It has been a very dumb year in college sports. You may ask how that distinguishes 2025 from several of the previous years, and that would be a fair question. But in a few preciously nonsensical instances, the industry has doubled down on dumb in a manner rarely—if ever—seen before.
The Year in Dumb Ideas countdown:
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Jeff Landry decided to insert himself into LSU’s crashing disappointment of a football season, first by ripping athletic director Scott Woodward for the outrageous $54 million buyout needed to part ways with fired football coach Brian Kelly, then to engineer the firing of Woodward.
The athletic program was turned over to longtime loyalist Verge Ausberry, who was tasked with landing the Lane Plane. He got that done, and Landry gave new coach Lane Kiffin a welcoming phone call, according to Kiffin. It remains to be seen whether Landry will have play-calling privileges.
The Tennessee quarterback either left the team or was told to leave during spring practice after reportedly seeking a pay raise and better surrounding talent. Per reports, Iamaleava was making $2.4 million under a contract signed with the Tennessee collective while he was still in high school, but asked for a raise to $4 million after his sophomore season.
Iamaleava not only didn’t get that figure from Tennessee, he couldn’t get it anywhere else in the transfer portal. He signed with UCLA for a lesser amount, played with lesser surrounding talent, finished with a worse record (the Bruins went 3–9 to the Volunteers’ 8–4) and had worse statistics (his pass efficiency rating dropped from 145.3 to 123.5). Other than that, great move.
The beleaguered ACC’s football championship tiebreaker rules cover a lot of scenarios. One thing they didn’t cover was making sure the team that was ranked highest by the College Football Playoff selection committee (by a wide margin) actually wins all ties.
That meant Miami, which was No. 12 at the time but in a five-way logjam for second place behind Virginia, was unable to play for the league’s automatic CFP bid. Instead, 8–5 Duke slid into the game and upset the Cavaliers, leaving the ACC champion out of the playoff and elevating James Madison of the Sun Belt Conference into the bracket.
Miami made it as an at-large selection—controversially, over Notre Dame—and the Hurricanes backed up their inclusion by winning a first-round game at Texas A&M. But the league put itself through some unnecessary hell, and also exposed the playoff to over-the-top criticism due to the inclusion of a second Group of 6 conference champion who was soundly defeated.
Hey, it might work out in 2026. It did not work out in ’25. The man with six Super Bowl rings went 4–8 at North Carolina in his debut season, with four of the losses by three touchdowns or more, after seemingly miscalculating the need for actual talent to win games at the college level. There were more headlines about his high-profile, 20-something girlfriend than anything that happened on the field.
On the bright side, Belichick did manage to raise awareness of adult co-ed cheerleading competitions. It’s never too late, former cheerleaders. Bill believes in you.
With the NCAA on the ropes legally in terms of fighting off restraint-of-trade lawsuits, it seems like just about everyone is currently eligible to play college hoops. Even if a player at one (or several) points in his or her career wanted nothing to do with college hoops.
You were a pro overseas? Not a concern. You played in the G League but now want to double back to college? Come on in. You were selected in the NBA draft but never played? We’ll work it out.
Currently, there is a run on midseason additions that are basically acquisitions at the trade deadline. Teams are plucking players from outside the college game and hustling to get them enrolled and in the lineup for the second semester.
The best part of that: Athletic directors have been moaning for months that they don’t have enough money to make the current House settlement economics work—but if a European center can fill a hole in the lineup for 10 weeks, pay the man!
As he worked under Jim Harbaugh from 2018 to ’23, Michigan had a chance to appraise Moore as a potential leader of the program. Seems the school missed a few warning signs with a problematic football employee. Again.
Moore’s two-season tenure came crashing down earlier this month, when he was first fired and then arrested on the same day. An inappropriate relationship with a staffer led to his dismissal, which was followed by him allegedly breaking into her home and threatening to kill himself. Coming after the disturbing allegations against former assistant Matt Weiss and the NCAA shenanigans by Connor Stalions and Jim Harbaugh himself, Michigan football has had more recent black eyes than a bad MMA fighter.
The NCAA is poised to push future March Madness fields for both men and women to 76 teams, despite the fact that almost nobody wants it. There is no fan clamor for 76. There is only tepid TV partner interest. It will benefit teams in the lower half of power conferences far more than anyone else, while further marginalizing low-major champions by pitting them against each other in more play-in games.
If you’re the coach of a 16–14 team that finishes 12th in the Big Ten, congratulations. Hope your 2027 NCAA bid gets you a bonus and another year on your contract.
Like many other well-intentioned concepts in college sports, the House settlement era has produced a new set of rules to be roundly ignored. The introduction of revenue sharing is a good thing, putting a lot of money in athletes’ pockets. The execution of policing where and how the money is being distributed has been predictably futile.
The fledgling College Sports Commission, brainchild of the conference commissioners who were completely done with the NCAA as an enforcement agency for improper payments, is finding out how the industry operates. Rules are an impediment to winning.
The $20.5 million salary cap is being blown past like slow drivers on the Autobahn. A “participation agreement” that schools were required to sign, promising not to sue the CSC, has been rebuffed, rewritten and rebuffed again. Player salaries, tampering and transfers might hit new highs in 2026.
Meanwhile, the spate of TV commercials that proliferated through the fall urging Congress to either pass or spike the SCORE Act—legislation primarily aimed at providing antitrust protection to the NCAA and its members—were sound and fury signifying nothing. The Act never made it to the floor of the House of Representatives. All those lobbying dollars, circling the drain.
Nothing speaks to the tone deafness of College Sports Inc. quite like the movement throughout the summer and into fall to adopt more permissive gambling rules—at precisely the same time that many college basketball programs are under federal investigation for point shaving and game fixing.
In late October, the NCAA Division I cabinet, with approval from Divisions II and III, passed a rule change that allowed athletes, coaches and staff members to bet on professional sports. Meanwhile, men’s college basketball players at several schools were facing NCAA sanctions and potential criminal charges for point shaving and performance manipulation. Some of them were allegedly paid off by professional gamblers to fix games in exchange for cash.
A federal investigation of corrupt gambling in the college game by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania is ongoing. The Eastern District of New York has already filed charges against dozens of people in a separate case, including current and former NBA players.
Sticking a finger into the gale-force winds signaling that this might not be the time, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey sent a letter to the NCAA requesting a membership vote to rescind the new legislation. That passed at the 11th hour in late November, allowing the NCAA to walk back one of the most optically bad decisions ever.
The Big Ten commissioner has been on a bad take heater, proposing a raft of dubious ideas. Among them:
Two and a half years into his tenure at the Big Ten, Petitti still has some work to do to convince the world that he actually likes college sports.
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