Former Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany once famously predicted that the Big Ten’s universities would drop down to Division III if the day ever came that schools paid their athletes.
Well, that day came on Tuesday, and Ohio State and Michigan have not yet joined up with Mount Union and Albion. But hey, the week is young.
Stewart! I hope you are doing well. Pick the four players who will go to New York City as the Heisman finalists in December. Please! — Jorge A.
That sounds like a futile endeavor given that there are always a couple of guys no one saw coming. See Ashton Jeanty. Or Max Duggan. Or Kenny Pickett. Or Kyle Trask. (Raise your hand if you have zero recollection Kyle Trask was a Heisman finalist in 2020.)
Instead, let’s phrase it as the four with the *best chance* of finishing as a Heisman finalist.
• Ohio State receiver Jeremiah Smith. History says I shouldn’t put this much confidence in a receiver, but this is not your typical receiver. In fact, Smith, only a sophomore, may be the second-most recognizable returning player in college football. And he plays for a team that’s in a big showcase TV game every week. Plus, we’re not saying he has to win the Heisman, just place. Just like another highly touted Buckeyes receiver, Marvin Harrison Jr., did just two years ago.
• Texas quarterback Arch Manning. You guessed it – he’s the most recognizable returning player, even having barely played. You can already tell this is going to be like Tim Tebow at Florida, where Arch’s every little sneeze makes the SportsCenter Top 10. And I do think he will be very good. The reason I don’t have him No. 1 is because the bar for him is already so impossibly high that it might take just one dud performance for everyone to turn on him.
• Clemson quarterback Cade Klubnik. I have Klubnik this high for the same reason I had Clemson as the most likely repeat conference champion last week – he’s not going to have much competition in the ACC. Something will have gone terribly wrong for Dabo Swinney if the Tigers aren’t playing in Charlotte in December with a CFP berth either already locked up or at stake. And if so, Klubnik, last seen throwing for seven TDs against SMU and Texas, will be The Guy there.
• Oklahoma quarterback John Mateer. I strongly suspect Mateer is about to take the country by storm just the way he took the Palouse by storm last season. For one thing, he’s extremely fun to watch, with his quick release and uncanny ability to not get tackled. He’ll get a lot of credit if he helps the Sooners turn things around. Also, he’s a bit of a character who’s going to give some memorable postgame interviews.
How many times while listening to Joel Klatt’s interview with Tony Petitti did you want to throw up? Between “We don’t want to be handed anything” (except for four automatic bids), “12 teams (in the Playoff) is not enough” and wanting 16 teams so that if the Big Ten’s No. 3 or 4 seed loses a Big Ten play-in game they’d have a “safety net?” Yuck. — Vinny from Kewaskum, Wis.
First of all, I’m glad he finally did an interview on the subject, even if it was with Big Ten state media. (At one point, Joel referred to Greg Sankey’s schedule-strength presentation to the media in Destin as the SEC’s “propaganda packet.”) But it mostly confirmed what I’d long suspected: Tony is a pro-sports exec who’s out of touch with actual college football fans.
Either that or he managed to find the five of them who are absolutely jacked to see an 8-4, sixth-place Iowa team play for an automatic CFP berth the first weekend in December.
At one point, speaking of this year’s Week 1 Texas-Ohio State showdown, he says, “As great as college football is — and it’s great — there’s just more on the table we can do. I think fans want to see more of these (strong) non-conference games early in the season.” He’s definitely right about that.
And yet, his entire model is based on the notion that non-conference games will not count toward those automatic berths.
“If you’re qualifying for the CFP off your conference record, and then play-in game, the fact that you play a tough SEC or ACC or Big 12 team and maybe get beat on the road, or whatever the result is — that might impact your seeding down the road, but it’s not going to impact your access,” he said.
Somewhere in heaven, Keith Jackson is stabbing his eye with a fork. How many hundreds of regular-season games did that man call where the national championship was on the line for one or both teams? Now, it would be: “Welcome to the banks of the Olentangy, where the stakes for No. 1 Texas and No. 2 Ohio State couldn’t be higher: One of these teams maybe, possibly will get a lower seed four months from now.”
I realize the sport’s margin for error has already increased with a 12-team field, but as of now, if Ohio State loses in Week 1, it puts the Buckeyes in a hole. Whereas in Petitti’s mind, Ohio State could lose to Texas 59-0 and it will have zero bearing on its season. So long as the Buckeyes finish in the top six in the Big Ten – which the program has done in all but one season this century – it will play for a CFP berth in early December.
Simply put, that is not college football. It’s more like the NBA, where you can finish the regular season 39-43, but as long as you make the Play-In Tournament, you can theoretically win the whole thing. Not even a diehard NBA fan would tell you the NBA regular season is appointment television.
Regarding the House vs. NCAA settlement, isn’t the $20.5 million revenue share cap just elevating the floor? If Ohio State, Texas or whomever wants a QB and it’s going to cost $5 million, but they already spent the $20.5 million, don’t they simply go back into the NIL space to get that money? Let’s not kid ourselves about the NIL clearinghouse actually policing these top-end deals. — Scott S., Rhinelander, Wis.
Opendorse, the NIL agency whose software many schools use to track their athletes’ deals, published a pretty jaw-dropping report this week that projects total NIL spending by schools, collectives and commercial entities to reach $2.75 billion in 2025-26. If every Power 4 school spends the full $20.5 million in rev-share (and many of them won’t), that would only account for about half that number. Which means there’s another $1 billion-plus in the ecosystem waiting to find its way to athletes.
And I have no doubt the schools will find a way to get it to them.
Early indications are that the schools and collectives are taking the Deloitte thing seriously (even if I’m not). Several have either disbanded their collective (Ohio State, Georgia, Colorado) or redefined its role. But if the early messaging is any indication, schools are about to become much more aggressive in finding their athletes legit outside deals that pass the Deloitte smell test. Texas, Georgia and Ohio State announced partnerships with Learfield to form in-house NIL companies that will broker deals between players and brands. More will follow.
Meanwhile, the Grove Collective at Ole Miss remains independent of the school, but now has a marketing subsidiary to negotiate corporate partnerships on behalf of the athletes they sign. Which I take it to mean, they will go sign a $2 million sponsorship deal with Oxford Widget Company, and then when Lane Kiffin needs $2 million for an edge rusher, that edge rusher magically becomes the new spokesperson for Oxford Widget Company. Think of it as a more innocent NIL version of Walter White’s car wash.
Note, a lot of these announcements have been giving me déjà vu to 2021-22, when schools first tried to do their own in-house NIL ventures but quickly got rendered obsolete by collectives. But back then the notion of paying college athletes was still seen as taboo, which likely caused some trepidation by legit businesses. Four years later, athlete influencers are all over social media, plugging a wide variety of brands. And not just in football and basketball.
Plus, I’m sure every small-business owner on Ohio State’s season-ticket list will be getting a call.
Stew, do you think there’s any merit to Tony Petitti’s argument that auto-bids based on conference standings would incentivize better non-conference scheduling? Because I don’t buy it. — Jim S.
It could. But it could also incentivize Sark to sit Arch Manning after the first quarter of the Ohio State game.
Where I’m from, games that don’t count toward the standings are generally referred to as “preseason.”
Where do you see Pitt this year? It’s one of the only teams with multiple returning All-Americans (linebacker Kyle Louis and running back Desmond Reid). The Panthers started out 7-0 last year before injuries just decimated them in the second half. How competitive can they be in the ACC if they get the Eli Holstein from the first half of last year? — Nick, Philadelphia
Boy did Pitt have a strange season last year. One minute, the Panthers are 7-0, garnering CFP sleeper buzz, and then-freshman Holstein looks like a breakout star. Then they get killed at SMU and never win another game. But injuries were a big part of the Panthers’ demise. Holstein, Reid and several offensive linemen all missed games in November, when an offense that averaged 42.3 points per game in its first seven games fell to 21.2 in the next five.
The thing to like about Pitt going into this season is its continuity, starting with a healthy Holstein behind center. Reid quietly finished No. 5 nationally in all-purpose yards last season (154.9 per game). And this figures to be another stingy Pat Narduzzi defense led by a bevy of proven playmakers in the front seven, most notably Louis (101 tackles, 15.5 TFLs in 2024) and Rasheem Biles (82 tackles, 14.5 TFLs).
My biggest concern for Pitt, though, is Narduzzi himself. That may sound strange to say about a head coach now going into his 11th season at the school. But outside of that one special 11-win season in 2021, it’s been largely underwhelming. The Panthers have finished above .500 in ACC play just twice in the past six seasons, and 5-11 over the past two.
The good news is he seems to finally have an innovative OC who he trusts in 32-year-old Kade Bell, and DC Randy Bates is back for his eighth season. And he has a lot of veteran leaders on this team. If I’m a Pitt fan I’d be disappointed if the Panthers win fewer than eight games.
Enjoyed the article on Sac State’s aspirations to move up to FBS but the article, to me, really never answered why neither the Pac-“12” or the Mountain West were showing much interest? Sacramento is a top 20 media market and the Hornets seem to make a lot more sense than Texas State to the Pac or NIU to the MWC. — Scott F.
Sac State has a lot to pitch, but “history” and “track record” are not among the selling points. Most schools that have made the move up from FCS to FBS recently have proven they can compete at a high level across multiple coaches.
The program had never made the FCS playoffs prior to former coach Troy Taylor’s arrival in 2019. He had a nice run, reaching the field in each of his three seasons (the Hornets did not compete in 2020). After Taylor left for Stanford, successor Andy Thompson kept the streak alive for one more season, before falling back to 3-9 last year. (He followed Taylor to Stanford last offseason, before Taylor was fired.) And while first-year coach Brennan Marion is making quite the splash in recruiting, he has yet to coach a game.
Those leagues may see it as too risky to bring in a program that might come in and drag down the quality of the conference if the move proves to be premature. Boise State, Fresno State, et al, left the Mountain West in part to get away from the annual also-rans that drag down their schedule strength. The new MWC isn’t exactly swimming in history and tradition, and, in fact, added UC-Davis, itself only a recent up-and-comer, as a football-only member. Maybe that’s a more realistic path.
But also, there’s the question everyone in college sports is asking, and which I tried and failed to answer — where is the money coming from? An athletic department that made just $100,000 in media revenue and reported a modest $836,000 in donations last year suddenly has the cash to make Marion ($750,000) and his staff ($2.7 million) the highest paid in FCS? Or to spend $4 million on this season’s football roster? Much was made of a group of business leaders, dubbed the “Sac12,” raising $50 million, but those are pledges – spread out over 10 years – contingent on FBS membership.
Needless to say, Sac State president Dr. J Luke Wood has some skeptics to win over. But if his vision begins taking hold, I would not be surprised if the school gets that call soon enough. The Pac and MWC will undoubtedly want to keep growing.
At what point will colleges start pushing to list athletic scholarships as a part of NIL compensation? — Joe, Jacksonville
At whatever point they want to start missing on recruits.
Once upon a time C-USA was the best non-BCS conference, but look at it now: Losing teams to the Sun Belt, and almost entirely made up of recent FCS teams. Why did it happen this way, and why is nobody talking about the fall of this once fairly mighty conference? — Dan M, Washington, D.C.
I cover this stuff for a living, and even I did a double-take when I got the e-mail Tuesday (July 1) that Delaware and Missouri State had officially joined Conference USA.
Is Stony Brook next?
The C-USA heyday you’re referring to was more than 20 years ago, when Louisville was fielding top-10 teams under Bobby Petrino, Gary Patterson had it going at TCU and Southern Miss was still one of the better non-BCS programs. (They never should have fired Jeff Bower.) Much of what happened from there was out of the league’s control. The ACC kept raiding the Big East, so the Big East/American kept raiding C-USA. Between 2005-12, it lost almost every original member plus a few of their replacements.
But one self-inflicted wound was the bizarre TV package it created in the mid-2010s that gave it a bigger presence on the short-lived American Sports Network as well as beIN Sports than on ESPN, which paid the schools next to nothing. Conversely, the up-and-coming Sun Belt went all in with ESPN, which, along with the additions of strong FCS programs such as Appalachian State and James Madison, basically usurped C-USA in status.
Case in point: In the 2011-13 realignment wave, three Sun Belt schools (Western Kentucky, Middle Tennessee and FAU) left for C-USA. A decade later, three C-USA schools (Marshall, Old Dominion and Southern Miss) left for the Sun Belt.
So here we are, in this brave new landscape, where, as of July 1, the new C-USA lineup is: Liberty, Western Kentucky, Jacksonville State, UTEP (for one more year), Louisiana Tech, FIU, Sam Houston, Middle Tennessee, New Mexico State, Kennesaw State, Delaware and Missouri State.
On the bright side, the league may boast the best name in FBS this season: Western Kentucky quarterback Maverick McIvor. A real-life Friday Night Lights character.
Hey Stew: What if the ACC and the Big 12 made a trade? ACC gets: Cincinnati, West Virginia and UCF. Big 12 gets: Stanford, Cal and SMU. Who says no? — Andy J., Columbus, Ohio
It makes way too much sense.
Stanford and Cal get to reunite with Arizona/Arizona State/Colorado/Utah, plus frequent nonconference foe BYU. SMU gets back natural rival TCU and fellow Southwest Conference expats Baylor, Texas Tech and Houston. Meanwhile, Cincinnati and West Virginia used to be in the Big East with Pitt, Syracuse, Louisville and Boston College. (The Mountaineers also overlapped with Virginia Tech.) And UCF gets more bus rides to Tallahassee and Miami, fewer flights to Stillwater and Ames.
Now, the Stanford and Cal administrations were pretty dismissive of Big 12 academics last time around, but that was before they got stuck playing 3,000 miles from home for a 30 percent paycheck. Presumably, times have changed. But would the Big 12 want them? On the one hand, they don’t exactly help your football or men’s basketball products. But it’s not like the schools they’re losing are necessarily headliners, either. Not to mention the Bay Area schools would immediately become the best programs in many of the Big 12’s Olympic sports.
You’ve sold me, Andy. Make it happen.
(Photo of Jeremiah Smith: Gary A. Vasquez / Imagn Images)
