Deckchair Arrangement 101
After an SEC meetings in which Congressional bills, self-governance, playoff expansion and tampering enforcement were all debated, there's an unasked question: Is this all for nothing?
I spent the past week in Destin -- wait, no Sandestin -- wait, no, Miramar -- Florida at the SEC’s spring meetings where a lot of weighty issues were discussed and debated.
New bipartisan federal legislation was released publicly (and it’d be a boon for the ACC, IMO, and not so great for the Big Ten and SEC or, probably, players).
A number of ADs here pushed hard for collective bargaining.
Greg Sankey ain’t about that pooled revenue stipulation and thinks everyone else is just trying to horn in on the SEC’s juice.
He’s also not a fan of Jim Phillips’ idea to all have the same tie-breaker model. Sankey’s ability to throw very subtle shade at Phillips is a truly remarkable skill.
Pete Golding went hard on being singled out for tampering when the whole plane is made out of tampering.
Kirby Smart talked about self-governance and a breakaway and discussed how much he thinks the current state of spending imperils the Olympic sports. I’m not sure those two positions can co-exist, but that’s another Substack.
Within that latter Smart story, my old pal1 Mike Elko offered a bleak assessment that I think not enough people paid attention to.
“If we don’t get some level of regulation within the market, a lot of people are going to go bankrupt,” Elko said Tuesday. “If it keeps going from where it’s at up another 20% and another 20% --we’re two-and-a-half years away from having an NIL budget that’s more than the TV revenue for all of our universities. And when that happens, we’re going to have some serious questions about how that gets funded.”
Look around society at health care or infrastructure or housing or public transportation and there’s always an argument about who’s going to pay for things and how they should be funded. I always wonder why we don’t talk more about why stuff costs so damn much. I think that’s a good bit of what Elko’s getting at.
One of the biggest debates here was about the 24-team playoff — the SEC still wants 16 — and I was struck to hear Sankey echo statements by Phillips that essentially said expanding is more about giving hope to schools who are spending more than ever.
Much of the Cruz-Cantwell bill is about trying to curb expenses by limiting transfers and capping salaries (which, by the way, the overwhelming takeaway from talking to coaches this week is that no set of rules will matter if schools don’t want to abide by them and there’s no prompt and effective enforcement).
Elko suggested a lack of transparency in player deals is a big part of the cost problem. “The market is driven by the agents, and there’s no disclosure,” he said. “There’s no data gathering, no understanding of what anybody actually earns and makes. You have this invisible market created by agents that goes up 20 to 25% every year.”
I think back to when revenue sharing was implemented before last season — the player pool was the same, the numbers of schools was the same, the number of snaps available to players was the same. And yet, because those schools could now directly spend $20.5M on player salaries, the average cost of a player exploded. (This is how inflation works, by the way).
From 2023 to 2026, according to a couple of coaches I spoke with, the price of a high level defensive end, for example, has probably gone up by 200%.
This is, to use a word common in this landscape, not sustainable.
Indeed, Josh Heird, the Louisville AD, spoke pretty eloquently on this topic this week.
Last year’s projected athletics deficit also hovered just below $30 million. But it was softened by a one-time $10 million university transfer, a new student athletic fee, and a new $25 million line of credit, to be used over two years.
This year, the bandages came off.
The student fee is now baked into the budget. The one-time money disappeared. A couple of football home games disappeared, too. Some previously stripped-down expenses — particularly financial aid — had to come back.
Don’t even get me started on student fees and university transfers.2 When the feds say they care about saving college sports, they should be more interested in saving sports from stealing money from average students to pay millionaires.
Meanwhile at Virginia Tech, the athletics department leadership is being split in two — someone to oversee sports, and someone to get money to pay for it all.
I also came across this piece by Katie Davis, an expert in college sports accounting, and it’s pretty bare-bones explanation of how this trend of spending cannot continue.
“Benchmarking in college athletics is aspirational. You’re not comparing against a stable baseline; you’re comparing against institutions with different revenue engines, different donor ecosystems and different appetites for risk. This is when “best practice” becomes “keep up,” and “keep up” becomes “spend more.” Cost containment, meanwhile, has a shelf life of about one losing season.
This is exactly the reason Darian Mensah’s market value did not exceed what Duke was paying him ($4 million) until Miami was about to be left without a quarterback, which immediately made Mensah’s market value closer to $10 million.
Economist would call this an irrational market, which is an apt descriptor. There was a lot of talk this week in Destin about schools too eager to act in their own self-interest, but I’m not even sure that’s true. As Elko pointed out, I think they’re acting in their own short-term interests and — as we’ve seen with potential PE investment in the Big Ten and Big 12 — eagerly mortgaging their future to do it.
And all of this is ignoring the elephant in the room. In the next two to five years, TV contracts will be negotiated, realignment will happen again, multiple conferences will be doomed, Super Leagues become a serious reality, an NCAA breakaway feels imminent, and all the deck chairs for which we’ve wasted countless hours debating their proper alignment will go down with the ship.
I asked Sankey about this exact possibly (inevitability?) and he did all he could to deflect and kick the can.
“There’s an abundance of hypotheticals. I know my decision making timeline.I know my decision making, hard decision making in timelines, but I can’t speak to others and whether whatever decisions they’re contemplating are a lot of activity without much accomplishment.”
Rough translation: We’re going to be good no matter what. If others aren’t, it’s because they didn’t make good choices.
Again, this isn’t a story relegated to sports. Look around at hospitals and infrastructure and small businesses and a hundred other areas of society. We’re in late-stage capitalism, and ultimately the future will be dictated by the handful of apex predators deciding when they’re full.
Ranking the QBs
Each year, I put entirely too much effort into researching stats and talking to coaches for my tiered ranking of every FBS QB situation. Here’s this year’s list.
A few of my favorite nuggets from the reporting for the piece:
Blind resume:
QB A: 67.8 Total QBR, 60.8% completion rate, 7.93 yards/attempt, 2.5 pass TD:INT ratio
QB B: 66.8 Total QBR, 60.2% completion rate, 7.53 yards/attempt, 2.8 pass TD:INT ratio
QB A is new Penn State QB Rocco Becht’s career numbers. QB B is… every Penn State starter from 2014-2025.CJ Bailey's career in the red zone: 112 touches, 35 touchdowns, zero turnovers
Last year, no Power 4 QB had more completions on 20+ yard throws downfield than Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele (85).
LaNorris Sellers forced 48 missed tackles in 2025 -- the same total as 2024, when he seemed like the toughest QB on the planet to tackle. But his yards per rush went from 4.1 in 2024 to 1.8 in 2025, and his sack rate jumped from 8.7% to 11.1%.
The original version of this topped 10,000 words, so a few of the fun metrics got cut for length. Instead, I’ll share a handful here.
Darien Mensah threw 252 passes last season when trailing on the scoreboard, sixth-most nationally. His 0.31 expected points added per dropback when trailing ranked 14th nationally, and no one ranked higher was within 70 dropbacks of his total in those situations.
Miami QBR in 2025 when targeting Malachi Toney: 94.0
Miami QBR when targeting all other players: 62.5
QBs in the playoff era to complete 75% of throws with 30 passing TD and 3,500 passing yards: 2019 Joe Burrow, 2020 Mac Jones, 2023 Bo Nix and 2025 Julian Sayin.
Career pass attempts prior to that season:
Nix, 1466
Burrow, 418
Jones, 154
Sayin, 12
No Power Four QB threw a higher percentage of his passes behind the line of scrimmage last year than Gunner Stockton (38.6%). Since 2019, no QB has a higher career rate of throws behind the line than him (38.8%).
Stockton on throws 10 yards or less: 84.2 QBR, 18 touchdowns, no picks
Stockton on throws 11 yards or more: 72.2 QBR, nine touchdowns, seven picks
Career games with multiple touchdowns:
|Fernando Mendoza - 21
Josh Hoover - 20
Career games w/multiple interceptions:
Mendoza - 3
Hoover - 11
Marcel Reed
vs FPI top 35 teams last year: 55.1 QBR, 59.8% completions, 11 TDs, 12 turnovers
vs all others: 77.5 QBR, 65.2% completions, 20 TDs, two turnovers
A blind comparison…
QB A: 7-3 record, 71.6 QBR, 61% completions, 6.84 yards-per-dropback, 24 touchdowns, five turnovers
QB B: 7-3 W-L, 68.4 QBR, 66% completions, 7.18 yards-per-dropback, 28 touchdowns, nine turnovers
QB A is Arch Manning, the most buzzed-about player in college football, against Power Four competition last year. QB B is Connor Weigman.
No quarterback had a higher percentage of completions last year go to tailbacks or tight ends than Weigman (54%). Dante Moore was the only other Power Four QB higher than 50%.
Byrum Brown’s 92 career touchdowns are nine more than any other returning QB.
Three QBs had 100 explosive plays last season (pass or run): Diego Pavia, Drew Mestemaker and Anthony Colandrea.
Drew Lindsay averaged just 6.9 air yards per throw and his 6.12 yards gained per attempt ranked 121st out of 134 qualified QBs.
Since Jameis Winston left following the 2014 season, Florida State starting QBs other than Jordan Travis are a combined 32-47 vs. Power Four/Five opponents with a 53.5 Total QBR, 90 touchdowns, 67 interceptions and have averaged 5.95 yards-per-dropback while completing less than 57% of their passes.
Rutgers posted a 61.7% completion rate last year — it’s best (and first time over 60%) since 2020. That’s the only season in the last decade in which Rutgers had a better than average completion percentage. Since joining the Big Ten, Rutgers has had more seasons with a team completion percentage below 50 (four) than above 60 (three).
Iowa has gone six straight years throwing 12 touchdown passes or fewer. Since 2004, the only major conference team with a longer streak is Georgia Tech (2007-2013), which ran an option offense. The second-longest active streak among Power Four schools is Michigan with two.
What else was David working on?
Inside ACCess this week consisted of three interviews we did in Amelia Island with Rhett Lashlee, Fran Brown and Dave Doeren.
Brown was pretty open about what he learned through last year’s struggles, saying he’s
The rumblings of Doeren’s demise were rampant last year, but he said he’s not close to retiring — and he’s pretty optimistic about this year’s team…
Also, Andrea and I offered some insight on the freshmen who impressed most this spring.
We’ll be back for two more Inside ACCess shows before the summer break. Next week, we have interviews with Jeff Brohm and Tavita Pritchard.
What’s David reading?
A great rec from my pal Seth on the man who cuts the perfect slice of ham. From the story:
In 2024, Mr. Soriano was selected to carve an 18-year-old Joselito ham, priced at more than $70,000, for an event at the Prado museum. In 2025, at the Casa Batlló in Barcelona, Mr. Soriano wept as he sliced through a 20-year-old vintage bursting with umami flavor that his company said was worth roughly $94,000, he recalled.
Just a ton of great detail in the piece. Also…
And speaking of “The Simpsons,” the folks at GQ foolishly tried to rank the best episodes. This is such a pointless endeavor as to not warrant a critique. It’s worth reading just to go down memory lane on some of the greats. There are no wrong answers though (unless you pick episodes after Season 11).
I’ve recently started watching Simpsons with my girls. My oldest one loves Hank Scorpio. I feel good about that as a father. She finds it upsetting that Homer wants to own the Dallas Cowboys though. I feel good about that as an Eagles fan.
My personal top 5 — subject to change at a moment’s notice — for what it’s worth:
Homie the Clown
You Only Move Twice
Bart’s Friend Falls in Love
Summer of 4-foot-2
Homer vs. NYC
Speaking of the simple joys in life, Food & Wine looked at the best cheap beers in the U.S.
This reminds me of the time I told Matt Fortuna that there was, effectively, no real difference between Miller Lite, Coors Lite & Bud Lite other than the marketing and that most people can’t tell the difference in a blind taste test. This inevitably led to a blind taste test and… Tuna got ‘em all spot on. Bastard.
That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading!
Speaking of old friends, it was great to catch up with a recovering Brent Venables and the great tandem of Carl Franks and Jill Mickle while I was here. Usually my beers with Carl are limited to Amelia Island, so this was a nice addendum.
The great Matt Brown dug into this a bit last week, too, looking at how schools actually fund their athletics departments. Florida State is at, roughly, 80% of funding coming from actual revenues. UCF is at 66%. Houston is at 55%. USF is at 35%. Think about that.
The “is this all for nothing” question lands because most of these debates are about who controls the money, not about whether anyone can actually account for it. Coming from an operator background, what strikes me watching the SEC meetings is that they’re negotiating governance on top of financial and athlete data that isn’t standardized across schools. You can’t enforce a cap, prove compliance, or even agree on what a “fair” share is when every department measures differently. The rules will keep shifting until the underlying ledger is shared.