The University of Wisconsin-Madison and Under Armour agreed to a 10-year, $104.5 million apparel relations extension on Nov. 24, retaining UA as the Badgers’ exclusive outfitter and injecting new funding into NIL.

The partnership with Under Armour first started in 2015 with the Badgers men’s basketball run to the Final Four. In the decade since, Athletic Director Chris McIntosh considers Under Armour one of the university’s “most valued partners.” 

In the recent history of Wisconsin football, the Badgers have struggled to compete with other Big Ten foes during the NIL era of college athletics. Since NIL was implemented into college sports in 2021, Wisconsin Football has experienced difficulties with gathering the funds necessary to recruit high-end talent. 

Under Armour’s sponsorship aims to help the Badgers further adapt to the NIL era of college football, including the transfer portal by giving the Badgers the ability to acquire great talent throughout the rest of the country. The contract contains a “starting sum of $175,000 annually”, that will continue to rise, to reward NIL contracts to Badger athletes. Under Armour is not only providing the Badgers with NIL, but they are also providing brand and business opportunities for UW athletes. 

In order to achieve success in the modern college football landscape, programs have to devote more monetary rewards than just scholarships to athletes. For example, the defending national champion Ohio State Buckeyes spent around $20 million in NIL on their program. 

In comparison to the Buckeyes, Wisconsin’s football budget is significantly less. After another abysmal football season and ranking towards the bottom of the Big Ten in NIL funds, this renewed contract with Under Armour will help catapult Wisconsin into the top half of the conference in NIL funds. 

Under Armour sponsors other notable football programs like Notre Dame and Texas Tech. These two football powerhouses — who finished the regular season  in the mix for the College Football Playoff — have seen direct benefits, such as new apparel, more flexibility, and better morale within their respective programs from their sponsorships with Under Armour. 

In a new era of collegiate athletics, the Badgers have found themselves trailing not just the Big Ten, but most Power-4 programs throughout the country as well. While their sponsorship with Under Armour doesn’t fix everything, it is definitely a step in the right direction for the future of Wisconsin Athletics. 

The NCAA transfer portal will feature hundreds of players across all levels of college football in the 2026 offseason.

Prominent quarterbacks have begun to declare their intent to enter the transfer portal in the weeks before it opens. DJ Lagway, Josh Hoover, Rocco Becht and Dylan Raiola are among the Power Four quarterbacks who will be at a new school in 2026.

One of the first Power Four quarterbacks that decided to enter the transfer portal was Arizona State quarterback Sam Leavitt. He will have two seasons of eligibility at his next school.

One program linked to Leavitt when he enters the portal is Oregon. Leavitt is from West Linn, Oregon, just south of Portland and an hour and a half drive from Eugene by interstate highway.

Oregon has not started a quarterback that it recruited from high school for an entire season since Justin Herbert in 2019. Bo Nix, Dillon Gabriel and Dante Moore (transferred back) all came to the Ducks via the transfer portal.

The 6-foot-2, 205-pounder began his college football career at Michigan State in 2023. He played in a maximum of four games to keep his redshirt for the Spartans, passing for 139 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions on 15-of-23 passing.

Leavitt transferred to Arizona State in the 2024 offseason. He started every game for the Sun Devils while accumulating 2,885 passing yards, 24 touchdowns and six interceptions while rushing for 443 yards and five touchdowns en route to their Big 12 Championship victory and subsequent College Football Playoff appearance.

The Big 12 named Leavitt its Freshman of the Year and Second-Team All-Big 12 for his heroics. The conference also named him as its Newcomer of the Week on multiple occasions. He finished 2024 with the most passing yards by a freshman in a season in Arizona State history.

Leavitt’s 2025 season was cut to just seven games due to injuries. He passed for 1,626 yards, 10 touchdowns and three interceptions while rushing for 306 yards and five touchdowns.

The Sun Devils will not start Leavitt in their bowl as he has declared his intent to leave. Arizona State (8-4, 6-3) will face ACC champion Duke (8-5, 6-2) in the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas on Dec. 31 (3 p.m. EST, CBS).

The NCAA transfer portal will officially open for all college football players looking for new destinations on Jan. 2, 2026. The portal will stay open until Jan. 16, 2026.

The way college football operates in the NIL/revenue-sharing era has moved a lot closer to the NFL model, and one high-profile program is acknowledging that in a very public way.

USC has been announcing on social media that players have “re-signed” with the program, essentially acknowledging that all college football players are free agents each year now, thanks to the transfer portal and the ability to chase better compensation elsewhere.

A big one for the Trojans this week was quarterback Jayden Maiava’s decision to return to USC rather than pursue the NFL draft this year or a bigger payday from another school, but USC has publicized the return of more than two dozen players in this way — from starters to little-used freshmen and even its kicker.

Coach Lincoln Riley was asked about this new approach for his program.

“I think that’s something that should be celebrated. In this day and age, it’s almost more like an NFL team. Like, it’s an accomplishment to be welcomed back, and then on top of that, when you do have that option, it’s something that should be celebrated by a school or a program that somebody wants to continue on what’s being built or what they’ve already started at that place,” Riley said.

“… It’s changed so much on all accounts. It’s changed a lot for the players. It’s obviously changed a lot for us.”

USC overhauled its player personnel/recruiting department a year ago by hiring general manager Chad Bowden away from Notre Dame and building a new staff for him. Bowden has a reputation for thinking outside the box, so this was likely an idea that he and his staff came up with for the Trojans.

College football analyst Adam Breneman chimed in with his thoughts on USC’s “creative” approach to roster management.

“To me, USC has always been known for creativity. They’re in Los Angeles, the creative capital of the world, that’s where great things happen, and a great job here by USC’s creative department, having this idea. I think we’ll see teams around the country copy this, announcing the re-signing of players to new contracts for the upcoming season with NIL and rev-share deals,” Breneman said.

“Chad Bowden, the USC general manager, is ahead of his time. He’s innovative, he thinks forward, he’s proactive, and his staff clearly has something here, really great with announcing the re-signing of the roster at USC. What a great idea.”

USC may have indeed started something with this, as Missouri announced the return of star running back Ahmad Hardy in the same way.

Amid the spectacle of the College Football Playoff’s opening weekend — and the nagging sense that we’re watching a sport we no longer love — here’s the uncomfortable question no one in power seems eager to answer:

Is college football slowly turning off the very fans who built it?

The other day on our radio show, we asked a simple poll question: “What’s your excitement level for this year’s College Football Playoff?” The result wasn’t close. The runaway winner was: “Mild at best.”

No, it wasn’t a scientific poll by any means. But it was taken in a college-football-crazed state, in a city that hosts three bowl games, from listeners who have spent decades scheduling fall Saturdays around kickoff times. These are not casuals. These are the lifers.

And they sound tired.

College football has always thrived on passion — irrational, inherited passion. We fell in love with this sport because we were loyal to our hometown or home-state schools. Because our dads and moms went there. Because our grandparents wore the colors. Because even when our teams were bad, they were ours. We believed players loved our schools the way we did. We believed coaches were stewards of something bigger than themselves.

That belief is gone.

What we’re left with now is a sport that feels increasingly transactional, untethered from its own history, and openly hostile to the idea of loyalty. The transfer portal and NIL didn’t just change college football — they rebranded it. Players are no longer student-athletes growing into men within a program; they’re year-to-year contractors shopping their services to the highest bidder. And coaches are no longer culture builders; they’re free agents with obscene contracts and super-agents who are already negotiating new deals with new teams by midseason.

Lane Kiffin didn’t even wait for the College Football Playoff selection committee to put his Ole Miss team in the 12-team field before bolting for his next big job. Think about it: the head coaches from three CFP teams will be elsewhere next season, meaning in the most important tournament in the sport that a quarter of its leaders already had one foot out the door before the playoff even started.

That’s not continuity. That’s chaos.

And the collateral damage is everywhere. Bowl games — once the measuring stick of success — are now disposable. This year alone, Notre Dame opted out because it got snubbed by the CFP committee while Kansas State and Iowa State opted out because they lost their coaches. Bowls used to mean something. They were a reward, a destination, a final chapter. Now they’re an inconvenience.

Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz didn’t mince words when he said earlier this week: “College football is sick.” He warned that the sport is “cracking” — not metaphorically, but structurally. Rules without consequences. Participation agreements nobody honors. Tampering without punishment. Freedom without guardrails.

UCF coach Scott Frost went even further. He said the quiet part out loud: “It’s broken.” And for that honesty, he was attacked. Not because he was wrong — but because he threatened those who benefit from the disorder. Frost described a world where participation agreements are ceremonial, salary caps are fiction and booster money determines competitive balance more than coaching or development ever could.

That’s not college football. That’s the NFL without contracts, unions or rules.

Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck summed it up best: “College football does not have any of what the NFL has in place. … I don’t think the general public actually knows what it looks like when you peel back the onion.”

And that’s the point. Fans (and coaches) are finally peeling it back — and they don’t like what they see.

Conferences now stretch from coast to coast, stripping the sport of its regional soul. Rivalries that once defined generations are disappearing in favor of television windows. Which brings us to a fair question for UCF fans: With USF no longer on your schedule, who’s your big rival? Answer: You don’t have one.

A sense of place used to matter in college football. Geography mattered. Identity mattered. Tradition mattered. Now everything is optimized for TV inventory and gambling markets.

Don’t get me wrong, college football is still idiot-proof. It will march on. ESPN needs the programming. Sportsbooks need the content. Saturdays will still be filled with games, spreads and parlays. The machine will not stop.

But what happens when the true fans — the ones who stayed and cheered through the losing seasons, NCAA sanctions and decades of irrelevance — start checking out emotionally? When excitement becomes obligation? When loyalty feels foolish?

We’re already seeing the signs. Fans less invested in bowls. Fans less connected to rosters that turn over annually. Fans who no longer recognize their own conferences. Fans who watch out of habit, not hope.

This isn’t about opposing player compensation. Players deserve to be paid. It’s not about nostalgia for unpaid labor or closed systems. It’s about structure, fairness and meaning. A sport without rules isn’t freedom — it’s anarchy. And anarchy is exhausting.

College football was never supposed to be perfect. It was supposed to be personal. It was supposed to mean something beyond the scoreboard. It was supposed to connect campuses, communities and generations.

Right now, it feels like a sport in disarray where even coaches and administrators are just  hopeless spectators to its unraveling. It’s so bad that they are begging the federal government to get involved. Can you name another multi-billion-dollar business that actively seeks governmental regulation?

The scariest part isn’t that coaches like Frost and Drinkwitz are speaking up.

It’s that we longtime fans are starting to quietly nod along and wonder why we’re still watching.

Yes, the College Football Playoff arrived this weekend and it’s never been bigger.

But, sadly, the sport itself has never felt emptier.

Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com. Hit me up on social media @BianchiWrites and listen to my new radio show “Game On” every weekday from 3 to 6 p.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and 969TheGame.com/listen

Aftter helping propel Arizona State to its first College Football Playoff run in 2024, quarterback Sam Leavitt is officially preparing to test the transfer market.

Multiple outlets report Leavitt intends to enter the portal when the window opens in January, and early lists of suitors already include Oregon, Indiana, LSU, and Miami. 

Leavitt’s 2025 season was cut short by a persistent foot injury that required surgery and ended his year after seven appearances.

Despite limited time, he finished the campaign with 1,628 passing yards, 10 touchdowns and three interceptions, and leaves Tempe with a two-year body of work that includes a 2024 breakout season (2,885 passing yards, 443 rushing yards, 29 total TDs).

ASU closed 2025 at 8–4 under coach Kenny Dillingham, going 6-3 in Big 12 play.

On Wednesday, Mike Golic Jr. weighed in on potential transfer portal destinations, explicitly linking Leavitt to Miami as a natural schematic fit.

“Sam Leavitt, to me, would be a fascinating fit at the University of Miami. We reckon Carson Beck is going to be out after this playoff run, and when I look at Sam Leavitt’s game, I think about the Miami offense they ran with Cam Ward, an offense predicated on the quarterback’s ability to drop back, create, and make plays with both his arm and his legs. That feels like a very easy comparison.”

The Hurricanes went 10-2 this season and enter the postseason with a quarterback (Beck) who posted 3,072 passing yards and 25 passing touchdowns with a 74.7% completion rate.

However, despite Beck’s productive year as the starter and Miami’s CFP berth, the senior quarterback is widely expected to move on after the season, opening a potential vacancy at one of college football’s biggest brands.

Leavitt combines a CFP start, redshirt-sophomore eligibility, mobility, and a nationally ranked NIL valuation (estimated at $2.1 million), positioning him as one of the portal’s most attractive quarterbacks.

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