. All players can do right now is announce their plans to enter the portal; once it opens, they can officially enter their names and contact their preferred schools. The transfer period will close on Jan. 16 after 15 days.

Wake Forest will face Mississippi State in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl on Jan. 2, 2026, in Charlotte, North Carolina. Kickoff is scheduled for 7 p.m. CT on ESPN.

Is Mitch Barnhart’s tenure as the University of Kentucky’s athletic director coming to an end next year? Barnhart addressed the retirement rumors in a new interview with the Herald-Leader, telling Jon Hale that he’s still “invigorated” by his work, but when the moment comes that he’s not, he’ll sit down with his family and discuss the future and what’s best for them and the university.

The questions are timely. In 2023, Barnhart signed a contract extension through the 2027-28 school year that would allow him to transition to a special assistant to the president role starting July 1, 2026. To do that, he must give six months’ notice, making the earliest deadline December 31, 2025, two weeks from today.

“Two things. I love competing. You know that. You know I love this place with all my heart. We came here in 2002 and planned on saying six to eight years and stayed a lot longer. I know there’s people that get frustrated because I’ve been here a long time, and that’s OK. I sense that. An old boss of mine told me one time, every time you make a 50-50 decision, you lose 50% of your friends. He’s probably not wrong, but we love Kentucky. I get up invigorated about what we’re doing at work. I love watching our kids compete. When that day comes — and don’t know — I’ll sit down with my family, and we’ll talk and determine what’s best for our family and for me, but most importantly, what’s best for Kentucky.

“I’ve got a couple, two-and-a-half years left on my contract. The ambassador clause is out there. It can go anytime after December 31, and if that’s something that’s best for this university, then we’ll have that conversation. If it’s something that we want to continue to work at it, I would like to win some more things. I like winning. The volleyball run has been a blast. I’d like to win at some more things and see what we got. And I love our coaches. We’ve got good people and fun to work with.”

The interview comes one week after Kentucky Sports Radio’s Jacob Polacheck and Jack Pilgrim published an article on Kentucky Basketball’s struggles on the recruiting trail, which cited anonymous sources that said UK’s partnership with JMI for NIL management has played a part, specifically the highly structured brand partnership with UK’s official partners. Sources told KSR that JMI was requiring recruits to sign away NIL rights that would normally be untouched at any other school.

Before Kentucky’s game vs. Indiana, Barnhart addressed the JMI concerns in an interview with Tom Leach, defending the partnership and insisting that UK student-athletes are free to sign third-party deals while acknowledging that the university encourages them to work with its official partners. He does the same in this interview with Jon Hale, although the issue of what prospective student-athletes (recruits) are asked to agree to as part of their deals to come to Kentucky is still unclear.

HL: When an athlete accepts revenue sharing money from UK, do they automatically get tied into the JMI deal, or do they opt into that separately?

Barnhart: “There’s some things that they’re opting into. OK, there’s some things they opt into, and obviously that’s a part of that process. And then there’s some things that we say, ‘Hey, does this fit you? Does this fit you? Do you want us to go out and find you (a deal)? Is there some things that make sense in a marketing piece, a partnership piece, so to speak, or a sponsorship piece?’ And if it doesn’t, you’ve got your own thing; you’re not prohibited from doing your own thing. We’ve shown that on many cases with student-athletes in our program. We’ve got student-athletes in our program that have got deals that are outside our partners, that they’ve gone and had an opportunity to go access and do those themselves. They just can’t use our IP marks in that process. Part of the ability to use the Kentucky marks, which we think is super valuable, is that relationship with JMI. So yes, that is part of that process. But to go do your own thing, you can certainly do that.”

When asked, Barnhart said he was not aware of any UK athletes being denied a deal because it was with a competitor. He talks a lot more about the JMI deal, collectives, transparency about revenue-sharing figures, and the roles of general managers in the NIL era in the interview. Check it out at the Herald-Leader. Matt Jones has reached out to Barnhart for an interview on KSR and has not received a response.

[Q&A: Kentucky AD Mitch Barnhart responds to criticism of JMI deal, NIL setup]

Name, image and likeness (NIL) rights were created to finally allow college athletes to profit from their talent. That’s led to formerly unpaid amateur players becoming instant millionaires, using their newfound wealth to save and invest, help out family, or even share the money with their teammates.

But handing that much money to teenagers is also risky. Grown professional athletes have blown through millions of dollars in the past, and while the stories of “going broke” are more infrequent today, there’s still a risk.

In steps NIL financial advisors, whose sole focus is making money earned from college stretch further than the one to five years an athlete is in school. They advise clients on the benefits of saving, investing, budgeting, taxes, and saying “no.”

In the past 10 years, there has been a massive shift in player compensation. Former and current players across different sports have successfully challenged and sued for greater equity in college sports revenue, including increases in stipends (2015), the right to profit from their NIL (2021), and the right to receive direct compensation from their university (2025).

According to Opendorse, a company that facilitates NIL endorsements for athletes, it’s estimated that college football players alone earned $1 billion from NIL payments in 2024. The company estimates that total will nearly double ($1.9 billion) by the end of 2025 after the introduction of revenue sharing on July 1.

Didier Occident is a wealth management advisor at Milwaukee-based financial services firm Northwestern Mutual. He also runs a financial literacy program, Secure the Bag. It is for college and professional athletes.

Secure the Bag is a 60-minute presentation in which Occident discusses budgeting, personal credit, taxes, and other money matters. It puts the audience through an interactive budgeting game that requires them to make financial decisions based on real-world examples from the four years of NIL’s existence.

For example, there’s an athlete Occident represented who made an expensive, beyond-his-means purchase that got him down to almost no money — $75 to be exact. To get the player’s money back, he posted the item on Instagram for sale.

“There’s always that ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ feeling, but now these guys gotta keep up with IG,” he said.

Occident began working with college athletes around 2018 when conferences began increasing some player stipends by about $2,000. He stressed to athletes at the time to view the stipend as a salary so that they know how to manage any kind of money.

“If you can’t manage $1,000,” Occident would tell the players, “you can’t manage $1 million.”

He’s presented at TCU, Florida State, Michigan, Oregon, Alabama, Tennessee, Oregon State and a few other football programs. He’s also presented with eight NFL teams, including the Los Angeles Chargers and San Francisco 49ers. 

When Occident first talks with teams or meets with prospective clients, he asks them, “What do you want to achieve with your money?” The more specific the goal — to travel the world or one day open a food truck — the more faith Occident has in his ability to show them the steps to reaching it.

“Because they have something that is in their mind that is going to keep them walking that straight line,” Occident said.

There’s a widely held assumption that rich people will eventually lose all their money. Whenever the lottery gets to a certain amount, it’s been said that 70% of lottery winners eventually declare bankruptcy, even though that likely isn’t true. Much of the interest in the various gambling scandals plaguing the sports world stems from interest in rich athletes risking millions on sports betting.

But these are adults we’re talking about. What happens when a bunch of teenagers are handed millions of dollars? It’s easy to assume they’ll blow their riches just as quickly.

Where college athletes spend their money isn’t all that shocking.

“Unfortunately, stereoptical things: the cars, clothes, the jewelry,” said Pat Brown, a wealth manager at Lawrence, Kansas-based financial services firm Creative Planning and the founder of “Financial Literacy for Student Athletes,” which specializes in money management programming for college athletes.

Brown was an all-conference linebacker at Kansas from 1994 to 1999, back when players received $600 monthly stipends compared to the estimated $5 million Texas quarterback Arch Manning is bringing in today.

“That was big money right there. Shoot,” Brown recalled.

During his final season, Brown took a class that introduced college athletes to basic financial literacy tools, such as investing and life insurance. Though Brown grew up middle class in the Ohio suburbs, he didn’t know anything about money management.

“Being Black, we just don’t talk about that stuff,” said Brown, author of the book, Financial Literacy for the Culture: Teaching What Wasn’t Taught-Credit, Budgeting, Investing, and Legacy for the Culture.

It is why Brown sees it as his purpose to teach today’s athletes how to earn, maintain and increase their wealth. He launched “Financial Literacy for Student Athletes” around 2021 and has presented at Kansas, West Virginia and Ohio.

Brown goes over opening bank accounts, the importance of credit scores/reports, and the various types of investment devices (traditional, Roth IRA, stocks, etc.). Through Creative Planning, which counts more than 500 college and professional athletes as individual clients, Brown helps his clients set up taxable and retirement accounts, establish limited liability companies, and review NIL contracts.

“I wasn’t exposed to this stuff until my senior year [at Kansas],” Brown said.

While working toward wealth for all college football players is the goal, it’s especially important for Black players, who make up nearly 45% of the sport.

Black people live within a system that legally held them back until about 60 years ago, creating a wealth gap that persists to this day: Median white net worth in America is almost six times that of Black net worth.

According to popular media such as ESPN’s “Broke” documentary, Black athletes are almost expected to blow all their money: Former NFL receiver Odell Beckham Jr. recently asked, “Can you make that last?” in reference to signing a $100 million contract.

But, young rich Black athletes aren’t any more irresponsible with their money than anyone else: Americans owe $1.23 trillion in credit card debt.

There is no group, Occident said, that has more opportunity to narrow that wealth gap than Black athletes.

“It is my mission to help them do what they can to erase the systemic part of what we’ve dealt with for 400-plus years,” he said.

Occident and Brown believe athletes are uniquely suited to handle money. The discipline to stick to a financial plan is no different than the discipline needed to play at a high level in college. Starring at the NCAA Division I level is almost impossible without being accountable and consistent.

“You don’t get that without being consistent and doing what you need to do,” Occident said.

Baltimore Ravens defensive back Malaki Starks neither had much money growing up nor did he know how to save it.

“It was like get money, spend money,” he said.

But after Occident’s presentation to the Georgia football team while Starks was on the roster, it eased Starks’ mind about managing his $160,000 in NIL deals.

Starks said he now has at least four investment accounts he manages. After getting his first NIL check his sophomore year at Georgia, Starks said he saved some, gave some to his parents, and the rest …

“I kept enough to get gas for the next month and go out to eat, like, twice,” he said.

Martenzie Johnson is a senior writer for Andscape. His favorite cinematic moment is when Django said, “Y’all want to see somethin?”

Football
12/18/2025 12:14:00 PM

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