theathleticuk
Its mid-July.
Have you picked up a copy of your favorite preseason magazine yet? Because prognostication season is fully upon us.
Which predictions will be thrown back at me a month into the season? Penn State, Clemson and LSU all had preseason national championship hype last year.
They all went 7-6, and two of them fired their coaches.
Which team(s) do you think this could happen to this year? Tyler F.
I know thats going to happen to some teams again this year, but theyre harder to identify.
Though all those teams were ranked highly in the preseason based on their personnel, there was still cause for skepticism given their coaches.
James Franklin couldnt beat top-10 teams, Dabo Swinneys program had been backsliding and Brian Kelly had underdelivered at LSU up to that point.
Advertisement Looking at the Vegas preseason national title favorites, I have full confidence in the coaches at Ohio State (Ryan Day), Notre Dame (Marcus Freeman), Oregon (Dan Lanning), Georgia (Kirby Smart) and Indiana (Curt Cignetti).
The only one in that upper tier that gives me pause is Texas under Steve Sarkisian.
Last years preseason No.
1 team went 10-3 but lost to a 4-8 Florida team and needed overtime to survive 5-7 Kentucky and 5-8 Mississippi State.
I do believe this years team is much more formidable on paper.
Arch Manning has a full year as a starter under his belt (though I still think expectations are too high), and Sark upgraded his supporting cast in a big way.
But the Horns are not without questions.
Everyone assumes Will Muschamp will come in and field a vintage Will Muschamp defense, but he hasnt called plays in six years.
Long story short, if you told me Texas would end up being this years Penn State, Id be less than shocked.
Any of the others could fall flat, too, but for different reasons.
Even then, it would probably be more of a 10-3 disappointment than a 7-6 disaster.
Indiana: New QB Josh Hoover just doesnt have it, and the defense takes a big step back without stalwarts Aiden Fisher and DAngelo Ponds.
Notre Dame: With no Jeremiyah Love or Jadarian Price and a reshuffled offensive line, the Irish find they cant line up and run the ball.
Ohio State: Turning over most of the starting defense two years in a row, coupled with a brutal schedule, finally catches up with the Buckeyes.
Oregon: Dante Moore, who had more stinkers last year than most remember, takes a step back without OC/QB coach Will Stein.
Georgia: Frankly, the Dawgs showed a lot of cracks last season (lack of explosiveness and a non-existent pass-rush), and Kirby Smart hasnt been able to stack unbelievable recruiting classes like he could pre-NIL.
Advertisement Hmm.
Just writing that out makes me concerned for Georgia.
On second thought, perhaps Georgia, not Texas, could be this years Penn State/Clemson/LSU.
Youve got $25 million in NIL to build a team.
Everyone is available.
Build a starting 22.
Joseph A.
Sorry to break this to you, but $25 million probably isnt enough to field a de facto All-America Team at this point.
Realistically, youd have to pick and choose which spots to fill with a superstar and which to fill with an average Power 4 starter.
But thats no fun.
So, for these purposes, Im going to load up at the most important positions until I run out of money rather than try to budget for all 22.
In most cases, the dollar figures are ballpark estimates of what the guy is making this year, based on the value of their position, and I fully concede some might be terribly wrong.
QB: Drew Mestemaker, Oklahoma State ($3.5 million) WR: Jeremiah Smith, Ohio State ($4 million) WR: Charlie Becker, Indiana ($2 million) RB: Kewan Lacy, Ole Miss ($1.5 million) RB: LJ Martin, BYU ($1.5 million) OT: Trevor Goosby, Texas ($2 million) OT: Carter Smith, Indiana ($2 million) DE: Dylan Stewart, South Carolina ($2.5 million) DT: A.J.
Holmes, Texas Tech ($1.5 million) DT: Tyrique Tucker, Indiana ($1.5 million) CB: Leonard Moore, Notre Dame ($1.5 million) CB: Zabien Brown, Alabama ($1.5 million) Fortunately, Mestemakers number is public, and its a bargain compared with most of the top transfer QBs (who are making $4-6 million).
So I saved enough to splurge on Jeremiah Smith, who is likely the highest-paid receiver by a considerable margin.
No question, this portion of the lineup is loaded, but Id need to fill my interior O-line, tight end, second edge-rusher (theyre expensive!), and all the linebackers and safeties with scrubs.
My hope is our offense will be unstoppable, while my defense mostly gets shredded over the middle but masks it with strip-sacks and interceptions.
Advertisement How do you think the new age-based eligibility rule will impact the transfer portal? Will players who dont get much playing time freshman year be more patient and stay for a second season, knowing there are more seasons to play? On the other end, do you think it will escalate bidding wars to stay for a fifth season rather than declare for the draft? Steve A.
In football, Im not sure it will make much difference in the portal.
Most high-level recruits arent going to enter as freshmen planning to stay in college for five years.
Their goal is to reach the NFL, so theyll still want to see the field as soon as possible.
But the draft angle will be fascinating especially this year.
In theory, the majority of the 2027 draft class should be 2023 recruits now entering their fourth seasons, bookended by a decent number of fifth-year seniors and a handful of three-and-outs.
But suddenly, all those fourth-year guys have an extra season of eligibility if they choose to take it.
What percentage of projected Day 2/Day 3 guys will now stay in school to improve their stock, knowing they can make good NIL money as proven starters? I suspect it will be most of them, which, if so, could significantly water down the pool available to NFL teams.
Mind you, we just went through this to some extent with guys who got a free year in 2020, but the first couple of classes who benefited from it were making very little money, if any.
Super seniors were the exception, not the norm.
Now were moving into an era where not playing five seasons could be the exception.
Once again, this will most directly affect current high school players.
The NCAA roster limit remains at 105 players.
If a coach believes hes going to keep, say, 15 of his 25 upcoming seniors for another year, he will have to take 15 fewer newcomers next offseason, whether recruits or transfers.
Hes likely to lean toward building an experienced roster rather than taking a big freshman class.
But all of this is a guess on my part.
Whatever happens in 2027 could be a one-off.
Roster trends will normalize once the new system has been in effect for more than one year.
You warn every year not to get excited about Nebraska.
Any reason to be excited for 2026? Justin Have you seen their new uniforms? The Huskers might go 7-6 again, but theyll look good doing it.
Advertisement When will we begin to see NIL fatigue? Phil Knight, Cody Campbell, et al.
have seemingly bottomless wells of money, but many donors and boosters do not.
At what point do these people grow tired of gifting hundreds of thousands a year to help land players, only to see their school go 7-5? Cristophe H.
Hi Stewart crystal ball this: All teams are part of a college or university.
Almost every institution is hurting financially right now.
At the same time, expenses for college sports are increasing exponentially.
Where does this buckle? Can TV revenue really support this model, whether its a Super League or something else? Anonymous I grouped these questions under the umbrella of What happens when the money runs out? Never say never, but skeptics have been speculating about donor fatigue for five years, and all weve seen is roster numbers go up and up and up.
Mind you, most schools are less reliant on donors to fund NIL since the House settlement, given their $20-plus million rev share pot and the increasing use of MMRs (Learfield, Playfly, etc.) or apparel partners (Nike, Adidas, etc.) to provide deals to athletes.
But the high-end programs cant fund both a $30 million football roster and a $20 million basketball roster without help from boosters.
People keep waiting for these fat cats to treat their investments in their favorite schools sports teams with the same risk-reward calculus they would in their everyday business, but I just dont think thats ever going to happen.
Fandom is not a rational thing.
So far, the only pullback weve seen comes when donors no longer trust the coach.
(See: Florida State.) Otherwise, theyre basically playing fantasy football.
Meanwhile, despite whatever financial pressures hang over universities, a growing number of them are still subsidizing their athletic departments to cover mounting costs.
Even top-of-the-food-chain schools like Michigan, UCLA and Washington have recently finagled their balance sheets to cover athletic deficits.
This should be the part where I say something like, All of this is unsustainable, right? In a normal business, yes.
But Im not sure casual fans appreciate just how powerful football or basketball success is at attracting students.
No amount of marketing campaigns comes close to the exposure a school gets from a deep run in the College Football Playoff or March Madness.
Indiana saw its freshman applications and enrollment jump nearly 10 percent last school year after the Hoosiers breakout 2024 season, and Id imagine those numbers will be even higher this year.
Do that year after year, and a university can completely transform its academic profile nationally.
And make much more money by charging out-of-state tuition.
Its telling that when the Pac-12 imploded, both Stanford and Cal did not hesitate to join the ACC at a discount all but ensuring they will rack up enormous deficits rather than drop down to a lesser conference.
Both esteemed universities are subsidizing their athletic departments, which suggests theyd rather pay a higher cost to compete than endure the brand hit that would come from no longer competing at the highest level in sports.
Advertisement But ideally, everyones athletic departments would be self-sustaining.
And theres no reason they cant be.
As big as those billion-dollar TV deals already seem, college football has been leaving oodles and oodles more revenue on the table.
Its the second-most popular sport in the country by a healthy margin, and yet the combined P4 and CFP media deals total far less (around $4 billion) than the NBAs ($6.9 billion).
And all of the major pro leagues are far savvier at maximizing dollars from sponsorships, merchandise sales and premium seating.
Were starting to see a few brave souls dare to corporatize their athletic operations, be it Utah ripping off the private-equity band-aid or Kentucky converting its operations into an LLC.
My guess is these arrangements will eventually be standard, once everyone finally admits they are operating full-on professional sports franchises by a different name.
Which team do you foresee having an equal chance of finishing either 3-9 or 9-3? Robert W.
Vanderbilt.
Who knows whether last season was the start of a golden era for the Commodores or the end of one.
The World Cup has the top four national teams in the semifinals, and theyre great matchups for TV executives, with France facing Spain and England facing its old nemesis, Argentina.
What matchups are the TV suits dreaming up for the CFP semifinals? Luigi The World Cup has been a ratings behemoth for Fox and Telemundo 40 million-plus for U.S.-Belgium and Mexico-England, around 20 million for England-Norway, and so on.
But the semis airing at 3 p.m.
ET on a weekday are less than ideal for TV.
Much like the CFPs Thursday- and Friday-night semis in mid-January.
I bring that up because ESPN had what should have been an ideal TV foursome in 2024-2025 with Notre Dame-Penn State and Texas-Ohio State, yet those games averaged 19.2 million viewers, ominously down 17 percent from the last four-team CFP when those games were on Jan.
1.
Viewership then dropped another 13 percent in 2025-2026 for Miami-Ole Miss and Indiana-Oregon.
And now, in Year 3, the semis are another full week later than before (Jan.
14 and Jan.
15) because there wasnt enough time off this year between the quarterfinals on Saturday, Jan.
1, and the following Thursday/Friday.
And one of them is now on TNT.
Yet another reason its insane to me that three of the four P4 commissioners want to cram another 12 Playoff games into an already unfavorable postseason calendar.
But perhaps this rivalry doubleheader could rev up those Nielsen meters.
Advertisement Ohio State vs.
Michigan.
Theyre the two most reliable TV brands in the sport, in arguably the sports biggest rivalry, playing an unprecedented postseason rematch.
LSU vs.
Alabama.
I also considered Texas-Oklahoma, but the Lane Kiffin factor puts this one over the top.
I realize people loathed postseason rematches in the past, but the climate is much different now when teams have to earn their way in.
No one complains when Duke-UNC or Kentucky-Louisville make it to the Final Four.
Has PJ Fleck peaked at Minnesota? He had one 12-team-worthy playoff season in 2019, but has not sniffed anything close to that since.
Looking at their 2026 schedule, it seems like another 7-5 season, where most of the fanbase will be satisfied with a victory over Wisconsin and a bowl berth.
Karl T.
Minnesota may be the poster child for how expectations are changing for everybody in the 12-team era.
The Gophers have won at least eight games in four of the last five seasons, and Fleck has reached a bowl every year since 2018, save for the weird 2020 season.
By Minnesota standards, thats pretty darn good.
But if youre a Minnesota fan watching Indiana win the national championship, or SMU and Texas Tech make the Playoff, its fair to ask: Why not us? In fact, programs like Minnesota (and Iowa and Northwestern) are exactly why Tony Petitti wants to expand to 24, to give Fleck and his players something to aspire to beyond the Rate Bowl.
Back in the 12-team present, this does feel like a prove-it year for the Gophers.
For the first time in forever, the program has a promising young quarterback in Drake Lindsey, who started every game last season as a redshirt freshman.
Darius Taylor has been a productive running back for three seasons.
Defensive end Anthony Smith is a preseason All-American, and both linebacker Maverick Baranowski (what a name) and cornerback John Nestor are at least All-Big Ten caliber.
As a sign of the times, Fleck also lost his best player of the past two seasons, All-American safety Koi Perich, to Oregon.
Minnesota is never going to outbid Oregon for a star player.
It would be easy to see that as evidence that the Gophers are forever doomed to 8-5 in the new era.
But no fanbase should think that way in a post-Indiana world.
Yes, the biggest spenders will occupy a majority of the CFP bracket, but theres still plenty of room for coaches who can out-evaluate their peers en route to 10 wins.
But we have nine years of evidence to suggest Fleck isnt at that level.
How do you wade through so many stupid questions week after week? Al_Czervik_III C.
Very few of my readers questions qualify as stupid.
Its more that many of them are too long.
But after doing this for 20-plus years, Ive become the Lionel Messi of skimming.