Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.
I hope you're all having a wonderful and restful winter holiday season! We certainly have here at Extra Points HQ. We’ll continue on holiday hours this week but will return to our regular posting schedule on Jan. 5.
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Before I get back to playing Expedition 33 doing important research to prepare for the new year, I want to do what everybody else likes to do this time of year: make a few predictions for how 2026 is going to go.
These are educated guesses, not triple-checked reported statements, so I don’t want the message board crowd to take anything here as immediate gospel and then scream at me next month.
In that spirit, here are a few predictions:
A few more schools are going to take the private equity money. But not a LOT.
I believe Utah’s decision to move its athletic department revenue operations into a private equity-powered LLC will give political coverage for other institutions to do the same thing. A lot of schools, and even a few conferences, have had conversations about different ways to secure outside financing, and for most of 2025, the political fallout was one of the reasons nobody ended up signing the paperwork.
Between Utah’s move and the Big 12’s deal with private capital, that seal has been broken, and other institutions may have more “permission” to more deeply explore similar models. I think at least two ACC institutions will end up announcing similar partnerships in 2026, and perhaps another school or two outside the Big Ten/SEC.
But I don’t think there’s going to be a stampede of, like, 14 schools rushing to do this. For one, I don’t actually think there are that many institutions with the assets and future revenue growth to actually pull something like this off. I’d expect future PE arrangements to have at least some level of real estate development as part of the total asset package, and not everybody has room, or stuff, to build in the near future.
I believe there’s also going to be an element of “lets see how this goes” before everybody jumps into the pool. I’m not the only industry person who has big questions about how the math will actually work out for Utah, and I know some of the school’s larger donors are not thrilled about this arrangement. A year probably isn’t enough time to judge the success of these massive investment campaigns, but it may be enough time to better understand what donor (and lawmaker) pushback could look like.
So a few schools that really need money now will take the plunge, but I expect more will watch a bit longer.
2026 is not going to be a good year for public disclosures.
I’m a huge FOIA guy. Open records requests have been a major tool in my reporting career, especially during the first decade or so, when I didn’t have the name or outlet prestige to nudge people into calling me back. FOIA doesn’t care if you work for ESPN or Burger King … the records are supposed to be responsive for all.
Those requests, from me and my peers, are a major tool in helping the public understand the finances of college athletics. Academics, industry professionals, reporters and others use them to get a handle on how institutions get money, where they spend it and who knows about what, when.
But over the past few years, state law changes have typically weakened open records legislation, rather than expanded it. By parking their athletic department operations in new LLCs, most states will allow programs to exempt those documents from open records requests. That means schools like Michigan State and Utah, in the near future, may not need to disclose virtually anything, including basic stuff like athletic department budgets or coach contracts. Other states have looked to make sure that athlete compensation data cannot be released via open records.
The only political constituency that really cares about expanded access to open records are reporters and huge nerds … and voters don’t typically those people. If the State U Ol’ Ball Coach says we need to limit open records (like Kirby’s Law), I think that will happen in most places … and the consequences will be far more serious than just football data.
I’m going to send a gazillion open records requests in about two weeks as I try to get the most updated financial, coach and vendor data from across the country. But absent federal law changes or a massive change of heart in NCAA membership, I think the kind of data I’m able to secure will become more and more limited in 2026.
Who’s That Football Team, however, is updated and will continue to spit out a new Daily Challenge question every single day. Today’s clue is small school with a Big School early history:
Play the Daily Challenge
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CLUE #1
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This DIII program played in the 1921 Rose Bowl. They tied Cal, 0-0 |
Speaking of the lawmakers …
Congress won’t pass any meaningful college sports legislation in 2026. But that doesn’t mean the government won’t be involved.
Despite support from most congressional Republicans, the SCORE Act wasn’t able to make it to a floor vote in 2025. Even if it had, it probably wouldn’t have gotten enough support in the Senate to get around a filibuster. After years of lobbying, that’s the closest the NCAA/Power 4 have been able to get to any sort of federal antitrust/employment law relief from Congress.
I think the single biggest reason for this isn’t that there aren’t enough lawmakers who believe federal intervention in college sports is necessary. The biggest issue is that Congress doesn’t really pass laws at all anymore. With 2026 being an election year, and with the GOP’s tiny House majority hinging on a few difficult-to-corral members, it’s very hard to see a pathway for SCORE, or something like it, to become law in 2026. There’s no incentive for members to build the difficult political coalition to make this happen.
But I don’t think that means federal intervention in college sports is dead. One of the reasons Congress hasn’t passed many laws over the past year is because it’s been happy to defer to the increasingly active executive branch. President Donald Trump also issued an executive order about college sports in 2025, but nothing really came from that.
If Congress isn’t able to take action by, say, March Madness, I think the Trump administration will look to find ways to more aggressively push its agenda on college athletics via executive agencies like the DOE, DOJ, FTC and others.
Lawyers will howl about how this is unconstitutional, and the administration won’t care. Does Trump have the power or inclination to singlehandedly end the athlete employment debate or antitrust enforcement surrounding college sports? No. Could he try? I think he might.
The NCAA will allow jersey patches, and almost everybody will try to sell one.
Everybody I’ve talked to in the MMR world over the past six months thinks this is inevitable. Two schools (LSU and UNLV) already have deals ready to go. Once the NCAA finally pulls the trigger, it’s hard for me to imagine many schools, no matter how blue their blood or tradition-deep they proclaim to be, will sit out the gold rush.
Broadly speaking, I think fans will probably be disappointed in who ends up buying the patches. The going rate for these things is going to be expensive, even for mid-majors, and the quirky regional fast food places, grocery chains and beloved local businesses are going to be (mostly) priced out. When patches happen, think healthcare companies, financial institutions, insurance, tech and perhaps a few deep-pocketed non-profits.
I feel pretty confident we won’t be able to afford to sponsor any uniforms in Division I. But if there are Division III schools that would be cool with some Extra Points patches? We’d happily have that conversation.
There’s going to be meaningful realignment movement in 2026.
I don’t think the Big Ten or SEC will expand or anything. But I do think there will be realignment at multiple levels of college sports, including in FBS. A places to watch:
I’ve been hearing there’s renewed interest in FCS institutions from more than one FBS conference … so long as the FCS schools are willing to pay. It’s $5 million to the NCAA to reclassify to FBS, and I’m hearing FCS schools will likely need to pay in the neighborhood of $10 million as an “entrance fee” to their new FBS leagues, plus whatever new expenses they’d have to pay for new scholarships, House money, new women’s sport sponsorships, etc. So it’s a lot of money and not something many schools can do. But I believe the odds that CUSA/MWC or even the MAC would deeply consider FCS schools now are much better than they were in, say, October.
Speaking of the MAC, don’t be shocked if anybody else leaves this year. Not just for league that might have better competitive or financial upside, but to "downgrade” a bit to save money.
I expect to see some official invitations to the ASUN from a few Division II schools before the end of the NCAA basketball tournaments, giving additional clarity to the UAC/ASUN membership drama
Don’t be shocked to hear about the American kicking the tires a little more, and a little more loudly, on non-football membership to bolster their basketball offerings.
These are educated guesses. I hope to have some actual reporting on all this stuff around NCAA convention time.
And finally …
We’re going to have fun this year.
Until the feds lock the doors and drag me away, I’ll keep filing FOIAs. (Have ideas or requests? Hit me up at [email protected].) We’ll keep updating our three games, and we’re working on potentially creating a fourth. We’ll make Extra Points Library more accessible (more on that next week), more powerful and more useful.
But I’m also gonna try to be a little more silly. It can be a grim and scary world out there. That’s not why you’re here. I’m still gonna write about private equity and legal analysis. But there’s no reason we can’t make some jokes while we do it.
Thanks for reading. Feel free to share your predictions in the comments, and I’ll see you next week!
