NIL

How Notre Dame became a more durable national title contender for college football’s new era

Published

5 months ago

August 21, 2025

Editor’s note: This article is part of the Program Builders series, focusing on the behind-the-scenes executives and people fueling the future growth of their sports.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Six months after Notre Dame played for a national championship, Pete Bevacqua turned the floor over to Marcus Freeman. The athletic director greenlit the head coach to ask for anything he wanted.

Flanked by deputy athletic director Ron Powlus and general manager Mike Martin at a sitdown in mid-July, Bevacqua wanted to know how the football program could make national title runs more frequently than once per decade. He wanted to know what Notre Dame required to win it all for the first time in 37 years, the longest gap between titles in school history.

But what could Freeman want? Notre Dame’s indoor practice facility has been here barely longer than he has. Its stadium renovations aren’t quite a decade old. Shields Hall, the future 150,000-square-foot home of the football operations center, will open next year. Notre Dame just re-signed with NBC at a dollar figure high enough to keep the program independent yet competitive with power-conference foes pulling in north of $50 million per year. Freeman already has an eight-figure contract extension of his own. And the College Football Playoff keeps rewriting its rules in Notre Dame’s favor, giving it access to a first-round bye and potentially better at-large odds if the field expands.

“We have what we need,” Bevacqua said. “Are you gonna play in the national championship game every year? No. Unfortunately, there’s too many good teams. But we’re gonna keep knocking on that door.

“We have to win national championships in football.”

Bevacqua opens meetings by talking about Notre Dame winning a national title, which last happened before he was a freshman student from Connecticut. To administrators, donors and trustees, that’s no small change in messaging for a program that has historically gotten in its own way. Ten years ago, school president Rev. John Jenkins was profiled in the New York Times, stating Notre Dame would opt out of big-time college football if the sport moved toward a pay-for-play model. As Jenkins spoke, bulldozers were already working on the $400 million renovation to Notre Dame Stadium, dubbed the Campus Crossroads Project.

Notre Dame was slow in adopting pathways for players to enroll a semester early because the administration was concerned about the practice’s impact on freshman orientation. Now the school is comfortable changing its academic calendar to accommodate the College Football Playoff.

Former athletic director Jack Swarbrick said Notre Dame would never have taken its football and gone home, but the school was right to attempt to lead the sport away from its current state of barely regulated name, image and likeness money. It failed. But it was worth a try.

“Wherever the bar moved to, we were gonna move,” Swarbrick said. “You advocate for the position you’d like to see occur, but in the background you’re always saying we’re not gonna let Notre Dame football fail.”

Yet avoiding failure is not the same thing as winning a national title. There’s catching lightning in a bottle for one season, and then there’s pouring the foundation on something more durable. That starts with Notre Dame’s holy trinity of football buildings: a renovated stadium, an indoor practice facility and a new operations center. Two of those projects are done, and the third could be by the time Notre Dame opens Freeman’s fifth season as head coach at Lambeau Field against Wisconsin in 2026.

They are all part of the reason Notre Dame believes it can now produce College Football Playoff runs in perpetuity. According to The Athletic’s CFP projections, the Irish have the fourth-best odds to make the 2025-26 Playoff at 73 percent, higher than preseason No. 1 Texas. It might seem like Notre Dame has everything to hold its reservation at college football’s adult table for the long run — acknowledging that every coach wants more NIL funding.

But faith in where Notre Dame football is headed doesn’t require a Hail Mary anymore, and every little bit still helps.

Notre Dame owned the national spotlight for the debut of the 12-team Playoff and hopes to be back on that stage in December. (Trevor Ruszkowski / Imagn Images)

The Mendoza College of Business sits off the southwest corner of Notre Dame Stadium and is under construction, like much of the campus. Overhead, the building is shaped like a capital H. When it’s done, it will look more like a capital A. Considering the school’s profile around Notre Dame, the alphabetical metaphor probably fits.

Namesake Tom Mendoza is an ardent supporter of the football program and helped start Notre Dame’s NIL collective with Brady Quinn. Business remains one of the most popular majors, both around the campus and within the football team. When the school started a sports analytics program four years ago, it did so with athletes’ schedules in mind. Then the faculty made sure the football staff knew about it. When Freeman took the head coaching job, one of his early meetings was a fireside chat with Mendoza College dean Martijn Cremers. But Cremers didn’t come to the football facility to talk in front of the team. Freeman went to the business school to talk in front of the student body.

“If you went in a laboratory and designed the perfect coach for Notre Dame, it would be Marcus Freeman,” Bevacqua said. “He’s become not just the football coach at Notre Dame, he’s become such a part of this university and this campus.”

The path by which Notre Dame positioned itself to keep competing for championships didn’t start in the business school, but it can be explained there. Among the theories taught and employed at Mendoza is the Flywheel Effect, popularized in the book “Good to Great” by Jim Collins. Without knowing it, Notre Dame football has made this theory an operating principle.

As Collins describes it, imagine a massive wheel mounted on an axle. The job is to get this heavy wheel to spin at a high speed. One push won’t do it. Not two. Not 10. Maybe not 100. But once the wheel spins with force, it creates its own momentum. It won’t be stopped by minor obstructions (i.e. injuries, staff turnover, even losses). There’s no way to know which push was most important in the flywheel reaching this self-sustaining velocity. It’s just obvious when it gets there.

The Notre Dame football flywheel is spinning, both inside the program and beyond its walls.

As Freeman has grown into the job, the admissions office has become more of a partner with the football program, both in high school recruiting and the transfer portal. Irish coordinator salaries have almost tripled in the past six years. NIL is no longer a roadblock to player acquisition or retention; in general, the Irish don’t lose talent they want to keep and rarely miss on portal targets they’re desperate to sign. When Freeman needed a new strength coach a year ago, Notre Dame funded an NFL hire. When injuries rocked the Irish roster last season, the program didn’t seem to miss a beat. When Bevacqua extended Freeman last December, days before the first-round game against Indiana, he paid him like a coach expected to make the national title game. When Freeman needed a new running backs coach last winter, he pulled Penn State’s Ja’Juan Seider, the only position coach in college football with a group better than the Irish.

When Notre Dame football needs resources, it doesn’t go wanting.

Some of this started under Brian Kelly, who professionalized the program to the point it could take a chance on a first-time head coach. Swarbrick got Notre Dame into the right rooms in the construction of the College Football Playoff. Bevacqua got it on the right golf courses, counting Donald Trump, Roger Goodell and Greg Sankey as playing partners this summer. When Notre Dame needed to meet the school’s 100-75 fundraising rule for Shields Hall — before breaking ground on a large capital project, 100 percent of the money must be committed and 75 percent must be in hand — the development office went into warp drive before the end of Jenkins’ presidential term on June 1, 2024. Dirt moved with six weeks to spare.

Freeman didn’t start this wheel spinning, but he helped it achieve inexorable momentum last winter by beating Georgia and Penn State in a seven-day span. The Sugar Bowl was Notre Dame’s first major bowl win in 31 years. The Orange Bowl felt like something bigger, the program’s most significant win since the 1993 Game of the Century against Florida State.

“The Georgia win changed everything,” said Mendoza, who watched the Orange Bowl alongside Tony Rice, Notre Dame’s last national championship-winning quarterback, and Tim Brown, its last Heisman Trophy winner. “Notre Dame used to think it could win. Maybe it knew it could win. Now it expects to win. Marcus can sell playing for a national championship and everything else that comes with it at Notre Dame. The kids feel it. The players we’re attracting feel it.”

The Sugar Bowl win over Georgia ‘changed everything,’ said business school namesake Tom Mendoza. (Geoff Burke / Imagn Images)

Freeman stood at the 50-yard line on a Saturday night in mid-June as Notre Dame hosted 21 official visitors. A dozen of the recruits were already committed. Nine were still up for grabs.

Before Freeman talked, the players and their parents — a group that included NFL alumni Larry Fitzgerald, Thomas Davis and Jermichael Finley — watched a video on the stadium’s screen showing the parents of former players, including Riley Leonard’s, talking about the Notre Dame experience.

Within a month, eight of the uncommitted prospects had picked Notre Dame. By the end of summer, the Irish had landed 11 of the 12 uncommitted prospects they’d hosted for official visits, including two 247Composite five-stars in cornerback Khary Adams and tight end Ian Premer.

The biggest reasons why Notre Dame believes it can keep knocking on the CFP door are still in high school. With 27 commitments for 2026, Freeman is on track to sign the program’s highest-rated recruiting class in 13 years. The Irish are yet to suffer a decommitment after watching 18 walk over the previous three cycles.

“You go into the semifinals game and you’re losing starters, putting backups in,” Freeman said, “but if you don’t have the depth that you can put somebody in and get the job done, then all of a sudden that becomes a hole and it becomes a deficiency and you lose.”

Notre Dame could have fumbled away the goodwill of last season when general manager Chad Bowden left for USC in February. From the start of the CFP to the start of spring practice, Notre Dame landed two commitments, both on the offensive line, hardly a position that requires a recruiting full-court press.

Notre Dame also lost presumptive recruiting director Caleb Davis to San Diego State. When Freeman tabbed Mike Martin from the Detroit Lions to become general manager — after an aggressive pursuit of James Blanchard from Texas Tech — they rebooted the recruiting operation alongside new director of recruiting Carter Auman, who graduated from Notre Dame during Freeman’s first offseason as head coach.

Organization picked up. For all Bowden’s energy, he had a habit of giving little warning of what he needed and when he needed it. That start-up approach, move fast and break stuff, had worked. It also felt like the Irish were due for something new. After last season, the program was no longer a startup. It wanted to be a Fortune 500 company. So it had to act like one.

There are no leprechaun costumes or gold boomboxes anymore. There’s talk of branding and generational wealth, ideas floated about how Notre Dame can become business partners with its players. When Martin sets up calls for professors, alumni or former players with prospects, he produces one-page overviews that include other schools in play, GPA, and parents’ professions. They arrive in advance.

There’s even a text chain for prospects’ moms. The entire operation feels buttoned up.

“It’s getting the talent,” Bevacqua said. “Fingers crossed, knock on wood, we are firing on all cylinders right now with recruiting.”

And National Signing Day is still four months away.

Televisions line the second floor of Notre Dame’s indoor practice facility, a gathering space that overlooks the field below. During the second week of August camp, the screens replay Notre Dame’s run through the CFP, with highlights of wins against Indiana, Georgia and Penn State. Everyone knows how it all ended against Ohio State. The longest season in school history still lingers around here, as much as Freeman would prefer it didn’t.

“They’re valuable lessons that you learn from last year, but I continue to remind them: 2024 has nothing to do with this 2025 team,” Freeman said. “Yes, let’s utilize the lessons. Let’s utilize some of those good and bad things that we learned from last year, but you do that no matter what the previous experience was. They understand that.

“We try to stop talking about that ‘24 year.”

Good luck with that.

The last time Notre Dame made the national championship game, the hangover was harsh. So was the realization the Irish weren’t as close to the mountaintop as they appeared before kickoff of that 42-14 loss to Alabama. Kelly interviewed with the Philadelphia Eagles, starting quarterback Everett Golson got suspended after spring practice and the program was out of the title chase by late September. Notre Dame ended that 2013 season against Rutgers in the Pinstripe Bowl.

The Ohio State game felt different. So did everything leading up to it. But when it came time for Notre Dame’s title shot, the team on the other sideline still had the most talent.

“I would point to depth as the No. 1 difference now,” Swarbrick said. “Our first D-line was really good that year. Alabama’s third D-line was really good. It was all the difference in the world.

“Sport always exposes your weaknesses. If your nutrition program isn’t right, if your strength conditioning program isn’t right, if recruiting doesn’t produce the quality of player and the depth, it always gets exposed. And I think the program is as solid across the board as any time in my memory.”

Notre Dame will begin its difficult encore at No. 10 Miami on Sunday night of Labor Day weekend. It will have the national stage to itself, with a first-time starting quarterback and a new defensive coordinator. The Irish added five potential starters in the transfer portal. Behind the practice fields, Shields Hall continues to go up, windows added, bricks laid. The facility stretches an entire block.

For the first time in a long time, Notre Dame enters a season where winning a national title doesn’t feel like a rote talking point. The Irish are betting favorites to return to the CFP and win double-digit games. If they get there, Freeman can lean into last season’s experiences. So can his roster. Whether he wants to talk about it in August or not.

“To win a national championship in any sport, you gotta be good; we’re good,” Bevacqua said. “You gotta stay healthy. And no matter how good you are, you’re gonna have to get lucky a couple of times. But I really feel we’re positioned to keep knocking on that door.

“There is no secret, no doubt, no hesitation that we want to win national championships in football.”

The wheel keeps spinning.

Program Builders is part of a partnership with Range Rover Sport. The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.

(Photo: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

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Kellam grad Kemari Copeland returns to Hokies, reportedly with plenty of NIL – The Virginian-Pilot

Published

18 minutes ago

January 6, 2026

Your Sports Nation

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Virginia Tech defensive end Kemari Copeland, a Kellam High graduate who earned third-team All-Atlantic Coast Conference honors in 2025, is returning to the Hokies.

Agency Grady Sports posted on X that, led by agent Nicole Kotler, it helped make Copeland, one of their NIL clients, one of the highest-paid players in college football. No details were given.

Copeland had 48 tackles (11 solo) in 2025, including 7.5 for loss. He led the Hokies with 4.5 sacks

More ex-Nittany Lions set to join Hokies

Meanwhile, Virginia Tech gained a commitment from Penn State transfer quarterback Ethan Grunkemeyer. The 6-foot-2, 212-pounder stepped in for the Nittany Lions after Drew Allar’s injury and threw for 1,339 yards in 2025, accounting for nine total touchdowns.

Another former Nittany Lion headed to play for James Franklin with Tech is Daniel Jennings, a 6-2, 257-pound edge rusher. Yet another is tight end Matt Henderson of Powhatan, who redshirted in 2025.

The Hokies also added a commitment from former Michigan State offensive tackle Justin Bell, a 6-6, 311-pounder who redshirted in 2025 as a true freshman, and one from former Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns running back Bill Davis.

Virginia Tech also landed edge Javion Hilson, a 6-5, 250-pounder from Cocoa, Florida, with four years of eligibility. He had just one tackle in 2025.

Ex-ODU receiver Brown chooses LSU

Former Old Dominion wide receiver Tre Brown III committed to LSU after leading the Sun Belt with 20.1 yards per catch in 2025.

He became the latest contributor to the Monarchs’ 10-3 season to join a Power Four conference team, joining quarterback Colton Joseph (Wisconsin) and running back Trequan Jones (Maryland).

Ex-Nansemond River star going to Colorado

Former Nansemond River High star Immanuel Ezeogu, who played for James Madison, committed to Deion Sanders’ Colorado program, the defensive lineman revealed on X. He had 15 tackles and a sack and forced a fumble in 2025.

Former Virginia wide receiver Trell Harris committed to Oklahoma, according to On3 Sports. The 6-foot, 200-pounder had 59 receptions for 847 yards and five touchdowns in 2025.

UVA gained a commitment from Rutgers transfer defensive back Jacobie Henderson, according to the Daily Progress. He had 42 tackles (three for loss) and five pass breakups in 2025.

Defensive lineman Jason Hammond will return to Virginia, the Cavaliers announced, but cornerback Emmanuel Karnley will enter the transfer portal.

Karnley had 26 tackles, an interception and eight pass breakups for UVA in 2025.

Pittsburgh is set to hire Brent Davis as the Panthers’ tight ends coach, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel. The former Army offensive coordinator was last at Virginia Tech as the tight ends coach.

JMU comings, goings take shape

Alonza Barnett III, the quarterback who led James Madison to the Sun Belt championship and a College Football Playoff berth, revealed his commitment to Central Florida. Meanwhile, former JMU running back Ayo Adeyi committed to Oklahoma State.

JMU defender Aiden Gobaira, who had 38 tackles and four sacks for the Dukes this season after his injury-plagued time with Notre Dame, committed to UCLA, according to On3 Sports, reuniting him with coach Bob Chesney.

Gobaira will be joined at UCLA, according to On3 Sports, by former Virginia Tech cornerback Dante Lovett, who has 36 career tackles, an interception and a forced fumble.

JMU gained a commitment from running back Seth Cromwell, a 5-10, 215-pounder who rushed for 646 yards and nine touchdowns for Northern Arizona in 2025, according to his agency. Also committing to JMU was Danny Royster, a first-team All-Great Lakes Valley Conference defensive end from the Division II University of Indianapolis. So did long snapper Mitchell Dietzel from Eastern Michigan and tight end Cole Keller from East Tennessee State.

Former East Carolina quarterback Katin Houser committed to Illinois. He was 269 for 408 for 3,300 yards, 19 touchdowns and six interceptions in 2025.

ECU hires defensive coordinator, receivers coach

Jordon Hankins was named East Carolina’s defensive coordinator, according to an announcement by head coach Blake Harrell.

Hankins comes from the University of Memphis, where he served as the defensive coordinator (2024-25), linebackers coach (2021-25) and assistant special teams coordinator (2021-23).

Also, ECU hired Juan Soto as the receivers coach. He spent the last two years as the assistant wide receivers coach for North Texas under new Pirates offensive coordinator Jordan Davis.

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UVA 7th, JMU 20th in preseason poll

Virginia was ranked seventh and James Madison 20th in USA Lacrosse’s preseason poll. Defending champion North Carolina, which will open its season at noon Feb. 7 at JMU, was ranked No. 1.

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Commanders do deal with ex-ODU cornerback

Former Old Dominion cornerback Tre Hawkins signed a reserve/futures contract with the Commanders. He spent the second half of the season on Washington’s practice squad.

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NSU assistant makes prestigious list

Norfolk State assistant coach Leonard Fairley has been named to the 2025 Silver Waves Media Rising Stars Mid-Major Assistant Coaches and GMs List, recognizing top emerging talent.

Fairley has been a member of the Spartans’ men’s basketball program for eight seasons, including his time as a student manager before transitioning into a coaching role.

During his tenure on the coaching staff, NSU has compiled a 155-88 overall record and a 77-23 mark in Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference play, capturing five regular-season championships and three MEAC Tournament titles.

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Radford freshman takes Big South honor

Radford forward Georgia Simonsen was named the Big South Freshman of the Week after totaling 30 points, 13 rebounds and two assists in two games.

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Paul Finebaum names SEC coach who is ‘badly losing the PR battle’

Published

1 hour ago

January 6, 2026

Your Sports Nation

A dream season that propelled a Southeastern Conference football program into the national title conversation has been marred by a chaotic coaching exit, leaving an elite roster in limbo. The sudden departure of the program’s architect to a fierce conference rival during the most critical stretch of the postseason has created an unprecedented conflict of interest for the remaining staff.

These assistant coaches are currently attempting to balance their loyalty to a group of championship-bound athletes with the demands of their new employers who are already focused on the next recruiting cycle.

The tension reached a boiling point after an unexpected victory against a top-ranked opponent extended the season and complicated the logistics for everyone involved in the building. ESPN analyst Paul Finebaum recently weighed in on the situation, noting that the optics of this exit have shifted from a standard career move to a damaging public image crisis.

While the departing head coach claims there is a transparent plan for his assistants to support both programs, the reality on the ground suggests otherwise: restricted access and divided loyalties.

The decision to prioritize the transfer portal over a chance at a national title has sparked a national debate about professional integrity and the responsibility a coach has to the players who helped build a winning culture.

Finebaum suggests that one specific individual is responsible for the ongoing friction and has failed to take the necessary steps to protect the program he built from unnecessary distractions. The fallout has created a significant hurdle for a team preparing for a semifinal matchup that represents the pinnacle of their school history.

Paul Finebaum says Lane Kiffin is poorly handling LSU transition

Appearing on the McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning podcast on Monday, Finebaum offered a scathing review of how LSU Tigers head coach Lane Kiffin has handled his exit from Oxford. The veteran broadcaster did not hold back when discussing the optics of the situation as the Rebels prepare for a historic playoff game without total clarity regarding their coaching staff.

Finebaum pointed directly at the new Tigers leader as the primary source of the friction that has dominated the national conversation.

LSU Tigers head coach Lane Kiffin is not navigating the postseason well, according to ESPN college football analyst Paul Finebaum. | Matthew Hinton-Imagn Images

“I think it’s incredibly sad,” Paul Finebaum said during the broadcast. “There’s one person who can make all this easier and that’s Lane Kiffin. Lane Kiffin is badly losing the PR battle. I know he’s working hard. I’d love to look at Kiffin’s phone right now, guys, you can probably attest to this. To see how many media members he has texted, trying to spin them on how much he cares about the Ole Miss program. But it’s pretty obvious that he doesn’t.”

The analyst argued that the coach’s focus has clearly shifted to his new surroundings at the expense of his former players. “He cares about where he is now, which is understandable but it also negates a lot of what he said leading into his departure that he really wanted to stay there,” Finebaum noted.

“I think it turns out that Keith Carter and a lot of the administration at Ole Miss made a real good decision because I don’t think Ole Miss would’ve beaten Georgia if Kiffin had been going back and forth between Baton Rouge and Oxford.”

Ole Miss Rebels quarterback Trinidad Chambliss (6) — Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss (6) threw for 362 yards and two touchdowns in the Rebels’ 39-34 win over Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. | Amber Searls-Imagn Images

As the postseason reaches its peak, the veteran journalist lamented the lack of resolution for the remaining staff and athletes. “I’m not going to try to sound like I’m a peacekeeper for the UN,” Finebaum added.

“I think it’s really tragic that more hasn’t been done by all parties, but mainly Lane Kiffin, to make this transition for Ole Miss easier as they get ready to go to the Fiesta Bowl.”

The Ole Miss Rebels will play the Miami Hurricanes in the Fiesta Bowl on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.

FSU football Mike Norvell, Michael Alford addressing new structure

Published

2 hours ago

January 6, 2026

Your Sports Nation

Updated Jan. 5, 2026, 6:01 p.m. ET

Florida State football leadership will meet with the media to discuss the program’s future.
Topics will include a front office restructure, NIL, and revenue sharing.
The program is undergoing a “comprehensive review” after a 7-17 record over the last two seasons.
FSU is actively recruiting from the transfer portal, including former Florida quarterback DJ Lagway.

Florida State football head coach Mike Norvell, Athletic Director Michael Alford and new Deputy AD and General Manager of Player Personnel John Garrett will meet with local media on Monday, Jan. 5.

The trio is expected to talk about the Seminoles’ front office restructure, Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) and revenue sharing, among other topics related to the FSU football program.

The Seminoles are hosting multiple transfer portal visitors, including former Florida quarterback DJ Lagway on campus as the program looks to restructure its roster following two dismal seasons that ended with a combined 7-17 record.

Norvell, whose job was under pressure during the season, will be back for a seventh season in charge of the program, and he promised a “comprehensive review” of the program that would change how the Seminoles operated. One of those changes is the hire of Garrett and Taylor Edwards as director of football and player acquisition.

Alford hired an outside consultant, Jake Rosenberg, to give a review of the program and help the Seminoles position themselves to best compete in the modern era of college athletics.

The Tallahassee Democrat will provide live updates from the discussion.

Live updates from Michael Alford, John Garrett and Mike Norvell press conference

Decision-making, leadership key to FSU’s next quarterback

Garrett said that what FSU wants in a quarterback goes beyond the intangibles they have, and they need to be mentally tough, make tough decisions and be a leader.

He said the “fun part” of recruitment is getting to know a player and finding out their fit within the program beyond their physical skill set.

Garrett said being an “accurate thrower of the ball” is the key physical trait that any quarterback needs to have.

Garrett describes new player recruitment structure

Garrett said there is constant evaluation going on with staff members assigned to certain regions of the country. Staffers will watch tape, communicate with high school coaches and talk with recruiting liaisons on a weekly basis to help evaluate and find the “best” fit for the Seminoles.

On the portal, Garrett called it a “mad dash” and something a program has to get ahead of when doing evaluations of players and who to bring in. He said the recruitment process is similar to prep evaluations, but done in a quicker timeline.

Alford describes the timeline for “review” and making changes to the FSU front office

Alford said that the decision to make these changes to the personnel staff has been something that has been discussed for a long time, and that after further analysis on what Norvell’s responsibilities were and how much he had to do, they felt it was right to make the changes now.

He said for an accurate “review,” the program had to wait for the season to end, because it’s where a “fair review” can take place.

Norvell, Garrett praise collaboration, ‘checks and balances’ critical to FSU’s success

“Everyone’s enthused,” Garrett promises that the Seminoles have the right “team” in place to build the right roster for FSU football.

Garrett said the staff is here to help Norvell make the most informed decision on the program. He said Norvell allows everyone to have a say on what is being discussed. Garrett said that collaboration allows all the different perspectives within the staff to have a say on what the program does.

Norvell said “checks and balances” is “critical” in modern-day college football.

Norvell said there won’t be a player brought into the program that everyone doesn’t agree upon.

On negotiations, Norvell said he doesn’t want to be the one negotiating with the players. He said his job is to coach and develop the players.

Norvell praised the work of Garrett and Edwards when discussing negotiations and helping bring players together.

Norvell labels college football as being in a “unique” position

On the transfer portal, Norvell said that working alongside Garrett and Edwards has been good through the first few days of the transfer portal.

He said there has been constant collaboration and that the staff has been very receptive to evaluations and decisions about who to target and what needs the program has.

Norvell called the state of college football “unique.” He said the program is going to find the “right people” to push FSU forward. He said he’s got a lot of confidence in what he and Garrett can do together when building FSU’s future.

Norvell says the new personnel department was a “necessity.”

Norvell said there was an aligned vision and constant collaboration throughout the restructuring of the program’s personnel.

“I’m excited for what this thing will mean, and how it will operate,” Norvell said.

Norvell said the willingness to allow the changes from everyone in the program will allow FSU to be taken to the “next level.”

Michael Alford opens the discussion by speaking on the program review

Alford said that FSU used both resources, both inside and outside the Seminoles program, to evaluate the operations of FSU.

John Garrett will lead recruiting efforts, retention and long-term decisions, while Norvell will have the final say on all decisions within the program. Garrett called it a “wonderful opportunity.”

FSU football players in the transfer portal

DL Darryll Desir, Jan. 5
DL Mandrell Desir, Jan. 5
DL Amaree Williams, Jan. 5
P Mac Chiumento, Jan. 1
DL KJ Sampson, Dec. 31
OL Ty Hylton, Dec. 30
OL Lucas Simmons, Dec. 29
RB Gavin Sawchuk, Dec. 28
OL Manasse Itete, Dec. 28
DB Ashlynd Barker, Dec. 28
WR Jayvan Boggs, Dec. 27
DE James Williams, Dec. 27
QB Brock Glenn, Dec. 25
WR Elijah Moore, Dec. 22
QB Jaylen King, Dec. 17
TE Randy Pittman, Dec. 16
LB Omar Graham, Dec. 16
DL Jaden Jones, Dec. 16
RB Kam Davis, Dec. 16
DB Cai Bates, Dec. 15
WR Camdon Frier, Dec. 12
DB Smoke White, Dec. 10
DB Edwin Joseph, Dec. 10
WR Willy Suarez, Dec. 10
RB Jaylin Lucas, Dec. 10
DT Jamorie Flagg, Dec. 10
TE Luke Douglas, Dec. 10
OT Mario Nash Jr., Dec. 9
DT L.A. Jessie Harrold, Dec. 6
DT Tyland Coleman, Dec. 9
LB Jayden Parrish, Dec. 5

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Quarterback Market In College Football Has Become As Bloated As The NFL

Published

3 hours ago

January 6, 2026

Your Sports Nation

There are a lot of underqualified QBs making big bucks this season.

PublishedJanuary 5, 2026 6:27 PM EST•UpdatedJanuary 5, 2026 6:27 PM EST

NFL fans are all too familiar with the market for quarterbacks.

The demand for great signal callers in pro football FAR exceeds the supply, so teams are more than willing to pay top dollar for mediocre (at best) QBs to help deliver some wins to their franchise.

Look at some of the quarterback contracts in the NFL, and you will see several players being paid either purely on potential or because their team just didn’t have a better option.

READ: NFL Teams Not Enjoying Dividends From Big Money QB Investments

Guys like Daniel Jones and Tua Tagovailoa were given massive contract extensions just for being “good enough,” but it isn’t entirely their teams’ faults.

The market for quarterbacks is so bloated – thanks in part to more deserving signal callers like Matthew Stafford and Patrick Mahomes inking mega deals – that even mediocre quarterbacks can command a fortune, hamstringing their franchises from making other moves to help the team.

It looks like college football, in their quest to be the NFL Jr., is following down a similar path.

Trey Wallace wrote earlier about how bad the market has gotten in the transfer portal, but it’s at its absolute worst when it comes to quarterbacks.

The latest offender is a familiar one: the Texas Tech Red Raiders.

I’ve written extensively about how Texas Tech has spent their way into becoming the next college football powerhouse, and while I can’t fault them for playing within the rules (because there are no rules), it doesn’t mean I have to like it.

The Red Raiders are all in on Cincinnati quarterback Brendan Sorsby, inking the former Bearcat to a $5 million payday.

I mean absolutely no disrespect to Sorsby, but is he worth more money than most NFL players on rookie contracts?

The answer is actually more complicated than that, though, as there isn’t a salary cap (yet) in college sports, so Sorsby is technically worth whatever a team is willing to pay for him.

The problem is that for every Texas Tech (oil money) or Michigan (Larry Ellison), there are several other programs that won’t be able to keep up in the arms race.

I’m not even talking about the Tulanes and James Madisons of the world. Even blue-bloods like Georgia and Ohio State don’t have the booster base to keep up with any of the Texas schools.

That means teams like Tech, A&M, and even Houston can theoretically price out everyone for almost any player they want.

READ: College Footbal Is SIck – Transfer Portal, NIL, And More

Unqualified quarterbacks commanding top dollar in college football isn’t a new phenomenon, either.

Miami reportedly paid Carson Beck somewhere in the vicinity of $4 million to forgo his final season at Georgia and skip the NFL Draft to come down to Coral Gables, and while the Hurricanes are in the College Football Playoff semifinals, most of that is thanks to their dominance on the offensive and defensive lines of scrimmage.

The Canes probably could have gotten a similar result this season if they had cut that quarterback budget in half or, God forbid, actually developed a quarterback that was already on their roster for a fourth of Beck’s price tag.

Even non-traditional powers are upping the ante for quarterbacks.

A team like Duke paid their QB, Darian Mensah, $8 million over multiple years to leave Tulane after a stellar true freshman season.

Giving $8 million to a Group of 5 freshman feels risky, and while it paid off for the Blue Devils, it also robs a team like the Green Wave of the ability to develop a special talent like Mensah.

I don’t have a solution to any of this, and I doubt the NCAA does either.

They let this genie out of the bottle and have no desire nor power to put it back, so we as fans are now forced to deal with the consequences.

Regardless of what ends up happening, this is just another example of college football following in the footsteps of its older brother, the NFL, and being all the worse for it.

I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: I want my college football back.

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Is it too late to save college football?

Published

4 hours ago

January 6, 2026

Your Sports Nation

As another college football season winds to a close, it’s difficult to imagine that the game could be a bigger mess. Not even Congress could’ve conceived of a plan that would produce the anything-goes state of affairs.

Everyone knows this. Everyone from fans to coaches to journalists talk about it and complain about it. Its flaws and excesses are obvious, and some of college football’s smartest have offered sensible ways to fix it. It’s not that difficult.

But no one is doing anything about it. And the reason no one is doing anything about it is simple: The people in charge are the people who are making money and they have ZERO incentive to change anything.

They have the money and the revenues to continue the status quo. Who’s in charge, you ask? Not the NCAA, that’s for sure. There is no central government to oversee the overall good of sports; the NCAA ceded control of football to the SEC and the Big Ten and ESPN a long time ago. They are the de facto commissioners of college football, their very own cash cow.

“We’ve created a mess. Point blank,” Arizona State coach Kenny Dillingham said last month. “The whole industry is a mess. The only thing that’s not a mess is the dollar signs. Those are still pointing up. The dollar signs, the business of it, that’s skyrocketing. Everything else is a mess. That’s just being transparent and honest.”

“It’s broken; college football is broken,” says Scott Frost, the Central Florida football coach. “Everyone would agree if they were honest.”

“College football is messed up,” former coach Nick Saban said on “The Pat McAfee Show” last month. “The playoffs have created tremendous interest in college football. … There’s more interest than ever, higher TV ratings and all that. But the underbelly underneath, that is not really good. It’s not really good for the development of players. It’s not really good for all the sports that we try to sponsor in college. …

“We’ve got to decide (if) we want to be a professional developmental league, or are we really going to have college athletes who go get an education and develop value for their future as they’re playing and making money?”

Every aspect of college football is messed up. NIL. The transfer portal. The scheduling. The uneven playing field. The lack of central leadership. Disruptive and frequent conference realignment. The constant player turnover. The playoff selection process. The length of the season. The bowl system.

The biggest problem is the combined effect of the transfer portal and NIL. The transfer portal enables players to transfer at will — it has created annual free agency for all — and NIL money has been used as the carrot to lure players into the portal and to other schools. Rosters are turned upside down every season. Players have more freedom than professional and high school players.

So far, more than 4,000 players have entered the portal, which opened Jan. 2 and closes Jan. 16. That’s about one-third of all DI scholarship players. That’s more than double the total number of players in the NFL.

In 2025, The Athletic examined the top 50 prospects at every position in the Class of 2021, which was the first to begin their careers with the ability to transfer and play immediately. In all, The Athletic followed the collegiate careers of 600 prospects. Result: 60.3% of the players transferred at least once, and one-third of that group transferred multiple times. College football allows annual free agency.

“I don’t think that’s really good for college football,” then-Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin told ESPN in 2023. “These massive overhauls of rosters every year really is not in the best interest of college football.”

(For the moment, let’s ignore the abject hypocrisy of a coach who abandoned his playoff-bound Ole Miss team to take the head coaching job at LSU.)

Players are chasing the NIL money. They (or their agents) are telling their current coaches, “Pay me or else.” They sell themselves off to the highest bidder. Boosters, rival coaches and agents encourage it. They are poaching players from other schools, offering endorsements, appearance fees and cash as a lure.

It’s the holiday shopping season for coaches, and it’s expensive. CBS posted a position-by-position price list for players on sale in the portal. The average price of a quarterback is $1.5 million to $2.5 million. An elite quarterback goes for $3.5 million. A running back averages $400,000 to $700,000. An offensive tackle: $500,000 to $1 million. A safety is on the low end of the hire-for-pay scale, $350,000 to $500,000.

It’s an easy fix. Limit players to one entry into the transfer portal, period. And/or make them sign contracts with a school, like the professionals they are. Let’s end the charade that this is anything but a professional football league and require contracts and a salary cap.

When a school makes a financial commitment to a player, he should make a commitment to the school. Big schools have turned Group of Five and FCS schools into farm clubs. These schools invest a year or two in developing a player, and then when he’s a finished product, the big schools swoop in and take him.

All that money and time is wasted. James Madison, which won one of the 12 spots in the College Football Playoff, has reportedly lost 11 starters to the transfer portal. At the very least, a school should be able to protect 80 players, and if one of them wants to transfer, he must sit out a year.

“I think (players) should make money, but there should be some restrictions on how they go about doing it,” says Saban. “And the movement is as big an issue, to me, a bigger issue than even the money. I mean, everybody being able to transfer all the time … that’s not a good thing.”

The lawless landscape has fomented other problems. Tampering is probably much more rampant than anyone realizes. Last spring, Colorado self-reported 11 tampering violations, which consisted of interactions with players from other schools who had not entered the portal.

The portal is bad enough, but now coaches are ignoring an NCAA bylaw that requires that players must actually enter the portal before they can have contact with another school. The irony is that Colorado coach Deion Sanders had accused Virginia’s coaching staff of tampering with Colorado players.

Florida State accused Oregon of tampering with running back Rodney Hill before he entered the transfer portal, while the player was practicing for the Orange Bowl. He eventually transferred to Miami.

Jeff Traylor, the head coach at Texas-San Antonio, says a school used an NIL offer to lure two of his players to leave his team before they were in the portal.

Agents also play a huge, underrated role in college football by facilitating, if not urging, transfers. NIL agent Noah Reisenfeld once claimed that “pretty much every NIL agency charges 20%” compared to the NFL/NBA standard of 3-5%.

They have every incentive to encourage players to leave for another school, annually.

Rodney Hill blames a bad agent for his much-traveled career. He says his agent pretended to be Hill and texted various schools attempting to get more money. When Florida State learned of these texts, Hill was shown the door. Hill went to Florida A&M, then decommitted after a coaching change, then committed to Miami, decommitted again, returned to Florida A&M, then entered the transfer portal again and landed at Arkansas.

“I wasn’t trying to leave (Florida State),” Hill told ESPN. “I didn’t want to leave, so I just had to, and the portal was closing up.”

He was fortunate, in a way. It has been widely reported that a high percentage of players in the transfer portal (40%, according to some reports) never find another school.

No matter how you cut it, college football is a mess for everyone except for a few very elite schools and players.

Mississippi head coach Lane Kiffin, left, cheers on wide receiver Miles Battle (6) as he runs along the sideline during the second half of an NCAA college football game against LSU in Oxford, Miss., Saturday, Oct. 23, 2021. The Rebels will be playing the CFP semifinals later this week, but Kiffin won’t be coaching them on account he took a job with LSU after the regular season ended. | Rogelio V. Solis, Associated Press

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Trinidad Chambliss agrees to new Ole Miss deal

Published

5 hours ago

January 6, 2026

Your Sports Nation

Jan. 5, 2026, 12:30 p.m. ET

As it sits just two wins from a national championship, Ole Miss could be set to return its star quarterback in 2026.

On Monday, Rebels quarterback Trinidad Chambliss reportedly agreed to a new NIL deal with Ole Miss, according to Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger. The deal is contingent on Chambliss being granted an additional year of eligibility by the NCAA.

A transfer from Division II Ferris State, Chambliss began the year as the backup to Austin Simmons but took over the starting job due to injury and never gave it back. He has started the last 12 games, leading Ole Miss to an 11-1 record and a spot in the CFP semis.

Dellinger added that the school is hoping for a resolution to his eligibility waiver in the next week, with his father being “confident” it will go through.

Chambliss spent four seasons at Ferris State before transferring to Oxford, and he’s seeking a medical redshirt for the 2022 season. After redshirting in 2021, Chambliss didn’t play in any games as a redshirt freshman as he dealt with health issues that ultimately led to tonsil surgery.

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