NIL
Cam Newton was one of CFB’s biggest stories since 2000, plus CFB news
Until Saturday Newsletter 🏈 | This is The Athletic’s college football newsletter. Sign up here to receive Until Saturday directly in your inbox. Today in college football news, Lay’s Valentina & Lime demolishes Doritos Blazin’ Buffalo & Ranch for junk food of the week honors. Changes: CFB’s especially busy quarter-century Every quarter-century in college football is […]
Until Saturday Newsletter 🏈 | This is The Athletic’s college football newsletter. Sign up here to receive Until Saturday directly in your inbox.
Today in college football news, Lay’s Valentina & Lime demolishes Doritos Blazin’ Buffalo & Ranch for junk food of the week honors.
Changes: CFB’s especially busy quarter-century
Every quarter-century in college football is busy, to be clear — now I want to do a whole newsletter section on the least consequential such period, because that’d actually be really, really hard — but these 25 years have left massive and often long-awaited marks on the sport’s history.
Last week, Scott Dochterman ranked the 25 most consequential stories since 2000. As you’d expect, the top of the list includes a whole lot of 2020s. It’s been an especially busy decade, and it’s only halfway done. Consider:
- The transfer portal. The Pac-12 starring as Guy Mauled By Bear in “The Revenant.” And the list’s No. 1 storyline: the 2021 onset of NIL, followed by last week’s news that Division I colleges will now be able to directly pay their players actual money, dynamiting the central pillar of the previous century-plus of American collegiate amateurism.
- Scott’s list is certainly not all recent stuff, though. Two events from 2007 (Alabama hiring Nick Saban and the Big Ten launching its own network) rank in the top 10, as does the realignment bonanza of the early 2010s. Overall, this is such a loaded ranking, 2001’s dawn of the modern recruiting-coverage industry only appears at No. 23 — Barely A Five-Star territory, in recruiting-coverage terms.
The only thing I would want to tweak, if I were rearranging these items with push pins on a particle board: moving Cam Newton’s 2010 season up four spots into the top 10, just behind the Big Ten truly launching the modern realignment era around the same time.
The story of Auburn’s quarterback having a father who’d allegedly asked a whole other school for a low-six-figure payment was one of the sport’s biggest pop-culture crossover dramas of the 2010s.
More critically, it might have been the single biggest turning point in the public’s perception of amateurism. Newton and his plight as the smiling face of scandal made a whole lot of people start to think, “Wait … why shouldn’t this kid who’s single-handedly turning a very mediocre team into a national champ get paid for it?”
Newton’s 2010 made more people reconsider the NCAA’s late-2000s treatment of Reggie Bush (No. 12 on Scott’s list). By the time of Johnny Manziel’s 2013 NCAA-baiting (No. 25), the entire thing was starting to feel like a joke everyone was in on, like a house that had always been bound to collapse.
Fast forward, and now it barely registers when Power 4 boosters pay decent quarterbacks 15 or 20 times what a Heisman winner’s family might have requested just 14 years prior.
Remember: For more of The Athletic’s look back at the past 25 years, inspect our rankings of the top 25 teams, top 25 players, top 25 coaches and top 25 games. And here’s that link to the top 25 storylines again.
Quick Snaps
📺 Two notes from Andrew Marchand’s insider notes on Pat MacAfee:
- “He has mused with associates about starting his own, independent version of GameDay, according to sources briefed on discussions. …
- “Last fall, McAfee grew upset about being shown swinging and missing during a segment in which he faced a University of Oklahoma softball pitcher. McAfee, according to sources briefed on the incident, demanded to know the name of the GameDay staff member who put it on the air.”
🅾️ Surprising nobody, GameDay will start the season at Texas-Ohio State. Lee Corso’s final episode, remember. Sure would be cool if McAfee were away doing his own thing elsewhere!
💰 Post-House settlement lightning round:
- “Eight female athletes filed an appeal of the House v. NCAA settlement, arguing that the landmark agreement violates Title IX.” This dispute had long been anticipated.
- “Throughout this case, many involved have pointed to the next big one coming down the pike. Johnson vs. NCAA, which has been moving through the courts for almost six years now, gets into one of the thorniest issues in college sports: employment.”
- “The people in charge are turning quickly to the sport’s next potential rules changes. At the top of the list: moving to a single transfer portal window.”
- As we continue to learn more about what big schools are going to do with their newly allowed $20.5 million allocations, here’s one of several Ohio State details: “Spending $18 million across four sports: football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball and women’s volleyball.”
🦬 Deion Sanders sounds okay after some recent health issues.
🍀 Notre Dame is looking into a QB recruit named Brady Quinn, and no, he is not a time traveler. That we know of.
💎 Men’s College World Series starts tonight. Eight things to know, including Arkansas as the melting pot of college baseball transfers. New Mexico Junior College! Florida SouthWestern State, with a capital W!
2025 Countdown: That’s not a Michigan helmet
Until Saturday’s completely format-free 2025 season preview countdown continues today with Conference USA and the MAC, the conferences that usually have the nation’s most and least transient membership rosters, respectively. I decided to pair these two into one edition for a couple reasons:
- They contain all three of this season’s conference realignment changes in FBS. What a tidy way to catch up!
- Almost all of the most enjoyable EA Sports rebuilding projects are usually in these two leagues. Who hasn’t labored to build a little MAC guy into Ohio State’s bully? Last year, my Conference USA alma mater, Kennesaw State, was the FBS newbie and thus one of the game’s most frequently undertaken construction projects. This year, CUSA — forever filling a critical role as the onboarding meeting, spaceship airlock and actual transfer portal — provides two such options.
With all this in mind, let’s bring on The Athletic’s Chris Vannini, who has covered lots of college football things, including smaller schools and The Video Game. How convenient!
Which of the two latest CUSA additions (Delaware and Missouri State) would be more fun as a fixer-upper?
Chris: While both have been top-25 FCS programs, I’m interested in Delaware. While playing an early version of the game, I actually spent a little time with them and really enjoyed their playbook, so that’s a bonus. For those unaware, Joe Flacco’s alma mater looks like Michigan, with blue and yellow winged helmets. The Blue Hens are also the only FBS program in the state of Delaware, so they’re unique. They have a balanced offense that may again rotate quarterbacks who can run and pass. The new Dynasty mode will encourage more local recruiting by making distant recruiting visits cost more, so get ready to recruit a lot of New Jersey.
Same question for the MAC. Seems like UMass rejoining after a decade away makes the Minutemen an enticing project?
UMass is another in a long list of former FCS national champions who have moved up to FBS, but they’ve had no success. People around the program earnestly believe it’ll be different now that they’ve started to fund the program the way it should be, and they’ll be near the top of the MAC financially this time around. On the field, UMass brings in dual-threat Yale quarterback Grant Jordan, who might be able to make some waves in the MAC. But it’s also a hard team to predict, with so much portal turnover during a coaching change.
Look at that, sneaking in actual season preview content. As far as Who’s Gonna Win goes, Liberty will surely again be CUSA’s clear favorite* despite losing 2023 league MVP quarterback Kaidon Salter to Colorado. Potential replacement Ethan Vasko played the last two years at Coastal Carolina, which happens to be the school his new head coach, Jamey Chadwell, had just left.
* Last year, Jacksonville State was picked third in the league in the conference’s preseason poll, then beat Western Kentucky in the league title game. Both now enter the season in a big pile of second-tier contenders. Weird way of putting it, I guess. They’re all 0-0.
In the MAC, expect Toledo to be the pick for what feels like the billionth time, though the Rockets have just two league titles since 2004. That sounds way more rude than I’d meant. They’ve been super consistent! So many near-misses! Feel like I’ve typed this exact paragraph annually for a decade now. Sorry.
Also expect some first-place MAC preseason votes for defending champ Ohio, defending runner-up Miami (Ohio) and NIU — the country’s second-best team last year, based on scoring margin in games against Notre Dame. A sleeper pick based on roster stability, though that’s a very relative concept in the MAC: Buffalo.
Your turn. This week’s survey: Whether you’re a gamer or not, which team in all of college football would be the most fun to turn into a CFP contender? I’ll run some of your brilliant ideas next week.
Have a good weekend, and untilsaturday@theathletic.com is how you can email me about any of this. Most of you usually just email me about the non-sequitur intros. Thank you either way.
(Top photo: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)