With the recent release of EA Sports College Football 26, 30-somethings across America are chasing Heisman and national championship trophies, playing the popular video game franchise that, thanks to NIL legislation, returned to consoles for the first time in a decade last summer.

However, one soon-to-be 30-year-old is living out the college football dream in real life, playing the human version of the 2025 college football season, not the virtual one.

Monte Harrison is an SEC wide receiver for the Arkansas Razorbacks, approaching his fourth decade on Earth. Only a sophomore in college, Harrison committed to Nebraska over Arkansas and several other schools as a four-star prospect in the Class of 2014, but elected to pursue a career in professional baseball instead.

The Milwaukee Brewers selected Harrison in the second round of the 2014 Major League Baseball Draft at pick No. 50 overall. He played pro ball for 10 seasons, including 50 games in the majors over three years with the Miami Marlins (2020-21) and Los Angeles Angels (2022), before retiring from baseball in 2023.

A year later, Harrison enrolled in college to finish what he started in football, suiting up for Arkansas in the 2024 season. He played in 11 games with two catches for 29 yards, both in his college football debut, which made him only the second player in NCAA history to record a statistic in an official FBS football game following an MLB career.

Though older than his teammates and opponents, Harrison is far from the record for the oldest college football player. Alan Moore and Tom Thompson will likely share that honor forever, each with an NCAA field goal attempt at 61 years old. Moore kicked for Faulkner University in 2011; before him, Tom Thompson set the record with Austin College.

And here I am, rubbing my knees after checking the mailbox.

[Oldest.com: 7 Oldest College Football Players]

The average American earns around $1.7 million in their lifetime, according to a 2011 study.

Almost no one would turn down the opportunity to earn around $2 million just to sign up for a job that – could – one day, earn them eight figures per year.

But incoming freshman right-hander Angel Cervantes did.

The 2025 MLB Draft’s No. 50 overall pick turned down the Pittsburgh Pirates so he could honor his commitment to UCLA baseball, Cervantes announced in a post on X on Wednesday.

While the Pirates’ offers aren’t public, the MLB gave the Cervantes’ pick a $1.93 million slot value, and the No. 51 and No. 52 overall picks signed for $2.75 million and $2.60 million, respectively.

Not only will the right-hander be an impactful addition to the 2026 team, but it’s a positive indication of what the 2026 squad already is.

Cervantes is betting on himself to make immediate contributions to a team with realistic 2026 national championship aspirations. He’s betting that UCLA and coach John Savage can still develop elite high school arms into the top pitchers in the nation.

He’s putting every young baseball player’s dream on hold for at least three years for the Bruins.

NIL: Not an Instant Lottery

Fans are quick to scream “NIL” whenever something doesn’t make sense in their head.

Like if Cervantes is picking college baseball over affiliated ball, it must be because he’s earning hand over fist in Name, Image and Likeness.

The truth is, he probably isn’t. Most Division I baseball players make little to no money in NIL, and even the nation’s best players on the diamond only make around $40,000 to $50,000 a year, according to College Football Network.

And yes, the House v. NCAA settlement will allow schools to pay players directly. But that $20 to $21 million each school is allotted is for the athletic department as a whole. Meaning UCLA will have to split that pool of money between rising redshirt sophomore quarterback Nico Iamaleava, rising senior guard Donovan Dent, rising senior center Lauren Betts and rising senior gymnast Jordan Chiles before it even opens the checkbook for the rest of the school’s student athletes.

It’s insane to think athletic director Martin Jarmond or Savage are going to hand over a sizable check to an incoming freshman.

Strictly in terms of NIL, it is highly unlikely Cervantes will make back whatever the Pirates could have given him directly from playing college sports.

The gamble Cervantes is likely playing is the one that’s hardly new to college baseball: developing for three-to-four years at a university instead of the minor leagues so that he can re-enter the draft with an increased stock, sign for an even larger signing bonus and fast-track to the majors.

As most Bruin baseball fans know, Gerrit Cole turned down the New York Yankees and their reported $4 million signing bonus after getting drafted No. 28 overall in the 2008 MLB Draft, instead choosing to come to UCLA.

Three years later, Cole had pitched on the biggest stage college baseball has to offer – the Men’s College World Series – and earned himself a then-record-setting $8 million signing bonus from none other than the Pittsburgh Pirates as 2011’s No. 1 overall pick.

While they may not have had the multi-million dollar contract sitting in front of them like Cervantes, the Bruins already boast a plethora of players who could have gone to professional baseball straight out of high school.

It almost seems court-mandated that every broadcast has to mention how rising junior shortstop Roch Cholowsky was a projected first-round pick in the 2023 MLB Draft if not for his steadfast commitment to UCLA.

Pirate finger pointing

There’s also the notion that Cervantes just didn’t want to be a part of the Pirates organization.

And while that could be true, the Pirates are far better at developing prep pitchers than most people give them credit for. Mitch Keller – a 2014 second-round pick out of Xavier High School in Iowa – has been a staple of Pittsburgh’s starting rotation since 2022.

Kyle Nicolas and Jared Jones have had setbacks recently, but were both prep-to-pro arms who have a seemingly bright future at PNC Park – both top prospects before exceeding rookie limits in 2024. Additionally, Bubba Chandler, a 2021 third-round pick out of North Oconee High School in Georgia, is currently MLB Pipeline’s No. 2 right-handed pitching prospect.

Plus, if Cervantes’ goal was just to get drafted by a different team, he could go to a junior college – where he’d be able to enter the 2026 MLB Draft – instead of a four-year university like UCLA, where he’d have to wait until 2028 to become eligible for the Rule 4 Draft again.

And if Cervantes’ wish is to turn himself into a top-five pick come 2028 – and earn an eight-figure signing bonus – he’ll still likely end up on a bottom-feeding franchise.

Rankings or hat pickings?

Yes, UCLA was No. 1 in Baseball America’s “Way Too Early” 2026 top 25 rankings published Tuesday.

Yes, LSU – 2025’s national champions – were No. 1 in last year’s iteration.

But of the remaining 24 teams in last year’s article, only three actually made it to Omaha, Nebraska.

And the rest of Tuesday’s rankings are littered with, as expected, SEC and ACC teams, along with recent powerhouses like Oregon State and Coastal Carolina.

The Bruins are a good team who are returning nearly every player who made a sizable impact in 2025. They arguably have their best shot at a second national title ever.

But it’s hard to overlook how many little things went in UCLA’s favor last season.

The Big Ten doesn’t have the top-heavy talent of the SEC or ACC, and the four former-Pac-12 programs in the conference all finished top five in their inaugural Big Ten regular season.

In the Los Angeles Regional, the Bruins dodged many of their opponents’ top arms, like Arizona State’s Ben Jacobs or UC Irvine’s Ricky Ojeda.

Then UTSA looked nothing like the team that beat then-No. 2 seed Texas, losing to UCLA in two games during the Los Angeles Super Regional.

And then UCLA got to face the tournament’s Cinderella, Murray State, in its first MCWS game.

But LSU and Arkansas sent UCLA home packing after back-to-back beatings that, after the top of the first against the Tigers, never felt particularly close.

In his final press conference of the season, Savage emphasized the need to improve his team’s starting pitching.

Right-hander Cody Delvecchio started the season as the Friday night guy, but struggled early on before becoming academically ineligible for the majority of the season. He was most recently drafted by the San Francisco Giants in the 12th round. Rising redshirt senior southpaw Ian May began the year as the Saturday starter, but lost his spot in the weekend rotation after just four starts, only reinserted out of apparent necessity before being moved to the bullpen for the NCAA tournament.

Rising junior right-hander Landon Stump was the Sunday starter all season, but finished 2025 with an ERA north of five while averaging just over four innings per start.

Rising sophomore right-hander Wylan Moss was excellent for much of the season – and earned Big Ten All-Freshman Team honors – but seemingly struggled adjusting to the collegiate baseball workload as a back issue hampered his effectiveness down the stretch.

Luke Rodriguez tossed 51.2 innings in his freshman campaign and had a 2.11 ERA across 21.1 innings pitched in 2025 before becoming academically ineligible. He has since entered the transfer portal.

Rising senior right-hander Michael Barnett has been a dependable workhorse for the past two seasons – and after shockingly going undrafted in the 2025 MLB Draft – is slated for his final season at UCLA. While certainly deserving of a weekend rotation spot, by Savage’s admission, Barnett doesn’t fit the typical profile of a front-of-the-rotation arm.

By Perfect Game rankings, Cervantes arguably has the best pre-college pedigree of a Bruin pitcher since Thatcher Hurd – who had a 1.06 ERA and 48 strikeouts to just 10 walks in his first 34 innings pitched before an injury cut his freshman campaign short, followed by his transfer to LSU.

Additionally, fellow incoming freshman right-hander Zach Strickland went undrafted despite being the No. 86 player in the class, according to Perfect Game, and could compete for a spot as a starter or back-end of the bullpen.

Throw in the anticipated returns of the Bruins’ two hardest throwers – rising sophomore right-handed closer Easton Hawk and rising junior high-leverage right-hander Cal Randall – and the Bruins are set to have a much more competitive pitching staff than they did a year ago.

Book your flights?

UCLA has lost little talent to the transfer portal in recent years.

AJ Salgado, who announced his signing to the New York Mets organization as an undrafted free agent via Instagram on Thursday, is the only everyday player the Bruins are losing. The team seems to have his replacement in rising junior center fielder and Texas transfer Will Gasparino, though.

Partnering the strengths of 2025 and adding a revitalized pitching core, UCLA has as good a shot as ever at showering in blue and gold confetti at Charles Schwab Field once again.

And players know that – they want to play for the Bruins.

So much so that they’d turn down seven figures.

Michael Cohen

College Football and College Basketball Writer

LAS VEGAS — A little more than two months ago, as Michigan embarked on its summer break following the completion of spring practice, some of the Wolverines got together to play pickup basketball, one of their favorite group activities away from the football field. 

But when veteran edge rusher Derrick Moore arrived at the court, he quickly noticed the presence of someone who shouldn’t have been in attendance: freshman quarterback Bryce Underwood, the five-star phenom whose commitment to Michigan last November transformed him into an NIL multi-millionaire long before his 18th birthday, which is still a few weeks away.

“What are you doing here?” Derrick Moore asked. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

The chilly reaction had nothing to do with what he thinks of Underwood as a person. Like so many of his other teammates and coaches, Derrick Moore is now a wholehearted believer in the teenage prodigy after observing how Underwood, the No. 1 overall recruit in the country, has carried himself since flipping his commitment from LSU to Michigan last November and enrolling over the winter. Underwood joined the Wolverines in time for their bowl prep against Alabama and then took plenty of reps during spring ball amid a quarterback room thinned by injuries and transfers alike. All signs now point toward him being the team’s starter once the regular season arrives. 

Michigan QB Bryce Underwood (19) signs autographs for fans before the ReliaQuest Bowl against Alabama. (Photo by Sarah Robbins/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Instead, Derrick Moore’s objection to Underwood playing basketball on that summer day was purely economic, even if he originally rolled his eyes a bit at the monetary figures attached to Underwood’s recruitment. One spring was all it took for Moore to deem it unwise of the program’s most valuable asset — a player who reportedly inked a market-resetting NIL deal worth between $10 million and $12.5 million over four years — to risk injury during a meaningless social activity. Especially after defensive coordinator Don “Wink” Martindale spent the spring yelling at his players to “stay away from Bryce, don’t touch Bryce at all!” in acknowledgment of how vital Underwood’s health really is. 

“I feel like we do a good job protecting him and also giving him good advice,” Derrick Moore said while representing the Wolverines at Big Ten Media Days. “He’s worth a lot, so we’ve got to make sure he knows. I feel like he already knows, but I feel like we’ve got to do a good job of reminding him that he can’t do too much. And if you do play basketball, no jumping, no jumping at all.”

Underwood, of course, was nowhere to be found in the South Seas Ballroom at Mandalay Bay, where the Wolverines’ contingent of Derrick Moore, fullback/tight end Max Bredeson, inside linebacker Ernest Hausmann and second-year head coach Sherrone Moore were responsible for telling wave after wave of reporters about the program’s shiniest new toy. It would have been thoroughly un-Michigan-like for Moore to bring Underwood to this week’s event, the league’s unofficial kickoff party for the 2025 campaign, though Colorado head coach Deion Sanders brought his true freshman quarterback, Julian Lewis, to Big 12 Media Days earlier this month. The Wolverines are digging in their heels to slow the Underwood hype train from picking up too much speed, but everyone around the program — let alone fans outside it — can sense the cars beginning to careen off the track. 

In a last-ditch effort to fortify himself against the barrage he surely knew was coming, Moore responded to the first question about Underwood by reminding the media that Michigan has yet to name a starting quarterback, that the competition is wide open entering fall camp, that Fresno State transfer Mikey Keene and East Carolina transfer Jake Garcia and former four-star prospect Jadyn Davis will all have chances to stake their claim between now and the season opener against New Mexico on Aug. 30. “There is no starter,” Moore said.

But that didn’t stop reporters from asking Moore about whether the extra reps Underwood took during the spring, when Keene was recovering from an undisclosed injury and Garcia had not yet joined the program, accelerated the timeline for when he will be ready to play. Or about how Underwood has embraced the possibility — inevitability — of starting for Michigan, the winningest program in college football history, as a true freshman. Or about why the Wolverines won’t just declare Underwood the starter given the extreme financial commitment they’ve made to him. All those questions came in the first third of Moore’s allotted media time. 

“His job is to just go be the best teammate, best football player he can be,” Moore said. “And whoever that person is, it’s going to take a village. And for us to be a successful program, to be a successful football team, we have to do a great job surrounding that person with weapons on the football field [and] the weapons mentally to be successful.”

Still, there was a fascinating juxtaposition on Thursday between the way Moore and Michigan’s upperclassmen spoke compassionately, almost tenderly, about Underwood’s numerical age — he’ll finally turn 18 next month — and the slack-jawed reverence with which they described his maturity as an athlete, likening his habits and disposition to those of seasoned veterans.

Michigan QB Bryce Underwood #19 prepares to receive the ball during the second half of the Michigan Maize vs Blue Spring Football Game. (Photo by Aaron J. Thornton/Getty Images)

On one side of the room was Bredeson, a fifth-year senior and one of the program’s longest-tenured players, telling reporters that he takes “a little bit of pride and responsibility in being like the older guy who can kind of calm college football down for him,” while also admitting that nobody else in Michigan’s locker room can understand the life that Underwood currently leads, from the sheer attention generated by his every move to the opportunities that land at his feet. 

On the other side of the room was Derrick Moore, a former blue-chip recruit in his own right, expressing genuine awe about how someone so young can display such unwavering focus and concentration, traits Moore said he never came close to matching at that age. 

Underwood, who grew up a half hour from Michigan’s campus, has already developed a reputation for being one of the first to arrive at Schembechler Hall each morning and one of the last to leave each night, a classic football cliché bestowed upon a team’s hardest workers. He’s known for taking the field alone 20 minutes prior to every session, headphones wrapped around his ears, to study that day’s practice script and visualize the drills in his mind. He builds chemistry with the wide receivers and tight ends via extra throwing sessions that often run until the wee hours of the morning. He competes maniacally in the weight room and has packed enough muscle onto his 6-foot-4 frame to reach 230 pounds. He accepts constructive criticism from anyone in the building and carries out menial tasks without a hint of rebuttal.

“He’s not no average 17-year-old,” Derrick Moore said. “With a lot of money that’s coming in, he’s pretty humble. If he does anything wrong, he takes full accountability for it. You don’t really hear too much trouble out of him, you know? He does everything like a pro.”

Even if that means sitting out of pickup basketball.

Michael Cohen covers college football and college basketball for FOX Sports. Follow him at @Michael_Cohen13.

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One of the very real narratives that has played out over this summer for the Florida Gators is whether they are competitive in the NIL space compared to the big boys of college football. Anytime there has been a bidding war for a top-rated prospect, Florida hasn’t seemed willing to play ball.

The NCAA has been trying to get spending under control since NIL became the way of the land, and a new executive order from President Donald Trump piggybacks off trying to restore order to the market.

If enforced, it would be a win for Florida. Whether or not it can be enforced is a different question.

Donald Trump signs an executive order

President Trump’s executive order “prohibits third-party, pay-for-play payments to collegiate athletes.” The order claims, though, that it “does not apply to legitimate, fair-market-value compensation that a third party provides to an athlete, such as for a brand endorsement.”

This aligns with the NCAA’s efforts to establish a framework, requiring all NIL deals to be reviewed by a third party to determine if the price is within a fair market range.

One of the problems Florida has had in the NIL space has been keeping up with schools like Texas, LSU, Ohio State, Georgia, and Oregon. Even schools like Texas Tech have started to emerge out of nowhere as their spending has shot up.

So even though the Gators continually make great progress with recruits and seem to always be in the early running with a number of top prospects, it comes up short more times than not when it comes to matching the contracts other schools are able/willing to offer.

If, and it is a giant if, there is any enforcement in place, it would be a win for the Gators as they would be in a position to match the spending of everyone else.

However, it is unclear from the executive order what the plan would be for enforcement, as even if rules are in place to curb spending, we know teams would likely resort to pre-NIL days and seek ways around those rules.

Until more details come out, it’s okay to be skeptical of the order. But it is at least a sign that Florida could be in a better NIL position this time next year.