FRISCO, Texas — It’s time to talk.

Big 12 media days have arrived, shifting from Las Vegas last year to its traditional spot in Texas. Players and coaches from all 16 teams in the conference are on hand at the Ford Center in Frisco, Texas, for two days of media activities.

Utah will take center stage Wednesday, with coach Kyle Whittingham, quarterback Devon Dampier, offensive tackle Spencer Fano, cornerback Smith Snowden and linebacker Lander Barton on site to represent the Utes.

Dampier was named the Big 12’s preseason newcomer of the year, while Fano and fellow offensive tackle Caleb Lomu were named to the league’s preseason all-conference team. Both awards were voted on by the media.

Whittingham will address the large media contingent at 11:40 a.m. MDT Wednesday from the main podium, before he and his players make the media rounds, including stops at radio stations and ESPNU.

The Utes will cap off the day with a media scrum — the players going first at 4:45 p.m. MDT and Whittingham finishing things off at 5:30 p.m. MDT.

With the offseason Utah had after a 5-7 campaign in its inaugural season in the Big 12, there’s plenty of storylines and questions entering their appearance at the two-day talkfest. Here are three of the hottest topics Whittingham and company will be asked about.

The offensive revamp

It’s a near-guarantee that Utah’s offense is going to be more fun to watch than last year’s.

With no Cam Rising for much of the season, 2024 was a drag, as the Utes’ offense averaged just 329.8 yards and 23.6 points per game. Despite a defense that kept them in every game but two, Utah’s offense — guided by backup quarterbacks — just kept sputtering, game after game.

It was time to rebuild, and Utah went to work, hiring New Mexico offensive coordinator Jason Beck and getting Dampier to come along. Add in an entirely new running back room (headlined by Washington State transfer Wayshawn Parker) and receiver room, and you’ve got a complete revamp.

Dampier, who racked up 2,768 passing yards and 1,166 yards rushing a season ago and scored 31 combined touchdowns, is tasked with reviving Utah’s offense.

Can he adjust well to the step up from the Mountain West and correct some turnover and accuracy issues from last year? Will Beck’s offense, which was the fourth-most productive in the nation and featured some exciting creativity, produce similar results? Can Parker lead the way for Utah’s running backs and continue his trajectory? Can Utah’s wide receiver room produce a few go-to guys?

If even half those things happen, Utah’s offense will be a lot more fun — and productive.

When will Kyle Whittingham retire?

The answer is going to be the same as the last 10 times that Whittingham has been asked about when he is going to retire, but someone will still pose the question. When will Whittingham call it a day?

Retirement speculation heated up last season when Utah officially announced defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley as the program’s coach-in-waiting and Whittingham said at last year’s Big 12 media day that he “probably won’t be sitting here in this chair” when Utah opens the 2027 season against Miami in Las Vegas.

Whittingham was asked about the topic on the “Jim Rome Show” recently.

“I would just answer it this way. As long as I’m excited about coming to work every day, have a ton of energy and am passionate about what I’m doing, and as long as my wife continues to support me — she may have the final say on this one when it’s time to quit,” Whittingham said.

“But as long as I’m excited to come to work every single day and be around these players, that’s kind of what I’m gauging on. If there comes a time I wake up and say, ‘Hey, that’s enough. I’ve had enough. I’ve got no energy left and it’s time for me to go.’ So I guess it is kind of vague, I know, but that’s kind of how I’m approaching it. It’s just a year-by-year basis.”

Revenue sharing and NIL

There’s no question that the college football landscape is completely different from five years ago, from conference realignment to NIL and revenue sharing.

As of July 1, schools can officially share up to $20.5 million per year with athletes — the vast majority of that going to football and men’s basketball.

Utah athletic director Mark Harlan said the Utes will meet that number.

Additionally, NIL deals will now be sent through a clearinghouse managed by accounting firm Deloitte, which will assess those deals and has the ability to approve or deny each NIL deal according to if it meets “fair market value.”

Texas Tech is one Big 12 school that has been making waves recently, reportedly spending over $10 million on a transfer portal class that ranks as one of the best in the nation. That momentum spread to recruiting, where the Red Raiders are reportedly set to pay at least $775,000 per year for three years to five-star offensive tackle Felix Ojo.

Utah, meanwhile, brought back offensive tackles Fano and Lomu, along with key players on defense like Snowden and Barton. Add in all of the transfers — Dampier and Parker were hot commodities on the transfer portal market — and Utah has been spending money, too.

What does Whittingham think of the new era of college athletics, where schools can now directly pay players? We’ll find out.

Elite 2028 wide receiver recruit Brysen Wright has inked his first trading card NIL deal, On3 has learned. Represented by ESM, the 6-foot-3.5, 210-pound wide receiver has signed with Wild Card.

Wild Card has released a box of college football trading cards previously, but Wright’s signing is the company’s first foray into the high school space. Leaf Trading Cards and Topps have been aggressive in signing up top high school talent in recent years.

“This is Brysen’s first trading card partnership,” his agent, Dan Everett of ESM, told On3. “The five-figure deal pays the soon-to-be 10th grader a first-round NFL wide receiver rate per autograph.”

ESM currently represents a slew of college quarterbacks, including Georgia’s Gunner Stockton, Iowa State’s Rocco Becht, Ole Miss’ Austin Summons, Mississippi State’s Luke Kromenhoek, Tennessee’s Jake Merklinger and Miami’s Carson Beck.

Wright already holds scholarship offers from Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Ohio State, Oregon, LSU, Alabama, Miami and Texas, among others. He impressed in OT7 this spring and turned heads at the OT7 Playoffs last month. The 2028 prospect tallied seven total touchdowns over the OT7 Playoffs, including three in his final game of the tournament. He camped at Ohio State in June.

“He’s incredibly physically developed at this early stage and is a smooth mover at his size,” Rivals’ Director of Scouting and Rankings Charles Power recently said. “The Jacksonville native is the only 2028 prospect to hold an early four-star rating.”

The Jacksonville (Fla.) Mandarin star played alongside Jaime Ffrench in 2024. Wright hauled in 31 passes for 646 yards and scored eight touchdowns as a freshman, including a four-catch, 114-yard performance with two touchdowns.

“Brysen Wright may be the best amateur wide receiver in the country not named Jeremiah Smith,” Wild Card’s vice president of talent acquisition, Jay Claud, said in a statement. “And he is 14.”

Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark has re-ignited the debate over the expansion of the College Football Playoff and how it should be structured. He leaned into his preferred format choice just a few minutes into his opening address at the conference football media day event.

What format is the Big 12 proposing?

Yormark said, “5-11 is fair,” adding, “We want to earn it on the field. It might not be the best solution today for the Big 12, but long term, knowing the progress we’re making, the investments we’re making, it’s the right format for us. And I’m doubling down today on 5-11.”

Download the SAN app today to stay up-to-date with Unbiased. Straight Facts™.

Point phone camera here

The term “5-11” refers to a format with five automatic bids for conference champions and 11 at-large bids, filling out what would be a 16-team playoff field starting with the 2026 season. The Big 12 and ACC are the two conferences proposing this format in an attempt to head off what the Big Ten and the SEC believe is the best solution.

The Big Ten and the SEC hold the most sway in expansion talks, and they want to see four automatic qualifiers earn bids from each of their leagues, along with two each from the Big 12 and the ACC. Adding Notre Dame as an automatic would leave just three at-large bids in that scenario.

The initial 12-team playoff kicked off in 2024 and ended four weeks later with the National Championship game between Ohio State and Notre Dame. Ohio State won the title, 34-23. The format featured four teams that earned first-round byes after winning their conference championships. All four teams lost their first matchups in the playoffs.

What do some of the coaches think about expansion?

During the Big 12 media interview sessions, Kansas State head coach Chris Klieman didn’t have an opinion on how the playoff should be set up going forward but brought up another expansion concern.

The wear and tear on the athletes is real,” Klieman said. “I don’t think we help that at all by knocking the roster size down. I don’t think that was a good move at all, but that’s control what you can control. So, that’s going to be a concern when you have fewer players playing that amount of games. But I’m excited about what I was able to watch last year of the playoff and the potential expansion here in another year.”

The Big 12 Conference had only one representative — league champion Arizona State — in the inaugural playoff last year. The Sun Devils lost to Texas in the quarterfinals in double overtime. Yormark said that reaching a point where several teams are in the discussion each year is how his conference can maximize whatever format the new playoff may take.

“I think parity matters, and I think ultimately over time, and it’s hopefully sooner than later, there’ll be a couple of our schools that will emerge as elite schools that are always part of the conversations at the highest levels, and that’s what we’re working towards,” Yormark said. “But it starts with parity and being competitive top to bottom. And I think we’re there.”

The conference opens play with a rivalry game on Saturday, August 23, between Kansas State and Iowa State in Dublin, Ireland.

What are the next steps in the expansion process?

Yormark believes the Big 12 is the “deepest conference in America” and said that in addition to schedule strength, “new metrics” will be added to the selection process to ensure fairness.

“I have a lot of faith in the selection process,” Yormark said. “They are doing a full audit to figure out how they can modernize and contemporize and how they use data and how certain metrics can be more heavily weighted.”

He also said he was confident conference commissioners will eventually settle on the 5-11 model. They have until December of this year to decide which 16-team format to adopt.

Offseason movement has slowed in college basketball with the calendar turning to June. That said, next season’s cycle of the portal already apparently has a big name set to be in it.

Princeton’s Caden Pierce is to be a very early entry into next spring’s cycle for the NCAA Transfer Portal. That’s according to reporting today by ESPN’s Jeff Borzello that Pierce will be redshirting this upcoming season to preserve his final year of eligibility to now spend playing for a new program.

“NEWS: Princeton star Caden Pierce, the 2023-24 Ivy League Player of the Year, plans to redshirt next season in order to finish his degree before entering the transfer portal and playing his final season elsewhere in 2026-27, he told ESPN,” Borzello tweeted out this afternoon.

Pierce, a native of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, has spent the past three seasons playing for Princeton with 90 appearances made as a full-time starter for the Tigers. In that career in New Jersey, Pierce has averaged 11.9 points (48.7% FG, 32.7% 3PT on 1.0 makes), 7.9 rebounds, 2.5 assists, and 1.0 steals per game, which made him the team’s leading rebounder in every year he had there and second-leading scorer in each of the past two.

Pierce developed from being Ivy League Rookie of the Year to being selected each of the past two years as All-Ivy. That included being Ivy League Player of the Year and First Team All-Ivy as a sophomore when he posted his career-best numbers of 16.6 points (54.6% FG, 34.2% 3PT), 9.2 rebounds, 3.2 assists, and 1.2 steals per game.

Over his three years in the program, Princeton went 66-25 (.725), including 30-10 in conference play to win three conference titles, two regular-season ones and one league tournament, in the Ivy. That led to one appearance in the NCAA Tournament in 2023 as the Tigers were a No. 15 seed who upset No. 2 Arizona and No. 7 Missouri to reach the Sweet 16, the furthest they’ve advanced in the modern era, before losing to No. 6 Creighton. Pierce, a freshman at the time, averaged 6.3 points (35% FG) and 8.7 rebounds during that run.

Pierce will now be another significant loss for the Tigers since the end of last season. Their most notable was the transfer of Xaivian Lee (Florida), a Top-40 overall transfer and No. 10 PG in the portal per On3’s 2025 Top Transfer Portal Players, after consecutive years on the All-Ivy First Team. Darius Gakwasi also entered his name into the portal, with no commitment since, back in March.

There’s a full other season to play before the portal will open again in college basketball in eight or nine months come March. It’ll be then when Pierce will eventually become available for his next school with this big news on his future.

To keep up with the latest players on the move, check out On3’s Transfer Portal wire. 

The On3 Transfer Portal Instagram account and Twitter account are excellent resources to stay up to date with the latest moves.

For the first time in either of its college football video game series, EA Sports incorporated real-life coaches into “College Football 26.” But as over 300 real-life coaches were included in the game, those who got to play “College Football 26” on its early release day recognized that two of the most well-known coaches in the sport weren’t among them.

North Carolina’s Bill Belichick and Colorado’s Deion Sanders declined to lend their likeness for “College Football 26” to EA Sports, The Athletic reported. Miami (Fla.) coach Mario Cristobal and Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz are also among the head coaches who aren’t in “College Football 26.”

Belichick’s decision not to be featured in “College Football 26” shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. During his 24 seasons as head coach of the New England Patriots, Belichick frequently declined EA Sports to use his likeness for the “Madden” video game series. Instead, the game developers would have a random character as the head coach of the Patriots.

As for Sanders, he typically lent his likeness to EA Sports for the “Madden” series during his playing career. The reasoning for why Belichick, Sanders and other coaches who didn’t lend their likeness for “College Football 26” is unclear.

Similar to what EA Sports did with Belichick when he opted not to appear in the “Madden” video game series, coaches who declined to appear in “College Football 26” were replaced by random characters. “Hector Luna” is the coach of UNC in place of Belichick, while “Kirk Patrick” is Colorado’s coach in place of Sanders, according to On3. 

While the most prominent Belichick isn’t in “College Football 26,” there is a member of the family in the game. UNC defensive coordinator Steve Belichick allowed EA Sports to use his likeness in “College Football 26,” the game’s principal game designer, Ben Haumiller, said in June. 

“Bill Belichick, historically, famously was not in ‘Madden’ for a lot of years. We chased him forever. We even had coach [John] Madden reach out to him,” Haumiller told the “Split Zone Duo” podcast. “So, when this opportunity came around, that was a joke internally, like, ‘Are we going to get Bill?’ And they never did. 

“When it came to Belichick, there were some questions of how he would show up. Ultimately, we were never able to come to a resolution with him. Hopefully, that changes.”

Unlike his father, North Carolina defensive coordinator Steve Belichick will appear in “College Football 26.” (Photo by Peyton Williams/Getty Images)

Steve Belichick, the eldest of Belichick’s two sons, became UNC’s defensive coordinator shortly after his father became the program’s head coach. He was Washington’s defensive coordinator under Jedd Fisch last season, marking his first year of coaching college ball. He previously spent several seasons on his father’s coaching staff with the Patriots.

Stanford interim coach Frank Reich, Utah State’s Bronco Mendenhall, Western Kentucky’s Tyson Helton, Jacksonville State’s Charles Kelly, UAB’s Trent Dilfer, Louisiana-Monroe’s Bryant Vincent, New Mexico’s Jason Eck and Kent State’s Mark Carney are the other FBS head coaches who reportedly declined to lend their linked for “College Football 26.”

As several head coaches declined to share their likeness for “College Football 26,” a handful of the game’s top coaches appeared on one of the covers for the video game. Ohio State’s Ryan Day, Penn State’s James Franklin, Georgia’s Kirby Smart, Arizona State’s Kenny Dillingham, Ole Miss‘ Lane Kiffin and Oregon’s Dan Lanning each appeared on the cover of the deluxe version of “College Football 26.”

The full release for “College Football 26” will take place on Thursday, but some users were able to start playing the game on Monday if they pre-ordered the deluxe version. 

Want great stories delivered right to your inbox? Create or log in to your FOX Sports account, follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily.

Get more from the College Football Follow your favorites to get information about games, news and more