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During his time as offensive coordinator at Arkansas, Bobby Petrino fought tooth and nail for his side.

So much so, in fact, that he reportedly got in a scuffle with his counterpart on the other side of the ball this past summer. He and Travis Williams never truly made up, as the latter and a raft of his assistants were the first to go when Petrino took over as interim head coach in late September.

Through it all, Petrino fought for his guys, especially the dual-threat quarterback upon whose shoulders so much rode. In the end, though, Taylen Green just couldn’t make enough of the right plays at the right times. 

At critical juncture after critical juncture, the ball slipped from the fingertips of Green or a teammate. Not surprisingly, the Razorbacks also lost their grip on chances for win after win. When the dust cleared on the 2025 season, Petrino had an offense that finished among the nation’s best but only two wins to show for it. 

Now, the 64-year-old has another fight in front of him. 

Petrino May Want to Look Into Taxidermy after This

Two years after getting charged with the task of saving the hide of Sam Pittman, the Montana native is tasked with the same for Bill Belichick at North Carolina. 

The 73-year-old Belichick’s first season in Chapel Hill was about as painful of a learning experience for the winningest NFL head coach of all time that you could imagine. Looking at the Tarheels’ 4-8 record only scratches the surface of just how bad things got.

While Arkansas had its own predictable level of in-fighting for a 10-loss team, including some locker room division during the Notre Dame catastrophe and an assistant coach play-acting as Mike Tyson on some poor player, North Carolina lapped Arkansas a time or two in the dysfunction department.

“It’s an unstructured mess,” a source with direct knowledge of North Carolina football told WRAL News five games into the 2025 season when the offense ranked 128 out of 136 Division I teams in points per game. “There’s no culture, no organization. It’s a complete disaster.”

“It’s all starting at the top, and the boys are being affected,” a parent of a 2025 UNC player told WRAL. “I don’t fault the players; I fault the leadership that created this toxic environment. There’s an individualistic mindset.”

Christopher McLaughlin, a UNC professor of law and government, penned an official letter asking university brass to “please end this circus.”

“When you agreed to pay a king’s ransom to hire Bill Belichick, did you also know that you were hiring Jordon Hudson to serve as the primary face of UNC athletics?” McLaughlin wrote.

Belichick firing two coordinators at season’s end should help reboot the North Carolina locker room culture some. So will leaning less on transfers and bringing in a whopping 39 high school signees starting in January. 

Given Petrino’s success with offense at all levels of college football, few doubt he will help send a jolt to UNC’s side of scoreboard. Some insiders, however, think he’ll be hamstrung from the start as the team evaluates the prospects it wants to bring in when the transfer portal opens on January 2, 2026.

That’s because Belichick, just as Petrino did with Taylen Green, is showing fierce loyalty to his chief talent evaluator despite a body of evidence that may ultimately cost him.

As part of Belichick touting UNC as the NFL’s ‘33rd’ team, he’s gravitated toward stocking his staff with veterans heavy on NFL experience. Chief among them is his general manager Michael Lombardi, who spent decades in the NFL around penning a column or two for The Athletic criticizing Jerry Jones. He spent three seasons under Belichick as a New England assistant.

In convincing the 66-year-old to follow him to Chapel Hill, Bill Belichick made Lombardi the nation’s highest paid GM to the tune of $1.5 million dollars a year. 

The return on investment hasn’t been too impressive. 

Insiders told The Athletic that Lombardi, who hadn’t worked in college football since the mid 1980s, got off to a disorganized start alongside Belichick last winter when both tried to learn the college game on the fly.

The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman, Brendon Marks and Stewart Mandel reported that most of the six NIL agents with whom they spoke described Lombardi as “either abrasive or dismissive toward them during their negotiations.”

For instance, one agent recounted Lombardi coming out the gates with a strong initial offer for his client, but then proceeded to lower it considerably over a series of subsequent calls. That ultimately cost UNC the player.  Playing hardball with a brusque manner is one thing when you’re winning (just ask Arkansas football fans recalling the glory days of Petrino as full-time head coach). It’s an entirely different matter when you lose, however.

A university source said that Lombardi’s bungled roster management (UNC had brought 70 new players into the 2025 season) by too often overspending on one position while hunting for bargains at others. 

“Initially, they thought people would flock to play for (Belichick) and take less money, but they realized fast that that wasn’t the case,” the source told The Athletic.

As The Athletic’s Mandel and Feldman see it, Lombardi hurts Petrino’s chances of doing what he so badly wanted to do at Arkansas – help lead his team to the College Football Playoffs.

“He’s totally at the mercy of Belichick and Lombardi and their Super Bowl evaluation skills to actually bring in some players and a quarterback that’s not Gio Lopez,” Mandel said on The Audible podcast.

Poor guy

That’s a big problem, considering “Michael Lombardi really didn’t know what he was doing on the college side,” which resulted in a “bad roster,” according to Mandel and Feldman’s co-host, Ralph Russo.

Arkansas, North Carolina Paying for Past Payroll Sins

Like North Carolina, Arkansas also had its own roster issues over the last couple years. Consider, for instance, the mismanagement around the defensive line heading into this year’s spring transfer portal.

What most shackled Petrino, Pittman and the overall Arkansas football program, however, was simply not being able to hang with the likes of UNC or most of the SEC in terms of staff and player payroll. 

That part was no secret. 

Arkansas Hunter Yurachek, though, made matters worse by openly admitting that Arkansas wasn’t equipped financially to win a national championship. 

He gave other programs’ GMs and coaches negative recruiting manna and pretty much turned what was already a steep uphill climb in the player acquisition department for his coaches into an escarpment. 

While Arkansas now has a new staff and significantly increased financial backing in place, the reputation it developed over the last couple years for shallow pockets will take time to reverse. 

Similarly, Lombardi is already saying a lot of the right things about learning from his first year on the job. For instance, in early December, he now knows that college recruiting is all-year round (as opposed to NFL draft preparation) and that he’s come to understand the “acquisition cost” that UNC must pay when negotiating for transfers and recruits. 

For Petrino at Arkansas, the lessons his higher-ups learned came too little, too late.

For North Carolina to be any different, a few old dogs must learn new tricks.

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More on Petrino, Arkansas and UNC starting at 24:40 here:

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More coverage of Arkansas football and Bill Belichick from BoAS:

Indiana capped a perfect 13–0 regular season by winning the Big Ten title, snapping a long skid against Ohio State and securing the No. 1 seed in the expanded College Football Playoff.

Under second-year head coach Curt Cignetti (24–2 at Indiana), the Hoosiers authored a program-defining season that thrust the program firmly into the national spotlight.

In his first year at Indiana after transferring from Cal, quarterback Fernando Mendoza completed 226-of-316 passes (71.5%) for 2,980 yards, 33 passing touchdowns and six interceptions, while adding 240 rushing yards and six rushing scores.

He posted the second-highest passer rating among starting quarterbacks (181.4) and ranked fifth nationally in completion rate, sweeping major awards including the Heisman Trophy, Maxwell Award, Davey O’Brien Award, AP Player of the Year, and Big Ten Offensive and Quarterback of the Year honors.

Following his historic season, On3’s Pete Nakos ranked Mendoza as the top transfer addition of the 2025 season, pointing to his immediate, program-altering impact in Indiana’s breakout campaign.

A Christopher Columbus High School (Miami, FL) product, Mendoza entered the Power Five ranks as a three-star recruit and the No. 140 quarterback in the 2022 class according to 247Sports.

He steadily developed in California, highlighted by a career-best 3,004 passing yards, 16 touchdowns and six interceptions in 2024, before transferring to Indiana in December 2024.

That foundation set the stage for a 2025 breakout that elevated him into arguably the sport’s top quarterback and one of college football’s most valuable NIL assets, with an estimated valuation of $2.6 million.

Several national outlets and mock-draft models also project Mendoza as a potential top-10 pick in the 2026 NFL Draft.

As the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff, Indiana is scheduled to face No. 9 Alabama in the Rose Bowl quarterfinal on January 1.

A win would send the Hoosiers to the CFP semifinals (Jan. 8–9) and potentially the national championship game on Jan. 19, a run that would further solidify Mendoza’s rapid rise.

Read More at College Football HQ

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Longtime Michigan State coach Tom Izzo isn’t mincing words when it comes to the recent surge of former NBA G League players and international pros getting the green light to play college basketball around the country. 

On Christmas Eve, Baylor received a commitment from James Nnaji, the 31st overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft. The 21-year-old Nnaji, a 7-foot center from Nigeria, was granted immediate eligibility as a midseason addition and will have four years of eligibility remaining, according to USA Today.

“I thought I’d seen the worst — then Christmas came,” Izzo said, per USA Today. “What happened just topped it. … Now we’re taking guys that were drafted in the NBA and everything? … If that’s what we’re going to, shame on the NCAA. Shame on the coaches, too, but shame on the NCAA because coaches are gonna do what they gotta do, I guess, but the NCAA is the one. 

“Those people on those committees that are making those decisions to allow something so ridiculous. … I just don’t agree with it.”

Nnaji never actually played in the NBA or the G League, but he did appear in five NBA Summer League Games for the New York Knicks in July and played professionally overseas last season in Spain and Türkiye. 

This isn’t the first time a situation like Nnaji’s has presented itself. In October, the NCAA ruled to allow guard London Johnson, 21, to join Louisville next year with two seasons of eligibility despite him having played three years in the G League.

Izzo revealed that he received a text from “a very famous, great coach” that criticized these fluid eligibility rules. “What we’ve done in the NCAA has been an absolute travesty to me,” the message read, according to USA Today.

Izzo went on to predict that, if polled, “maybe 5-10%” of D-I coaches would agree with these changes.

“If that’s the way it is, and if I have to make those adjustments, then let’s make them,” he added. “Let’s go pro if that’s the way it is, but let’s not be half you-know-what. 

“Because there’s no such thing as being half that.”

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The coaching search is over, but the work is just beginning. Michigan Wolverines football has a new leader in Kyle Whittingham, the 22nd head coach in program history, and he’s already hard at work in Orlando as the Maize and Blue prepare for the Dec. 31 Citrus Bowl against Texas.

Michigan’s official NIL collective, Champions Circle, has launched its ‘Membership 2.0,’ an opportunity for fans to receive “new benefits, new opportunities to engage with players and coaches and new ways to support those who wear the Maize and Blue.”

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“As Coach Whittingham takes the helm to lead the next chapter in Michigan football history, one thing is clear: success in today’s college football landscape requires support from each and every fan,” the collective shared in a press release.

By becoming a Champions Circle member, Michigan fans are “directly supporting NIL opportunities that help:

• Empower our new coach to establish the next great era of Michigan Football
• Build championship-level depth at every position
• Prevent rivals from poaching our top talent

The First 100 New Yearly Victors & Valiant Members will receive a football signed by Whittingham and freshman quarterback Bryce Underwood AND an invitation to a first-of-its-kind “Meet Coach Whittingham” webinar in 2026.

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Here are details on membership tiers for Champions Circle:

The 66-year-old Whittingham is already in Orlando connecting with Michigan staff, players and their families. The Wolverines have one game remaining but are also focused on next season.

Whittingham was introduced to Michigan fans on social media Saturday evening and will hold his introductory press conference Sunday morning at 11 o’clock from the team hotel.

The dawn of NIL has forced a realignment of college conferences, putting pressure on the structure of conference championships. When you look at the Power Four football conferences (ACC, Big 10, Big 12, and SEC), each have expanded somewhere between 16 and 18 members. 

The past two seasons have demonstrated that the current conference championship format is not equipped to corral the super-sized power conferences. Deciding the top teams in the country is left to too many qualitative metrics (strength of schedule, head to head, and common opponents).

Something needs to change.

Texas A&M’s path to CFP

Looking at the SEC, Texas A&M had a historic 11-1 regular season, good for one of the best records in the nation. However it featured in-conference wins against seven out of the nine worst teams in the SEC; and every team they beat had a conference win percentage of .500 or worse.

The Aggies season would end in disappointing fashion as they lost twice in a row, against in-state rival the Texas Longhorns 27-17 and in the first round of the College Football Playoff against the Miami Hurricanes 10-3.

A&M arguably only faced three impressive teams all season (Miami, Notre Dame, Texas), and its only win of the three came in the form of a controversial one-point victory over ND in Week 2.

TAMU is one of multiple glaring examples of how massive conferences allow teams to waltz unscathed through their conferences thanks to scheduling issues.

Is a return to Divisions the solution?

It would seem creating divisions within the conferences should be closely considered. This would stoke more fierce rivalries among inter-division opponents, ensuring more even matchups and a clearer cut conference championship.

Looking to the past, all of the Power Four conferences had divisions but were eliminated across  the last decade — a division format made less sense with smaller membership.

In 2024, the Big 12 (with 16 members) had a four-way tie at the top of the conference between Arizona State, Iowa State, BYU, and Colorado, who all finished with a 7-2 record. By the end Arizona State and Iowa State faced off due to tiebreakers, but many thought that BYU was more deserving than Iowa State.

This season in the ACC (with 17 members), Virginia guaranteed their spot after a 7-1 conference record, but there was a 5-way tie for second place between Duke, Miami, Georgia Tech, SMU, and Pitt. As Miami fans well know, the unranked 7-5 Duke Blue Devils were awarded the second spot over a 10-2 Miami team ranked No. 12 in the country at the time.

Applying the Divisions to the ACC

When looking at the ACC, the conference has 17 members, which forces teams to play more or less games than one another. All of this would be solved if another team joined the conference.

But let’s concentrate on how the current structure of the ACC would address this issue. There would be three main things taken into consideration: rivalries, location, and talent. It might look something like this:

ACC North: Syracuse, BC, Pitt, Louisville, VT, Virginia, Clemson and Georgia Tech

ACC South: Miami, FSU, SMU, Cal, Stanford, Duke, UNC, NC State and Wake Forest

For the divisions, it would be fair to re-evaluate every five years whether the two divisions are evenly split. Currently the competition would be tight; each division would be well balanced. 

The proposed system would also allow scheduling and travel to be much simpler; every division team plays one another, the north would have 7 conference games while the south would have 8. At the end of the season, the two representatives from each division would face-off for the championship.

As some guidelines here are the five hypothetical tiebreaker rules: 

1 – Conference Record

Conference records always take importance over every guideline but would have more weight as every team faces each other.

2 – Head to Head

Due to everyone facing off this should solve for tiebreakers except for three (or more) way ties.

3 – Overall Record

In the case of Miami – Duke the tiebreaker was Win Percentage of Conference opponents. In the context of a 7-5 record, the overall record should have more weight.

4 – National Ranking (AP poll / CFP)

Ideally the conference championship should be settled by this point but if it goes this far National Ranking should be considered in ensuring that the best teams compete for the conference championship.

Will realignment fix everything?

Fans want more entertaining matches and teams want ease of scheduling and travel.

The answer is simple — either return to smaller conferences or implement divisions to make conferences matter.

In the end, no matter the solution, it won’t be perfect. Sports fanatics will always say that there will be a better format, but the least we can do is learn from past mistakes.

North Texas capped a program-best 12–2 season with a New Mexico Bowl win, but quickly faced major roster turnover as quarterback Drew Mestemaker, running back Caleb Hawkins, and wide receiver Wyatt Young all entered the NCAA transfer portal.

Mestemaker broke out as a redshirt freshman in 2025, leading the FBS with 4,379 passing yards and 34 touchdowns following Saturday’s 49–47 victory over San Diego State.

He began his North Texas career as a walk-on and earned conference offensive honors and national attention before deciding to test the portal.

Hawkins, the Mean Green’s freshman back, finished 2025 as one of the nation’s most productive rushers, totaling 1,434 rushing yards and leading the FBS with 25 rushing touchdowns, highlighted by a 198-yard, three-touchdown bowl performance to cap the year.

Young, meanwhile, paced UNT’s receiving corps with 1,264 yards and 10 touchdowns (ranking among the top three nationally) and earned first-team All-American and All-Conference honors.

Losing the nation’s top passer, the FBS’s most productive freshman runner, and a top-three WR in one offseason represents an immediate top-to-bottom offensive reset for North Texas. 

For the transfer market, all three are premium, high-demand assets — Mestemaker as a starting QB target for Power-Five teams, Hawkins as a feature back with breakout tape, and Young as a proven perimeter threat.

Mestemaker has already been linked to Oklahoma State (connection via coach Eric Morris), Indiana, Texas Tech, and Oregon, while Hawkins and Young are expected to draw attention from both Group-of-Five and Power-Five programs.

Hawkins, a three-star recruit from North Rock Creek High School (Shawnee, Oklahoma) in the 2025 class, also held offers from Emporia State and Central Oklahoma before committing to North Texas in September 2024.

Young, a three-star prospect from Katy Tompkins High School (Katy, Texas) in the 2024 class, signed with the Mean Green over offers from Rice, Arizona, Memphis, Air Force, and others.

Three top underclass producers hitting the transfer portal at once underscores how quickly the transfer era can reshape a program, leaving Group of Five teams that develop stars grappling with retention issues and the financial pressures of NIL.

Read More at College Football HQ

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