Controversy is an annual part of the Men’s College World Series, and this year’s edition was no exception. So much so, the NCAA was forced to issue a detailed statement explaining the latest incident.

The NCAA issued a three paragraph statement addressing the controversial double-ejection of Coastal Carolina head coach Kevin Schnall and first-base coach Matt Schilling in the first inning of Sunday’s Game 2 in the best-of-three Men’s College World Series final vs. LSU.

“NCAA Playing Rule 3-6-f-Note 1 states that balls, strikes, half swings or decisions about hit-by-pitch situtations are not to be argued,” the NCAA statement read. “After a warning, any player or coach who continued to argue bals, strikes, half swings, or a hit-by-pitch situation shall be ejected from the game.”

You can read the full statement below:

Big-time sports properties are selling for big bucks, and you have questions…

From Willie

If a private equity firm was given the opportunity to buy and college football program, which school would have the highest financial evaluation?

I’m not as sure as everyone else that the PE revolution is coming to college football. It’s not only that most programs are run by public universities. I’m struggling to see how a PE firm would extract the exorbitant return on investment it would expect from a large cash infusion.

The quickest way to make more money on college football is with the next media rights deal. But those take place at the league level, not at the school level (except for Notre Dame). And the only way the media rights money truly levels up is if all the leagues get together and sell their rights as one. (Which they might not even be allowed to do at this point.) 

But Willie brings up an interesting question during the same week that the Buss family agreed to sell the Los Angeles Lakers for $10 billion. What programs are the college football version of the Lakers or the Dallas Cowboys or the New York Yankees? What teams would fetch the highest price if they suddenly went on the market?

I think the top three is fairly easy to determine.

1. Ohio State

The Buckeyes are the biggest guarantee of high ratings — seemingly independent of opponent. Ohio State has a massive, passionate alumni base and sells out a 105,000-seat stadium every game. The team is never bad. 

Buckeyes fans are nodding, but they’re also sad because under the current deal, this is why Ohio State has to play so many noon games. When Fox knows that even Marshall-Ohio State is going to do a big number, that becomes a Big Noon game even though the outcome isn’t really in doubt.

2. Texas

It helps that the Longhorns have finally turned their resource advantage into results on the field, but let’s be real. A lot of people enjoyed watching Texas lose when the Longhorns struggled (by their standards) through the 2010s. Texas is a huge brand with a wealthy, motivated alumni base. If the Longhorns were for sale, the price would be massive.

3. Notre Dame

The Fighting Irish have networks fighting to televise their games, and they sell out every visiting stadium or neutral site. There are plenty of sidewalk fans who love the school, but there are even more people who hate-watch the Irish. The fact that Notre Dame is so relevant on the field again makes the Irish even more valuable now.

After that, it becomes more difficult to parse. Programs like Alabama, Georgia, Michigan and Penn State would occupy the next (still very expensive) tier. Then would come a list of other Big Ten and SEC schools that routinely pack huge stadiums and deliver consistent ratings.

But I think this exercise will fortunately remain strictly in the realm of the hypothetical. The schools will hopefully remain smart enough to keep these tremendously valuable assets to themselves and not sell off any pieces.

From Derek in South Bend

This email is too long to read, but I just want to plant the idea here, because you get into it some, but I think you’re not quite appreciating the value of the 4+4 College Football Playoff model for the Big Ten and the SEC.

You are absolutely right that the SEC might get five or six teams into the playoff in a 5+11 model.

Recall that a conference gets around $4 million for each team in the CFP. That might grow a little if the playoff expands, but not by much. The marginal benefit of going up from 4 to 5 or 6 in a given year is only $4 to $8 million for the whole conference.

It’s possible that also increases the odds of you advancing if you have more teams. But let’s face it. The 5th and 6th best SEC teams are not going to advance far and not going to win the national championship. So just getting more teams in gets you really only a little more exposure and a little more cash.

But imagine you had four guaranteed spots as a conference. You can suddenly do all kinds of things with it.

The SEC goes from eight to nine conference games — you’ve discussed this. Who cares if half the conference (more or less) gets an extra loss? You can light those losses on fire because you still get four in.

And suddenly, the SEC media rights package is more valuable–I assume, way more valuable than (sometimes) $4 million a year.

— B1G creates a play-in tournament at the end of the year (and you’ve hinted at this). Again, it’s not that Iowa deserves a shot at the playoff. It’s that the B1G can create a new package of games to sell, again way more than (sometimes) $4 million a year.

— SEC and B1G challenge. They can now schedule an intersectional rivalry for a series of years with prime matchups. And then you can sell that new package. Again, no big deal if you lose out of conference.

I know you’ve mentioned some of these possibilities, but I just want to point out, all three are (1) way more valuable than the 5th or 6th team entering the playoff some years, (2) you can use all of them as possible new revenue streams, and (3) they are feasible because you have four guaranteed slots you can do whatever you want with, and you’re not jockeying with other conferences in the regular season to try to schedule strategically of tough but not too tough.

In any case, I think the point is, giving up a 4+4 model is literally tens of millions of dollars each year that the B1G and the SEC would be giving up, and it’s a reason why it’s still being discussed.

Either Derek is running a burner account for Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti or he has a future as a TV executive.

But the factor to remember about the CFP debate over multiple automatic bids (the Big Ten’s preference) and more at-large bids (everyone else’s preference) is it isn’t only about money. Power is as important or more important in this particular negotiation.

Yes, the SEC would make more money by agreeing to the format that allows four automatic bids each for the Big Ten and SEC, two each for the ACC and Big 12 and one for the highest-ranked champ of the other leagues. That system also would include three at-large spots, and presumably, the Big Ten and SEC believe their teams would claim the bulk of those. This format would allow the SEC to easily shift to nine conference games with no fear of losing playoff spots, and Disney/ESPN would, in turn, increase its payout to the SEC. 

But even though we’re assuming the Big Ten and SEC will somehow meld together in the coming years into some sort of super league, that isn’t necessarily how those inside the conferences view it. SEC leaders want their league to be considered the most powerful and most influential when the next CFP deal comes around. Not coincidentally, that happens just before the SEC’s current media rights deal expires. While there are potentially bigger financial gains there, the power dynamic still might mean more. 

If the sport is heading for further consolidation, someone will have to run the more consolidated entity. Neither the leaders of the Big Ten nor the SEC want that to be someone who isn’t them. But they also probably don’t want to run it together. In their minds, someone has to come out on top.

And that’s what all of this is really about. Because if it were about money, this format would have been decided long ago.

From Ryan

I was just catching up on yesterday’s show and the Diego Pavia discussion got me thinking about  eligibility restrictions. I believe you are both correct about Pavia’s NFL prospects. He’s likely a late round pick or UDFA and hopefully he’ll catch on somewhere. If that prediction comes true, he will make considerably less money than he is making now at Vandy and may only survive for a short time in the league. 

My question is when do you think we will see a player sue over eligibility restrictions? 

It seems like you could make a pretty solid argument that the NCAA is violating the Sherman Act and restricting players’ earning potential by imposing eligibility limits. 

Diego Pavia seems like the perfect candidate for this argument and he could, in theory, stay in college football for several more years while making millions of dollars each season as opposed to trying his luck in the NFL where he might not even be able to make a 53 man roster. 

For the record, I don’t want this to happen and believe it would be bad for the sport but I think it’s an argument that could be won from a legal perspective. (Side note: I’m not a lawyer but I, like Ari, have watched a lot of Law & Order)

What do you guys think? Will we ever see this and if so, when?

We’re actually seeing it over and over, Ryan. Multiple lawsuits have been filed since the Pavia ruling, but the courts have not been as unanimous as they seem to be in the cases regarding NCAA rules that restricted players’ incomes. 

Just last week, a judge denied former Tennessee basketball player Zakai Zeigler’s request for an injunction that would have allowed Zeigler to keep playing in college after exhausting his eligibility. Zeigler has appealed. 

In April, a North Carolina judge denied a request for injunctive relief from several former Duke football players who also challenged the NCAA’s eligibility rules.

Pavia’s case is different because it involves his time in junior college and whether the NCAA should consider 2020 an exempt year because the NCAA paused the eligibility clock for every athlete playing in the NCAA during the 2020-21 school year. The newer crop of cases tend to involve players who simply want more years of eligibility.

In antitrust law, a court may rule that a certain restriction is justified if there is a pro-competitive reason for it. In these cases, the schools and NCAA might be able to convince a court that limiting participation to the traditional college window makes the product more appealing to the consumer. 

The schools and NCAA failed miserably when they argued that denying players money made the product more appealing, but I suspect they might have better luck with this argument. Either that, or the courts will disagree and we’ll someday see a 42-year-old Johnny Manziel suiting up for a Sun Belt school.

OMAHA, Neb. — On a hair dryer of a Sunday afternoon in the town that every June becomes de facto Baton Rouge North, the LSU Tigers didn’t merely win a Men’s College World Series national championship. Nor was it merely their eighth overall.

The title they really won was that of Greatest Ever College Baseball Program.

“I don’t think there’s anyone here that’s going to argue with you on that,” said designated hitter Ethan Frey, from Rosepine, Louisiana, pointing to the 24,734 decidedly Cajun fans as they sang along to Garth Brooks’ “Callin’ Baton Rouge.” “What I know is that when we go to work every day, we do it trying to make the Tigers that came before us proud. Hopefully we have. They built it. We build on that.”

The building where they do that work, Alex Box Stadium, is draped in trophies and artifacts that are all evidence for their best-ever argument. All over the building where they did their work on Sunday, Charles Schwab Field, it is easier to find LSU photos and logos commemorating so many Tigers moments in Omaha than it is to find a hot dog.

“This city feels like home to us,” said former LSU coach Skip Bertman, sitting in a wheelchair on the field, confetti scattered over his shoulders as he shook hands with the players as they came off the stage where they had just received their trophies. He is the man who pulled LSU baseball out of the swamp of irrelevance in the 1980s. “When we come here, we bring a lot of folks from home, but there are also so many people who live here that wear our colors because they grew up watching us play during so many summers. That’s special.”

LSU does not own the record for most national championship rings. That belongs to USC. But none of the Trojans’ dozen championships have come during this century. Their last win was in 1998, and that was their first in 20 years. No one will ever replicate what head coach Rod Dedeaux’s teams did, winning seven of their titles during an 11-year span from 1968 to 1978. But Bertman’s teams won five in 10 years, between 1991 and 2000. Now current head coach Jay Johnson, who has said the best part of the job is his friendship with Bertman, has won two in three seasons.

LSU hasn’t won the most MCWS games. That mark is owned by Texas, with 88 to LSU’s 47, which ranks fifth all time. But the Horns hooked the last of their six national titles a full two decades ago, and their last finals appearance was in 2009. Today’s Texas program is very good. LSU’s is great.

The Tigers own none of the Omaha longevity records, such as that all-time win total or number of appearances made (20, ranked fifth). As the innings wound down on Sunday, the purple and gold crowd that crammed into the shade of the Charles Schwab Field concourse stood beneath a series of massive wall plaques commemorating the teams that have participated in and won every MCWS played in Omaha, beginning in 1950, that line the entire cavernous hallway. The listings, five years at a time, begin down the first-base line and continue all the way around to third. Not until past the halfway point do you see the first LSU logo. And that’s what makes the Tigers’ unparalleled run of college baseball success so, well, unparalleled.

USC made its first appearance in 1948, and Texas made its debut one year later, participants in the last two Series played before the event was moved to Omaha. They have compiled their prodigious numbers over the span of 75-plus summers. LSU didn’t crash the party until 1986. It won its first title five years later.

So, all that the Tigers have accomplished has taken place over a lengthy yet comparatively compressed period of time. And that makes their résumé all the more impressive.

Those 20 Omaha visits, those eight national titles, that 8-1 record in MCWS finals, those 47 MCWS wins, have all happened over the span of 40 years, which have also happened to be the most tumultuous, shift-changing, impossible-to-predict decades when it comes to doing business in any collegiate sport, but especially college baseball.

And we haven’t yet mentioned the conference regular-season and tournament titles — 12 of each — won in the baseball battle royale that is the SEC, a Frankenstein created in a laboratory that LSU helped construct. Oh, and did we tell you that the Tigers have been led to Omaha by four different coaches, three of whom won national titles.

“I think that adaptability is underrated as a key to long-term success, and frankly, when you have had success, it is so much harder to convince yourself to make changes as you go,” said Ben McDonald, the program’s first truly transcendent superstar. The righty led the Tigers to two of their earliest Omaha appearances, and in the midst of the second visit was drafted first overall by the Baltimore Orioles. The next superstar was 2023 MCWS hero hurler Paul Skenes. “You’re thinking, ‘Why would we change what we are doing? What we’ve been doing is working!’ But Jay is the perfect example of a guy who understands how the game works now. How the transfer portal works. How to coach kids of this generation. Just like Skip did.”

There have been challenges. When Bertman retired and became full-time athletic director in 2001, he chose longtime assistant Smoke Laval as his successor. Laval got the team back to Omaha twice but never won a title and failed to make the NCAA tourney field in his last season. Bertman still says that dismissing his friend was the most difficult time of his career. Paul Mainieri made the program an Omaha regular again and won the 2009 national championship, but his era ended with a polite but difficult departure. Johnson, who has been a Division I college head coach since 2014, has deftly navigated the spaghetti pile of roster construction that is the transfer portal/NIL age.

After winning the 2023 MCWS, LSU lost 13 players to pro baseball, an SEC record. Last year there were eight LSU pitchers drafted. The team started this season with a largely new roster, and it took a while to jell, going 19-11 in conference play. It’s largely forgotten now, but the Tigers spent the first round of this NCAA tournament in a wrestling match with regional 4-seed Little Rock.

But when it clicked, it clicked. And LSU won the national title by going 2-0 against a Coastal Carolina team that had won 26 in a row. The same team that suddenly cut LSU’s longtime four-run lead to only two in the closing frames of Sunday’s contest, even after the Chanticleers had lost their head coach to a first-inning ejection.

“They had to make us sweat a little bit, didn’t they?” Bertman, 87, said with a laugh. “But in the end, they added to the legacy. And it sure feels like Jay has them in a position to keep adding to it for a while to come.”

Everything they do now is just more icing on the King Cake. College baseball’s kings. A crown that now feels indisputable.

PFF gave its top 10 (plus an honorable mention) units heading into the 2025-26 season. Penn State football made it into a majority of the lists. The only area the Nittany Lions didn’t break through was with their linebackers. Every other offensive and defensive unit, though, earned one of the 11 places available according to PFF.

PFF ranks Penn State’s quarterbacks at No. 7

Drew Allar brings in both praise and criticism. Regardless, he was still up to be a first-round pick in the 2025 NFL Draft and will more likely than not be one of the first 32 picks in the 2026 NFL Draft.

NFL Network’s Daniel Jeremiah posted on X, “I’ve been studying [Allar] the last couple days. There are areas to clean up but the good is really good.”

Allar is coming off a season without reliable wide receivers. He threw for 3,327 yards and 24 touchdowns on 262 completed passes and had a 66.5 completion percentage. However, he also threw eight interceptions. PFF wrote:

“He’s my No. 4 returning quarterback in college football. Allar was the sixth-most valuable quarterback in the nation this past season, according to our wins above average metric, and his 21 big-time throws were a top-20 mark in the nation as well.”

Heading into 2025-26, the starter has a better wide receiver group that made it onto PFF’s list as well and the NCAA’s No. 1 running back duo of Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen.

Behind Allar is redshirt freshman Ethan Grunkemeyer. While Penn State making this list is almost exclusively because of Allar and his NFL probability, Grunkemeyer was the No. 8 quarterback of the class of 2024 and a four-star recruit.

PFF ranks Penn State’s running backs at No. 1

To no surprise, Singleton and Allen are leading PFF’s running back ranking. Getting these two seniors to return is huge for the Nittany Lions. Both came into the program ready to set records, and they;ve continued to do so for the past three years. Their fourth year at Penn State should be nothing but star-quality. PFF wrote:

“The Nittany Lions were the only team to have two players on my top 10 returning running backs list in seniors [Singleton] (No. 3) and [Allen] (No. 6). Among returning Power Four backs since 2023, Singleton has the most receiving yards (682) and is the second-most valuable one according to PFF’s wins above average metric. Allen is second among returning Power Four rushers with a 92.5 rushing grade and 2,000 rushing yards since 2023.”

The Nittany Lions also have Corey Smith, Quinton Martin, and Jabree Wallace-Coleman behind their leading duo for worst case scenario. All three were four-star recruits of their respective classes.

PFF gives Penn State’s wide receivers an Honorable Mention

Penn State’s wide receiver group needed adjustments, and head coach James Franklin made them. In fact, the three starters will all be new transfers to the program heading into 2025-26. Since we have yet to see them in action with the rest of the Nittany Lions, ranking this position any higher than an honorable mention isn’t justifiable. PFF wrote:

“Their starting trio of wide receivers will be made up entirely of transfers: Syracuse’s Trebor Pena, Troy’s Devonte Ross and USC’s Kyron Hudson. Pena’s 475 yards after the catch last season were the ninth most among Power Four receivers, Ross ranked seventh in the Group of Five with 1,050 receiving yards and Hudson tied for fourth in the Big Ten with 13 contested catches.

“While losing superstar tight end Tyler Warren certainly hurts, Penn State has done an incredible job of recruiting at that position. The Nittany Lions have brought in a top-five tight end recruit in each of the past three recruiting classes and still have a solid veteran for the room in redshirt senior Khalil Dinkins.”

PFF gives Penn State’s offensive line an Honorable Mention

Penn State has five returners for the 2025-26 season, including Vega Ioane who is easily the star of the group. However, the other four can’t be overlooked. Nick Dawkins, Nolan Rucci, Drew Shelton, and Cooper Cousins each bring experience and talent to the starting five.

All of the units on PFF’s list noted top players in the line, making Penn State’s honorable mention seem a little low considering how solid the starting five is together with four of them having started together previously. There’s a “certainty” factor that arguably puts Penn State above some other schools ranked. Choosing one school that made the top 10 over the Nittany Lions would be No. 8 Miami, which even PFF has some questions about:

“The left side of Miami’s offensive line is a bit more uncertain. Markel Bell is the favorite to be Carson Beck’s blindside protector at left tackle and is a massive player at 6-foot-9, 340 pounds who started five games for the Hurricanes at left tackle last season. If he’s not up to the task, former five-star recruit Samson Okunlola could be worth a shot as a redshirt sophomore. The left guard will likely be redshirt senior Ryan Rodriguez, who started the opening game last year but suffered a season-ending ankle injury after 38 snaps.”

PFF ranks Penn State’s defensive line at No. 5

For Zane Durant and Dani Dennis-Sutton to be the reason why Penn State made it into the top five of this list is impressive, especially since PFF noted the lack of depth the Nittany Lions have in this position. PFF wrote:

“While the Nittany Lions might not have the depth of other schools on this list, they still place in the top five for the two superstars they have in [Durant] and [Dennis-Sutton]. Durant is my second-ranked defensive tackle in the nation after leading them all with 14 tackles for loss/no-gain last year. His 28 pressures were also a top-25 mark among FBS interior defenders. Dennis-Sutton could be the third-straight Penn State edge defender to go in the first round of the draft.”

PFF ranks Penn State’s secondary at No. 10

A.J. Harris, Elliot Washington II, Zakee Wheatley, and Zion Tracy allowed Penn State’s secondary to just scrape the back-half of this ranking at No. 10. What puts the Nittany Lions in a good position with their secondary is their depth. Players who aren’t, like Washington II, still have a positive impact on the field. PFF wrote:

“[Harris] finished his sophomore year as one of the 10 most valuable cornerbacks in the nation according to PFF’s wins above average metric while only allowing 0.76 yards per coverage snap. On the opposite side is junior [Washington II], who was one of the 10 most valuable Big Ten corners last season, according to PFF’s WAA metric, despite not even starting for the Nittany Lions.”