The past few years have brought massive changes to the world of College Football as the landscape continues to shift. NIL and the Transfer Portal were the first dominos to fall as it allowed players to get paid which then brought a form of free agency as players would enter the transfer portal seeking the next big deal.

On Friday, Judge Claudia Wilken finally approved the NCAA House Settlement which brings even more changes to College sports. Colleges can now pay their players directly through revenue sharing, a clearinghouse now has to approve NIL deals over $600, and roster limits will soon be enforced.

All of the chaos and changes in College Football have been difficult to keep up with and the latest set of changes won’t be the last changes we see in the years to come as College Football seeks a set format.

As the sport continues to change, legendary Head Coach Mack Brown appeared on “See Ball Get Ball with David Pollack” where he pitched several massive changes to College Football.

Mack Brown calls for the NCAA to adopt the NFL Model

On the show, Mack Brown gave his suggestions for where College Football should head next suggesting that a model similar to the NFL’s may be the best route. The idea that Mack Brown likes the most from the NFL is the salary cap which he feels should come into effect in College Football.

“I think we should have a salary cap period, and we should definitely have a rookie salary cap. Coaches are calling around anyway and saying, ‘What’s the going rate for a quarterback, a great quarterback,’ so we’re kind of doing that anyway. But if the NFL can do it, then why can’t college do it? And it would be better for the players, it’d be better for the families”

Mack Brown

Mack Brown later went on to talk about how a decision that once was made to benefit the rest of your life was being made to instead benefit the most in the short term which will likely hurt the players down the line.

“We always said it’s a 40 year decision. It’s not four. Well, the last few years, it’s been a one year decision. It’s been a six month decision.”

Mack Brown

The idea of a salary cap in College Football would be the best approach to ensuring that every program is on a level playing field. As things currently stand, programs can take an approach like Texas Tech has taken spending more than most programs could ever imagine in a single year to build a roster.

Where a salary cap may not work in College Football is with some of the issues we’ve seen before the NIL era even began. It’s always been discussed that players have gotten paid under the table and if a salary cap came into place, it could once again bring back that dark area of the sport that is impossible to police.

The current model of College Football is certainly broken in some ways but, there also needs to be some time to get better insights into what the effects have been. Revenue sharing could prove to be a great solution to the issues and it comes with a salary cap in a way as programs have a limit on how much can be distributed to the athletes.

We’re far from the end when it comes to changes to the sport but, with the House Settlement approved, College Football could finally be reaching a moment where the entire landscape isn’t being changed.

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One of the early shifts in mixed martial arts came when dominant American wrestlers entered the game, nullifying strikers and often being able to smother jiu jitsu specialists with their size, strength and dominant top games. Former interim Bellator welterweight champion and current PFL contender Logan Storley believes MMA’s future will see far fewer wrestlers make the transition to the sport thanks to name, image and likeness (NIL) deals at the collegiate level.

The ability of college athletes to make significant money through NIL deals has caused a massive shift in how sports operate at the university level. While splashy deals around “revenue sports” such as basketball and football, oft-overlooked sports have seen an influx of cash for athletes.

Take, for example, NiJaree Canady, the softball player who transferred to Texas Tech and signed a $1 million NIL deal (she just signed a second such deal for next season). Texas Tech made the investment into their program and it paid off with a run to the finals of the Women’s College World Series.

With programs expanding their push for championships to “non-revenue sports” through NILs for elite athletes, Storley — himself a four-time NCAA Division I All-American for the Minnesota Golden Gophers — thinks college careers could be enough for wrestlers to avoid moving to a high-risk career in MMA.

“Right now we’re in a weird time with MMA with NIL money coming in and we’re not seeing as many wrestlers come over,” Storley told MMA Fighting. “NIL has changed a lot. Guys are getting paid a lot of money. So we haven’t seen a ton of wrestlers come over. … Some of these guys are making a million, $1.5 million-with your top recruits, do you come fight after that?”

MMA has never been a guaranteed path to financial security, even if you prove to be a very good fighter, and that has not changed in the current landscape.

Building yourself up on the regional scene to get experience means small purses while also paying to train, and the better the training, the higher the cost.

With the UFC as the end goal for most fighters, with the most prestige and the highest potential pay, most fighters now come into the UFC through competing on Dana White’s Contender Series (DWCS). Impress enough on DWCS and you’ll be offered a UFC contract which pays $10,000 to fight, with a $10,000 win bonus. Assuming three fights per year, all victories, that’s $60,000 annually. And that’s before taxes, fees paid to managers and coaches, specialized diets, basic training costs and gear. Oh and then whatever is left you get to live off of.

Two-time former GLORY light heavyweight kickboxing champion Artem Vakhitov split a pair of kickboxing fights with former UFC middleweight and light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira and earned a contract on DWCS with the hopes of meeting Pereira in a big-money UFC clash in the near future.

Vakhitov then walked away from the UFC contract when UFC officials were not willing to budge on their entry-level contracts, even for a fighter with a built in rivalry with one of their biggest fighters that could be used to sell tickets and pay-per-views.

Secondary promotions have also continued to fall under the UFC’s dominance. Pride, EliteXC, Strikeforce, Bellator, and so on, have all folded over the years, with just PFL and ONE standing as potentially valid places for a top athlete to ply their trade outside of the UFC’s Octagon. And PFL purchased Bellator before not using many of the top athletes that came with the deal, releasing many of them with one, or even zero, PFL fights.

“I think the landscape of MMA has changed,” Storley, who fights in the 2025 PFL welterweight tournament semifinals on Thursday, said. “With Contender Series and less guys on the roster with PFL, Bellator’s gone, it’s changed a little bit. Wrestling has some money, and there’s no security in your early career in MMA. That’s just the truth of it. The first few years are very, very tough, and I think with guys making money over there and going into coaching and coaching roles, you have a little more security.”

For decades, women’s basketball was dominated almost exclusively by UConn and Tennessee, and then, for many years, only UConn’s dynasty thrived.

In recent years, other contenders have emerged periodically, but none have challenged the crown quite as well as South Carolina.

Until this past season, the Gamecocks and Dawn Staley had arguably taken the mantle from the Huskies and Geno Auriemma. Then, UConn returned to the top of the ladder and cut down the nets for the 12th time in program history, keeping this rivalry and battle for the top of the sport in flux.

Slice it anyway, though, and it’s obvious: No. 1 might be up for grabs, but it’s these two heavyweights that everyone is chasing. NIL, the transfer portal and the recent House v. NCAA settlement, which established revenue sharing in college sports, have upended the landscape. However, due to their rich traditions and coaching acumen, UConn and South Carolina have remained mostly unscathed by the upheaval — and even benefited from it.

The Gamecocks and Huskies signed two of the most highly pursued portal players, as Ta’Niya Latson, the nation’s leading scorer, left Florida State for South Carolina, and Serah Williams, arguably the best big in the portal, left Wisconsin to choose UConn.

This leaves every other coach in the nation strategizing and wondering what it will take to truly and consistently usurp perennial powerhouses UConn and South Carolina on the recruiting trail, the hardwood, or in March. Like much of the rest of big-money NCAA sports, women’s basketball coaches are no longer prioritizing only building four-year players but winning with transfers who can be lured with lucrative NIL promises.

As complicated as the modern era of college athletics has become — a record 1,450 Division I players entered the transfer portal after last season — coaches understand they must work within the confines of this new system, which involves the portal acting as a faster on-ramp for roster building. NIL and revenue share are becoming additional incentives for players to consider other programs if they want to succeed.

Fourteen power conference coaches interviewed by The Athletic said they’ve completely altered how they build rosters, recruit and develop talent.

“Coaches are questioning, obviously: Is it even worth it to be in this business? What are we doing? What are we doing if we can’t build a program and you’re starting from scratch every year to build a team without any rules around it?” one power conference coach said. “What are we doing? And why are we doing it?”

(Coaches were granted anonymity to speak freely about their recruiting habits, NIL and the overall climate of the sport.)

“I have to change. I have to pivot and plan for 50 percent attrition,” another power conference coach added. “Time will tell if you can build a program (in this era). If I can’t build a program, I’m not going to be doing it very long.”

Playing time, star roles and scholarships are no longer enough for coaches to retain players. Notable star players like Latson, Olivia Miles (Notre Dame to TCU) and Cotie McMahon (Ohio State to Ole Miss) switched programs.

They were among roughly 300 power conference players who transferred this offseason — an average of about four players per power conference team. More than 20 percent of the transfer pool had already changed schools at least once. Among the 40 returning starters off Sweet 16 rosters, 10 transferred.

Many coaches said this season’s top portal players signed deals of upward of $700,000, and some unheralded underclassmen, due to their longer eligibility, were seeking deals of $ 300,000 or more. By comparison, the WNBA supermax this season is less than $250,000, with only four players receiving it.

Meanwhile, less than a quarter of the league makes $200,000 or more. Yet, at the college level with limited post players in the portal, many coaches said programs needed to offer a premium of that kind to sign even a marginal big.

“If you were a post player in the portal a month ago and you averaged three points a game at the Power 4, most of them were asking for $200,000 plus,” one power conference coach said. “And you’re like, ‘You averaged 2.5 points per game.’ ”

Even highly successful programs are learning they might need to reset expectations after every season, given the uncertainty of attrition and what those defections mean for their own needs from the portal.

Look no further than UCLA. The Bruins appeared in their first Final Four of the modern era and, in a previous era of the sport, would have been considered a prime contender in the 2025-26 season due to the experience returning players gained. Yet, after the Bruins’ successful run, the entire freshman class, as well as Londynn Jones, a 31-game starter, and Janiah Barker, the Big Ten’s Sixth Player of the Year, decided to transfer.

It means UCLA coach Cori Close will be starting essentially from scratch after this core’s graduation, rather than steadily building a program, with backups becoming role players and then starters, that is capable of taking down UConn or South Carolina in the Final Four.

Notre Dame was ranked No. 1 during the season, and despite a late collapse, seemed poised for a strong upcoming season. But after the Irish lost Miles to TCU, freshman key contributor Kate Koval to LSU and two other players, they dropped out of The Athletic’s post-transfer top 25. USC seemingly has prime minutes up for grabs after losing star JuJu Watkins to an ACL tear. Still, Kayleigh Heckle and Avery Howell, two freshmen who figured to be centerpieces next season, entered the transfer portal.

“You had to think about sitting out a year, you had to think about the perception,” one power conference coach said about previous transfer implications. “Now it’s just normalized. If you lost two or three kids in a year, it used to be like, ‘Oh my gosh, what’s wrong at that school?’ And that’s just not the notion anymore.”

Some coaches likened the roster turnover to coaching at the junior college level.

“If I can keep the kid for two years,” one said, “I feel like I’ve won the lottery.”

Although most coaches are frustrated with the lack of oversight and guardrails in place from the NCAA over the past few seasons, they understand that it’s also a shifting reality for them. In this era of limited regulation and hazy guidance, coaches and universities that are quick to adapt have had the upper hand, whether that means getting their collectives more involved (generally seen as acceptable among all coaches) or tampering with athletes (seen as illegal, but not currently regulated as such).

Now, with the settlement finalized over the weekend, actual regulation is taking effect.

As of last Saturday, college athletes were required to report NIL deals worth more than $600 to the newly established College Sports Commission for approval. On July 1, universities can begin making revenue share payments to athletes. The impact of these regulations on athletes’ deals is currently unknown. Still, the NCAA has been clear that the NIL-specific regulation is intended to protect athletes from false deals, not to hinder their earning power.

However, because the settlement had been pushed back — a decision was expected two months ago — universities and collectives were able to front-load deals, which created an arms race across conferences, which drove up the total “cost” of rosters.

The Athletic asked 12 coaches what they expect it would cost, between revenue share and NIL, to build a roster that could contend for their respective conference title. Multiple Big Ten and SEC coaches estimated the cost between $2.5 million and $3.5 million. Multiple ACC and Big 12 coaches said that building a championship roster costs between $1.5 million and $2.5 million. Most of those numbers exceed even the WNBA’s team salary cap of just under $1.51 million.

However, this number is a moving target. With impending legislation, coaches are uncertain about how it may change in the coming seasons, particularly with the establishment of revenue sharing and the creation of the College Sports Commission.

Coaches said that while the leverage has shifted almost entirely to players, there are no safeguards in place for the programs or the collectives that act on their behalf. This movement leaves many coaches working on a year-to-year basis, unsure of what their rosters will look like or how much money they will have to fill potential holes.

“In true professional sports, I know I have this player under contract for four years and I can prepare for that player to go into free agency, or I know I have $200,000 coming off the books ahead of next year. Here, it’s free agency every single year, and the tampering is out of control,” one coach said. “So, please tell me how I do this. Tell me how to manage a roster when we don’t know the rules.”

Regulation around NIL, collectives and revenue share could provide some stability, but even so, coaches expect both tampering and transfer numbers to remain high every season.

From the 2020 high school recruiting class, 17 of the top 25 (and seven of the top 10) players transferred before the end of their college careers, including Angel Reese, Kamilla Cardoso and Hailey Van Lith. In the 2021 class, 13 of the top 25 players transferred, and 18 of the top 25 players in the 2022 class, now rising seniors, transferred.

This attrition has had a ripple effect on how college coaches prioritize high school recruiting. Many staff chose not to send multiple (or any) coaches on the road this offseason for the first high school recruiting evaluation period, valuing hosting immediate impact players over seeing talent who wouldn’t be on campus for a few years.

That signals a significant shift in the overall recruiting philosophy. Five years ago, the lifeblood of almost every program was high school recruiting. Now, the portal offers another option. Multiple coaches said that their focus on high school recruits has decreased from 95-100 percent of their recruiting efforts to somewhere between 50-70 percent. Nearly 80 power conference freshmen transferred this offseason, so coaches also realize that bringing in a freshman doesn’t necessarily mean stability.

As coaches prepare for summer workouts before the 2025-26 season and make plans to attend high school recruiting events, they recognize that their priorities might look different a year from now. Regulations from the House settlement could remove some of the challenges of the past few seasons. Still, coaches will have to navigate a landscape that once seemed unimaginable in college sports.

However, one challenge remains the same: UConn and South Carolina are the hunted.

“The job is just different now,” one coach said. “You just have to make up your mind if you want to deal with the other stuff.”

(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; top photos: Joe Buglewicz, Eakin Howard, Jonathan Daniel / Getty Images)

MANHATTAN, Kan. – Kansas State junior Maximus Martin received First Team All-Central Region recognition Tuesday, as the American Baseball Coaches Association revealed the 2025 ABCA/Rawlings All-Region teams.
 
Martin is one of seven players from the Big 12 Conference named to the All-Central Region First Team, a region compiled of 37 schools. First Team All-Region selections are eligible for ABCA/Rawlings All-America honors, which will be announced Friday, June 13 prior to the start of the 2025 NCAA Division I College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska.

A native of Edgewater Park, New Jersey, Martin is the fifth player in the Pete Hughes era to garner All-Region honors, joining MLB Draft picks Zach Kokoska (2021) and Tyson Neighbors (2023), and first-rounders Jordan Wicks (2021) and Kaelen Culpepper (2024).

In his first season at K-State, the Second Team All-Big 12 selection produced a slash line of .320/.420/.612, compiling 18 doubles and 14 home runs – tied fourth in the single-season records. Martin was one of the league’s top offensive performers, finishing the regular-season in the top-10 in three categories.

 

Martin, who garnered both Big 12 Player and Newcomer of the Week honors, turned in a team-leading 18 games with two or more hits, while he was second with 15 multi-RBI games.

 

On March 10, he became the first Wildcat in school history to be named the Golden Spikes Player of the Week after he registered incredible 2.714 OPS with five home runs and 12 RBI in the Wildcats series sweep of William & Mary.

 

K-State ended its 2025 campaign with a 32-26 overall record, including a record-breaking 17 conference wins to earn its second straight trip to the NCAA Tournament.