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The CSC is asserting itself. What comes next?
Plus: How many CFP teams will we get next year? And a few reasons why you shouldn't pity Chris Klieman.
Kyle Rowland
January 13, 2026
Hello readers,
Thanks as always for reading NIL Wire. Today, I have some thoughts about college football coaches who complain about the sport’s evolution and an update on CFP expansion. And in the main story, I’m going deep on the College Sports Commission and its drama with Learfield. Will it prove the CSC actually has teeth? Read on to find out!
This week, I’ll be at the NCAA convention, along with Matt Brown of Extra Points. I’m a social creature, so if you’re around and up for a relaxed, off-the-record conversation, feel free to email or DM me.
— Kyle
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KICKOFF
16 playoff teams! 24! We’ll find out soon.
College Football Playoff xpansion is coming. It’s a matter of when and what the format is.
Talks will take center stage at the national championship game in Miami, and there are two formats under consideration. One would feature a 16-team field, with five conference champions and 11 at-large teams. The other format is 24 teams, a model favored by Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti. Excluding the Group of 5 is not a realistic possibility.
ESPN’s Heather Dinich reported that a 16-team playoff is most likely, and perhaps as soon as next season, if Petitti and his SEC counterpart, Greg Sankey, reach a compromise.
The deadline is Jan. 23. If there is no agreement, the 2026 season will keep the current 12-team playoff format.
According to Dinich, the Big Ten could agree to a 16-team field for three years in exchange for a commitment from Sankey and the SEC that a 24-team format will be used in the future. Sankey and the SEC are putting up resistance to a 24-team playoff with automatic bids. What could change that thinking: a 24-team bracket with no automatic qualifiers.
Under that format this season, the SEC would have had seven playoff teams. The Big Ten would have had six.
Dinich said a three-year, 16-team playoff could create time to eliminate conference championship games and shift the sport’s calendar.
Don’t pity Chris Klieman
Add Kansas State’s Chris Klieman to the list of college football coaches who’ve said goodbye because of NIL.
And count me among those who don’t feel sorry for him. Not that he cares, or that he was asking for sympathy.
I understand why NIL and the transfer portal frustrate coaches. They have every right to say so and to answer honestly when asked about the state of college sports. But what we hear often goes beyond frustration; it’s coaches protesting the changes themselves.
Sorry, but these are the rules. They’re fair. They should have been instituted decades ago. My apologies if a multimillion-dollar job has become more difficult.
“We don’t have any guardrails and rules,” Klieman told the Manhattan Mercury. “Anybody can do whatever the heck they want. And that for all of us coaches, not just myself at Kansas State, I’ve talked to [many coaches] across the country, we’re all kind of like, ‘We need some guardrails so that somebody can’t spend $45 million, while somebody else is spending 15.’”
Guardrails are not needed. This is what a free market looks like. Is it unfair that Ohio State and Georgia pay their coaches more than Kansas State does? No one seems confused by that. People get paid differently in every walk of life. Some employees earn more than others. I still don’t understand why this suddenly becomes an existential problem when players are the ones who benefit.
Journalism has undergone rapid change. So have healthcare, finance, transportation and technology. Those changes have made plenty of jobs more stressful and less predictable. Does that mean employees never complain or quit? Of course not. But publicly railing against change because it disrupts a comfortable system that favored coaches is unbecoming, especially when you’ve benefited handsomely from that system.
“I’ve been doing this for 35 years, [but] I’d die if I kept doing this job, I’d die,” Klieman said. “If I kept doing this job, I was gonna have a heart attack, or I was gonna have a stroke. My blood pressure was through the roof. The stress and anxiety, not of winning and losing — my legacy is going to be fine on winning and losing.”
He told the Mercury the worst day of his coaching career came last April when he had to cut 20 players because of roster limits. I have sympathy there. It’s never easy telling people they aren’t good enough and upending their lives.
But that is part of the job. Coaches are paid to make difficult, sometimes heartbreaking decisions. I’m sure Klieman pushed players out over the course of his career in the name of building the best possible roster. That was acceptable when it served competitive interests.
When the NCAA later reversed course and said schools didn’t have to trim rosters, Klieman was furious.
He said a return to coaching was possible but only if the rules were fixed, a task he has no interest in taking on.
“No, no way,” Klieman said. “Everything that we have put out there to try to get it fixed gets shot down.”
College football will survive. The ratings already prove that. The sport isn’t broken just because coaches no longer control every lever of power. And it doesn’t need saving from the people who were most comfortable when players had the least.
‘The sky’s not falling’
Former Wyoming and North Dakota State coach Craig Bohl, now the executive director of the American Football Coaches Association, sat down with Sports Business Journal and gave some enlightening answers on a few important college football topics.
Bohl said the calendar needs to be “more nimble” and that he expects “some pretty significant structural changes to meet the needs of our coaches, our players and college football enterprise.”
Bohl said the reduction from two to one transfer portal window allows there to be “some structure in a sense or order.” He added that no matter how many windows there are or when they are, it’s going to be chaotic.
Bohl stressed that coaches just want to know the NIL rules. If there’s structure and guardrails, they’ll follow them. (That’s debatable.)
“What we’re trying to figure out in this NIL world is where the revenue streams are, what makes it equal, what makes it equitable to come up with some competitive balance,” Bohl said.
And he had some advice for young coaches (which Klieman might find useful): “The sky’s not falling,” Bohl said.
More news and links:
The Athletic’s Ralph Russo had smart commentary on the Demond Williams saga, noting that his return to Washington could signal progress.
Attorneys for Trinidad Chambliss plan to file a lawsuit in the state of Mississippi in an attempt to get the Ole Miss QB a sixth season of eligibility.
Mark Cuban discussed why he donates to Indiana and compared NIL to the NBA’s salary cap.
The Tuscaloosa News’ Emilee Smarr got some fascinating numbers: Alabama men’s basketball is splitting $2.9 million in revenue-sharing (14 percent of the school’s total rev share).
No charges will be filed against Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman over an alleged physical altercation at his son’s wrestling match.
DOWN TO BUSINESS
The CSC is asserting itself. What comes next?
A conflict between Learfield and the College Sports Commission could be coming to a courtroom near you!
On Friday, Learfield and the CSC each issued directives to their constituents about playing inside the bounds of NIL.
According to Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports, Learfield, the largest multimedia rights holder in college athletics — and the company that is perhaps second only to ESPN in power within the industry — told schools it does not guarantee NIL compensation for players. Not coincidentally, Dellenger wrote a detailed story earlier in the week about the pursuit of transfer portal quarterback Brendan Sorsby, who was offered a $3.5 million NIL guarantee through LSU’s multimedia partner, Playfly.
Payment streams have evolved each offseason since 2021, and using multimedia partners to redirect NIL dollars directly to players is a popular (and growing) avenue to exceed the revenue-sharing cap.
Under the terms of the House settlement, schools can share $20.5 million of revenue with athletes. Third-party deals are used as workarounds. The CSC, through its NIL Go clearinghouse, evaluates deals worth $600 or more to ensure they are for valid business purposes and not disguised as pay-for-play. (On Monday, the CSC released its latest batch of NIL Go data. It has approved more than 17,000 deals worth $127 million and blocked 524 deals worth almost $15 million. Almost 90 percent of deals were approved.)
Does Learfield’s clarifying email signal that the CSC’s enforcement has teeth?
In its email, Learfield said it might present a financial target, but that figure isn’t guaranteed. Learfield also said it would not provide NIL advances. It told schools it will cap the amount of NIL marketing funds at 20 percent of a school’s total sponsorship budget.
Some schools are discreet, but others have flouted the rules, essentially daring the CSC to take action and not approve a deal. Well, hours after Learfield’s Friday email, the CSC released a memo about potential rules violations related to third-party NIL deals. The CSC said it had “serious concerns” about some of the deal terms and the “consequences” of those deals for the parties involved.
Included were two lengthy bullet points about schools using multimedia rights partners (and others) in third-party deals, outlining the guidelines and rules while cautioning that schools could be putting players’ eligibility at risk if NIL Go denies their deals.
“Separately,” the release said, “investigations into unreported third-party NIL deals are progressing and some schools should expect to hear from the CSC next week.”
Uh oh!
It seems as if some deals will go unapproved, which could create significant upheaval because the schools and their multimedia rights partners are on the same team, not the CSC’s. The true doomsday scenario is a flurry of lawsuits pitting schools/conferences against the NCAA, perhaps hastening the formation of a super league.
Another possibility is a boomerang effect, with outside collectives becoming a common entity again.
After a week of multimillion-dollar deals and the Demond Williams fiasco, the CSC found it time to remind schools that rules were rules and enforcement does, in fact, exist.
“Making promises of third-party NIL money now and figuring out how to honor those promises later,” the CSC memo said, “leaves student-athletes vulnerable to deals not being cleared, promises not being able to be kept, and eligibility being placed at risk.”
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