The University of Colorado is a remarkable place. It sits at the foot of the Flatirons, draws students from around the world, and shapes the state’s scientific, cultural and economic life more than almost any other institution. I have spent a lifetime connected to this university, and I say this as someone who cares deeply about its success: CU probably will never be a “sustained” national football powerhouse. And that’s not an insult. It’s an honest acknowledgment of the landscape we now live in and, if anything, a plea that we stop chasing a mirage that drains time, money and energy from what CU actually does best.

Let me be clear: CU can have great seasons. It can produce electrifying moments, top-10 rankings, thrilling Saturdays at Folsom Field (hopefully not at 8:00 p.m.) and the kind of storylines that make the country look west for a couple of weeks. But a powerhouse, the kind that reloads every year, bulldozes competition, outspends everyone and expects to contend for national titles as a matter of routine, is a different category altogether. And Colorado simply doesn’t have the structural ingredients to be competitive at a very high level every year.

Start with geography. The equation is simple: football powerhouses sit atop enormous recruiting bases. Texas, Georgia, Florida and Ohio each produce dozens of blue-chip recruits every year. Alabama has no major in-state competition and can pull from the entire Southeast. Colorado produces a handful of elite prospects, usually fewer than five. You can’t build a perennial top 10 program when your home state gives you a roster the size of a pickup basketball team. You have to fly everywhere, fight everyone and overpay for out-of-state talent just to stay competitive.

Then consider stadium economics. Folsom is one of the most beautiful venues in America, but beauty doesn’t pay the bills. At just over 50,000 seats, it isn’t even in the top 50 nationally. Meanwhile, the schools we’re comparing ourselves against have 85,000 to 105,000-seat cathedrals humming with revenue: premium clubs, suites, donor boxes, end-zone complexes. That difference alone produces tens of millions of dollars in additional annual operating revenue. CU will never be able to replicate that scale in Boulder, nor should it try.

Which brings us to finances. Even before the current deficit, CU’s athletic budget has hovered around $140 million, going up recently toward $160 million. That sounds large until you look around. Ohio State is over $290 million. Texas is not far behind. Georgia and Alabama are in the same orbit. LSU just hired a coach for $91 million in a multi-year deal — at a public institution. This is not a market CU can play in. It’s not even in the same country. 

And now we’ve entered the branding (NIL) era, a world where the top programs spend $20-40 million annually not on coaching, not on facilities, but on the players themselves. Colorado’s donor base, corporate landscape, and statewide culture simply do not support that kind of annual fundraising. We have generous donors, but not South East Conference (SEC) style or Big-Ten boosters who treat Saturdays as a religion. NIL branding is not a temporary trend; it is the defining financial mechanism of modern college football. And CU is on the wrong side of the arms race. Maybe one area of hope with raising the needed money to be competitive is in a third-party private equity agreement. The University of Utah’s athletic department is about to create a new partnership with a private equity firm that could generate an estimated $500 million in revenue.

Culture matters too. Boulder is a place people choose for lifestyle, for mountains, for climate, for academics, for entrepreneurship. This isn’t Tuscaloosa, Columbus or Baton Rouge, where football saturates daily life and where a losing season is treated as a civic crisis. CU students disperse to ski slopes, hiking trails and concerts. Faculty are nationally recognized researchers who did not come to Boulder to live inside the roar of a football machine. That’s not a criticism, it’s precisely what makes Boulder special. But it’s also why Colorado may never be, and should never try to be, an Alabama or Ohio State of the Rockies.

And even in the years when CU succeeds, its success carries its own penalty. Bigger programs simply poach CU’s coaches, coordinators, strength trainers, analysts and recruiters. They can double or triple salaries with little effort. Sustained powerhouses rely on stability and pipelines of talent behind the talent. CU is a destination when things go well, not a home you stay at for decades.

So where does that leave us?

It leaves me with a simple conclusion: CU should aim to be good, competitive, exciting, fiscally healthy and academically aligned, not an imitator chasing a model that doesn’t fit our mission or our reality. The pursuit of “powerhouse” status isn’t just unrealistic; it distorts priorities and pressures the institution to behave in ways that undermine its purpose.

Colorado is at its best when it embraces what it truly is: a world-class research university with a vibrant campus, a beautiful stadium and a football program that can surprise the country every now and then. That is more than enough. It is something to be proud of. And it is infinitely more sustainable than pretending Boulder sits on the same tectonic plates as Austin, Columbus, Tuscaloosa or Athens.

We can love CU football passionately, without insisting it become something it cannot be. That is not cynicism but is realism, spoken with love, for the place that has shaped so much of my life.

Go Buffs!

Jim Martin is a former regent, past chair of CU’s athletic subcommittee, and adjunct law professor, having taught Sports and the Law. Martin regularly provides presentations to various groups  on the topic: “The Wild West of Today’s College Athletics.” He can be reached at jimmartinesq@gmail.com.

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Dillingham Out?

As the ripples of college football’s initial coaching carousel were starting to subside, here it goes again. Michigan was apparently closing in on Arizona State’s Kenny Dillingham as its next coach, but one of Lee Corso’s truisms came roaring back: not so fast, my friend. Dillingham is now rumored to be signing an extension at Arizona State, which means that the Michigan search will continue.

DeBoer A Possibility?

Other rumors with Michigan have centered around Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer. That’s convenient timing, as DeBoer himself is in jeopardy of a fourth loss in a second consecutive season at Alabama. It’s safe to say, as Paul Finebaum asserted recently, that Alabama’s CFP game with Oklahoma could deeply impact DeBoer’s future plans. If DeBoer did leave Alabama, the resulting coaching carousel fallout would likely be massive across the entire sport.

A New Favorite

But a new favorite is jumping thorough the Kalshi prediction market. Washington coach Jeff Fisch has leaped to a 37% chance to take the Michigan job as Dillingham fell from an overwhelming favorite to under 10% chances. Fisch is finishing the second year of a $54 million contract for seven years that he signed with the Huskies before the 2024 season.

Fisch’s Resume

A renowned offensive mind, Fisch graduated from the University of Florida and has climbed the offensive coaching ladder since. He did coach defense briefly with the NFL’s Houston Texans, but he’s otherwise worked on offensive with a bevy of college and pro teams. He’s been the offensive coordinator at Miami, with the Jacksonville Jaguars, and at UCLA.

Fisch rose to prominence in his first head coaching job at Arizona. His Wildcat teams climbed from 1 to 5 to 10 wins in his three seasons there. Since taking over Washington, Fisch is now 14-11 and has taken the Huskies to two bowl games.

Michigan’s Dilemma

Michigan seemed to be in good shape with Sherrone Moore after the departure of Jim Harbaugh to the NFL, but the events of the last week left the Wolverines suddenly without a coach and at a point in the coaching carousel where many of the biggest targets (Lane Kiffin, James Franklin) and even the top secondary targets (Jon Sumrall, Alex Golesh) have already been hired.

Given the uncertainty around the Michigan program, Fisch might make sense simply as one of the quicker hires possible. With Washington preparing for the LA Bowl this evening, Fisch recently reiterated his plan to coach the Huskies in 2026. That said, the prediction market is obviously not quite buying in on that plan.

When President Donald Trump hosts an event in the Oval Office and opens things up to questions from the media, as he did on Friday while hosting members of the 1980 Miracle on Ice team, you get a lot of dumb questions.

I mean, I get that opportunities to ask the president a question are at a premium, but with Jim Craig and Mike Eruzione on hand, is that the time to ask about Venezuela?!

President Donald Trump gestures to the crowd before the start of the NFL Super Bowl 59 football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs, Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025, in New Orleans.  (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

Anyway, at least one member of the press asked a question that made a lot of sense, and it had to do with NIL.

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That’s fitting, as back when the Miracle on Ice team played, the Olympics were strictly for amateurs, and most of the team was plucked from various collegiate rosters.

Had they played 40-plus years later, they may have been rolling in some of that NIL dough.

But, as the president noted — and Sen. Ted Cruz would agree with — the current state of NIL is simply not sustainable and could cause serious damage to college athletics, and even the Olympics.

U.S. President Donald Trump, joined by the 1980 U.S. Olympic men’s ice hockey team, holds up a bill to honor the team in the Oval Office of the White House on Dec. 13, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

TRUMP WARNS COLLEGE SPORTS ARE IN ‘BIG TROUBLE’ IN CRYPTIC POST

“I think that it’s a disaster for college sports,” President Trump said. “I think it’s a disaster for the Olympics, because, you know, we’re losing a lot of teams. The colleges are cutting a lot of their — they would call them sort of the ‘lesser’ sports, and they’re losing them like at numbers nobody can believe. They were really training grounds, beautiful training grounds, hard-working, wonderful young people. They were training grounds for the Olympics.

“And a lot of these sports that were training so well would win gold medals because of it. Those sports don’t exist because they’re putting all their money into football. And by the way, they’re putting too much money into it, into football.”

President Trump noted that the top-performing athletic programs aren’t making enough money to sustain themselves, given the rate at which they’re paying highly sought-after players.

U.S. President Donald Trump stands with Ohio State Head Coach Ryan Day as he welcomes the 2025 College Football National Champions from Ohio State University to the White House during a ceremony on the south lawn in Washington, District of Columbia, on April 14, 2025. Ohio State won the national championship by defeating Notre Dame 34-23. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

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“They’re putting all of their money in, and I know something about it,” President Trump said. “They will not be able to stop. You have a college president [saying], “I’m telling you, sir, we give a guard $7 million, we’re going to win the national championship,’ and they’ll give them seven, then they won’t win it.

“And even if they do win it, colleges cannot afford to be paying the kind of salaries that you’re hearing about.”

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The 2025 college football regular season is over and the time is now for ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit to hand out his personal awards for the year ahead of what’s sure to be an entertaining postseason. He calls them the Herbie Awards, which are given out to worthy somebodies across various categories.

For instance, you can go read who Herbstreit selected as his Offensive Player of the Year right here. But one of the awards Herbstreit came up with was called the Redemption Player of the Year, which he said is intended to award a guy who bounced back from an injury, a poor season the year before, or even someone who showed extraordinary growth from Week 1 to Week 14.

He nominated three players for the honor: Texas quarterback Arch Manning, Alabama linebacker Deonte Lawson, and Notre Dame defensive end Boubacar Traore. As you should already know, Herbstreit opted to give the Redemption Player of the Year honor to the most famous name in college football, Arch Manning, for navigating a difficult year into a very positive finish for he and the Longhorn program.

“I think he came in with unrealistic expectations,” Herbstreit said of the Texas QB. “When this season started, people were talking about, ‘He’s going to win the Heisman Trophy. He’s better than Payton. He’s better than Eli. He’s better than his grandpa. He’s going to win a national championship. It’ll be the first pick next year in the draft.'”

Obviously, the season didn’t turn out that rosy. For Herbstreit, it was seeing Manning undergo the ego hit and the piling on of critics but still turn his season around to finish so strong that impressed him so much.

“When that didn’t pan out in the first half of the season, people were very, very critical,” Herbstreit continued. To his credit, he blocked all of that out. Didn’t take any of it personally. If anything, I think it motivated him to go out and help his teammates win games. And I was really happy for him enduring that and coming out on the other side.”

In his first year as the full-time starter, Manning finished with just under 3,000 total passing yards while guiding Texas to a solid 9-3 season given the harsh schedule they were saddled with. After some early-season offensive struggles and two losses in their first five games, Manning and the Longhorn offense hit a groove as the Longhorns won six of their last seven.

Across Texas’ final five games, Arch Manning threw for 300+ yards in three wins against Mississippi State, Arkansas and Vanderbilt, and then led a 27-point outing and scored two touchdowns, one passing and one rushing, to lead Texas over rival Texas A&M.

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LUBBOCK, Texas – Texas Tech senior linebacker Jacob Rodriguez collected his fifth national award this season Friday evening as he was tabbed the winner of the Bednarik Award during the College Football Awards Show live on ESPN.

Rodriguez is the first Red Raider in program history to win the Bednarik Award, which is presented annually by the Maxwell Football Club to the nation’s top defensive player. The Bednarik Award selected Rodriguez over Ohio State safety Caleb Downs and Texas A&M defensive end Cashius Howell.

With the addition of the Bednarik Award, Rodriguez is now the winner of the Butkus Award (nation’s top linebacker), the Bronko Nagurski Trophy (nation’s top defensive player), the Lombardi Award (nation’s top lineman or linebacker) and the Pony Express Award (nation’s top duo with David Bailey) this season alone. He is the third player in history to win the Butkus Award as well as the Nagurski Trophy and Bednarik Award in the same season, joining Miami’s Dan Morgan (2000) and Notre Dame’s Manti Te’o (2012). Rodriguez joins Te’o as the only players to also win the Lombardi Award.

Rodriguez, who was also tabbed a first team All-American by the Walter Camp Foundation during the ESPN broadcast, has bolstered one of the nation’s top defenses, leading the Red Raiders to their first Big 12 title in program history this season and their first appearance in the College Football Playoff. The Red Raiders enter a potential matchup with either No. 5 Oregon or No. 12 seed James Madision at 12-1 overall, marking the most wins in program history.

Rodriguez has now led Texas Tech to four-consecutive bowl appearances during his career after going from a scholarship quarterback at Virginia, to walk-on linebacker with the Red Raiders and now a national award winner. He was joined during the ESPN College Football Awards Show by his parents, Joe and Ann Rodriguez, and his wife, Emma.

Rodriguez enters bowl season as the FBS leader with seven forced fumbles and ranks among the top-15 players nationally with 117 tackles. He is the first FBS player since 2005 to record at least five forced fumbles, two fumble recoveries and four interceptions all in the same season. His impact has bolstered a Texas Tech defense that leads the nation with 31 takeaways and ranks third nationally in scoring defense at 10.9 points per game. Rodriguez was responsible for nine takeaways himself — all in Big 12 play – thanks to his ability to punch the ball out and also read the quarterback in coverage.

Rodriguez is currently the highest-rated player in all of college football, according to Pro Football Focus, grading out at 93.3 overall so far this season. He is the top-rated player in the country in terms of rush defense, receiving a 95.5 grade in that area for a Red Raider defense that is easily the nation’s best in stopping opponents on the ground. Texas Tech is giving up only 68.5 rushing yards a game thanks to Rodriguez, who also ranks fifth nationally in coverage with a 92.3 grade.

Established in 1995, the Chuck Bednarik Award is one of the most-prestigious honors in college football, awarded annually to the most outstanding defensive player. This accolade recognizes exceptional talent, tenacity and impact on the defensive side of the ball. The award is named in tribute to Chuck Bednarik, a revered figure in football history known for his remarkable career as a linebacker.

It’s a darn tootin’ time to be a lawyer in the college sports space, eh? As college footbal programs all around the country change coaches, hand out buyouts and sign ridiculous new contracts, even some former coaches are trying to get what’s theirs.

Just this week, as the dust seemed to be settling nation-wide on a chaotic spin of the coaching carousel this fall, we had Sherrone Moore’s firing at Michigan and the ugly fallout from that ordeal, plus the somewhat surprising retirement of legendary Utah Utes head coach Kyle Whittingham, setting up a changing of the guard at Utah plus a brand new search in Ann Arbor — which may kickstart a whole other chain of coaching searches.

Amid all this talk of contracts and big buyout money, one former Nebraska coach, Scott Frost, has come out of the woodwork to sue Nebraska, alleging the ‘Huskers have shorted him on the agreed-upon buyout payments. Local news outlet WOWT had the news Friday evening:

“Former Nebraska football coach Scott Frost filed a lawsuit Friday, accusing the school of breaching his contract and mishandling millions in buyout payments and taxes,” they wrote. “In the complaint filed in Lancaster County District Court, Frost claimed the university wrongly stopped payments he said are owed for 2025 and 2026 under his employment contract. Frost is seeking a court order confirming Nebraska’s right to reduce those payments and seeking at least $5 million in damages.

Scott Frost was fired on the heels of a 10th consecutive loss in a one-possession game, this time to Georgia Southern, 45-42, following a poor start to the team’s season in 2022. At the end of that season, Nebraska placed former Baylor and Carolina Panthers coach Matt Rhule at the helm of the program, and he’s guided it ever since.

Scott Frost buyout details

When Frost was fired in September of 2022, his buyout came out to roughly $15 million, and that number would have been split in half had the Cornhuskers merely waited a few weeks, until Oct.1, to officially pull the trigger. Now, per Yahoo Sports, the argument centers on some tax mumbo jumbo.

“According to the filing, Nebraska told Frost in December 2022 that it planned to count the projected value of his 2025 and 2026 buyout payments as income on his W-2 for that year,” wrote Jim Recalto for Yahoo. “Frost argues that move was improper and left him with a $1.7 million tax liability for money that had not been paid.”

Yahoo adds: “Frost says those future payments were guaranteed under his contract and could not be reduced or taken away. However, he also claims the university said in the same email that the payments could later be adjusted, without explaining how or why.”

Seek out your local CPA for a better read on this situation, but from the bird’s eye view, it appears that Frost had future buyout payments lumped into the same year he was fired, which definitely heavied his tax burden vs. taken the payments over several years. Then, the university tried to adjust or change those payments they had already lumped onto the W-2 which Frost had been taxed for.

Essentially, the man was taxed on money he hadn’t yet received, and then when it came to receiving said money, the process for getting it was changed around despite the fact Frost was already liable for the money. At least, that’s how Frost’s side puts it. Nebraska may have some explaining to do here.

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