It’s NCAA Football Championship week. The two teams who deserve to be in the championship game Monday night are there.
The No. 10 Seed Miami, without a bye week, ran a gauntlet of really good football teams — Texas A&M, Ohio State, Ole Miss. Any of those defeated teams could have been picked to win it all.
No. 1 Seed Indiana polished off Alabama, and Oregon with lop-sided victories.
To confidently pick the winner in this game should be considered impossible. Indiana appears to be the best team of 2025, but the game is at Miami’s home field, Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. That has never happened before.
Home team advantage not withstanding, football is an unpredictable game when played by teams with abundant talent. That odd-shaped pigskin ball just doesn’t bounce right sometimes. Turnovers, while sometimes a sweet breakfast treat, are very distasteful on the gridiron. A ball bounces off a shoulder pad and it’s intercepted and ran pack for a pick six — that can change a game in an instant.
Fumbles deep in your own territory are easy points for the pickin’. It doesn’t matter how much money the school is paying that quarterback. He’s going to fumble or throw a costly interception occasionally.
How many games in the playoffs have seen kickers go wide and change the games complexion?
And, those guys in the striped shirts, even with instant replay, can change the outcome of a game with that silky yellow flag they pull from their belt.
The winner of the game really hinges on things that cannot be accurately predicted. The team that takes the best care of that fickle football will probably win. Both teams have powerful offenses and stout defenses. Oregon’s cause of death can be attributed to those three costly turnovers, one interception and two fumbles, that led to Indiana points in the first half. Nobody saw that coming.
Tune in and see how this historic game unfolds.
Car$on Beck…
The Carson Beck story is amazing. He is the poster child for success in the new world of NCAA football money.
His payroll is behind only to Arch Manning (Texas) at $5.3 million, and Jeremiah Smith (Ohio State) at 4.2 million.
Reports are that Beck was given a base “salary” of $4 million, with a potential to earn up to $6 with incentives, to leave Georgia and play for Miami in his sixth year of college eligibility. The reports of his salary and his years of eligibility have both been in controversy.
Reporters for The Athletic report that his salary is just over $3 million. Some say he technically had seven years of eligibility due to the COVID extra year, but he actually was on a college roster six years. I know, it’s confusing. (That’s where the NCAA is living these days, in a state of confusion.)
Beck was on the Georgia roster from 2020 through 2024 and then was lured away by Miami. He graduated from the University of Georgia in 2024 with a degree in sports management.
In these crazy times, if Beck should lead Miami to the national championship, he likely will become the first inductee, to the University of Miami Hall of Fame, who has a degree from the University of Georgia. Go figure.
Fernando Mendo$a…
Reports are that Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza doesn’t have a traditional salary. Instead, he is compensated about $2.6 million by name, image and licensing (NIL) money through sponsorships from Adidas, Dr Pepper, T-Mobile and Epic Games.
It also has been reported that Mendoza turned down a more lucrative offer from Miami to instead play for the Hoosiers. The Heisman Trophy winner grew up the the shadow of the University of Miami campus, so it will seem like a home game for him, as well.
This game has more story lines than CSI Miami.
The Payroll Portal….
The tales of two quarterbacks highlight the craziness of college football these days.
We are in the middle of the annual auction of college football players who have entered the portal, about 4,000 of them.
It’s silly when the various teams make the big announcement that this or that player from some other team has “chosen” to play for their team.
No, they chose the money that was offered. The press release should read, “The Salamanders have purchased the services of a running back that has been playing or on the bench for No Luck U.”
There are enough players in the portal to fill more than 35 rosters. Ohio State, one of the acknowledged high stakes kingpins, has lost about 30 players to the portal, about one-third of its roster. Texas has lost about two dozen players, Notre Dame 20, Alabama 20, Michigan 28, just to name a few.
A reader called and asked, “What happens to the players who enter the portal and aren’t picked up by anyone?”
Good question.
AI says about 54 percent of the players who seek offers from other schools don’t get any. Some return to their team, if allowed, some seek to latch on to lower level teams in hope of playing regularly and being able to make a name for themselves to return to Division I at some point.
But 54 percent is a staggering number. That means about 2,160 players will not cash in as hoped. That’s enough to fill 21 rosters.
Let’s Kick Up the Crazy…
What a fine mess the NCAA has made with this allowing players to be bought and paid for and allowing this portal scramble during the championship playoffs.
I suggest we make things even crazier.
First lets get the NFL on board with this portal thing. The NFL should do away with its draft and let all of their players enter a portal as well, if they want to seek employment elsewhere. And, the NFL could accept college players into its portal as well.
College players can enter the NFL Draft when they are three years past their high school graduation. Open that up to allow anyone, even high schoolers to enter the portal for both the NCAA and the NFL.
Why should a high school or college quarterback have to take a measly $5 million from Texas, if the Indianapolis Colts would be willing to pay $10 million to get another Manning. The NCAA and the NFL are restricting the earning power of young players. Heaven forbid.
Doing away with the draft and adopting the portal approach would get the NFL out of these 10-year $230 million fully guaranteed contracts like the Browns gave to Deshaun Watson. Watson has played only a handful of games due to injuries. He is owned a salary of $46 million for the 2026 season and likely won’t play a game. This type of contract is rare in the NFL. Few teams are this dumb.
With the portal, everyone would be year-to-year. NFL players would have to perform or pay the price next year. They could be replaced by a college kid.
Maybe all pro leagues should go fully portal. Why should this just be ruining college sports?
Thanks for reading. Your comments would make this much more interesting.
Or you could just buy me a coffee. Make it decaf, as you can see, I’m jittery enough.
Brilliant breakdown here. The portal auction comparison really nails what's happening to college ball tho. I dunno if extending it to the NFL makes sense pracitcally but that 54% failure rate for portal players is brutal when you think about it. These kids are gambling on themselves while schools keep playing moneyball, and half end up worse off than before they jumped.