The College Football Playoff has reached the quarterfinal round, after a mixed bag of first round matchups have landed us with eight teams remaining that can still win the national title. With less than a week left in the non-CFP bowl season, and the playoff ramping up, it’s time to take a look at all four second round matchups.

New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day will be the showcase for each of the quarterfinal games, and four iconic bowl games will be in the spotlight, determining who makes it to the semifinal round the following week. While our primary focus will be on the roster churn for the Oklahoma Sooners in the transfer portal and the players heading off to the pros, there’s no denying that there should be some great football to watch as the calendar turns to 2026.

The new changes to the transfer portal window were put in place with the intention of making things easier for both coaches and athletes, but some haven’t viewed the changes as a positive.

Per The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel, one agent said, “nothing has changed, except kids aren’t able to take visits.” The agent added that “it’s the dumbest thing in the world.”

Previously, there were two transfer portal windows: one being a 20-day window in December and the other being a 10-day window in April. As of October, there is now just one transfer portal window, which is Jan. 2-16 this year.

Athletes playing on a team that undergoes a coaching change are given a 15-day transfer portal window that begins five days after a new coach is hired. Players who are participating in the College Football Playoff but choose to transfer during the January window are allowed to stay with their teams through the end of the season.

On the surface, the change would seemingly be a net positive for all parties, but apparently it still needs some tweaking.

A shuffling of quarterbacks is coming to college football in 2026.

In the Power Four ranks, quarterbacks such as Rocco Becht, Josh Hoover, Dylan Raiola and Brendan Sorsby are looking for new schools to play for next season.

While the Power Four quarterbacks are dominating the spotlight, there are a number of Group of Five starters looking to increase their exposure at Power Four programs in 2026.

One quarterback who will depart from a Group of Five school when the transfer portal opens is UNLV starter Anthony Colandrea. He will have one season of eligibility remaining at his third school.

One school of interest that has emerged for Colandrea since he decided to leave UNLV is Florida State.

Pete Nakos of On3 reported that Florida State is interested in Colandrea as its starter in 2026.

Should Colandrea transfer to Florida State for the 2026 football season, he would join a growing number of quarterbacks who have transferred to the Seminoles in the last five seasons.

James Blackman was the last quarterback recruited out of high school to start at the beginning of a season for Florida State all the way back in 2020. Since Blackman, Mike Norvell has added Jordan Travis (Louisville), DJ Uiagelelei (Clemson and Oregon State), and Tommy Castellanos (Boston College) from the transfer portal to the Seminoles.

The 6-foot, 205-pounder began his college football journey with Tony Elliott at Virginia in 2023. Tony Muskett started that season at quarterback, but a combination of injuries and inconsistency gave Colandrea the opportunity to play in seven games. He threw for 1,958 yards, 13 touchdowns and nine interceptions while rushing for 225 yards.

Colandrea played in 11 of the Cavaliers’ 12 games in the 2024 season. He passed for 2,125 yards, 13 touchdowns and 11 interceptions while rushing for 277 yards and two touchdowns. He transferred to UNLV the following offseason.

The Rebels gave Colandrea the starting role over Michigan transfer Alex Orji after the first game. Colandrea passed for 3,459 yards, 23 touchdowns and nine interceptions while accumulating 649 yards and 10 touchdowns on the ground. He guided UNLV to a 10-win season, a Mountain West Championship appearance and an appearance in the Scooter’s Coffee Frisco Bowl.

Colandrea received Mountain West Player of the Year and All-Mountain West First Team distinction for his heroics in 2025.

Fox Sports college football analyst RJ Young delivered a harsh assessment of a high-profile quarterback who holds a $2.5 million NIL valuation from On3. This signal-caller recently decided to enter the transfer portal, a move that sparked significant conversation regarding loyalty and team building in the modern era. Young suggests the decision transforms the player from a program cornerstone into a temporary asset.

The analyst noted that the athlete’s next destination will likely view him as a transient piece rather than a long-term solution. This contrasts sharply with the fanbase he is leaving behind because they believed he would play a central role in restoring their program to national title contention.

The quarterback had originally arrived with immense expectations and family ties that carried unique prestige at his former school.

Young argued that the player had everything he requested at his previous stop, including a relative on the coaching staff. By exiting the program now, the standout leaves behind an unfinished job regarding a College Football Playoff invitation despite helping the team reach its first bowl game in eight years.

Analyst details financial, competitive implications of transfer decision

The subject of this scrutiny is Nebraska Cornhuskers quarterback Dylan Raiola. He famously flipped his commitment from the Georgia Bulldogs and the Ohio State Buckeyes before landing in Lincoln. Young’s critique centered on the shift in how Raiola will be perceived moving forward.

“Wherever he lands next will greet him as a rental, unlike Huskers fans who believed he would play a large role in their return to national title contention,” Young said.

The analyst emphasized the unique situation Raiola abandoned.

“Raiola had everything he asked for at Nebraska,” Young said. “As a legacy with an uncle coaching the offensive line, his name carries a prestige in Lincoln that it does not anywhere else in the country.”

Fox Sports college football analyst Laken Litman also weighed in on the situation. She noted the massive expectations placed on the young passer when he arrived on campus.

“The 6-foot-3, 230-pound quarterback was supposed to be the star that would lead Nebraska’s resurgence alongside head coach Matt Rhule,” Litman said.

Raiola started as a freshman and threw for 2,819 yards in 2024. However, his second season did not go exactly as planned after he broke his leg against the USC Trojans. Litman pointed out that external factors likely influenced the departure.

“However, this year didn’t go as planned,” Litman said. “He broke his leg in a loss to USC that sidelined him for the rest of the season, and then couple that with Nebraska firing its offensive line coach, who is his uncle, and his brother de-committing from the 2026 recruiting class, and the decision starts making sense.”

Young added that the initial excitement blinded many to the quarterback’s history of movement.

“The admiration Cornhuskers fans laid on Raiola allowed many Nebraska fans to forget he transferred programs twice in high school and flipped his commitment three times as a prep player,” Young said. “Because his decision to play for the Huskers felt like the one that would stick.”

The Cornhuskers will face the Utah Utes in the SRS Distribution Las Vegas Bowl on Dec. 31 at 10:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.

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Let’s face it, college football in today’s day and age is nothing like it was even five years ago.

NIL and the transfer portal have introduced new wrinkles – and headaches – for coaches and programs to have to navigate, so building a roster is as complex as it has ever been.

READ: “College Football Is Sick” With NIL Buyouts And Beyond.

I have often found myself gnashing my teeth over the direction of the sport, but today I decided to focus that energy on how exactly to build a roster in this modern era of college football.

Let’s break this down into some key components.

Follow the NFL Model

General manager Howie Roseman of the Philadelphia Eagles. (Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)

It’s not a new development to say that college football is becoming more like the NFL. 

With new roles like general manager being created to help deal with the transient and transactional nature of the college game, more and more schools are starting to treat their rosters like NFL operations.

That means abandoning the outdated idea of an 85-man scholarship roster and instead viewing it as a 53-man roster.

Gone are the days of stacking and shelving five-star talent just to keep them waiting in the wings. Most teams are realistically operating with a two-deep at most positions, with the occasional three-deep at high-attrition spots (think trenches).

In reality, you’re paying big money to roughly 35–45 players. Think of the rest as cost-controlled development.

Recruiting now functions more like a draft: cheaper, unproven talent you hope will provide depth and develop without immediately chasing a payday elsewhere.

Which brings us to money.

Budget Allocation and the Tier System

UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava. Mandatory Credit: Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images

The average Power Four football budget — combining revenue sharing, boosters, and collectives — now sits north of $25 million.

That number is only going up, but for now, it’s a clean baseline.

READ: NIL Wars Between SEC And Big Ten.

The question becomes how to allocate that money without overspending on one player or undervaluing another.

Many general managers use a tier system rooted in NFL positional value, and since college football is mirroring the pros more each year, it makes sense to adopt it.

Tier One

• Starting quarterback
• Edge rusher
• Left tackle
• Cornerback
• X receiver

You could argue WR1 and CB1 sit in a Tier 1.5, but the idea is simple: quarterback is king, and the next most important positions are those that protect your QB and hunt the opposing one.

Tier Two

• Starting running back
• Slot receiver
• Backup quarterback
• Interior offensive and defensive linemen

Linebackers and safeties likely fall into Tier 2.5, if we’re splitting hairs.

A note on running backs: unless you’re dealing with a truly special player (think Saquon Barkley), they sit near the bottom of Tier Two. Their positional value just isn’t very high in today’s game and they wear down quicker than most other positions.

Tier Three

This is a developmental and depth tier, and where a lot of your high school recruiting budget should be spent outside five-star or top-100 high school talent (think low four-star and high three-star players who could develop into quality starters).

Tier Three is where a staff that is great at identifying and evaluating talent earns its pay; anyone can tell you a five-star WR will be a monster, but can you pick out the three-star kid and make him the next Puka Nacua?

Spending Breakdown

Now that we have our position groups identified, it’s time to breakdown where that money will go.

If we stick to the $25 million budget, it would look a little something like this:

Tier One is where roughly half of your funds will go ($11.25 million).

A QB gets 18% of the budget in the NFL, and it’s no different in college, as a high-level P4 starter will pull down a minimum of $3 million, more than likely 4.

Having an elite QB is almost a non-negotiable, but an elite edge rusher and left tackle is almost as important.

You’re probably going to end up spending $1.5 million on two game-wrecking edge rushers and a brick wall at left tackle.

A true WR1 that every defensive coordinator has to game plan for and lose sleep over will also fetch north of $1 million, as will a lockdown CB1.

From there, Tier Two gets a little under $9 million to play with, with your slot receivers and interior linemen eating most of the budget there just through quantity alone.

Tier Three is going to cost around $3–4 million and will be allocated to roughly 40% of your roster, so a lot of these guys will be cheaper depth pieces and younger developmental players.

It seems gross to breakdown college athletes based on what they are worth, but that is just the world we live in these days.

Recruiting vs. Transfer Portal

Finally, we get to my favorite part of the experiment: talent acquisition.

Those of you that are recruiting freaks like myself will be happy to know high school talent acquisition still plays a big role in building a roster, but the transfer portal is vital to any successful college program.

Your high school recruiting philosophy should prioritize Tier One players with super high upside, meaning you should spend on five-star and top-100 level quarterbacks, edge rushers, left tackles, and CB/WR1s.

Other players like interior linemen, safeties, and linebackers should still be recruited out of high school, but you shouldn’t reach for a high-priced talent when a kid who is 80% as good comes at half the cost.

When it comes to the transfer portal, treat it like free agency.

One-year rentals are fine, and you should never portal for depth. This should be to fill glaring holes on the roster.

Tier One is the priority in the portal, especially if you are deficient at a spot like tackle, edge rusher, or receiver.

By having a healthy balance of high school recruiting and the portal (probably a 70-30 split for programs with strong NIL), you can prevent your roster from hollowing out.

And there you have it!

NIL and the transfer portal have made college football almost unrecognizable, and I hate it, but if your team starts to adapt to the new model, they should be fine.

You will start to see more and more teams adapt a model that is similar to the NFL, and although that makes me sad to see, it doesn’t mean college football is mirroring the NFL, rather, it is just mirroring the NFL’s positional value structure.

Hang in there, college football fans. The sport is getting weirder by the day, so let’s all just weather the storm at this point.

As he and the Vanderbilt Commodores prepare to play the Iowa Hawkeyes in Wednesday’s ReliaQuest Bowl, quarterback Diego Pavia and 26 other former JUCO football players on Friday asked a federal judge in Tennessee to let them play in 2026 and potentially 2027.

Through attorneys Ryan Downton and Salvador Hernandez, Pavia’s group wants Chief U.S. District Judge William L. Campbell Jr. to issue a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction that would block the NCAA from enforcing applicable eligibility rules pending a final judgment in Pavia v. NCAA. Final judgment means the case would be completed at the trial court level and appealable; no trial date has been set yet for Pavia v. NCAA, with the two sides suggesting trial dates to Campbell ranging from June 2026 to February 2027.

Pavia’s group desires for former JUCO football players to be able to compete in D-I “without regard to years of eligibility or seasons of competition at junior colleges.” The NCAA limits eligibility in one sport to four seasons of intercollegiate competition—including JUCO and D-II competition—within a five-year period. It also generally restricts former JUCO players to three years of D-I football. Pavia has proposed that the D-I eligibility clock begin when a player first registers at an NCAA member school, not when they first register at a “collegiate institution,” which includes non-NCAA schools.

In a related antitrust litigation brought by Pavia’s attorneys, Vanderbilt senior linebacker Langston Patterson is among players suing the NCAA over eligibility rules, and in particular the ones that govern redshirt. Patterson argues that since redshirt players have five years to practice and graduate, there’s no persuasive reason to limit them to four seasons of D-I play. These players seek to expand their maximum number of D-I seasons from four to five. Patterson’s case is before the same judge, Campbell, who is weighing whether to grant a preliminary injunction to authorize a fifth season of play.

Pavia, 23, is a seasoned college football player. He’s playing in his sixth season of college football, with his first two seasons at JUCO New Mexico Military Institute and the last four at New Mexico State and Vanderbilt. Pavia is also one of the best quarterbacks in college football and recently finished second to Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza in the 2025 Heisman Trophy voting. Pavia is earning a great deal as a power conference QB, too. In June, he said he was offered $4-$4.5 million by other colleges to transfer.

Pavia has publicly indicated he intends to participate in the 2026 NFL draft. With more than two dozen other former JUCO players as co-plaintiffs, the case brought by Pavia against the NCAA could continue without him. The NFL’s deadline for underclassmen to declare is Jan. 14. If Pavia gains the choice to remain in college, it’s plausible he might stick around.

After all, Pavia’s NFL draft prospects are mixed. Listed at 6-foot and regarded as relatively slight, Pavia would be on the smaller side for an NFL quarterback. Although it is early for draft prognostications and the NFL combine isn’t until February, Pavia is generally regarded as a late-round draft pick or priority free agent. He also doesn’t project as a likely NFL starter, at least early in his NFL career. Those outlooks have financial implications. A sixth-round pick will sign a four-year contract worth in the ballpark of $4 million. With NIL and House settlement revenue share, Pavia could probably earn more, and potentially much more, by staying in college and dominating.

Last year at around this time, Campbell granted Pavia a preliminary injunction to play in 2025. Shortly thereafter, the NCAA issued a one-time waiver for the 2025–26 academic year that allowed qualified former JUCO players the chance to remain in school. Since that time, more than three dozen “Pavia lawsuits” have been filed by former JUCO and Division II players who want to keep playing in college. Also, in October, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on Wednesday dismissed as moot the NCAA’s appeal of Campbell’s order on grounds that Pavia was already playing, and the NCAA had granted a waiver. The Sixth Circuit remanded the case back to Campbell.

In Friday’s court filing, Pavia describes this arrangement as unfair and unlawful under antitrust law. He notes how other categories of relatively older players receive five years of eligibility to play four seasons, a longer window than ex-JUCO players. Those categories include:

• A player who graduates from high school, then plays football at a prep school for a post-grad year before joining a D-I college.

• A player who plays another professional sport (Chris Weinke became a football player at Florida State in 1997 as a 25-year-old after a six-year pro baseball career).

• As of 2025, the NCAA allows former pro basketball players to play college basketball even though they are former pros in the G League and Europe. As noted by Pavia, former NBA draft pick James Nnaji, who grew up in Nigeria and has played professionally in Europe but not in an NBA regular season game, will soon join Baylor’s men’s basketball team. Sportico examined the topic of pro basketball players joining NCAA teams and its impact on Pavia v. NCAA in depth last summer.

Pavia insists that if the NCAA was worried about the impact that he and other seasoned college players have on competitive balance, “it would preclude other older athletes from competing in Division I NCAA sports.”

The antitrust argument leveled by Pavia depicts the NCAA and its member schools and conferences as engaging in a group boycott of former JUCO football players. By limiting how long these players can play D-I, those players are denied potential NIL and revenue-share compensation. Pavia’s expert witness, Dr. Joel Maxcy, is quoted as saying NCAA member schools enjoy a “financial advantage by moving older players out and replacing them with younger players,” since “an outgoing star would be considerably more costly to the school than an incoming player.”

The underlying logic is that football players of Pavia’s caliber, experience and fame can demand more in compensation from colleges than a teenage high school student who might not play a featured role in college until his sophomore or junior year. Pavia says by pushing “older, more experienced players” out of NCAA football, “schools will have the ability to bring in additional freshmen at a much lower cost.”

As Pavia tells it, D-I college football players constitute a labor market, meaning a group of players who seek to sell their (relatively) elite football services to colleges. Colleges, as competitors to buy players’ services, can run afoul of antitrust law by limiting how they compete.

To advance that point, Pavia draws extensively from former Ohio State football star Maurice Clarett’s antitrust litigation against the NFL. Clarett challenged an eligibility rule that requires players be three years out of high school. As a disclosure, I was one of the attorneys representing Clarett in the litigation. 

Clarett argued that the relevant market for his case was the market for NFL players, with NFL teams as the buyer of players’ services. That market is distinct and there are no reasonable substitutes; no one would credibly say the XFL, UFL, CFL, AAF or any other non-NFL pro league is a credible substitute. Pavia analogizes that point to say that the market for his services is D-I football, especially since “more than 99% of NIL dollars are paid to those athletes.” Neither playing in JUCO nor playing in the NFL is a substitute to D-I football, Pavia insists. He cites data showing how “less than 1% of Division I football players get drafted into the NFL each year.”

An NCAA spokesperson responded to a request for comment on Pavia’s latest court filing by providing context on the Nnaji eligibility decision. As discussed above, Pavia contends the NCAA allowing Nnaji and other former pro basketball players to play D-I undercuts the association’s justification to limit the number of eligible seasons.

“Each eligibility case is evaluated and decided individually based on the facts presented,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Schools continue to recruit and enroll individuals with professional playing experience, which NCAA rules allow with parameters.”

The spokesperson added that “as NCAA eligibility rules continue to face repeated lawsuits with differing outcomes, these cases are likely to continue, which underscores the importance of our collaboration with Congress to enable the Association to enforce reasonable eligibility standards and preserve opportunities to compete for future high school student-athletes.”

Attorneys for the NCAA will have the opportunity to try to rebut Pavia’s arguments. 

Expect NCAA attorneys to argue, as they have in other court filings, that eligibility rules ought to fall outside the scope of antitrust law since they concern how long a college student can play a sport—a primarily educational, rather than economic, matter. 

The NCAA will also assert that eligibility rules are designed to link an athlete’s athletic experiences with the normal trajectory of a college student. Usually after four years of college courses, athletes and non-athlete students graduate and move on to another phase of life, usually a job.

In addition, the NCAA will likely maintain that Division I college football is a unique product and the closer it resembles an inferior version of the NFL, the more it will seem like minor league football. Fans, consumers, broadcasters, media and others, so the theory goes, could then tune out.