Transfer portal season is over. The actual college football season is almost here. With the dust (probably) settled on everyone’s roster, Richard and Alex pick through dozens of portal classes and highlight 26 players who are sliding into situations worth tracking in 2026. This episode is NOT just a recitation of the highest-ranked transfers, but a deeper examination of who’s being relied on to fill major holes, who’s propping up a hot-seated coach, and who’s just going to be plain old fun to watch. We cover new players going to:

* 11:55: Texas

* 13:50: Nebraska

* 16:51: Miami

* 19:49: Clemson

* 22:27: Oregon

* 24:12: James Madison

* 27:01: Ohio State

* 29:56: Washington

* 36:06: LSU

* 42:31: Oklahoma

* 47:55: Texas Tech

* 51:43: Florida State

* 54:34: Cal

* 56:59: Baylor

* 58:49: Miami University

* 1:02:22: Michigan

* 1:03:04: Wisconsin

Producer: Anthony Vito

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Brendan Sorsby has his temporary injunction, and the field is open for Texas Tech’s QB to play in 2026. Yes, Alex is as shocked as you are. What now, though? To answer that question and a few more, let’s welcome Sam Ehrlich, an assistant professor of legal studies at Boise State and operator of the College Sports Litigation Tracker. In this episode:

* 0:17: Alex’s monologue on why Sorsby’s triumph is so absurd, even for people used to watching the NCAA lose in court, like all of us.

* 8:14: Welcoming Sam Ehrlich, asking what he thinks of the ruling, and why the judge’s order left so much unsaid.

* 11:57: What the NCAA’s appeal changes, and why the clock may now work in Sorsby’s favor instead of against him.

* 14:59: Whether one Texas injunction really changes the NCAA’s ability to enforce gambling rules elsewhere. (Be careful about this one.)

* 18:23: Why collectively bargained rules or a federal college sports bill would probably have prevented this situation.

* 23:43: Venue shopping, “home cooking” complaints, broader sports-integrity fallout, and what angry Big 12 schools can actually do about it.

Producer: Anthony Vito

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Alex, Richard, and Matt Brown get back together for the Split Zone Duo/Extra Points Sports Business Hour with the most serious congressional attempt yet to reorganize college sports on the table. The Protect College Sports Act of 2026 would touch NIL enforcement, athlete movement, the House settlement’s cap structure, media-rights pooling, conference realignment, and even the timing of coach moves via a Lane Kiffin Rule that Alex thinks is a little silly. The group talks through why this bill deserves your attention than the usual Capitol Hill noise, why it still has obvious ways to fail, and how its politics run through everyone from the Big Ten and SEC to Cody Campbell and Texas Tech.

In this episode:

* 4:14: Why the Protect College Sports Act is more serious than past college-sports bills, and what it would do to NIL disclosures, transfer limits, athlete compensation, and the College Sports Commission.

* 25:08: How media-rights pooling became one of the bill’s biggest fights, why the Big Ten and SEC hate it, and how Cody Campbell’s fingerprints are all over the politics.

* 36:52: The so-called Lane Kiffin rule, and whether Congress can actually stop coaches from arranging new jobs during the season.

* 41:19: Utah’s private equity experiment, the layoff headline, the missing public details, and why fan revolt in American college sports tends to be so muted.

* 51:24: Why the planned NC State-Virginia game in Brazil fell apart, and what it says about trying to export college football internationally.

* 1:06:36: Why Brendan Sorsby’s eligibility fight feels so ridiculous.

If you like this episode, you’ll love a paid subscription.

For $10 a month (or you can get a free month with an annual subscription), subscribers get about twice as many Split Zone Duo podcasts, as well as our coach carousel reporting, deep dives on college football history, Q&A opportunities, and many more goodies as we think of them. You also help keep this show independent and ensure we’re making a podcast that puts our listeners, not anyone else, first.

Producer: Anthony Vito

Is your head coach going to succeed? Most of the time, you’ll know by Year 2. Welcome to the latest installment of SZD’s checkup on head coaches about to start their second season on the job. The class of 2025 was famously light on Power 4 hires but offers more G6 hope than you might think. In this episode, we’ll tier out this crop of second-year coaches as follows:

* 0:16: Why Year 2 remains such a revealing checkpoint for college football coaches, even after the portal changed the roster-building calendar.

* 8:03: The guys who are trending up, like Zach Kittley at FAU, Mark Carney at Kent State, Matt Drinkall at Central Michigan, Willie Simmons at FIU, Jerry Mack at Kennesaw State, Dan Mullen at UNLV, Jason Eck at New Mexico, and Matt Entz at Fresno State.

* 24:28: The guys who have us in wait-and-see mode, including the hard AAC jobs, Phil Longo at Sam Houston, Mike Uremovich at Ball State, Eddie George at Bowling Green, Dowell Loggains at App State, Tony Gibson at Marshall, Barry Odom at Purdue, and Rich Rodriguez at West Virginia.

* 39:22: The guys who are already trending the wrong way and need a turnaround, like Scott Frost at UCF and, well …

* 46:01: Bill Belichick’s lousy first year at North Carolina and how much hope there is that things could improve

Producer: Anthony Vito

Everyone can hear a free preview of this episode. To get the whole thing, become a paid subscriber today.

For $10 a month (or you can get a free month with an annual subscription), subscribers get about twice as many Split Zone Duo podcasts, as well as our coach carousel reporting, deep dives on college football history, Q&A opportunities, and many more goodies as we think of them. You also help keep this show independent and ensure we’re making a podcast that puts our listeners, not anyone else, first.

Host emeritus Steven Godfrey joins Richard and Alex for a look back at the Big 12’s extremely public flirtation with expansion a full decade ago. It was a strange spring and summer in 2016, as the Big 12 basically put on realignment tryouts for a long list of schools including several (BYU, UCF, Houston, and Cincinnati) who did get into the conference — but not until years later, when others dominoes had fallen. Let’s revisit the summer of realignment that wasn’t, and then let’s think about how it changed the next decade of college football.

In this episode:

* 0:00: Why the realignment fashion show became so public

* 8:10: The now-quaint factors that drove realignment decisions back then

* 12:28: The candidate pool, including Houston and Cincinnati’s very different campaigns, BYU’s many complications, UCF before the Scott Frost/Josh Heupel run, and SMU before it became an ACC playoff team

* 32:02: Why the process came down to BYU, Cincinnati, and Houston. (Also, why the Big 12 was genuinely scared of Houston)

* 43:48: Counterfactuals: whether earlier expansion would have changed Texas and Oklahoma’s exit, the Pac-12’s collapse, or the expanded playoff’s politics around non-power teams

* 56:08: The afterlife of the public audition, from Memphis and Sacramento State to the next round of conference-movement anxiety.

Everyone can hear a free preview of this episode

To get the whole thing, become a paid subscriber today. For $10 a month (or you can get a free month with an annual subscription), subscribers get about twice as many Split Zone Duo podcasts, as well as our coach carousel reporting, deep dives on college football history, Q&A opportunities, and many more goodies as we think of them. You also help keep this show independent and ensure we’re making a podcast that puts our listeners, not anyone else, first.

Producer: Anthony Vito

Richard is joined by Joel Anderson, host of The Ringer Tailgate and The Press Box podcasts, for a conversation about the NAACP’s Out of Bounds campaign and the bigger question underneath it: What is fair to ask of Black college athletes and recruits at a moment when lawmakers and the courts are attacking Black voting power? They start with HBCUs and PWIs, move through the campaign’s specifics asks, and cover lots of topics from there: political education, NIL incentives, the transfer portal, the limits and power of boycotts, and why college football keeps becoming the platform for this kind of discussion.

In this episode:

* 0:00: The roles of HBCUs and PWIs in Black college life, and how generational experiences shape Richard’s and Joel’s views.

* 12:01: The NAACP’s campaign and its asks of recruits, current athletes, fans, donors, and consumers.

* 16:16: What is fair to expect of college athlete activism now

* 26:55: Whether the idea of a “boycott” has lost force

* 37:53: The role of the NAACP in 2026

Producer: Anthony Vito

More on the story covered in this episode:

* NAACP press statement: Black athletes and fans should withhold support from public schools in states attacking Black voting rights

* NAACP: Out of Bounds

* CBS Sports on the NAACP campaign

If you like this episode, you’ll love a paid subscription.

For $10 a month (or you can get a free month with an annual subscription), subscribers get about twice as many Split Zone Duo podcasts, as well as our coach carousel reporting, deep dives on college football history, Q&A opportunities, and many more goodies as we think of them. You also help keep this show independent and ensure we’re making a podcast that puts our listeners, not anyone else, first.

Alex, Richard, and host emeritus Steven Godfrey turn a Memorial Day subscriber mailbag into a holiday-travel episode, starting with an either/or question about Steve Sarkisian and Lincoln Riley. From there, they get into G.J. Kinne’s future, Arkansas cutting and then quiickly reinstating a sport, what a 24-team Playoff might do to scheduling, how to talk about Kirby Smart, Dabo Swinney, Dan Lanning, and Eli Drinkwitz in 2026, and then the important holiday matters: message boards, soccer pain, cookout tips and tricks, Alex’s recent discovery of beans, and Spotify deep diving.

In this episode:

* 2:08: Who is under more pressure in 2026: Lincoln Riley or Steve Sarkisian? Plus: Will Muschamp’s role at Texas and USC’s politics around Notre Dame

* 13:46: Where G.J. Kinne could go next, and which coaches might make sense for future Texas G5 openings.

* 19:51: Arkansas reinstates tennis, then the conversation turns to Hunter Yurachek and athletic department accountability.

* 26:44: Would a 24-team Playoff make schools schedule better non-conference games, or just change the incentive to chase automatic bids?

* 33:57: Kirby Smart, Dabo Swinney, Dan Lanning, and Eli Drinkwitz as case studies in how we talk about portal usage, title ceilings, and carousel smoke.

* 44:52: Memorial Day light fare: Eastside LA food, message board culture, Tottenham and Valencia, cookout rules, beans, and all-time Spotify listening history.

Producer: Anthony Vito

If you like this episode, you’ll love a paid subscription.

For $10 a month (or you can get a free month with an annual subscription), subscribers get about twice as many Split Zone Duo podcasts, as well as our coach carousel reporting, deep dives on college football history, Q&A opportunities, and many more goodies as we think of them. You also help keep this show independent and ensure we’re making a podcast that puts our listeners, not anyone else, first.

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SUBSCRIBER EPISODE: Alex and Richard start with the surprise of UCLA becoming one of the offseason’s best recruiting stories, then Alex brings on Ira Gorawara fromThe Athletic for a campus-level look at Bob Chesney’s first few months in Westwood. This subscriber episode is about whether UCLA’s current burst of money, attention, and salesmanship is the first sign that a program long trapped between Los Angeles indifference and its own underinvestment might finally be changing its shape.

In this episode:

* 0:00: Richard and Alex set up UCLA’s recruiting surge, the money behind it, and why Los Angeles is a hard place to matter unless you are winning or selling.

* 10:49: Ira Gorawara joins to explain why Bob Chesney’s arrival has given the program a different feel than it had under recent coaches

* 17:02: Chesney’s contrast with Chip Kelly and DeShaun Foster

* 22:45: Whether UCLA’s donor alignment and roster spending are real enough to change the program’s ceiling.

* 29:17: How durable the Bruins’ recruiting bump might be, and what counts as success over the long term

* 34:29: The Rose Bowl vs. SoFi Stadium

Producer: Anthony Vito

Everyone can hear a free preview of this episode. To get the whole thing, become a paid subscriber today. For $10 a month (or you can get a free month with an annual subscription), subscribers get about twice as many Split Zone Duo podcasts, as well as our coach carousel reporting, deep dives on college football history, Q&A opportunities, and many more goodies as we think of them. You also help keep this show independent and ensure we’re making a podcast that puts our listeners, not anyone else, first.

Alex and Richard use Richard’s trip to ACC meetings as a window into the big college sports fight of the hour: how many teams will be in the College Football Playoff going forward. Then they sort through the Big Ten/SEC split over 24 teams, Ole Miss’ strange week as a national punching bag in the middle of May, and Nebraska’s first run-in with the new NIL enforcement system, which might be less the end of creative player payments than the start of better paperwork.

In this episode:

* 3:22: What Richard learned at ACC meetings, including the coming ACC tiebreaker puzzle

* 7:24: Why 16 vs. 24 teams is the next Playoff fight, and how conference title games, ESPN, and FOX fit into it

* 17:47: Why the Big Ten and SEC are on opposite sides of the 24-team debate

* 37:25: Ole Miss catches strays from Lane Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian

* 47:22: Nebraska’s rejected NIL deals, the College Sports Commission’s first big test, and the future of athletic department creativity

Producer: Anthony Vito

If you like this episode, you’ll love a paid subscription at www.splitzoneduo.com/subscribe

For $10 a month (or you can get a free month with an annual subscription), subscribers get about twice as many Split Zone Duo podcasts, as well as our coach carousel reporting, deep dives on college football history, Q&A opportunities, and many more goodies as we think of them. You also help keep this show independent and ensure we’re making a podcast that puts our listeners, not anyone else, first.

Subscriber episode: Steven Godfrey joins Alex and Richard to do a two-year checkup on Alabama under Kalen DeBoer. When Nick Saban retired in January 2024, Godfrey thought the Crimson Tide were due for a major reality check, while Alex thought one of Saban’s gifts to Bama was a durable and higher floor. Two seasons into the DeBoer era, Godfrey’s view looks like it’s carrying the day. But does Alabama see it that way, given a new contract extension for DeBoer?

In this episode:

0:00: Why Alex and Godfrey disagreed two years ago

5:14: What DeBoer’s extension says about Greg Byrne’s bet and Alabama’s appetite for patience after an uneven first two years.

10:28: Alabama’s roster-building question: Is high school recruiting just going really well, or are they poor, or is it a bit of both?

20:38: Godfrey on the psychology of SEC donors spending money on football players, and why it’s better for Ole Miss than Alabama

52:23: The archival add-on: Alex’s special episode from 2021 on what “gameday home” condo purchases do to SEC towns

Producer: Anthony Vito