Speaking from the Oval Office on Friday while honoring the “Miracle on Ice” 1980 U.S. men’s hockey team, President Donald Trump called NIL a “disaster” in college sports. He also further signaled his willingness to get involved.

Trump has been vocal about settling the landscape in college athletics. He signed an executive order earlier this year called “Save College Sports” to prohibit third-party, pay-for-play payments and directs the Secretary of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board to clarify that athletes are amateurs and not employees.

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But as dollars continue to fly through NIL and revenue-sharing, Trump called for a “strong salary cap” and said colleges are putting themselves in tough financial shape as a result. He stressed the need for action and reiterated he’d step in, if necessary.

“You’re going to have these colleges wipe themselves out, and something ought to be done,” Trump said. “And I’m willing to put the federal government behind it. But if it’s not done fast, you’re going to wipe out colleges. They’re going to get wiped out, including ones that do well in football.

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“They can’t pay $12 million, $14 million, $10 million, $6 million for players. They won’t be able to stop. There’ll always be that one player, they only have that player, they’re going to win the national championship. And they’ll have 100 colleges thinking the same thing. Colleges cannot afford to play this game. It’s a very bad thing that’s happening.”

Donald Trump: Schools ‘putting too much money into football’

President Donald Trump’s assessment of college athletics centers around Olympics sports, which he has said multiple times are caught in the middle of the current landscape. He said Friday schools have been cutting those non-revenue sports, calling them “training grounds” for the Olympics. For example, UTEP dropped women’s tennis while Grand Canyon cut men’s volleyball ahead of the House settlement.

As things currently stand, Trump argued schools are starting to divert more dollars toward football. As a result, other sports could be impacted.

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“I think that it’s a disaster for college sports,” Trump said of NIL. “I think it’s a disaster for the Olympics. We’re losing a lot of teams. Colleges are cutting their, they would call them, sort of the lesser sports. They’re losing them at numbers nobody can believe. And 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 that money into football.

“And, by the way, they’re putting too much money into football because colleges don’t make – even the most successful universities don’t make that much money. … I think the NIL is a disaster for sports. It’s horrible for the Olympics. I think it’s actually horrible for the players. And you’re losing all of these great sports. They’re not college football.”

At least in Utah, going to bowl games remains a very big deal.

The college football bowl season is undergoing an assault, with plenty of teams opting out of invitations to play in the postseason. The reasons vary, but the movement is tracking and threatening the bowl business.

But locally, the bowl train is heading down the track. The bowl thoughts are positive, and events remain as anticipated fun, a reward and an opportunity to shine.

It’s carnival time. Break out the travel plans.

Utah, BYU, and Utah State are locked in. It’s game time, show time, a rally point in December.

The 10-2 Utes can’t get enough of this season after the 2024 funk. The offense is rolling, Kyle Whittingham must be celebrated and this is his final game in Uteville.

For the Crimson faithful, this is a season that needs milking. Las Vegas is just a few Maverick and 7-Eleven stops away, and Dec. 31 is plenty of time to plan. Plus, Utah will kick Nebraska from Allegiant Stadium back to the corn fields.

In Logan, Bronco Mendenhall has the Aggies playing in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl in Boise Dec. 22. This is a celebration of Mendenhall’s remarkable, gutsy entry back into Utah and a team that made impressive strides.

How can players, coaches and fans not want to see their Aggies take on future Pac-12 opponent and 6-6 Washington State and give this season one more run?

In Provo, Kalani Sitake got his contract extended. This means more support for his assistants, continuity for returning players and a time to salute their “player’s coach.”

It’s also a chance to get 12 wins and shoulder that chip after the College Football Playoff snub. They see this as Alamo Bowl and Colorado Part 2.

The biggest opt-out is Notre Dame. Shunned by the CFP committee, the Fighting Irish made a very public statement by refusing to play BYU in the Pop-Tarts Bowl in Orlando. It was a shot at ESPN, essentially telling the network “We’re not letting you make money (an estimated $50 million) off our brand when you snubbed our royal keisters.”

Big 12 brothers Iowa State (8-4) and Kansas State (7-5) are eligible for bowls, but declined. ISU lost head coach Matt Campbell to Penn State and players voted for health and safe practice reasons to decline. Similarly, K-State just had head coach Chris Klieman retire and uncertainty with staff, recruiting and health led the program to decline.

Both teams will be fined $500,000 for this decision.

Teams with 5-7 records were approached to go bowling, but many declined, including Baylor, UCF and Kansas.

That makes five Big 12 teams that turned away bowl invitations.

This places a cloud over the entire bowl industry when teams refuse to come and party in your cities, accept your gifts and use the event as a positive experience for the team and fans.

It’s a commentary more on the possible gloom settling around many teams in December because of the transfer portal, players bound for the NFL opting out and NIL money simply making the risk of injury or bad performance not worth it.

Players have their coin. They don’t need another PlayStation or Xbox.

NIL hasn’t caused a complete collapse (the delayed 2026 portal window helped stabilize many rosters), but it amplifies devaluation in the expanded CFP era.

Non-playoff bowls are increasingly seen as optional, with opt-outs rising from individual players to entire teams. If unchecked, this threatens the bowl system’s long-term viability, especially for mid-tier games.

In the future, we may see many NIL/revenue share deals that include contracts requiring bowl participation. Bowl organizers have discussed NIL incentives including direct payments to players to boost appeal, but most lower-tier bowls lack the budget to do that.

Critics argue NIL erodes tradition, turning bowls into “glorified scrimmages,” while supporters say it empowers players in a monetized sport.

Locally, Whittingham, Sitake and Mendenhall have all spoken in the past how important the extra practices for a bowl are for a team. They provide an extra period of time to develop players and foster competition.

Bowls also provide an event that many seniors deserve because some, if not most, will never play football again. It is also a chance to win another game and add to the momentum gained during the season as programs head into offseason workouts, the weight room and recruiting.

It would seem defections to the portal loom as a legitimate threat for many teams as they see their rosters depleted and their priority is loading up not with players directly out of high school but seasoned Division I athletes who have been through training programs and the next level and can step in and fill the gaps.

This, sadly, is the state of college football today. Bowl games, outside the CFP, are becoming endangered events.

Big 12 participating bowl teams (Texas Tech will play either Oregon or James Madison in the Orange Bowl on January 1 as part of the CFP):

Dec. 27 — Pop Tarts Bowl, BYU vs. Georgia Tech

Dec. 27 — Texas Bowl, Houston vs. LSU

Dec. 30 — Alamo Bowl, TCU vs. USC

Dec. 31 — Sun Bowl, Arizona State vs. Duke

Dec. 31 — Las Vegas Bowl, Utah vs. Nebraska

Jan. 2 — Holiday Bowl, Arizona vs. SMU

Jan. 2 — Liberty Bowl, Cincinnati vs. Navy

Nick Saban might be done patrolling a sideline, but he isn’t done challenging the sport he helped define.

Now an analyst on ESPN’s College GameDay, the seven-time national champion is pushing a simple, sweeping idea: college football needs a real boss. Not a committee, not a loose alliance of conferences—a single commissioner with authority over the entire sport, backed by a competition committee that can standardize how the game is run.

‘We don’t have that right now’

In Saban’s view, the mix of NIL money, constant transfers and conference realignment has pushed college football into a gray area where everyone has power and no one has control. He argues that without a centralized voice setting rules and expectations, the sport drifts.

Saban contrasted the current setup with an earlier era in which scholarship agreements spelled out academic standards, transfer expectations and long-term commitments between players and schools. Those guardrails, he believes, have been eroded to the point that the sport is flirting with chaos. If you’re not backing stronger structure, Saban suggested, you’re effectively siding with “a little bit of anarchy.”

The focus and money surrounding the College Football Playoff, in his mind, have only masked deeper structural problems.

Is Saban the obvious choice?

Saban isn’t alone in calling for a commissioner. Last year, James Franklin—then at Penn State and now at Virginia Tech—publicly argued for exactly that role and even floated Saban as the ideal candidate, saying college football needs someone who wakes up and goes to bed thinking only about what’s best for the sport.

Whether the job ever exists, and whether Saban would actually want it, remains an open question. But his message is blunt: college football is at a crossroads. For the former Alabama coach, the next era can’t just be about bigger TV deals and a larger playoff. It has to start with someone finally grabbing the wheel.

The College Football Playoffs begin this week, and Dr. Pick’ Em–my favorite pigskin prognosticator, whose 83% success rate is as frightening as it is accurate–sent a postcard from the Caribbean to mark the occasion. On the front, a pristine beach. On the back, his verdict on the real winners scrawled in black Sharpie: “The Rich and Powerful.”

The bracket reveal is engineered to feel like the season’s crescendo, a pure celebration of merit. But Dr. Pick ‘Em, whose analytical precision is matched only by a cynicism grand enough to fill a stadium, sees the final rankings for what they are: the financial scaffolding of a system designed to protect two conferences, six high-rent bowls, and the owner’s box–the broadcast networks.

In the age of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) and the open transfer portal, college football finally has the ingredients for its own version of a magical tournament. Any ambitious program is now one phenomenal class of transfers away from being a true Cinderella, much like the teams that make March Madness so captivating. The overnight success of teams like Tulane, Vanderbilt, and Indiana demonstrates that NIL brings us closer to NFL parity, where a year-to-year talent infusion can spark a rapid ascent.

Yet, the CFP selection committee does its level best to discourage these potential Cinderellas. Instead of rewarding the magic, we have a system that awards a county fair’s blue ribbon based on the pig’s grandfather’s pedigree rather than the quality of its bacon. The committee favors the brand over the product, the résumé over the reality on the field.

The bowls, the networks, and the established power conferences act as the evil stepmother, using their structural power–television slots, scheduling prestige, and the subjective final vote–to ensure their favorites get the spotlight. The CFP, as currently constructed, discourages the glass slipper moment.

The transfer market and the conference shield

The inclusion of Indiana as a top seed is the perfect, living example of an NIL-fueled Cinderella story, but it comes with a massive asterisk that the committee ignores.

For decades, Indiana was the quintessential “potato cellar” program. When Coach Curt Cignetti was hired, he utilized the one-year blitz. He built a gritty foundation with over 30 transfers in his first season, then proved the model sustainable by reloading in year two with difference-makers like quarterback Fernando Mendoza. He and defensive anchors Mikail Kamara and Aiden Fisher transformed a perennial Big Ten bottom-feeder into a powerhouse.

But let’s be honest: Indiana’s Cinderella story only has a happy ending because of the logo on its jersey.

If this same scrappy, transfer-fueled squad were in the SEC – take Vanderbilt as a prime example – it would have faced Georgia, Texas, Alabama, and LSU. Instead of a pristine record and a No. 1 seed, the Hoosiers would be sitting at 8-4 or 9-3, likely watching the playoffs from home. A mid-major with the same talent would be fighting for the single “Group of Five” crumb left on the table. Indiana got the invite not just because it is good, but because the Big Ten provided a path protected by brand bias.

The Big Ten’s mirage vs. the SEC meat grinder

This year’s bracket has reignited the sport’s oldest feud, with arguments echoing from Columbus barbershops to Tuscaloosa BBQ joints. Big Ten fans point to the top of the board: their conference secured two of the top four seeds. It looks like dominance. But the illusion shatters upon inspection. The Big Ten placed only one other team, Penn State, in the 12-team field – a stark lack of depth.

Contrast that with the SEC, which placed five teams in the bracket but saw three more top-25 teams excluded. This isn’t about conference pride; it’s about the brutal physics of the schedule. Metrics like SP+, which measure dominance, show the SEC’s top tier dwarfing the Big Ten’s. For an SEC contender, a “break” means facing a Kentucky team full of future NFL draft picks. The bruises are cumulative.

The committee, in a rare nod to reality, tacitly admitted that surviving the SEC gauntlet with two losses is a more impressive feat than navigating a top-heavy Big Ten schedule unscathed, ranking a 10-2 Texas A&M ahead of an 11-1 champion from a weaker conference.

The Aggie anomaly: earning the slipper

Which brings us to the Texas A&M Aggies (11-1, No. 7 seed), the team Dr. Pick ‘Em believes is currently playing the best football in America. By any measure, the Aggies are surging. Their defense is suffocating, and their offense has found a ruthless rhythm. Their body of work was forged in the SEC’s fiercest fires.

Their single blemish came not in a sleepy September game, but in the final week against a desperate Texas Longhorns squad fighting for its playoff life. In the cold calculus of evaluation, A&M was penalized for the difficulty of its environment and denied a first-round bye, a classic case of the system favoring the “clean” résumé over the “hard” one.

Meanwhile, contenders like Notre Dame built cases on “Soft Landings.” The Irish touted a win over a dysfunctional Arkansas as proof of grit, while padding their schedule with scheduled convalescences against the likes of Stanford and Virginia. By excluding the Irish, the committee sent a powerful message: a glossy win total built on cupcakes is a liability.

Cathedrals, chapels, and a ray of hope

The current two-tiered ecosystem is patently unfair. The big winners are the Cathedrals of Revenue – the major bowls and networks. The dozens of other bowl games became Sidelined Chapels.

However, there is a sliver of hope. An expanded playoff system might actually rescue the very bowl ecosystem it appears to be decimating. By moving the first four CFP games to campus sites, the quarterfinal and semifinal rounds are now exclusively hosted by the New Year’s Six bowls. That guarantees those premier games remain significant and hugely profitable.

If the CFP were to expand again to 16 teams, more bowls would be absorbed into the playoff structure, providing guaranteed relevance and financial survival for more of the postseason. In this way, the CFP’s growth could offer a lifeline to the institutions it previously left floundering.

For now, though, the system implicitly tells fans of “Chapel” schools that their passion is secondary. Notre Dame’s reaction–a public sulk with players sprinting for the portal–taught us that for many, only the Cathedral matters.

Prediction: the gauntlet’s payoff

Despite the bias, Dr. Pick ‘Em is betting on the one asset the system can’t purchase: Momentum. He sees this bracket breaking for the battle-tested.

First Round: Oklahoma survives a slugfest against Alabama, while Texas A&M smothers Miami in College Station.

The Run: A&M’s physicality breaks the will of Texas Tech’s high-flying offense, followed by a defensive masterpiece against Georgia.

The Championship: The moneyed favorite, Ohio State, against the fire-forged Texas A&M.

Final Prediction: Texas A&M 31, Ohio State 27

The rich usually get richer in this sport. But this January, Dr. Pick ‘Em is wagering that a team forged in fire will prove that a champion can still be crowned by the scoreboard, not by pedigree.

But don’t hold your breath for a total revolution. The system makes sure the stepsisters get to the dance while the Cinderellas stay home.

Fernando Mendoza balked at entertaining the Heisman Trophy ceremony as an assured outcome Friday, even as he arrived in New York a comfortable betting favorite to win the award.

As of an afternoon press session, Mendoza hadn’t even finished his speech.

Yet even as he artfully sidestepped suggestions the award was already won, Mendoza did have a firm answer for where the 45-pound bronze trophy should live, if he is selected as its winner Saturday night.