Carson Beck turned heads and made arguably the biggest move in the college football transfer portal this offseason when he left Georgia for Miami.

And it appears the Hurricanes will dole out some serious money for that decision.

One of the nation’s more experienced quarterbacks, Beck could make up to $6 million for the 2025 football season, when adding in all the endorsements and incentives, according to figures estimated by On3 Sports’ Pete Nakos.

That would represent some marked inflation from Beck’s current NIL valuation of $4.3 million, the second-most valuable player in the nation, according to On3’s rankings.

And it’s said that Beck signed an NIL deal with Miami worth upwards of $4.5 million after his bombshell decision to leave Georgia and snub the NFL Draft to join the Hurricanes.

In part because of its spending on the quarterback, Miami ranks fifth in college football among NIL spenders, according to On3 Sports’ research into coaches, administrators, and NIL collectives heading into this season.

Experts believe that Beck will make more this year playing for Miami than he would have as a rookie with an NFL team.

His decision to enter the NCAA transfer portal was met with surprise, as it was expected the two-year Georgia starter would enter the draft.

But two days after entering the portal, Beck announced that he signed with the Hurricanes, signaling what could be one of the most consequential player movements heading into 2025.

Notably, it emerged that Beck entered the transfer portal with a “do not contact” designation, according to the reporting.

That would indicate that the quarterback already had a destination in mind, and didn’t wish to be contacted by any other programs.

Beck took over as Georgia’s starting quarterback in the 2023 season following the departure of two-time national champion Stetson Bennett.

He threw for 3,941 yards and passed for 24 touchdowns in his debut season as starter, leading to some speculation that he would enter the NFL.

But the quarterback returned for the 2024 season, a decision that resulted in an up and down season for both him and the Bulldogs’ offense.

Beck covered 3,485 yards and established a personal record with 28 touchdown passes, but also suffered through turnovers, tossing 12 interceptions.

(On3)

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GREENVILLE, S.C. – The Greenville Swamp Rabbits, ECHL affiliate of the National Hockey League’s Los Angeles Kings and American Hockey League’s Ontario Reign, announced that Liam Finlay has signed with the team for the 2025-26 season.

Finlay joins the Swamp Rabbits after completing his fifth professional season with the Elite Ice Hockey League’s Glasgow Clan. He earned 39 points (13g-26a) in 53 games a season ago.

Finlay is reunited with Head Coach/General Manager Chad Costello, with the two previously crossing paths for a pair of seasons with the Allen Americans. Under Costello’s guidance as a rookie in the 2022-23 campaign, he recorded 70 points (33g-37a) in 54 games. His 33 goals were third-best amongst first year players and eighth in the entire league, and his 70 points ranked fourth on the rookie leaderboard. For his efforts, Finlay represented the Western Conference in the 2023 ECHL All-Star Classic and was selected as a member of the 2023 ECHL All-Rookie Team.

The 28-year-old enters his third ECHL season and sixth overall as a professional. He begins the 2025-26 season with 215 career games across Europe (Scotland, Finland, Slovakia, Germany and Sweden) and the ECHL, totaling 190 points (78g-112a).

Prior to turning professional, Finlay played four seasons of college hockey with the University of Denver, earning 98 points in 158 games while claiming the 2017 National Championship. He also split time in the British Columbia Hockey League between the Vernon Vipers and Penticton Vees over three campaigns, earning All-Rookie team honors in 2015.

RJ Young

FOX Sports National College Football Analyst

Kirby Smart and his Georgia Bulldogs run the SEC. 

Alabama fans hate to hear it. LSU fans would like to dispute it. Texas would like us to just wait awhile. But since Kirby Smart first reached the national title game in 2018, his program has made the College Football Playoff four times in eight years and won two national championships.

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart and players celebrate after defeating the Texas Longhorns 22-19 in overtime of the 2024 SEC Championship. (Photo by Todd Kirkland/Getty Images)

The only SEC coach to put together a better run than that is Nick Saban, and he doesn’t coach anymore. When people were touting Kalen DeBoer’s coaching record before arriving as the successor to Saban at Alabama (104-12), many seemed to forget Smart had been winning from the moment he arrived to coach one of the most storied programs in the deepest league in the sport.

Consider this: Smart is 105-19 as a head coach, 53-5 over the past five years, and had already won the same number of national titles as all 11 coaches combined heading into last year’s College Football Playoff. The only coach keeping pace with Smart is Dabo Swinney, whose Clemson program is the closest thing to an SEC team outside the league.

Smart is the best this league has to offer, and all roads run through Athens, Georgia. The defending SEC champions haven’t lost a game at home in six years, when South Carolina coach Will Muschamps made off with part of the hedges between his teeth on the way back to Columbia. That was so long ago that Muschamp has been on staff at Georgia for five years.

The way that Smart has reestablished Georgia as one of the most dominant programs in the country is by using the strategy everyone else will be forced to employ in this new era of roster caps, revenue sharing and annual turnover: Recruit the best and play everyone.

Georgia does not produce Heisman winners — the Bulldogs have only two in their rich football history (Frank Sinkwich and Herschel Walker). The program does not produce 1,000-yard receivers — just one all-time (Terrence Edwards)— and it hasn’t produced a 1,000-yard rusher since 2019 (D’Andre Swift). Yet Georgia puts trophies in the cabinet and first-round picks into the NFL Draft, totaling 11 since 2021. 

Despite having a 2025 roster that is mostly made up of underclassmen, 54% according to Smart, Georgia expects to defend its SEC title and return to the CFP because most of those players, many of whom are four and five-star recruits, played significant football in 2024 and will be asked to play significant snaps again this season as young players.

Nate Frazier #3 of the Georgia Bulldogs runs with the ball during the University of Georgia Spring Game. (Photo by Steve Limentani/ISI Photos/Getty Images)

“We play a lot of players,” Smart said this week at SEC Media Days. “I think we had the third or fourth most players over 100 snaps. So, if you come to Georgia, you expect to play. We want to give you an opportunity to play, so we get a lot of those guys reps and grow them, and we’ll see where we are in fall camp at that position.”

Smart learned that philosophy from Saban, who, in his last year as head coach at Alabama, started a true freshman at safety: Caleb Downs. Downs led the 2023 Crimson Tide in tackles and broke a 40-year record for tackles in a season by a freshman with 107. When Saban retired, Downs transferred to Ohio State and was one of the top defenders in the country, staring for the defending national champions.

It’s not just identifying talent that makes Smart so good in this day and age. There are 30-plus five-star prospects coming out of high school every year, and not all of them go to Georgia. It’s Smart’s ability to identify the five to seven that fit his program’s needs and the program culture.

“You can say what you want, but there are more people in college football today, especially in the SEC, that are comfortable with where they are,” Smart said. “This is a pretty good life. I’m earning 200K a year. I’m very comfortable. But you don’t reach your goals being comfortable.”

The rest of the SEC is going to have to take notes and follow Smart’s path by paying players not just with money, but with the privilege of playing early and often. Perhaps they won’t create the kind of stats that lead to media members yelling their names on a regular basis, but they will develop into NFL-caliber players who make it to their second NFL contract, and they will play for championships. Nothing in college football is assured. Nothing in college football is without risk.

Smart has coached through the creation of the transfer portal, the decision to allow players to play immediately after transferring within the FBS, the advent of NIL, and now, the beginning of revenue-sharing with players. None of this has stopped him or Georgia from doing what it must do to maintain its presence atop the deepest league in football. And yes, Kirby Smart is just fine with that.

RJ Young is a national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports and the host of the podcast “The Number One College Football Show.” Follow him at @RJ_Young.

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Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy will be on “Big Noon Kickoff” next season as part of a deal with Fox Sports; NBA commissioner Adam Silver discussed local media rights; and Drew Brees will reportedly serve as an analyst on Netflix Christmas Day coverage of the NFL. Plus additional news about Peacock, David Zaslav, Michele Steele and Scott Hanson.

Portnoy, Barstool Sports, officially strike “wide-ranging” deal with Fox Sports

Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy announced that the company has reached a three-year deal with Fox Sports under which he will be making live, weekly appearances on the “Big Noon Kickoff” college football pregame show. In addition, the company is going to have a daily morning program on FS1 which he described as a Barstool breakfast/wake-up program that will incorporate different characters.

Portnoy revealed that he is going to be on Monday editions of the new show, which is expected to debut before the first episode of “Big Noon Kickoff,” which takes place from Columbus, Ohio on Sat., Aug. 30 as the Ohio State Buckeyes face the Texas Longhorns. Furthermore, he explained that Fox will be building a studio for the show emanating from Chicago and that it will encompass “whatever is happening and relevant to our world.” The show is going to utilize Barstool talent, who will be making appearances on different days of the week.

“This has the potential to be really good for both parties,” Portnoy said during an appearance on The Unnamed Show. “They want our audience, but they know what audience we have, and we’re going to try to come up with a bunch of things with them and it’s a wide-ranging relationship.”

Outside of “Big Noon Kickoff,” Barstool has its own preexisting college football program that will now precede “Big Noon Kickoff” on Barstool channels, Tubi and the Fox Sports digital platforms. Moreover, the two companies will work together on co-produced shows and content on the digital side. Portnoy said conversations between the sides have been ongoing for five to six months and that Fox Sports chief executive officer and executive producer Eric Shanks traveled to meet with him for three hours.

Adam Silver acknowledges potential NBA local TV solutions

Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal reported this week that “all signs” are pointing to the NBA launching a national streaming RSN prior to the 2027-28 season, when up to 20 teams could be contractually permitted to join such an entity. During a press conference after the NBA Board of Governors meeting, league commissioner Adam Silver referenced the need to determine whether the NBA will settle on “an aggregated solution” or a hybrid model that satisfies teams who want to be part of larger networks or independent with their broadcasts.

“I personally think it’s potentially the best value potential in all of sports,” Silver said of local rights. “When I look at what the market has said about the value of national games, there’s no reason that our teams shouldn’t be commanding on a relative basis that same value on a local basis. It’s just that at least up to now, streamers largely have not been in the local business, but I believe that’s going to change as well.””

Silver acknowledged the decline in local and regional television due to cord cutting and shrinking linear distribution, noting that some teams have “taken significant cuts in regional television” and emphasizing the importance of solving the issue.

Brees reportedly returning to Netflix NFL Christmas broadcast

Former NBC NFL analyst Drew Brees will serve as a game analyst for Christmas Day NFL coverage on Netflix, according to Andrew Marchand of The Athletic. Brees took part in the Netflix studio pregame show from Los Angeles last year alongside Kay Adams, Robert Griffin III, Mina Kimes and Manti Te’o, and he also worked with Scott Hanson on the international broadcast.

Netflix is entering the second season of a three-year deal in which it is presenting games on Christmas Day. The network will be broadcasting a doubleheader of matchups — the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Commanders at 1 p.m. EST; and the Detroit Lions against the Minnesota Vikings at 4:30 p.m. EST.

Brees was briefly considered an heir apparent to NBC’s Cris Collinsworth during his brief stint with the network from 2020-22.

Plus: Peacock, David Zaslav, Michele Steele, Scott Hanson

• Peacock, the OTT streaming service from Comcast-owned NBCUniversal, is raising prices for its premium and plus subscription tiers by $3 per month. The company is also going to be adding a select tier featuring current seasons of shows on NBC and Bravo in addition to library programming.
• In a court filing following a lawsuit by Warner Bros. Discovery investors in the Southern District of New York, company chief executive officer David Zaslav and chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels are arguing that the case does not have merit, Michael McCann of Sportico reports. The memorandum cites the ubiquity of coverage, claiming “the negotiations were being monitored obsessively by the media, the industry, and the public,” and that the outcome was uncertain but would have financial impact both on Warner Bros. Discovery and the league.
• Michele Steele is departing ESPN after 14 years with the company, Sports Media Watch has confirmed. Over the years, Steele has reported from football and basketball games, anchored “SportsCenter” and taken part in podcasts.
• Longtime “NFL RedZone” host Scott Hanson, who reached a new multiyear contract to continue anchoring the Sunday whiparound program, said in a recent appearance on the “SI Media with Jimmy Traina” podcast that there was a time when he thought, “I don’t know if this is going to happen. … It was not my intention to kind of go that direction, but you have to be willing for that eventuality or that possibility.”

EAU CLAIRE (WQOW) – Blugolds alum Jarrad Vroman has been picked to lead the women’s hockey program, UW-Eau Claire Director of Athletics Jason Verdugo announced Friday.

Vroman played for the UWEC men’s program for three seasons, helping the Blugolds win the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference regular season title in 2020 and a WIAC Commissioner’s Cup in 2022.

For the last two years, Vroman has been an assistant coach for the men’s team at Augsburg University, which won the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference regular season championship in 2024.

“My family and I couldn’t be more excited to come back to Eau Claire to lead the women’s hockey program,” Vroman said in a release. “I am thankful Jason Verdugo and the entire Athletics Administration who are entrusting me with a program that has had so much success and potential. It’s an honor to be given the opportunity to the work with Blugold Student Athletes and give back to Blugold Hockey, UW Eau Claire, and the great community!”

Vroman takes over for Erik Strand, who announced his resignation in May to join Division 1 University of Vermont women’s hockey.

RELATED: Longtime Blugolds coach Erik Strand steps down

His assistant coach, Erin Connolly, was named the head coach of the University of Dubuque women’s program in June.

RELATED: Erin Connolly named head coach of Spartans women’s hockey

After his Blugolds career, Vroman played one season of professional hockey, helping the Roanoke Rail Yard Dawgs win the SPHL’s President’s Cup in 2023.

Vroman lives in Eau Claire with his wife, Bree, who holds the women’s hockey program record for games played with 121, and their daughter, Sophie.