In talking to sources, JMI, in conjunction with the UK basketball staff, is requiring prospective student-athletes to sign away NIL rights that would normally be untouched at any other school. A highly structured brand partnership agreement is something uncommon at other schools, but it is something Kentucky has pursued in accordance with JMI, making this arrangement unique to the current landscape of college basketball recruiting.

“I will say that Kentucky is the only school I’ve dealt with that even has anything remotely like this in their contracts,” one anonymous source said

LAS VEGAS — Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark publicly backed his ACC counterpart Tuesday after Notre Dame’s athletics director tore into the league over the Irish being left out of the College Football Playoff.

Notre Dame AD Pete Bevacqua has openly questioned the ACC’s support after Miami — an ACC member — jumped the Irish for the final at-large CFP berth. Bevacqua told “The Dan Patrick Show” on Monday that Notre Dame’s relationship with the ACC sustained “permanent damage.”

His decision to go after the league so forcefully, and so publicly, didn’t sit well with Yormark.

“Pete’s behavior has been egregious,” Yormark said Tuesday during a panel at the Intercollegiate Athletics Forum in Las Vegas. “It’s been egregious going after [ACC commissioner] Jim Phillips when they saved Notre Dame during COVID. We all knew, and it was very transparent — [CFP committee chairman] Hunter [Yurachek] was very transparent about it, that as Notre Dame and Miami got closer together, head-to-head would be a factor.”

Notre Dame AD says ACC did ‘permanent damage’ to relationship with push for Miami over Irish

Robby Kalland

In 2020, Notre Dame was granted temporary ACC membership to play a full football schedule during the shortened season.

“I think [Bevacqua] is totally out of balance in his approach, and if he were in the room, I’d tell him the same thing,” Yormark said Tuesday.

In the penultimate CFP rankings, BYU sat between Notre Dame and Miami but fell to Texas Tech in the Big 12 Championship Game, giving the committee room to take a hard look at the Hurricanes and Irish. Miami’s season-opening win over Notre Dame became the decisive wedge that pushed the Hurricanes into the field.

Bevacqua argued the ACC “singled out” two-loss Notre Dame as it worked to elevate Miami.

“We were mystified by the actions of the conference to attack their biggest business partner in football and a member of their conference in 24 of our other sports,” Bevacqua said Monday. 

Phillips rejected that assertion.

“The University of Notre Dame is an incredibly valued member of the ACC, and there is tremendous respect and appreciation for the entire institution,” Phillips said in a statement Monday. “With that said, when it comes to football, we have a responsibility to support and advocate for all 17 of our football-playing member institutions, and I stand behind our conference efforts to do just that leading up to the College Football Playoff Committee selections on Sunday.

“At no time was it suggested by the ACC that Notre Dame was not a worthy candidate for inclusion in the field. We are thrilled for the University of Miami while also understanding and appreciating the significant disappointment of the Notre Dame players, coaches and program.”

Notre Dame declined a bowl invitation after the school was left out of the playoff.

Yormark was a proponent for BYU’s inclusion in the playoff, but said he understood why the Cougars were not included in the field after suffering a second loss to Texas Tech.

“I think overall, they did the right job,” Yormark said. “It’s progress over perfection. The selection process will never be perfect. And our goal as commissioners and the management committee is how do we improve upon it?”

LAS VEGAS — The ACC has found itself in the College Football Playoff crossfire in two of the past three seasons, and now the league is pushing for swift changes to the format.

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips on Wednesday called for an immediate expansion of the 12-team playoff and said he wants the CFP to examine whether it should scale back the weekly rankings released during the five weeks leading up to Selection Sunday.

The window to expand before the 2026-27 season is closing fast. ESPN granted CFP leaders an extension until Jan. 23 to finalize a decision. The prevailing expectation had been that the playoff would stay at 12 teams because the 10 FBS conferences and Notre Dame have been unable to reach consensus on a 16-team (or larger) model.

“I would prefer not to wait another year, but I only speak for the ACC,” Phillips said Wednesday after a speaking engagement at the Intercollegiate Athletics Forum.

Notre Dame’s fury over its exclusion from this year’s CFP helped change the tone. Athletic director Pete Bevacqua accused the ACC of pushing for Miami to be selected over the Irish. Notre Dame has a football scheduling partnership with the ACC and is a full member of the conference in 24 other sports. Bevacqua said Monday the school’s relationship with the ACC suffered “permanent damage” because of what he believed were ACC attacks on Notre Dame’s résumé.

Conference commissioners met Tuesday in Las Vegas to discuss the playoff, but no format agreement emerged. Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark told CBS Sports he also prefers expansion now rather than waiting until 2027-28. The SEC remains focused on a 16-team format, an SEC spokesperson told CBS Sports.

“We have good teams being left out,” said Phillips, “I think we have that responsibility to make sure that we get to a number that we feel better about, that either we believe anybody after that wouldn’t necessarily win [a national championship], or we at least cut into that margin. And I don’t know what we can get done in the next six weeks, but we’re committed to staying together and working together and working with the management committee to figure this thing out.”

Phillips reiterated his opposition to any format that awards disproportionate automatic qualifiers to the power leagues. The Big Ten recently proposed a 16-team model that would give both the Big Ten and SEC four AQs each, while the ACC and Big 12 would receive two apiece.

The Big Ten and SEC control the votes needed to set the future format, but the sides have yet to reach an agreement on any structure beyond 12 teams. The Big Ten floated a 24-team model earlier this fall, but it failed to gain SEC support — though several SEC athletic directors remain intrigued by the concept, industry sources told CBS Sports.

Phillips: CFP’s weekly rankings ‘disruptive’

Phillips is also pushing to reevaluate the CFP’s weekly rankings shows on ESPN. The committee’s top 25 is currently unveiled in each of the five weeks before Selection Sunday. The group drew criticism this year for keeping Miami below Notre Dame until flipping them in the final week, citing the Week 1 head-to-head result.

“The weekly shows draw a lot of interest. They’re incredibly disruptive and very hard for the schools and the conferences,” Phillips said. “And I understand why we do the shows, and it’s part of the agreement with ESPN. but it causes great anxiety throughout. We have to find a better way moving forward as it relates to some of that, some of that pre-information.”

Phillips said it is unclear whether any adjustments can be made under ESPN’s contract, and commissioners did not address the issue during Tuesday’s meeting.

College football’s weekly reveal schedule is unique. By contrast, the NCAA basketball tournaments release a top-16 preview one month before Selection Sunday, before the field is selected in March.

“You’ve gotta believe that those 16 teams are gonna be in the field at 68, right?” Phillips said. “So there’s less pressure there, and it’s a fun thing and kind of a way to create interest with a month to go before Selection Sunday.”

ACC will explore changes to tiebreaker protocol

Part of the disruption in the ACC’s playoff push this season was the logjam at the top of its regular-season standings. Miami, the highest-ranked ACC team in the CFP, did not reach the ACC Championship because of the league’s five-way tiebreaker policy. Virginia and Duke met in the title game, with the five-loss Blue Devils emerging as the ACC champion, placing more uncertainty on whether the power conference would be left out of the CFP completely this month.

Phillips wants to explore tweaking the tiebreaker policy and implementing CFP rankings into the protocol.

“Who knew that we would get to the seventh tiebreaker with five teams that were 6-2?” he said. “It’s just the stars aligned in a way that nobody predicted, but no one should throw shade on Duke. They earned the right. Everybody had a chance to be part of that tiebreaker, and they played great. They won the league. They held the trophy. So I was super happy for Duke. It worked out the way it was supposed to work out relative to that’s the tiebreaker we put in place, but we’ll come back together. It would be smart of us to now also have a CFP maybe component in there, in the tiebreaker.”

The ACC eliminated divisions in 2023, before the additions of Cal and Stanford in an expansion to 17 teams, further complicating a large league without divisions.

Phillips suggested all conferences follow similar tiebreaker protocols, citing the power conferences all set to play nine conference games starting next season. The ACC and SEC recently voted to move from eight to nine conference games.

“Maybe there’s something that allows less confusion about what everybody’s tiebreaker is in college football,” Phillips said.

In this day and age, college football programs are generally inclined to accept massive donors from virtually any stripe of life. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that a story bounced around about a South American cartel funding NIL for one school. That story wasn’t true, but a recent story could make for bedfellows nearly as strange as that one.

The G5 Playoff Teams

Tulane and James Madison have dealt with a period of massive disbelief following each school earning a College Football Playoff berth. While one Group of Five team is all but certain to gain a CFP spot, a second team was a surprise. Because 8-5 Duke snuck into the ACC title, James Madison jumped the Blue Devils in the CFP pecking order and claimed a second G5 spot. Many have argued that neither Tulane nor James Madison belong in the Playoff.

Pavia’s wager

But Vanderbilt QB Diego Pavia took his dig and turned it in an interesting direction. The Vanderbilt passer, who has an NIL valuation of $2.5 million per On3, made a particularly bold offer. Pavia’s team at 10-2 finished just outside the CFP picture, had a different reaction to the CFP selection controversy. Specifically, Pavia offered to put his money where his mouth is.

It’s a 12-team Playoff. Put every team that is good… This G5 team, if a G5 team wins it, I would donate whatever I got in NIL back to that team. I would do that if a G5 team ever wins it.

Diego Pavia

A tough road for Tulane and James Madison

Admittedly, Pavia’s cash is probably safe. Tulane is currently a 17.5 point underdog to Ole Miss in its first round game, and James Madison is a 21.5 point underdog against Oregon. ESPN’s FPI gives the Green Wave about a 1 in 6 shot to win their game and the Dukes a just under 1 in 8 shot to win. Even then, a winning G5 team would have to plow through two more games, with the first coming against a top four foe– Texas Tech in the case of James Madison and Georgia in the case of Tulane.

Differing Vanderbilt Messages

Pavia’s consternation runs contrary to his own coach’s comments. In a refreshing recent turn, Clark Lea told reporters that Vandy missing the Playoff was “no one’s fault except our own.” It’s safe to say that Pavia felt a bit differently, and in fact made his multi-million dollar wager against the relevance of the Group of Five teams. Considering that Pavia himself came from a Group of Five team at New Mexico State, he of all people should have realized that in the new era of college football, anything can (and probably will) happen.

Following the release of the 2025 College Football Playoff bracket along with the end of the sport’s regular season, it’s now the month for debate. In the aftermath of a more controversial CFP field than the first 12-team version a year ago, athletic directors, head coaches, conference commissioners and Paul Finebaum are all lobbing grenades at one another.

The drama has focused in South Bend ever since the relase of Sunday’s Playoff bracket, which had Miami, not Notre Dame, sneaking in as the final at-large bid. Of course, the Hurricanes ultimately made the last-second leapfrog of ND thanks to a second bad BYU loss to Texas Tech in the Big 12 title game while Miami’s head-to-head win was the final difference-maker.

To say the Irish are upset would be describing the situation with extreme grace. Shortly after the field was set, Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua dressed his wagon and made quite the media tour, stopping by Dan Patrick to take shots at the ACC while, overall, sharing several messages to the public about how poor and unfair he felt Notre Dame was treated during this year’s selection process.

While watching some of those clips and discussing the Notre Dame fallout from their missed CFP bid on Wednesday morning’s episode of First Take, ESPN college football analyst and SEC Network host Paul Finebaum dumped criticism on the way Bevacqua and Notre Dame have handled this saga.

“Pete Bevacqua has said a lot of things; he hasn’t backed up anything,” Finebaum said. “I mean, he just threw a bunch of rocks at the street. But he didn’t touch anything. If he wanted to make a statement, say, ‘Hey, we’re getting out of the ACC, whatever it costs, whatever the legalities.’ But he didn’t do that. He just made a bunch of empty threats.”

Finebaum makes the point that if Bevacqua is going to attack the ACC and the CFP committee and its chair, who’s an SEC athletic director — all these various important parties in college football — then he better have a reason. For now, though, he sees all this uproar from Bevacqua as pretty much shouting into the wind if it isn’t followed up by any serious action.

“And I think, as a result, Notre Dame has lost all credibility in this matter,” Finebaum added of the Irish. Sure, did Notre Dame have legit complaints about the whiplash nature of their ranking vs. Miami over the final weeks? Perhaps. But ultimately, the Fighting Irish lost to both of the CFP opponents who they played, and beat only one team in the final top-25 rankings.

As Finebaum and others would say, Notre Dame had their chances. A path to the national title game isn’t some birthright. Even with an expanded field, the Irish should have to earn their way in if they aren’t going to win a conference, and in 2025, they unfortunately came up just short.

More on College Football HQ

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Bellagio Resort & Casino played host to an all-star cast of history’s greatest football legends and the sport’s most promising student-athletes during Tuesday night’s 67th National Football Foundation (NFF) Annual Awards Dinner Presented by Las Vegas.
 
More than 1,800 people attended, and countless more watched on ESPN+ as the star-studded 2025 NFF College Football Hall of Fame Class received college football’s ultimate honor. The NFF also honored 16 of the game’s top student-athletes, who collected postgraduate scholarships as members of the 2025 NFF National Scholar-Athlete Class Presented by Fidelity Investments. More than 50 previous NFF Hall of Fame inductees returned, and 125 colleges and universities sent representatives to attend the fabled affair.

Urban Meyer, the third-winningest coach in Division I history who led Ohio State to a national championship, three Big Ten Conference titles and seven wins over Michigan during a seven-year tenure as head coach, was among the class of 22 inductees: 18 first-team All-America players and four standout coaches.

Meyer coached the final game of a coaching career that places him alongside legends on Jan. 1, 2019 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. His Buckeyes defeated Pac 12 champion Washington, 28-23, to cap a 13-1 campaign.

Meyer’s Ohio State Buckeyes were, for seven seasons, on top of the college football world. The team won the inaugural College Football Playoff national championship in 2014 and won Big Ten Conference titles in 2014, 2017 and 2018. His teams never finished worse than first in the Big Ten’s divisional standings, and his Buckeyes were dominant in Big Ten games with a best-ever 7-0 record vs. Michigan and a 54-4 overall record in Big Ten games, including an NCAA record 30 consecutive conference victories.

His Buckeye teams were 83-9 overall, including the sixth unbeaten/untied season in school history in 2012 (12-0), a record-tying 14 wins in 2014 and the two longest win streaks in school history: 24 and 23 games.

Meyer’s 17 seasons as a head coach featured a record of 187-32 that positions him with the third-highest winning percentage in college football history at .853, trailing only Hall of Fame coaches Knute Rockne and Frank Leahy.  

Off the field, Meyer’s development of players included “Real Life Wednesdays,” a series of speakers – CEOs, money managers, pro athletes, etc. – who addressed the team in life experiences and pursuits to ensure they were prepared for life after football.

Beyond football, Meyer has made a lasting impact through civic service, serving on the boards of the Veterans Golfers Association, Folds of Honor, and the Tim Tebow Foundation. He and his wife established the Urban and Shelley Meyer Fund for Cancer Research at Ohio State’s Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Meyer earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Cincinnati (1986), lettering one season (1984) with the Bearcats as a defensive back. While launching his coaching career as a graduate assistant with the Buckeyes, he earned his master’s degree in sports administration from Ohio State in 1988. Meyer’s coaching career also includes assistant positions at Illinois State, Colorado State and Notre Dame. He was the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2021.

He is a member of the Utah Athletics Crimson Club Hall of Fame, the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame, and the Ashtabula County Football Hall of Fame. He currently serves as a host and analyst on FOX’s Big Noon Kickoff.

Ohio State Head Coaches in the College Football Hall of Fame (8)

Name – Years at Ohio State   Inducted

Urban Meyer – 2012-18        2025

Jim Tressel – 2001-10           2015

John Cooper – 1988-2000      2008

Earle Bruce – 1979-87           2002

Woody Hayes – 1951-78       1983

Francis Schmidt – 1934-40    1971

John Wilce – 1913-28           1954

Howard Jones – 1910            1951