NIL

Mitch Barnhart says the NIL money is there but he refuses to show the receipt

Published

8 hours ago

December 18, 2025

If you’re a Kentucky fan trying to make sense of NIL, revenue sharing and JMI, you’re not alone. The athletic director running the whole thing admits it’s “clunky” right now.

From losing ground with high school basketball recruits like Tyran Stokes and Christian Collins, BBN is at all-time high in recruiting anxiety.

In a long sit-down with the Lexington Herald-Leader, Mitch Barnhart tried to explain how Kentucky is operating in this new College Sports Commission / NILGo world. The message was basically this: yes, it’s confusing; no, Kentucky isn’t freelancing; and he believes the structure he’s put in place is actually a strength, not a handicap.

Convincing the fanbase of that isn’t going to be easy without recruits showing up.

‘Clunky’ rules, moving caps and a promise to stay in the guardrails at Kentucky

Barnhart said the current landscape is really two different eras smashed together: what was done before July 1, and everything that’s been built since the House settlement, the College Sports Commission and NILGo went live.

Different schools had different pre-July 1 spending patterns. That history impacts how much cap space they have now. Some have more room. Some have less. That’s part of why it looks like schools are operating under different rulebooks.

Barnhart’s word for the rollout was “clunky.” There are participation agreements that not every school has signed yet, rules that have to go through courts and attorneys general, and separate 30-day windows for both the House plaintiffs and state AGs before some policies can even be implemented. Some rules are in effect. Others are still in line.

In the middle of all that, Barnhart keeps coming back to the same idea: Kentucky is trying to be “steady,” stay within the “guardrails,” and trust that “progress is being made” as the national framework catches up.

That might not satisfy fans who look around and see other schools clearly pushing those guardrails, but it’s the lane he’s chosen. Pope backed that up by saying they will always “err” on the side of caution when it comes to NIL.

NILGo, averages and a ‘hot market’ in Lexington

On the actual NIL payouts, Barnhart said all deals now flow through NILGo, and Kentucky has already had “several hundred” go through the system. At the Champions Blue meeting in October, he pegged the average deal around $3,000, with the biggest near $50,000. He said those numbers are still “trending in the same way.”

He pointed to Kentucky volleyball as a prime example of what a “hot market” looks like. A Final Four run has made that roster more visible in Lexington, and as their “notoriety” has grown, so has their NIL value. Barnhart sounded genuinely excited talking about watching those opportunities grow for non-revenue athletes.

For fans who worry Kentucky isn’t doing anything, that’s the counter: NIL deals are happening, they’re in seven figures across the department, and not just in football and men’s basketball.

The question, of course, is whether that level of activity is enough to land and keep the kind of top-end basketball talent BBN expects. So far, the answer to that question seems to be no.

Why Mitch Barnhart is all-in on JMI

A huge chunk of the interview was essentially a defense of the JMI model that fans hate.

Barnhart’s pitch goes like this: JMI arrives with more than 200 corporate partners already on board and a seasoned sales force generating $35–40 million a year in advertising and sponsorships. That group is now tasked with not just selling Kentucky athletics, but also matching student-athletes with those brands.

From his perspective, that’s an enormous head start. You’ve got a big, experienced sales staff already embedded on campus, already working with companies that “are very, very interested in your program,” and now they can turn that machine toward NIL.

He also made a key point that’s been blurry for fans: JMI isn’t skimming a cut off those NILGo deals. “There’s no fee,” Barnhart said. “We’re fee-free.”

So what’s the trade-off? Marks and flexibility.

If a student-athlete wants to use Kentucky logos and IP in their deals, that path runs through JMI. If they sign with a company that competes with an existing UK sponsor, Barnhart said they’re “certainly” encouraged to give Kentucky partners first crack, but athletes can still go ahead with outside deals they just can’t use the marks.

That is a huge deal. Being able to use the UK brand, and the notoriety that comes with Kentucky basketball is a huge draw for NIL-minded athletes. Not being able to use those can be a deal breaker.

He pointed to cases like Trent Noah, who has hometown relationships he wants to honor, and players who arrive with pre-existing high school NIL deals. The message there was, “We work through it,” even if it’s messy. Noah decided to not opt-in with JMI and has deals all through the commonwealth, you just won’t see the UK logo anywhere.

The flip side is obvious: if you don’t like or trust JMI, you’re going to see this entire structure as restrictive, even if the AD keeps calling it a “really cool” family.

Barnhart speaks on conflicts of interest and long relationships

Barnhart didn’t dodge the question about perceived conflicts between UK staff and JMI personnel. He just doesn’t see a problem.

To him, the long-standing ties that span from the Jim Host era to IMG to now 11 years with JMI and a new extension through year 25, are a feature, not a bug. He framed it as a tight-knit group of people who love Kentucky and know the market, not as an insider network that needs to be broken up.

A lot of fan angst comes from the Rachel Newman Baker-Brandon Baker relationship. Rachel is an assistant AD at UK while Brandon is Vice President Partnerships at JMI with the title UK Sports & Campus Marketing. According to JMI, “Brandon’s role is focused on aligning key partners’ marketing objectives with the goals and vision of the university. He directs the team that oversees all key partnerships and renewal business, as well as gameday activations, partner hospitality, and stadium/arena signage.”

“If it was a conflict,” Barnhart essentially argued, why have revenues and rights deals grown so aggressively?

That answer is unlikely to quiet any critics of the relationship between UK and JMI. Some fans hear “family” and “long-term relationships” and immediately think of a closed ecosystem that’s hard to challenge. But Barnhart is clearly not backing away from that model. If anything, he’s doubling down on it as a competitive advantage.

Why Barnhart won’t show his revenue-sharing cards at Kentucky

Maybe the most interesting part of the interview was his insistence on keeping revenue-sharing numbers private.

Barnhart pushed back on the idea that it’s about secrecy. He called it “flexibility.”

In his view, there are two separate buckets: revenue sharing and NIL. He thinks fans and some schools have blurred those lines by bragging about a big “NIL” number that’s really a mix of both.

He wants the freedom to slide resources between those buckets depending on the sport, the year and the player. Maybe a high-profile recruit is better served taking more in rev share and less in NIL, or vice versa. Maybe football needs a bigger push one offseason to address a critical position, while basketball doesn’t. Maybe in another year it’s the opposite.

If he puts hard public numbers on what each program gets, he worries he’ll lock himself into boxes that hurt Kentucky competitively and create a circus of fans comparing individual payouts.

He also says there’s a protective piece: he doesn’t want each athlete “pegged” publicly by a dollar figure or constantly compared to teammates.

You can debate whether that explanation is satisfying, or whether transparency would actually help calm the waters, but it’s at least a clear window into his thinking.

For fans it is just Mitch Barnhart saying they have the money, but won’t show a receipt.

Balancing Kentucky football, Kentucky basketball and the rest of the athletics department

Kentucky’s situation is unusual. Both football and men’s basketball are profitable. Most schools can’t say that.

Barnhart admitted that balancing those two in this new world is tricky. Pre-July 1, he says everyone loved the rosters. Post-July 1, the math is just harder across the board, not only at Kentucky.

His bigger picture vision is to use the power of the Kentucky basketball brand to lift everything. If NIL and rev-share decisions are made wisely, he believes success in men’s hoops and football can raise the tide for baseball, women’s basketball, volleyball and everyone else.

That’s the optimistic version. The pessimistic version is what some fans are already feeling: if basketball misses on elite recruits and football falls behind the SEC arms race, nobody gets lifted and everything falls apart.

On general managers, Mark Pope and ‘talent evaluation’

Barnhart also weighed in on the “general manager” debate that’s hovered over Kentucky basketball.

Will Stein came in and immediately wanted a GM for football. Barnhart was fine with that. For a first-time head coach juggling a new staff, a playoff run and a roster rebuild, he called it “probably a pretty smart decision.”

With Mark Pope, he’s not forcing the issue. Barnhart said he’s going to “lean into” Pope’s preference and give him the flexibility to decide whether he wants that role or not down the line.

Then he slipped in a line that will jump out to fans: “Our talent assessment was fine until we lost a couple games, and then everybody started wondering about our talent assessment, correct?” Well, Mitch that is usually how it works.

In other words: he doesn’t think one rough stretch means the eval process is broken, and he doesn’t believe a GM is some magic fix. But he did leave the door open to adjustments later if Pope decides he wants to structure things differently.

Will Mitch Barnhart still be the one steering this or will he retire?

Finally, the obvious question: how much longer does he want to do this?

Barnhart acknowledged the ambassador clause in his contract that would allow him to step aside after December 31 and shift roles. He didn’t commit one way or the other.

He talked instead about loving competition, loving Kentucky and the fact that he and his family came planning to stay 6–8 years and never left. He admitted the job has changed, where it used to be 75% competition and 25% “other stuff,” he thinks those numbers have flipped. Now it’s more about sustaining the enterprise of college sports than just trying to win Saturday.

He also admitted the personal connection piece is harder in an era where 35–40% of the roster turns over every year. Meeting every recruit, knowing every family? That’s tougher now.

But the thrill of competition is still there for him. “The day that changes,” he said, is probably the day someone else should take over.

That’s the backdrop to everything he just laid out: a clunky system, a controversial partnership model, a fanbase demanding top-tier results, and an athletic director who insists Kentucky has “a good plan” for all of it, and says he still wants to be the one fighting to make it work.

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Everyone caught up to Oregon’s business model. Can Ducks win it all in a world they pioneered?

Published

29 minutes ago

December 18, 2025

Your Sports Nation

After decades of milestone wins on its climb to college football powerhouse status, Oregon found itself on the other side of a signature victory this season.

As Indiana celebrated on the Ducks’ home field on Oct. 11, an Oregon staffer shook the hand of a Hoosiers assistant coach and congratulated him on a 30-20 win that helped validate IU as a national championship contender.

“We’re hard to beat,” the Oregon staffer said.

No doubt. Since joining the Big Ten last year, the Ducks are 17-1 in conference play and 24-2 overall, with a league title in their debut season. Since 2010, Oregon is tied for fifth in the nation in victories with Oklahoma at 161. Only Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson and Georgia have more.

“We’ve been building to a standard of what winning football looks like, regardless of conference,” head coach Dan Lanning said this week.

After the Ducks spent years breaking through barriers that previously required something akin to birthright status for entry, college football has met them where they are. Adaptability and innovation are cornerstones of the Oregon brand, so of course, no school was better prepared to succeed when NCAA amateurism crumbled and the ability to effectively pay players became a necessity for programs that aspire to win national championships.

Oregon football has never been better, but the Ducks are no longer college football’s gate-crashers.

“There’s been some great stories in college football, but it’s even harder to stay there, and (the Ducks) have found a way to stay there,” said Craig Pintens, who was a high-ranking administrator at Oregon from 2011 through ’18 before becoming athletic director at Loyola Marymount.

In this year’s College Football Playoff, Indiana, Texas Tech and Ole Miss are the new-money climbers, no longer constrained by their histories.

The Ducks? Heading into a first-round home game against 12th-seeded James Madison on Saturday, they are just another team trying to win a championship.

Well, maybe not just another team.

You see, Oregon is not quite a member of the establishment class, either. It has a lot more in common with Ohio State, Georgia, Oklahoma, Alabama and Miami these days than with the Hoosiers, Red Raiders and Rebels — with one notable exception.

That first group has combined for 13 national titles since 2000 and 34 in college football’s poll era, dating to 1936.

The Ducks are still seeking their first.

“They’ve built the entire sundae at this point,” Pintens said. “It’s just a matter of putting that cherry on the top. And it is inevitable. It’s going to happen.”

College football has never cultivated upward mobility. Past success is the best predictor of future success. Lineage and tradition are prized commodities.

The schools at the top of the food chain tend to stay there — or have an easier time getting back when they slip. Those toward the bottom generally get stuck.

There are outliers. Nebraska looks as if it may never recreate the glory days of the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. Clemson went from good to elite under Dabo Swinney, but that era of dominance is increasingly looking like a moment in time rather than a permanent change.

And then there’s Oregon, the most obvious exception that proves the rule.

The Ducks didn’t have USC’s Heritage Hall, a shrine to a program that claims 11 national titles and eight Heisman winners. They didn’t have Touchdown Jesus, Notre Dame’s iconic monument to the program’s essential place in the history of college football.

“We didn’t have the kinds of things that Ohio State and Texas and all these legacy programs had, but we did feel like we had a chance,” former Oregon athletic director Pat Kilkenny said.

The first baby step toward Oregon shedding its history came in Shreveport, La., of all places, with quarterback Bill Musgrave leading coach Rich Brooks’ Ducks to a victory in the program’s first postseason game in 26 years, the 1989 Independence Bowl against Tulsa.

The mid-1990s featured trips to the Rose and Cotton bowls that signaled progress but also showed the Ducks still had a long way to go: Oregon lost those games to Penn State and Colorado by a combined score of 76-26.

Nike co-founder and Oregon alum Phil Knight’s involvement and investment in the program brought a grander vision in the early 2000s. Why not put up a billboard in Times Square to promote quarterback Joey Harrington as a Heisman Trophy contender in 2001?

“I think our optimism was more about Holiday Bowl and Top 25,” said Kilkenny, an Oregon native. “But somebody like Phil Knight gets involved, that doesn’t work for him. He doesn’t want to do anything unless he can be the best.”

Oregon football had no distinguishing characteristics, so Knight helped create them.

With Nike’s help, Oregon made uniforms a differentiator in recruiting, unveiling a fresh look almost weekly.

“Being fashion-progressive isn’t exactly indicative of a strong football program, but (Knight) saw it as brand-building,” Kilkenny said.

The Ducks were on the front end of the spread offense revolution under coach Mike Bellotti, then promoted Chip Kelly to head coach and changed the way the game was played by optimizing fast-paced football.

When the facilities arms race was escalating, Oregon built its so-called Death Star, a tinted-glass fortress with a barber shop, sleep pods and tech-integrated lockers. The $68 million Hatfield-Dowlin Complex, funded largely by Knight, opened in 2013.

The Ducks reached the national championship game in 2010 and 2014, losing each time.

They haven’t been back since, which suggests the ascent has stalled. That’s not the case. Through a whirlwind of coaching changes from Kelly’s successor, Mark Helfrich, to Willie Taggart to Mario Cristobal to Lanning in the span of only seven years, Oregon was still progressing.

“I think they’ve built a tremendous culture, and that culture has turned over through multiple coaches,” said Pintens, who credits his former boss, athletic director Rob Mullens, with overseeing the continued growth at Oregon.

Even with Knight’s backing, Oregon is not among the top revenue-generating programs in college football.

“Oregon is not as resourced as some of the other top powers in college football,” Pintens said. “They lack a population base. They don’t play in a huge stadium.”

Autzen Stadium’s gameday experience is one of the best in the country, but the place seats about 56,000, about half the capacity of the largest stadiums in the Big Ten and SEC.

When Oregon spends, it spends on what matters most.

“If you want to be a top-10 team in college football, you better be invested in winning,” Oregon’s Dan Lanning said earlier this season in response to then-Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy’s comments about how much the Ducks’ roster costs. “We spend to win.”

In 2020, the NCAA lifted its ban on paying college athletes for their name, image and likeness. Quickly, those deals became a proxy for paying players, and Oregon was again an early adopter. Founded by Knight and other prominent donors, Division Street quickly became one of college football’s most well-run NIL collectives, groups that pool funds from boosters to license players’ rights.

Taggart and then Cristobal had already changed the nature of Oregon recruiting, turning the school into a destination for blue-chippers, despite the school’s limited number of those prospects within its geographic footprint.

Lanning was hired away from Georgia to keep that going in 2021. His ability to embrace a more transactional form of recruiting while still establishing a winning culture has allowed Oregon to narrow the gap between itself and the likes of Ohio State and Georgia.

NIL has been “an equalizing force,” Pintens said.

“You could have better facilities, you could have better coaching, better everything, but at the end of the day, if you don’t have any dollars to support that, it’s going to be really difficult to put together a team,” he said.

The transformation that took Oregon decades is happening much faster elsewhere, as paying players spreads talent around and gives the traditional have-nots a chance to become haves.

“The historical programs that weren’t able to compete, it did give them a chance to put a little jet propulsion into their football program, if that’s where they chose to invest,” Kilkenny said.

Fourth-seeded Big 12 champion Texas Tech, with a roster backed by billionaire booster Cody Campbell that reportedly cost more than $28 million, this season won its first outright conference title since 1955.

In the SEC, sixth-ranked Ole Miss has effectively mobilized its resources with the Grove Collective and ripped off three straight double-digit victory campaigns while LSU and Florida (with a combined six national titles) fired their head coaches this season.

In the Big Ten, Indiana, which started the year having lost more games than any other major college football program, has turned unprecedented investment into an unfathomable turnaround under coach Curt Cignetti. The Hoosiers kept rolling after the win in Eugene, knocked off Ohio State in the conference title game, and enter the Playoff as the No. 1 team in the country, boasting the program’s first Heisman Trophy winner in quarterback Fernando Mendoza. The Ducks are no longer the disruptors.

“The willingness and the belief in taking what had been done and saying, OK, we can be No. 1,” Kilkenny said. “We can win it all, and we can be a national brand, that has all happened.”

Oregon’s challenge now is not just to check the last box on the resume and join the blue bloods once and for all but to keep the new wave of gate-crashers from jumping ahead of them in line on the way to the top of the mountain.

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Kirk Herbstreit issues an apology for misunderstood post following Army-Navy game

Published

1 hour ago

December 18, 2025

Your Sports Nation

Kirk Herbstreit drew the ire of the college football world earlier this week. Now, he’s moving quickly to clear the air after a social media post sparked backlash following the Army–Navy game.

Herbstreit, who’s become the face of ESPN’s college football coverage, addressed the situation in a lengthy post on X (formerly Twitter). He apologized for what he described as a misleading caption attached to a video clip promoting his Nonstop podcast with colleague Joey Galloway.

“Just wanted to address a mistake that we made on my socials earlier this week related to last weekend’s CFB Saturday,” Herbstreit wrote. “We posted a video where Joey Galloway and I were talking about how strange it was to be home and not traveling on a CFB weekend since the end of August and how we felt like we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. We posted the video with a caption that was very misleading about ‘Weird not having any CFB this weekend.’”

Herbstreit acknowledges that the wording created a bit of confusion, appearing dismissive of games that were played, most notably the Army–Navy Game: “Some took that out of context and ran with it. That’s on me,” he wrote. “My apologies for any disrespect (albeit unintentional) to the teams that played last weekend, especially [Army] and [Navy].”

The original post, which has since been deleted, included a clip from the podcast with the caption, “Saturday not having college football threw us for a loop,” accompanied by a laughing emoji. That message quickly drew a response from Navy Athletics, which quote-tweeted the post with a photo from Saturday’s game.

More on Kirk Herbstreit, Army-Navy controversy

Alas, Navy went on to defeat Army 17–16 in one of college football’s most iconic rivalry games, a matchup that has occupied a standalone window on the Saturday following conference championship weekend for years. While it has no impact on the College Football Playoff, the game remains one of the sport’s most-watched events, averaging 7.84 million viewers on CBS.

In his apology, Herbstreit emphasized that the Army–Navy Game remains one of his favorite events on the college football calendar: “Not sure there is a game I personally look forward to more EVERY year than Army and Navy,” Herbstreit added.

“They play for the love for each other and love for the game. Anybody who has ever watched me for the last 30 years on TV knows how I feel about that game.”

Beyond Army–Navy, last weekend still featured a full slate of college football action. Bowl season opened with Washington facing Boise State, the FCS playoffs held quarterfinal games, and South Carolina State defeated Prairie View A&M in the Celebration Bowl.

Listening back to the deleted clip itself, Herbstreit and Galloway never actually stated there was no football being played. Instead, they reflected on the unfamiliar feeling of being home for the first time since August without their usual travel routine.

Still, the initial caption struck a nerve. It highlighted how easily attention can drift toward the Playoff and power conference landscape at the expense of the broader sport.

Herbstreit closed his statement by reiterating that the controversy stemmed from miscommunication, not disrespect. At the least, he felt it necessary to publicly address the situation, and let the college football world know he meant no ill-will towards Army-Navy.

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$87 million coach reportedly offered ‘blank check’ by Michigan to replace Sherrone Moore

Published

2 hours ago

December 18, 2025

Your Sports Nation

Kalen DeBoer has done his part to deny any interest in the Michigan head coaching vacancy, but that hasn’t stopped an army of vocal college football analysts from speculating that he could jump ship from Alabama and become the next head man of the Wolverines.

DeBoer signed an $87 million contract over eight years with Alabama early in 2024 as the man to replace Nick Saban, and so far the results have been up and down, but mostly positive.

However connected DeBoer may be to the Crimson Tide at this point in time, there are reportedly some serious power brokers linked to Michigan who are extending quite an invitation, according to ESPN analyst Greg McElroy.

What Michigan is offering Kalen DeBoer

“Michigan has been applying the full court press from the very beginning. Michigan has offered what I’ve been told is a blank check to try to get Kalen DeBoer out of Tuscaloosa and to Ann Arbor,” McElroy said on the Always College Football podcast.

That talk comes right as DeBoer has Alabama in the College Football Playoff, where he will seek to improve on his 0-2 record against Oklahoma in the first-round game on Friday.

“Now, the timing is unique here, because Kalen DeBoer is in the midst of preparing his team for [the playoff]. Frankly, I don’t think that Kalen DeBoer is ultimately going to take the job,” McElroy said.

“I don’t think Kalen DeBoer wants to take the job. I think Kalen DeBoer is happy at Alabama. I think the narrative that he’s unhappy, or he’s this or that or his family doesn’t like this or his family doesn’t like that, I think it’s untrue.”

Current insider reporting suggests that DeBoer’s representatives are seeking a contract extension from the school for the coach, but that remains a very fluid situation right now with no set conclusion.

But if DeBoer should lose to the Sooners again and get the Tide bounced from the playoff early?

Sure, it would raise the temperature around his tenure, but to suggest that it would be enough for him to abandon ship and try again at Michigan is unlikely.

Michigan will still pursue, however unlikely

“I think people are just grasping at straws, but it doesn’t mean that Michigan won’t continue to try to woo him,” McElroy said.

“It doesn’t mean they’re going to stop trying to go get him. They’re gonna try. Whatever they have to do, they’re gonna try, because there’s a lot of people that believe that Kalen DeBoer is one of the top coaches in America. So you go all in for that coach. And I think Michigan will continue to try to go all in on Kalen DeBoer.”

It stands to reason that Michigan, which finds itself in a coaching decision it didn’t expect to be in at this point in time, will do whatever they can to attract a big name.

But what if that big name already has a big job?

The feeling between Michigan and DeBoer is not mutual

“They can be interested. Is the interest actually reciprocated? I don’t know the answer to that, frankly. I frankly don’t think it is,” McElroy said.

“I think Kalen DeBoer, like I said, will be the head coach [at Alabama] moving forward, but he’s going to likely turn down more money at Michigan if he does end up staying in Tuscaloosa.

“At least, that’s what it sounds like right now. Because when I hear ‘blank check,’ you can interpret that how you want to interpret that.

“It sounds like, to me, Kalen DeBoer is going to be very wealthy on either side. But I do know that Kalen DeBoer is, right now, not interested in having a conversation with Michigan, and I do know this: that Michigan is not interested, yet, in accepting, the answer no.”

Bankruptcy trustee presses case against Deion Sanders’ son Shilo

Published

3 hours ago

December 18, 2025

Your Sports Nation

Dec. 17, 2025, 10:04 p.m. ET

Shilo Sanders is in a legal dispute with a bankruptcy trustee over approximately $250,000 in alleged unauthorized fund transfers.
The core issue is whether Sanders’ NIL earnings belong to him or to the bankruptcy estate for his creditors.
Sanders filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in October 2023 to discharge over $11 million in debt from a 2022 civil court judgment.

The trustee in the bankruptcy case of former Colorado football player Shilo Sanders filed a response in court Dec. 17 that supports his argument that Sanders violated bankruptcy law by making unauthorized transfers to himself of approximately $250,000.

The court filing is the latest volley in bankruptcy case of Sanders, who filed a Chapter 7 petition in October 2023 seeking to get out of more than $11 million in debt.

The trustee in the case, David Wadsworth, sued Shilo Sanders in October, seeking recovery of the money and an accounting from Sanders. Sanders’ attorney then filed a motion to dismiss that complaint in November by arguing that the trustee had it all wrong.

The latest filing from Wadsworth’s attorney rebuts that notion as litigation related to the bankruptcy case continues on multiple fronts in addition to this one. Sanders’ debt stems from a civil court judgment in Dallas in 2022.

“The Defendants are wrong,” the trustee’s attorney, Peter Cal, said in court documents.

What is at issue in Shilo Sanders’ bankruptcy case this time?

The court-appointed trustee in this case is in charge of rounding up Sanders’ non-exempt assets for the bankruptcy estate to divide among his creditors. The trustee has alleged having trouble doing that and filed a complaint against Sanders related to money he traced in Sanders’ business accounts for earnings from his name, image and likeness (NIL). Those businesses are named as defendants with Sanders in the complaint – Big 21 and Headache Gang.

The big issue is who the money in question belongs to – the bankruptcy estate or Sanders. Sanders’ earnings before he filed the bankruptcy petition generally belong to the bankruptcy estate for the benefit of creditors, while earnings that came from work after the bankruptcy filing belong to Sanders.

Sanders’ attorney, Keri Riley, stated in court documents that the money in question belonged to Sanders because they were “post-petition earnings.”

The trustee disputed that in his response Dec. 17 and said such factual disputes can’t be resolved at this stage of the litigation.

Sanders “relies on the unsupported argument that all funds in the Big 21 Bank Account were post-petition earnings of the Debtor (Sanders),” the trustee’s attorney stated. “The Court should not consider the argument because it relies upon a factual assertion that is not included in the (trustee’s) Complaint.”

The trustee’s attorney then includes a footnote.

“Because there were funds in the Big 21 Bank Account on the Petition Date, the Defendants’ argument is demonstrably wrong,” the footnote states.

Timing of Shilo Sanders’ NIL earnings in dispute

The trustee’s attorney also noted that “even if the earnings are paid to the Debtor post-petition, they are considered prepetition earnings when they arose from a prepetition contractual interest.”

He argued the trustee pleaded his case well enough for the trustee’s complaint against Sanders to move forward. A bankruptcy judge will decide on that.

“It is more than plausible that at least certain of the post-petition deposits were based on the Debtor’s prepetition NIL contracts and, therefore, are subject to turnover,” the trustee’s filing states.

The trustee said he wants Sanders to “account for the distributions” after “improperly” exercising control over property of the bankruptcy estate.

How did the Shilo Sanders bankruptcy case originate?

A security guard at Sanders’ school in Dallas sued Sanders and his parents in 2016, alleging Shilo caused him permanent and severe injuries when he tried to confiscate his phone at school in 2015, when Shilo was 15. The parents were dismissed from the case before trial, but when the case finally went to trial in 2022, Shilo didn’t show up for it and got hit with a $11.89 million default judgment as a result.

The security guard, John Darjean, then moved to collect on that judgment in 2023, leading Sanders to file for bankruptcy to try to get out of it.

Darjean is fighting that with a separate complaint that alleges the debt should not be discharged in bankruptcy court because it stems from a “willful and malicious” injury. Sanders has claimed he acted in self-defense. That complaint remains pending, as does a separate complaint from Darjean that accuses Sanders of improperly omitting or concealing assets in his bankruptcy closures, which he denied.

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$45 million college football head coach reportedly offers Lane Kiffin unexpected role

Published

4 hours ago

December 18, 2025

Your Sports Nation

The College Football Playoff travels to Oxford on Saturday with an unusual subplot: an 11-win Ole Miss team entering the postseason without the coach who compiled that record, Lane Kiffin.

Meanwhile, Tulane, which Ole Miss faces Saturday at 3:30 p.m. ET at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, also has an outgoing coach, as Jon Sumrall has opted to finish the season in New Orleans before taking over at Florida.

Kiffin’s 2025 Rebels closed the regular season at 11–1, securing a CFP berth behind a high-powered offense that averaged 498.1 total yards per game, the third-most in college football.

Within days of the Egg Bowl, Kiffin accepted LSU’s offer, a reported seven-year contract worth roughly $91 million, and announced he would not coach Ole Miss in the playoff.

Ole Miss promptly elevated defensive coordinator Pete Golding to lead the program into the bracket.

On Wednesday, Sumrall broke down the matchup and joked that he had offered Kiffin a spot in Tulane’s coaches’ box.

“They’ve got a lot more stability for the game than people realize. They’re going to be who they’ve been; they’re just not going to have Lane on the sideline,” Sumrall said. “I’ve reached out to Lane to see if he wants to sit in our coaches’ box for the game, but he hasn’t given me an answer yet.”

Florida Gators head coach Jon Sumrall. — Gainesville, FL, USA; Florida Gators head coach Jon Sumrall smiles during the press conference at the Heavener Football Training Center at the University of Florida. | Matt Pendleton-Imagn Images

Tulane arrives after winning the American Athletic Conference and finishing 11–2.

The Green Wave boasts one of the nation’s best turnover margins (+10) and a defense that has tightened steadily since an early setback in Oxford on Sept. 20, a 45–10 loss.

Adding to the narrative, Sumrall, who signed a reported six-year, roughly $45 million deal to become Florida’s next head coach, has said he will remain with Tulane through the postseason before joining the Gators full-time.

Tulane has already designated passing-game coordinator Will Hall as Sumrall’s successor once the playoff run concludes.

This moment reflects a new normal in college football’s accelerated coaching market, with major hires unfolding as teams prepare for postseason play.

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$36 million college football coach reportedly out of race for Michigan vacancy

Published

5 hours ago

December 18, 2025

Your Sports Nation

Michigan is the last remaining Power Four college football program to find a new head coach in the 2026 cycle.

The Wolverines fired head coach Sherrone Moore on Dec. 10 with cause and are now one week into the coaching search. Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer, Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham, and Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz are among those being floated as potential replacements.

One name that previously received attention for the vacancy was Washington head coach Jedd Fisch. On3 and ESPN college football insider Josh Pate reported Fisch’s interest in the Michigan head coaching vacancy has declined in the last few days.

“There’s been some sentiment today that maybe Jedd Fisch’s name has cooled,” Pate said. “I think that’s accurate. The critical take-home points are that I don’t know if Jedd Fisch is going to be a factor in the Michigan search moving forward… I don’t think Jedd Fisch is going to be an option for them.”

Washington Huskies head coach Jedd Fisch holds the LA Bowl championship belt | Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

Fisch’s waning interest is a relief to Washington, as it is all too familiar with head coaches leaving for other jobs. The Huskies lost Kalen DeBoer to Alabama in the 2024 offseason when Nick Saban announced his retirement from the Crimson Tide.

The Florida alumnus spent the first 24 seasons in the coaching ranks as an assistant at a high school, in the Arena Football League, at six different NFL franchises and five different college football programs. He served as Michigan’s passing game coordinator in 2015 and 2016 under Jim Harbaugh, part of the reason he is linked to the Wolverines’ current opening.

The only head-coaching capacity Fisch had served in before he took the Arizona vacancy was as UCLA’s interim coach in the 2017 Cactus Bowl against Kansas State.

Arizona finished 1-11 in 2021, the lone win against California (10-3) in November. The Wildcats improved to 5-7 in 2022, a record that included an upset victory over a ranked UCLA team. Fisch followed up a 3-3 start in 2023 with seven consecutive wins, including an Alamo Bowl win over Oklahoma (38-24).

Fisch filled the Washington vacancy left by DeBoer in the 2024 offseason. An up-and-down first season led to a 6-7 season, capped by a Sun Bowl loss to Louisville (35-34).

The Huskies put together a stronger effort in 2025. Washington concluded the regular season at 8-4 and defeated Boise State (38-10) in the LA Bowl in SoFi Stadium.

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