NIL

NIL is changing college sports; for better or worse?

Published

8 months ago

May 6, 2025

NIL is changing college sports; for better or worse?

HUNT VALLEY, Md. (TNND) — It’s been nearly four years since the NCAA enacted a new policy allowing college athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness, and just a few weeks since a federal judge opened the door for college athletic departments to pay athletes directly.

Much of the details are still being worked out in the courts. Key components like roster limits, scholarship limits and payment pools are still up in the air.

As is a governing body to oversee all of these new rules, since most current regulation is a patchwork of state laws, legal settlements and NCAA rules.

But, we are starting to see the impacts of college athletes getting paid – and what it means for the enterprise as a whole.

Depending on who you ask, the historical shift is: long overdue for athletes who’ve spent thousands of hours grinding for their craft; late to the party in terms of global sports; the official death certificate for amateurism and the “student” side of “student-athlete”; or, an inevitable reality that has to run wild before it gets reined in and regulated.

To the league itself, it’s a positive step.

When a judge granted preliminary approval for a framework for schools to pay athletes, NCAA President Charlie Baker said it would “help bring stability and sustainability to college athletics while delivering increased benefits to student athletes for years to come.”

The push for college athletes to get paid spans decades, with legal challenges and legislative efforts dating back to at least the early 2000s. Which is surprising, considering the NCAA has been a multi-million dollar industry for several decades, and a multi-billion dollar industry for about a decade.

That disparity is due to the idea of “amateurism,” a word many experts and analysts use when they cite concerns about completely commercializing college sports. That idea goes back more than a century, to 1800s England, where sports were only for the wealthy, and the working class didn’t want them to be able to pay their way to victory.

“I don’t want to say [amateurism] is going to die, but it will certainly be the commercial aspects that are going to permeate,” said David Hedlund, the chairman of the Division of Sport Management at St. John’s University. “I think we’re going to see and hear less and less about amateurism, and college sports are going to look more like professional sports, or a training ground for professional sports.”

The idea that sports are for enjoyment and the love of the game rather than money is a noble one. And players can love the game and make money off their talents at the same time.

But many experts say amateurism has long been dead; the NCAA was just, for whatever reason, the last organization behind the International Olympic Committee to let it die. It’s part of an effort to keep pace with the rest of the world. Overseas soccer and basketball players are spotted when they’re 12 to 14 years old, and go pro when they turn 18.

“We’re in a global marketplace,” said Matt Winkler, a professor and program director of sports analytics and management at American University. “We sort of have to keep up with the other nations if we want to strive and have those great moments in sports for our Olympic teams and our World Cup teams and so forth.”

Coaches have long been compensated, and universities have long profited off their sports teams.

“The money has always been there. It’s just a lot more front-facing now, I think, than it’s been in the past,” Hedlund said.

Some sports analysts say it was quite front-facing in this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.

March Madness was devoid of any significant upsets or Cinderella teams. For the first time in five decades, every team that made it to the Sweet 16 came from a power conference, including all four No. 1 seeds and all but one No. 2 seed.

And, every team that made it to the Final Four was a No. 1 seed.

ESPN analyst Stephen Smith said NIL deals and the now no-limits transfer portal are to blame for why mid-major programs didn’t see much success, and top-tier schools prevailed.

“If there was no NIL, if there was no portal and you have the mid-majors go 0-6 in the second round, please, we ain’t sweating that,” Smith said. “But when you’re able to point to rules that have been implemented that ultimately shows itself to have inflicted upon the game itself, that’s dangerous.

“College basketball as we knew it – which, to me, is all about March Madness – will cease to exist. Because there’s no madness.”

Experts say there is a serious question mark about the current state of how much colleges can pay to entice players, and how many times players can be enticed enough to transfer.

But not all believe it has to be the death of March Madness or competition in college sports. After all, there’s still Division 2 and 3 universities.

Richard Paulsen, a sports economist and professor at the University of Michigan, said it’s hard to gauge the impact of NIL deals and the transfer portal on competition. Because while the top ten or so power schools may be able to offer the most money to the elite players, there’s still a lot of talent out there.

“The top schools have an advantage in getting the A-level talent, but some of the players that might have sat on the bench at a top school previously could be enticed away with NIL money coming from a second tier school,” Paulsen said. “So I think the impact on competitive balance is maybe a little bit less clear.”

Paulsen says, as a professor, he is worried about the impact NIL deals – particularly million-dollar ones – can have on the students themselves, some 18, 19, 20 years old. It raises the question, does a teenager or young adult need this much money?

Shedeur Sanders is 23 years old, and his NIL valuation at the University of Colorado was roughly $6.5 million. Granted, he’s the son of NFL Hall of Famer and head coach for Colorado Deion Sanders.

But, his 2024 stats were top five in completion percentage, passing touchdowns and yards. Several analysts had him as the top prospect in the 2025 NFL draft, but he slid down to the fifth round, shocking much of the sports world.

Various reports place blame on other reasons – maybe he took more sacks than he should have, maybe NFL executives see traits we can’t see, maybe he bombed interviews with the managers, maybe it had to do with his Hall of Famer dad. And he certainly wouldn’t be the first prospect to get picked later than expected and prove all the teams that passed over him wrong.

But, he’s also losing money by going pro. The iced out, custom “Legendary” chain he wore on Draft Day reportedly cost $1 million.

“It is at least worth noting that five years ago, he wouldn’t have had the online presence that he had, and that could have turned off some NFL teams,” Paulsen said. “Without being in the rooms, I don’t know if it did, but that is possible, and it’s not something that would have been possible even five years ago.”

It begs the question, is it even worth going pro for these top-tier college athletes with insane NIL deals?

In the NBA, new data shows it may not be. The league announced last week just 106 players declared early for the 2025 draft. It’s the fewest since 2015. The number typically hovers around 300.

The drop in early entrants could be lingering effects of the extra COVID year.

But, next year, ten schools will pay their rosters somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million, including several million dollars per top player. That’s far more than the players would make if they were a second-round draft pick in the NBA.

Winkler said the combination of competitive rosters and the scope of these NIL deals has more to do with this drop in early declarations.

“These deals are getting so big that unless you’re going to be a first round draft choice, maybe if you’re going to be kind of a lottery pick or a top 10, 15 pick, it would be better for you to exhaust your eligibility on a major team, because you’re going to make more,” he said.

So, it might be financially advantageous for athletes to wait on the pros. Some announcers were even suggesting Sanders should go back to college if the NFL didn’t deem him ready for the show. (NCAA rules prohibit him from doing so anyway; he declared for the draft and signed with an agent).

But what about the fact that these players, who become millionaires, are still students?

Schools are working to provide resources for these athletes so they can get advice on what to do with their wealth, so that they don’t spend it irresponsibly. Which is not to assume all of them would; it goes without saying this money could greatly benefit an athlete who grew up in poverty and change the trajectory for his/her family.

But Paulsen says he worries about the “student” side of “student-athlete” when we start talking about millions upon millions of dollars and students transferring to whichever school offers them the most. Sometimes credits don’t transfer; sometimes players could feel pressure to fulfill their NIL commitments over their studies, when the stakes are that high.

At a young age, these players are under an unprecedented amount of pressure, from their coach, from their family, from their financial adviser, from social media, from broadcast exposure, from stakeholders, from the tens of millions of people who can now legally bet on them.

“Players should be able to leave bad situations, absolutely, and I certainly support players’ autonomy and chasing financial benefit from their athletic talents,” Paulsen said. “But if we’re going to call them student athletes, we should have some emphasis on the student part of that too. Some of these rules that are helping the athlete are hurting the student.”

One of those rules, he says, is the transfer portal. But in addition to harming the students’ academic careers, experts say this also takes a toll on teams and fans of those teams.

Take Nico Iamaleava for example. The star quarterback abruptly parted ways with Tennessee over an alleged compensation dispute with the school’s collective. He demanded an NIL readjustment to $4 million to keep playing for the Vols, and when they said no, he transferred to UCLA, though it’s unclear if they met his demands.

The exit shocked his teammates in Knoxville, with one of his receivers and defensive backs, Boo Carter, telling reporters, “He left his brothers behind.”

But the new pay-to-play system does also beg the question of school loyalty, not just for the players, but the fans too.

Paulsen says roster continuity, players spending all four years playing for one team, has been an endearing feature of sports like women’s college basketball, when you look at the legacies, for example, Caitlin Clark built at the University of Iowa, or Paige Bueckers at the University of Connecticut.

“I do think there’s definitely some extent to which all this player movement can have negative consequences,” he said.

But, some experts doubt fans of teams need to see the same or similar team year to year.

After all, this past NCAA Men’s March Madness Championship between Florida and Houston – the one ESPN’s Smith said featured no madness at all – scored 18.1 million viewers on CBS. That’s up 22% from last year’s championship, and the biggest audience since 2019.

The Final Four games, featuring all No. 1 seeds, ranked as the most-watched games in eight years.

In other words, so far, so good when it comes to college sports fandom.

One thing broadly agreed upon among experts is that competition must remain intact. The Florida-Houston matchup was a nailbiter.

“The biggest thing that would kill sports is if there is no competitive balance,” Hedlund said. “It is known when you have a really great team being a not-so-great team, if the great team probably will win, people don’t want to watch.”

People still appear to be watching. If they stop, one could assume the NCAA would change its course, or it’d be out of all its money too.

Plus, these experts expect regulation soon – possible measures like transfer restrictions, collectively bargained salary caps, conference realignment to avoid concentration, turning athletic departments into LLCs, putting degree completion into bylaws and evening out the number of roster spots, among other rules.

Experts say: be patient, wait for the legal fights to run their course, and wait for the brightest minds in sports – and Congress – to come up with a solution that pleases the players, teams, coaches, schools and fans.

“This is fundamental to the success of sports, so we just need to figure out what rules, what regulations, what governing bodies, how do we facilitate this?” Hedlund said. “We don’t want to ruin sports. That’s what’s at stake here.”

Winkler says it all comes down to the most “hardcore” stakeholders: fans and alumni. If the SEC and Big 10 just ganged up and created their own Premier League and college sports turned into checkbook sports, it could threaten that school pride.

“This year, we definitely saw cracks in the system,” Winkler said. “If the best athletes just go to the top, are [fans] rooting for an inferior product? Are they still going to have that affinity for their school, their team, their degrees, and people that are doing it? This is really going to test that.

“[Schools] have two key pressure points: keep getting a lot of money from TV so you can fund your athletic department, and keep alumni, fans and donors still feeling as engagedThere’s a lot to be worked out in the next several months and probably the next year to really get a boiler plate idea of what the rules and regulations need to be.”

NIL

Here is the latest Big 12 Conference sports news from The Associated Press

Published

22 minutes ago

January 13, 2026

Your Sports Nation

The College Sports Commission has rejected nearly $15 million in name, image, likeness agreements since it started evaluating them over the summer, representing…

UNDATED (AP) — The College Sports Commission has rejected nearly $15 million in name, image, likeness agreements since it started evaluating them over the summer, representing more than 10% of the value of all the deals it has analyzed and closed. The CSC says it did not clear 524 deals worth $14.94 million, while clearing 17,321 worth $127.21 million. All the data was current as of Jan. 1. The numbers came against the backdrop of a “reminder” memo the commission sent to athletic directors last week, citing “serious concerns” about contracts being offered to athletes before they had been cleared by the commission through its NIL Go platform.

UNDATED (AP) — Arizona has tightened its hold on the top spot in The Associated Press men’s college basketball poll after Michigan’s loss to Wisconsin. The Wildcats received 60 of 61 first-place votes. Iowa State moved up to No. 2, followed by UConn, Michigan and Purdue. Nebraska moved up two spots to No. 8 to match its highest-ever ranking set in February 1966. Vanderbilt hit No. 10 for its first top-10 ranking since the 2011-12 preseason poll. No. 19 Florida, No. 22 Clemson, No. 23 Utah State and No. 25 Seton Hall were the new additions to the poll. Kansas, SMU and UCF fell out.

UNDATED (AP) — South Carolina climbed to No. 2 in the latest AP women’s basketball Top 25. The reshuffle follows a week where four of the top 10 teams lost. UConn is No. 1. LSU and TCU jumped into the top 10, with LSU moving to No. 6 after beating Texas. Texas dropped to fourth, while No. 5 Vanderbilt has its highest ranking since 2002. Maryland and Oklahoma fall out of the top 10, and Alabama, Notre Dame, and Illinois entered the poll. The SEC leads with nine teams in the Top 25.

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Former college football coach Chris Klieman says lack of guardrails around NIL, portal led to retirement

Published

1 hour ago

January 13, 2026

Your Sports Nation

Former college football coach Chris Klieman discussed the “factors that drove his decision” to retire, including the lack of guardrails around NIL and the transfer portal, according to Ned Seaton of the Manhattan MERCURY. Klieman said he was “kind of at my wits’ end,” as “anybody can do whatever the heck they want.” He added, “I’ve talked to (many coaches) across the country, we’re all kind of like, ‘We need some guardrails so that somebody can’t spend $45 million, while somebody else is spending 15.” Klieman: “You get done playing Colorado, and come Monday, man, there’s 20 (players’ agents) that want to know a number, or they’re ready to go into the (transfer) portal.” Klieman said for all of December and January he would “work with whatever 80 of our kids to see if we can keep them, and if not, go work with 580 kids to fill the 30 spots we’re going to need,” which to him is “not recruiting.” Klieman: “You’re just putting compensation packages together. … That’s the way college football is, and I’m OK with that, but I don’t have to be a part of it if that’s the way it’s going down.” Klieman said that the issue “needs unified action by university presidents, Congress, and ultimately, a commissioner of college football who could impose and enforce limits and guardrails.” However, he “doesn’t currently see a real path to any of those things, because it will be very difficult to get universal agreement, since those who have the most money have no incentive to sign on” (Manhattan MERCURY, 1/10).

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Virginia colleges resist disclosing athletic revenue-sharing

Published

2 hours ago

January 13, 2026

Your Sports Nation

After two seasons of despair, Virginia Tech football fans finally have something to cheer about.

The administration has launched a major financial commitment to Hokie athletics, a new head football coach is expected to bring a haul of top-flight talent with him from Penn State and, to kick things off, an anonymous fan stepped up last month with a record-setting $20 million donation.

Yet it remains to be seen if all of that will be enough to fulfill Tech’s ambition of competing with top-tier schools that have seemingly unlimited resources to invest in the post-amateur era of collegiate sports.

A court settlement last year was supposed to have brought some order to the wild-west world of Division 1 athletics. For the first time, schools were allowed to share revenue with student-athletes, but the amount per school was capped at $20.5 million a year. But the agreement has done nothing to tame the cost of “name, image and likeness” payments.

Atlantic Coast Conference members like Virginia Tech have mostly stood on the sidelines and watched as a small number of name-brand teams set the market value.

Last week, Texas Tech inked ex-University of Cincinnati quarterback Brendan Sorsby to a reportedly $5 million deal. The school, flush with West Texas oil boosters, bragged about the deal in a billboard that lit up New York’s Times Square.

Texas Tech, which rode a gusher of NIL money to this year’s College Football Playoff, has budgeted $35 million in combined revenue sharing and NIL payments to athletes in the 2025-26 school year, according to the Athletic.

There’s no way to know how Virginia Tech stacks up.

Officials in Blacksburg have provided few details about its football finances, including how it spends public funds provided by taxpayers and fees extracted from students. Tech is not an outlier when it comes to secrecy; colleges and universities fear that sharing information could provide an unfair advantage to their on-field opponents.

Reporters in North Carolina have used state open-records laws to determine how other ACC schools are distributing their $20.5 million in shared revenue.

In Virginia, however, universities have taken a unified stand in refusing to release records related to revenue sharing of public funds. Virginia Tech and other universities have used an expansive interpretation of a “scholastic records” exemption in state open government laws to withhold copies of revenue-sharing agreements or payments, even in cases when news outlets have requested the redaction of all names or other personally identifiable information.

“Even with student names redacted individual student-athletes may be identified,” the Virginia Tech FOIA office responded to a Cardinal News open-records request. “Therefore, the requested records are considered scholastic records concerning identifiable individuals. Accordingly, your request is denied.”

In December, Tech spokesman Mark Owczarski agreed via email to provide a general breakdown showing that 75% of shared revenue went to members of the football team, a higher percentage than at the University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University.

Getting accurate numbers about the value of NIL deals received by Virginia Tech football players is even harder to come by. When the settlement was announced, there was anticipation that the details of any NIL deal valued at $600 or more would be released as part of a new agency set up to make sure the terms reflected market value.

The College Sports Commission, however, has released only a top-level report on the total number of deals approved and the value. The one-page document has no information about the number of deals for any school, much less information about individual NIL arrangements.

For several weeks, Cardinal News sought to schedule a follow-up interview with Owczarski about the finances of Virginia Tech football. His office eventually said it will not make him available. “University leadership is not available for interviews on this topic.”

The lack of official information has given rise to publications that have developed formulas to place an NIL value on highly touted players. Here is what On3 Media has to say about two recent Virginia Tech portal commits:

Ethan Grunkemeyer, 6-foot-2-inch, 207-pound quarterback from Lewis Center, Ohio. Grunkemeyer started the final six regular-season games for Penn State last season and led the Nittany Lions to a 22-10 victory over Clemson in the Pinstripe Bowl. He has three years of eligibility left. On3 Media estimates Grunkemeyer’s NIL value at $783,000.
Javion Hilson, 6-foot-4-inch, 240-pound defensive end from Cocoa Beach, Florida. Hilson appeared in three games last season with Missouri. Hilson will arrive in Blacksburg with four years of eligibility remaining. On3 Media estimates Hilson’s NIL value at $419,000.

There’s no way to know if Virginia Tech paid more or less than the On3 Media estimates.

Kelly Woolwine, the CEO of Triumph NIL, who for several years acted as Virginia Tech’s “defacto general manager” handling negotiations with players and their families, said he learned from experience that “99 percent of what you hear” about NIL values is untrue.

“On the flip side, truth may be stranger than fiction,” Woolwine quipped in a rare interview on the Virginia Tech Sideline podcast in December 2024.

One thing is certain: last fall, many among the Hokie faithful believed the football program had lost its way.

“What was once a great program competing for championships is now a laughingstock,” wrote Robert Irby in “Sons of Saturday,” a website dedicated to Hokie fandom.

Virginia Tech football hit a low in September after a 0-3 start, ending with a 45-25 blowout at the hands of Old Dominion University in Lane Stadium. After the game, Virginia Tech fired head coach Brent Pry.

Two weeks after Pry’s exit, the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors held a special meeting to approve “Invest to Win,” a campaign to inject an additional $229 million into Virginia Tech athletics over the next four years. Figures released by the board show that about half of the funds would come from donations, while $21.3 million would be generated by an increase in student fees.

“Today, we are stepping up to compete, and we ask our loyal fans and generous donors to step forward with us,” said Virginia Tech President Tim Sands.

In November, fans also cheered news about the hiring of head football coach James Franklin, whom Big Ten powerhouse Penn State had dismissed mid-season. (In an unorthodox twist, Franklin announced he would retain Pry — with whom he had coached at Vanderbilt and Penn State — as his defensive coordinator.)

The coaching change so far has led to a huge net gain for Virginia Tech’s roster. About a half dozen players left the team when Pry was fired, but Franklin has brought talent with him from Penn State.

For instance, Franklin was hired on Nov. 17, a little more than two weeks before top high school players would announce where they would enroll in 2026. In short order, Franklin convinced 11 recruits who had committed to play for him in Happy Valley to change their minds and follow him to Blacksburg.

As a result, Virginia Tech assembled a 2026 recruiting class that ranked fifth in the ACC, behind Miami, Florida State, North Carolina and Clemson, according to 247 Sports.

There was more good news on Dec. 15, when Virginia Tech announced that an anonymous donor had agreed to give a record $20 million gift to the athletic department.

“We are deeply grateful for this extraordinary and timely gift,” Sands said. “Doing more with less, while a testament to the talent of our staff and student athletes, is no longer an option.”

The real test begins this week, as Virginia Tech competes with other schools in a NIL bidding war in the transfer portal.

Coach Franklin has imported a member of his Penn State staff, Andy Frank, to serve as general manager and assemble the roster for the 2026 version of the Hokies.

His predecessor, Woolwine, said one of the vexing challenges in major college football today is managing players’ expectations as compensation goes up year after year.

“You’re going to have a program that is going to bring in a guy for $700,000,” Woolwine said in the December 24 podcast, “and on the other side of the line from him is a guy who has been slaving away at that same university for $75,000 a year. How happy is he going to be when he sees that?”

Woolwine said compensation is by far the biggest locker room distraction in the history of college sports. “It’s bigger than girls, and drugs and partying,” he said.

Players’ concerns about where they stand in compensation can lead to negativity in locker rooms of every major program. “They think their school or their organization was holding out on ‘em, taking advantage of ‘em, sandbagging ‘em. They are very bitter about it,” Woolwine said.

The transfer portal has made it easy for disgruntled players to seek more money and/or playing time elsewhere. This has made it harder for coaches to develop players over time. Underclassmen who have been working toward playing time can find themselves knocked down the depth chart when a school signs players from the portal.

Last season, for instance, only eight of 28 seniors on the Virginia Tech football team played their entire careers in Blacksburg, according to a Cardinal News analysis.

Woolwine said the goal is to find players who are in Blacksburg because they love Virginia Tech. “We don’t have the money to buy our way through this,” Woolwine said in December 2024.

The question remains whether today’s “Invest to Win” will generate the resources that will make it possible for Hokie football to again compete at the highest level.

The loftiness of Virginia Tech’s goal was reflected in a last-minute edit to the goal of the $229 million infusion to athletics. Instead of wanting to be competitive against the ACC (considered the weakest of the Power Four conferences), Virginia Tech expressed a desire to compete with “the best institutions nationwide.”

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Scarlet Knights Legend Leonte Carroo Sues Rutgers Over NIL Claims

Published

3 hours ago

January 13, 2026

Your Sports Nation

Rutgers football legend Leonte Carroo is suing Rutgers University over the use of his Name, Image, and Likeness from when he was playing in college, according to an article written by Brian Fonseca of Nj.com/NJAdvancedMedia. Carroo’s lawsuit claims that he is entitled to back payments for the money he generated for the university throughout his college career. The lawsuit values those figures between 2.8 and 3 million dollars.

Carroo and his team originally filed the lawsuit in October. In December, Rutgers countered and tried to have the lawsuit dismissed, arguing that the statute of limitations had long passed and that several courts from around the country had already unanimously denied the type of NIL claim that Carroo’s team is making. On January 9th, Carroo’s legal team filed a brief meant to argue that the university’s dismissal should be denied.

According to the article by Fonseca, Carroo’s team gave Rutgers a formal demand letter in June seeking compensation for the unauthorized use of his NIL. The university did not provide such compensation, which led to the lawsuit.

The House vs. NCAA settlement granted back payment to college athletes who were in school between June 2016 and 2024. Carroo’s playing at Rutgers career falls just outside that, as he played from 2012-2015. Carroo’s legal team is arguing that just because he falls outside the period given, it does not take away from the fact that Rutgers unjustly profited from his time as a player.

Carroo was one of the most well-known players at Rutgers while he was playing. He currently holds the receiving touchdowns record in school history by a wide margin, and he was one of the faces of the team when they first entered the Big Ten. Carroo and his legal team argue that some sort of compensation is in order for his level of stardom.

If the courts side with Carroo in this case, it has the potential to open up a whole can of worms across college athletics. It would lay the groundwork and encourage other former athletes from other schools to sue their own school for the same reason. Similar cases to this, including players from other college programs, have been dismissed or denied already across the board. It remains to be seen what will come of this lawsuit in particular.

A link to the original article by Fonseca can be found here.

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Former Minnesota safety Koi Perich commits to Oregon

Published

4 hours ago

January 13, 2026

Your Sports Nation

Former Minnesota safety Koi Perich has committed to play for head coach Dan Lanning and the Oregon Ducks, On3 has learned. Perich was one of the top available players in the NCAA transfer portal, proving to be a massive win for Oregon. It’s the second straight year Lanning has snagged an elite safety from a Big Ten foe.

Perich is a four-star prospect per the On3 Industry Transfer Portal Rankings. He also comes in as the No. 12 overall player. At the time of his commitment, only Missouri‘s Damon Wilson ranks higher on the list of available guys. Now, the No. 1 safety is off the board and heading to Eugene.

Texas Tech was the other program battling Oregon for Perich’s eventual signature. It’s no secret how aggressive the Red Raiders can get in the transfer portal. Especially for defensive players, being a staple of the 2025 roster. But similar to the College Football Playoff quarterfinal matchup between the two, Oregon came out on top.

Perich played in 26 games during his time at Minnesota, turning into one of the best defensive backs in the Big Ten. He recorded 128 tackles, 5.5 tackles for a loss, and one sack. The stats when dropping back in coverage are just as good, snagging six interceptions, five passes defended, and even forcing two fumbles.

Oregon will be looking for a whole lot more of the same. Last portal cycle saw the Ducks land Dillon Thieneman from Purdue, setting the blueprint for what Perich’s time in Eugene might look like. But there was always thought to be a ton of potential with Perich.

Looking back at his high school recruitment, Perich played at Esko (MN) Lincoln Secondary, where he was a four-star prospect. He was the No. 58 overall recruit in the 2024 cycle, according to the Rivals Industry Ranking, a weighted average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies.

Minnesota listed Perich as a sophomore on his official roster bio during the 2025 season. If he wishes to use them, two years of eligibility remain moving forward. While Oregon might be hoping they just snagged a multi-year player, you have to imagine the NFL Draft will be a serious consideration this time next year.

To keep up with the latest players on the move, check out On3’s Transfer Portal wire. The On3 Transfer Portal Instagram account and Twitter account are excellent resources to stay up to date with the latest moves.

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$5 million QB ranked No. 1 college football transfer portal player

Published

5 hours ago

January 13, 2026

Your Sports Nation

The NCAA transfer portal is nearing the end of its two-week window for college football players to enter in hopes of finding better situations at new programs in 2026. The portal opened its doors on Jan. 2 and will officially close on Friday.

No fewer than 4,000 players from across college football entered the portal in the weeks after the 2025 regular season ended. Much of the discussion about the 2026 portal cycle revolves around quarterbacks shifting to different Power Four programs in search of better situations.

One of these quarterbacks is former Cincinnati signal-caller Brendan Sorsby, who entered the transfer portal and committed to Texas Tech. He will have one season of eligibility for the Red Raiders.

The 6-foot-3, 235-pounder began his college football journey under Tom Allen at Indiana in 2022. He used his redshirt that season, completing only three of six passes and throwing an interception in a blowout loss to Penn State.

Sorsby played in 10 of the Hoosiers’ 12 games in the 2023 season. He threw for 1,587 yards, 15 touchdowns and five interceptions while rushing for 286 yards and four more touchdowns. Allen was fired that offseason, and Sorsby entered the portal for the first time.

Cincinnati landed Sorsby from the portal in the 2024 offseason. He started all 12 games for the Bearcats that season, passing for 2,813 yards, 18 touchdowns and seven interceptions and rushing for 447 yards and nine touchdowns. The Bearcats were 5-7 in 2024, losing each of their last five games.

Brendan Sorsby throws the ball in Cincinnati's 2024 football game against TCU. — Cincinnati Bearcats quarterback Brendan Sorsby (2) | Albert Cesare/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Sorsby passed for 2,800 yards, 27 touchdowns and five interceptions and ran for 580 yards and nine touchdowns in his last season with the Bearcats. Cincinnati was 7-5 in the 2025 regular season, losing each of its last five games. Sorsby entered the portal ahead of the Bearcats’ bowl game.

Schools scouring the portal for quarterbacks had Sorsby near the top of their wishlist. Max Olson of ESPN released rankings for the best transfers in the 2026 portal cycle, with Sorsby coming in at No. 1 overall.

“He was the Plan A all along for coach Joey McGuire and his staff, a proven Big 12 starter and Texas native that who can elevate an offense who ranked No. 2 nationally in points per game this season before the loss to Oregon in the CFP quarterfinal. The Red Raiders return a lot of players around Sorsby entering 2026 and should be the preseason Big 12 favorite,” Olson wrote.

“Sorsby’s arrival also allows backup Will Hammond to recover from his torn ACL and prepare to take over as (Texas) Tech’s starter in 2027.”