Last summer was a monumental one for the sport of college football.

The old generation was reunited with and the new generation was introduced to a college football video game. After 11 years in hibernation, the passing of NIL legislation ultimately made way for EA Sports to produce a college football video game again.

EA Sports College Football 25 was a resounding success, and now the game will be released on an annual basis. On July 7, EA Sports College Football 26 first became available to the public, implementing new features and showcasing updated rosters.

What does the Mid-American Conference look like in EA Sports CFB 26? The team ratings and players overalls are listed below:

Toledo leads all 13 MAC programs with an overall of 78, ranked one point ahead of Buffalo. On the other end, Ball State and Kent State are tied for the lowest rated teams on the entire game at 68 overall.

Program Prestige

Each program is assigned a “prestige” value on a star system. The highest rated programs including perennial playoff contenders Georgia, Alabama, and Ohio State are labeled 5 stars. Conversely, lower rated programs, such as recent FBS additions Kennesaw State and Delaware, are labeled 1 star.

Program prestige plays a key role in recruiting in the game’s “Dynasty Mode.” Below is each MAC program’s prestige rating. No MAC program is rated higher than 2 stars — the prestige given to Miami (OH). Two MAC programs — Akron and Kent State — are given 0.5 stars, a prestige level which wasn’t present in EA Sports CFB 25.

Compared to CFB 25:

• Miami (OH) upgraded from 1.5 to 2 stars
• Akron downgraded from 1.5 to 0.5 stars
• Buffalo downgraded from 1.5 to 1 star
• Kent State downgraded from 1 to 0.5 stars

Player Ratings

The 10 highest rated players by overall are listed below for each MAC program.

Top Players in the MAC

Buffalo middle linebacker Red Murdock and Toledo strong safety Emmanuel McNeil-Warren are the highest rated players in the MAC at 90 overall. Nine MAC players received a rating of 85 or greater.

On July 1, college sports entered a new frontier.

For the first time ever, universities began directly paying their players as part of the “House v. NCAA” settlement. The settlement allows each university to pay its student-athletes up to $20.5 million per year, which works out to approximately 22% of the average athletic department revenue at Power Four schools. The vast majority of that money will go to pay athletes in football and men’s basketball, the two most revenue-generating sports for most universities.

With the revenue-sharing agreement comes a crackdown on NIL (name, image and likeness) deals. Prior to revenue sharing, the NIL was the Wild West, and essentially boiled down to pay for play.

The new system attempts to make NIL what it was originally intended to be — sponsorship opportunities for athletes at a true market value.

“Biggest issue is we’ve got to have somewhat of a level playing field with the NIL space, I shouldn’t say NIL, but with what we’re paying them.”

—  Utah coach Kyle Whittingham

Every NIL deal will now be sent through a clearinghouse managed by accounting firm Deloitte, which will assess those deals and has the ability to approve or deny each NIL deal according to if it meets “fair market value.”

Already, the system is working, sending some NIL deals back for reworking — including a few at the University of Utah.

“I will say with the settlement, with the cap, with NIL Go and our athletes have been submitting on NIL Go. Since the settlement was decided three or four weeks ago, the turnaround has been pretty quick,” Utah athletic director Mark Harlan said in an interview on ESPN 700.

“We’ve had all but a few approved here at Utah, the ones that haven’t been approved, we go back and we help the student-athlete restructure to make sure it’s in that range of compensation.”

From the beginning, Harlan has said Utah will be “all-in” on revenue sharing. Men’s basketball player Keanu Dawes was the first to receive a revenue-sharing deal from the university, with others, including football players, following shortly after.

Utah was able to retain key players like offensive tackles Spencer Fano and Caleb Lomu, cornerback Smith Snowden and others, and got New Mexico quarterback Devon Dampier and Washington State running back Wayshawn Parker out of the transfer portal.

“We’re excited to be able to, again, to have a dramatic increase for what football had,” Harlan said. “You don’t retain two first-rounders (Fano and Lomu) and guys like Smith Snowden and others if you don’t have capital and great donors involved. It’s never enough because there’s always someone that’s got more, obviously Texas Tech.”

Texas Tech, as Harlan mentioned, has made waves in the past year, signing one of the top transfer classes this offseason, including Stanford edge rusher David Bailey and North Carolina offensive tackle Howard Sampson, spending over $10 million, according to The Athletic.

Texas Tech followed that up by signing five-star high school offensive tackle Felix Ojo, who will receive “an annual compensation of $775,000 per year for three years from Tech’s revenue-sharing pool,” according to The Athletic.

There was a mad dash to sign and pay out NIL deals before July 1; deals paid out thereafter would be subject to review by Deloitte. One NIL deal platform, Opendorse, had its biggest day in company history on June 30, processing nearly $20 million in payments.

“There’s teams that are front-loading all the extra money they had prior to the rev share kicking in,” Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said. “We got teams spending supposedly $50 million or more on players, and that’s five, six times what we got.”

The Houston Chronicle reported that Texas will spend $35-$40 million on its 2025 roster, between revenue sharing and NIL deals, many of which were signed before the NIL clearinghouse went into effect.

“Biggest issue is we’ve got to have somewhat of a level playing field with the NIL space, I shouldn’t say NIL, but with what we’re paying them,” Whittingham said.

“Bottom line, they’re professionals, they’re getting paid like professionals and we’ve got to get a handle on that. We can’t have X amount of schools paying, spending $50 million on rosters and the rest of us $12 million … There’s about 12 teams that’ll have a chance to win it all every year and that’s it. So I would say leveling the playing field with a salary cap, again, back to the NFL model, and making things more uniform. It works in the NFL, so why can’t it work at this level?”

The big question around college sports is this — will the revenue-sharing cap and “true market value NIL” bring a sense of parity in terms of what teams can spend?

That’s the hope — but Whittingham is unsure if it will work in practice.

“I don’t think the rev share is an equalizer or is going to be the equalizer that everyone thinks it’s going to be because they’re going to circumvent it,” Whittingham said.

“They’ll find ways around it just like everyone always has. And so you’re still going to see a big disparity in the opportunity to build rosters. But again, until we get to an NFL model, where there’s a salary cap and that’s it, and if you break that cap, then you get huge penalties — I mean huge penalties, then it’s not going to work.”

Fueled by the infusion of money into the space, the unlimited transfer portal has turned college football from a place where players would be developed for three or four years at one school into one in which half or more of every annual roster is comprised of new players.

“Instead of 20 or 30 guys turning over each year, it’s 60 guys. Half your roster is new,” Whittingham said.

The new age, where players can transfer without penalty, has both helped and hurt the Utes. This offseason, Utah lost star defensive tackle Keanu Tanuvasa to BYU and star cornerback Cam Calhoun to Alabama. After spring practices, promising receiver Zacharyus Williams took off for USC.

Meanwhile, Utah has used the transfer portal to its advantage with players like Dampier, Parker, Cal receiver Tobias Merriweather and cornerbacks Don Saunders (Texas A&M) and Blake Cotton (UC Davis).

Even players not in the transfer portal are being contacted to play for other schools.

In a video published by the Daily Universe’s Sam Foster, Snowden replied to a question about if BYU reached out to him this offseason.

“It wasn’t directly to me,” Snowden replied. “… BYU wasn’t the only school (to reach out), it’s kind of what the name of the game is right, with the transfer portal. I wouldn’t say that it was any tampering type thing, it was more of agents and all that type of stuff.”

Nowhere else in sports is every player a free agent after every season, except in college sports right now. But after the NCAA and the Department of Justice reached a settlement in 2024, the NCAA was permanently barred from restricting a player’s eligibility. In the previous iteration of the rules, athletes had to sit out a year before joining their new team.

A solution to all of it could be collective bargaining, just like what happens in all of professional sports, but the implementation could be extremely difficult.

Collective bargaining could make players employees of the schools, set a clear total salary cap and perhaps create contracts that lock a player into a school for a certain number of years.

Nearly every Big 12 coach at media days told Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger that they support employment/collective bargaining.

“I think it’s heading that way,” Whittingham said of collective bargaining.

“I don’t know if I support or don’t support it. I know that the system we have in place is not sustainable and even with the rev share and the changes that have been made, I’m still not buying the fact that it’s the answer.”

Whittingham supports going to an NFL minor league model, he said this week.

“I realize when you say, well, college football’s not the NFL, but the NFL has been doing some good things for a lot of years and we ought to take some pages from them on how to implement salary cap, collective bargaining if it comes to that,” Whittingham said.

“I think that’s the only real way to get a grasp and a handle on things. As distasteful as it might sound to some people, I think an NFL minor league model is the best direction to head personally. That’s my own opinion.”

Whittingham has long said that there will eventually be a “super conference,” and he doubled down on that this week.

“I still believe that super conference concept is on its way. I really buy into that and I think that there’ll be X amount of teams that break away. They’ll have their own conference commissioner and they’ll do things the way they want to do and everyone else is going to kind of have to fend for themselves,” Whittingham said.

Another avenue for change in college sports would be congressional action.

On Thursday, members of the House of Representatives introduced a bipartisan bill — the SCORE act — that would make conferences exempt from antitrust lawsuits and would let the NCAA once again set parameters “for the manner in which a student-athlete may transfer between institutions, if such rules provide that at least one occasion each student-athlete may transfer between institutions and be immediately eligible.”

It would also codify into law the House settlement, including the current 22% revenue-sharing cap and the new NIL rules. NIL deals would need to serve a “valid business purpose” and have fair market value compensation.

“Instead of 20 or 30 guys turning over each year, it’s 60 guys. Half your roster is new.”

—  Utah coach Kyle Whittingham

The bill wouldn’t advance collective bargaining, in fact, it would prevent college athletes from being employees of their schools, conferences or an athletic association

The bill would also provide protections for athletes, such as requiring schools to provide “coverage of medical expenses for athletic injuries for up to 3 years post-enrollment,” and would cap agent fees at 5%.

It would also establish a process for registering and certifying agents and “setting parameters for the ability of member institutions to negotiate with agents who are not registered under such process.”

Capping agent fees is something Whittingham is in favor of.

“I think it would help the players. Some of these guys are taking 20, 25% from these guys. That’s outlandish. It should be 3 to 5%, just like the NFL is, and certification would be certainly, absolutely a step in the right direction.”

One thing is clear from talking to coaches across the Big 12 — the current system is unsustainable.

Whether through the new NIL rules and revenue-sharing cap being tightly enforced, collective bargaining or an act of Congress, the powers that be feel like change needs to come to college sports.

Image credit:
Kade Anderson (Photo by Eddie Kelly/ ProLook Photos)

Though he didn’t go first overall, Kade Anderson didn’t have to wait very long to hear his name called, as the Mariners selected the star LSU lefthander with the third-overall pick in the 2025 MLB Draft on Sunday.

A draft-eligible sophomore, Anderson last year as a freshman showed flashes of his tantalizing stuff and pitched to a 3.99 ERA with 59 strikeouts across 38.1 innings. In 2025, however, he took his game to another level and compiled a 3.18 ERA with a nation-leading 180 strikeouts against just 35 walks across 119 innings. Anderson took home a litany of postseason awards and was a first team all-SEC selection, a first team all-American and BA’s College Pitcher of the Year.

Anderson has a slender frame at 6-foot-2, 185 pounds with some present strength in his lower half. He has a simple delivery in which he starts with his shoulders almost square to the first base dugout. Anderson begins his motion with an extremely small sidestep that leads into a high leg lift. He has a short and compact arm action and attacks from a high three-quarters slot with above-average arm speed. Anderson’s fastball sits in the 92-95 range, but has been up to 97 with plus carry in the top of the zone. 

The biggest revelation in Anderson’s arsenal in 2025 was his mid-80s slider—a pitch he threw just two percent of the time in 2024. It emerged as an above-average offering that flashes plus with lateral life, and it garnered a 31% miss rate. Anderson’s upper-70s, high-spin curveball is a plus pitch that has great pure spin rates, excellent depth and distinct shape from his slider. Anderson rounds out his arsenal with a mid-80s changeup that also took a step forward in his sophomore season. It’s an above-average fourth pitch that flashes plus with tumbling life, and it’s especially effective against righthanded hitters. Anderson’s curveball and changeup also generated impressive whiff rates of 35% and 48%, respectively.

Anderson is a plus strike-thrower who has an above-average feel for his entire four-pitch mix. Perhaps the only blemish on Anderson’s resume is the fact that he’s already had Tommy John surgery. He’s a high-probability starter with physical projection, and an exciting blend of strikes and stuff that gives him potential front-end of the rotation upside.

Two of the centerpieces of Texas baseball coach Jim Schlossnagle’s 2025 recruiting class are likely going pro before ever arriving onto the 40 Acres. Both Gavin Fein and Kayson Cunningham were drafted in the first round of the 2025 MLB Draft.

Third baseman Fein was drafted No. 12 by the Texas Rangers. Cunningham, a shortstop, was drafted No. 18 by the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Fein, of The Temecula (Calif.) Great Oaks, has been committed to the Longhorns for nearly four years. As a senior, he hit .358 with 16 RBIs and five home runs. In 2024, his brother Dylan was drafted in the seventh round by the A’s.

Cunningham, a San Antonio Johnson product, committed to the Longhorns in June of 2024. He hit an astounding .509 as a senior, with 27 RBIs and 39 runs scored. He also stole 21 bases on 25 attempts. Cunningham was both the Gatorade Player of the Year and USA Baseball Player of the Year.

Neither player is expected to end up playing for the Longhorns now. First round money in the MLB Draft is higher than any college baseball player could make via NIL.

Follow us on X (formerly Twitter) at @LonghornsWire.

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This article originally appeared on Longhorns Wire: Two Longhorns baseball commits drafted in first round of MLB Draft

Tre Phelps has announced his return to Georgia baseball in 2026. He was previously considered an MLB Draft prospect as a draft-eligible sophomore.

“Let’s run it back,” he posted on X followed by a graphic. 2026 will be his third season with the program.

FRISCO, Texas — It’s been close to two weeks since revenue-sharing officially became a dynamic element in college athletics as part of the groundbreaking House settlement, and everyone involved is still getting their feet under them.

It’s become a significant moment in intercollegiate athletics, with a Big 12 athletic director comparing it to historic events like the creation of the NCAA (1906), the introduction of athletic scholarships (1956), Title IX (1972), the NCAA v. Board of Regents case (1984), and the Fair Pay to Play Act for NIL (2019).

Institutions across the country had been working around the clock to prepare for the introduction of rev-share on July 1. That mandated educating athletes on the challenges they’ll face, including handling NIL through an online clearinghouse called NIL Go.

Schools now can directly pay athletes, with a cap set at $20.5 million. Most Power 4 programs will allocate a significant portion of that revenue pool toward football, approximately 75%, although this varies from school to school. Those institutions aren’t required to reveal what they’re paying players.

While the topic of money can be a sensitive subject, the players know they’re prepared.

“The topic of money is never really a discussion we intended to have, but they do a good job educating us on the changes or what’s to come,” said UCF linebacker Keli Lawson.

For many institutions, education extends beyond traditional academics, embracing a holistic approach where player-development personnel collaborate closely with athletes to equip them for the multifaceted challenges they will encounter in their lives and careers.

“These life skills developments are about putting us in situations to be able to develop a part of our life that we probably weren’t taught growing up, such as creating an LLC [Limited Liability Company]. How do savings work? How does credit work? How are you able to build your credit when you’re trying to buy a home? How do you go about doing something like that? What is the difference between a lease and renting?” said Kansas quarterback Jalon Daniels.

Revenue-sharing payments, like NIL deals, are taxable income that athletes must report on their tax returns.

“They’re not just giving money and saying, ‘Here, do whatever you want with it.’ They’re putting us in situations to build a plan and find out what we can do with our finances rather than just going out and saying, ‘Oh, dang, I just got this much money. Let me go ahead and blow it all,’ and then realize that you’ll have taxes later down the line,” Daniels added.

The Big 12 recently has entered into a multi-year partnership with PayPal, which will facilitate revenue-sharing payments from universities to their athletes through the popular online payment platform. This agreement will also enable athletes to receive NIL payments seamlessly.

Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark said West Virginia was one of the first schools in the conference to utilize PayPal’s HyperWallet.

UCF AD Terry Mohajir talks NIL, construction, Space Game and International games

“Two weeks ago, they brought in a couple of people to talk to us about the revenue sharing because there have been so many changes,” said West Virginia receiver Jaden Bray. “We have to switch to a whole new app. We’ve got to upload everything. There’s so much stuff. So they do a great job of teaching us.”

Daniels believes this new opportunity will prepare him for a possible career in the NFL.

“It’s a better chance, a better time for you to learn in college when you’re making hundreds of thousands of dollars than when you go to the NFL and you start making 10s of millions of dollars. What are you going to do with it then?” he said.

That said, some coaches warn their players against falling prey to unsavory third-party elements, especially like an agent.

“Some of these guys are taking 20-to-25% [of their income] from these guys,” said Utah coach Kyle Whittingham. “That’s outlandish. It should be 3-to-5% just like the NFL, and certification would be an absolute step in the right direction.”

Originally from Germany, UCF offensive lineman Paul Rubelt faces limitations with NIL and revenue-sharing due to his status as an international student. However, he remains unfazed by the opportunities his teammates can seize that are often more lucrative.

“I’ve gotten so much through the school,” Rubelt said. “We get gear. We get free food. We receive disbursements, such as scholarship money and housing. That’s a lot of stuff and a free degree. I’m on my second degree now, so that’s more than I can ask of being an international student.”

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Rublet sees a significant advantage to revenue-sharing.

“It’s awesome for players to get,” he added. “Can it be out of control? Probably. So there are good [things] and bad [things].”

Throughout it all, it still comes down to what is accomplished on the field, according to Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy.

“The teams and coaches who can put that aside will focus on coaching and playing football and find a way to come together to get the best chance to win. That’s the only way I think we can handle the monetary side of college football at this time,” he said.

Please find me on X, Bluesky or Instagram @osmattmurschel. Email: mmurschel@orlandosentinel.com. Sign up for the Sentinel’s Knights Weekly newsletter for a roundup of all our UCF coverage.