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Morning Edition

December 17, 2025

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The college football quarterback carousel is already spinning fast. While big names like Arch Manning at Texas and LaNorris Sellers at South Carolina are staying put, a growing group of notable QBs are testing the transfer portal and exploring new opportunities.

— David Rumsey [[link removed]] and Eric Fisher [[link removed]]

College Football QB Carousel: Who’s Staying, Who’s Heading to Portal? [[link removed]]

Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images

College football’s postseason is just getting underway, and the transfer portal doesn’t open until Jan. 2, but the quarterback carousel is already spinning around several big-time signal-callers in the sport’s new free-agency era.

Texas quarterback Arch Manning, South Carolina’s LaNorris Sellers, and Maryland’s Malik Washington are all planning to return to their respective schools in 2026. While Manning and Sellers forgoing entry into the NFL Draft is not unexpected given their performances this season, Washington’s decision not to transfer is somewhat surprising, given today’s landscape.

Washington broke Maryland’s freshman passing record with 2,963 yards, and he would have been a top target for QB-needy programs in the transfer portal. The Terps finished 4–8 this season, but they opted to retain head coach Mike Locksley, with AD Jim Smith promising [[link removed]] to “rapidly strengthen our NIL support for 2026 and beyond.” It’s unclear what type of new financial deal was struck with Washington to keep him in College Park.

Sellers did sign a new deal [[link removed]] with South Carolina, according to ESPN. Manning, already one of the highest-compensated players in college football, has not reportedly signed any new deal. Both players are projected to have first-round potential when they do enter the NFL Draft.

USC also announced that it had re-signed quarterback Jayden Maiava, a redshirt junior.

Portal Piling Up

The transfer portal is already filling up with several notable QBs from Power 4 teams looking for new homes, though:

Florida’s DJ Lagway Nebraska’s Dylan Raiola Oklahoma State’s Zane Flores Cincinnati’s Brendan Sorsby Michigan State’s Aidan Chiles UCF’s Tayven Jackson

Lagway, currently a sophomore, will likely command a costly NIL (name, image, and likeness) and revenue-sharing package wherever he ends up. He leaves a Florida program that paid roughly $21 million [[link removed]] to fire coach Billy Napier, who recruited Lagway to Gainesville in 2023, and is waiting on new coach Jon Sumrall [[link removed]] to finish leading Tulane’s College Football Playoff run before taking on the Gators job full-time.

Raiola, also a sophomore, leaves Nebraska, which this season signed head coach Matt Rhule to a two-year contract extension through 2032. The Cornhuskers finished 7–5 and will play Utah in the Las Vegas Bowl on New Year’s Eve.

More quarterbacks, potentially including some competing for teams in the CFP, are expected to enter the transfer portal, too, as the carousel picks up even more pace later this month and in January.

SPONSORED BY E*TRADE FROM MORGAN STANLEY

Brian Hoyer on NIL, Donor Fatigue, and Life After the NFL

In Season 2, Episode 10 [[link removed]] of Portfolio Players, presented by E*TRADE from Morgan Stanley, former NFL quarterback and Legacy25 partner Brian Hoyer breaks down how NIL is reshaping college sports—and why today’s landscape is starting to look a lot like professional football.

Hoyer dives into donor fatigue, the “Wild West” nature of collectives, and why flexibility and strong infrastructure are becoming essential for long-term success. He also reflects on the lessons he learned inside the Patriots organization, his transition into the business world, and why financial planning is becoming a critical part of athlete development.

Watch the full episode of Portfolio Players here. [[link removed]]

FIFA Responds to World Cup Ticket Backlash With New $60 Tier [[link removed]]

Yukihito Taguchi-Imagn Images

After weeks of increasingly severe blowback over 2026 World Cup ticket costs, much of it from within the soccer community, FIFA has relented, somewhat, and is introducing a new, lower-cost level.

The global governing body said Tuesday that it is creating a new “Supporter Entry Tier” for World Cup tickets that carry a fixed price of $60 per match, including the tournament final. That cost is a marked difference from dynamically priced tickets for much of the World Cup inventory that have soared into the hundreds of dollars, even for group-stage matches, and beyond $4,000 for the July 19 final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

Football Supporters Europe estimated it would cost at least $6,900 for a single fan to follow their team from the group stage through the final. The new FIFA ticketing tier is designed to address that, to a degree.

Inventory Issues

The lower-cost tickets will be limited to about 500 seats per participating team, per match. FIFA is designating that 10% of each ticket allocation to a Participating Member Association (PMA), such as U.S. Soccer, will be in the new Supporter Entry Tier. The PMAs were each already set to get 8% of the total ticket inventory for each match, so the new, low-cost tickets will be a small subset of that.

FIFA said that inventory “will be allocated specifically to supporters of qualified teams, with the selection and distribution process managed individually by the Participating Member Associations.”

The move follows increasingly withering criticism around the world about perceived greed on the part of FIFA—particularly as the upcoming World Cup tickets will cost about five times as much in Qatar in 2022 [[link removed]]. FSE had called FIFA’s original pricing “extortionate.” Scotland, in thrall over its first World Cup berth since 1998, had to go so far as to warn fans not to incur excessive debt to watch the club [[link removed]].

FIFA also said Tuesday that it has now received more than 20 million ticket requests for the World Cup during an ongoing, lottery-based phase of its ticketing. That figure is quadruple the level from the end of last week, and adds to the nearly 2 million tickets sold during the two prior phases.

FSE, for its part, said there is more work to be done by FIFA to ensure proper treatment of fans.

“While we welcome FIFA’s seeming recognition of the damage its original plans were to cause, the revisions do not go far enough to reconcile,” the organization said in a statement. “The vast majority would still have to pay extortionate prices, way higher than any tournament before.”

Olympic Strategy

Organizers for the upcoming 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, meanwhile, also plan to begin registration for their ticketing on Jan. 14.

Officials said there will be at least 1 million tickets sold for $28, tying into the year of the event, and a third of the overall ticket inventory for those Games will be priced at $100 or less. The pricing plans have been long in development, and they are not a direct response to what’s occurred in recent days and weeks in and around the World Cup.

There is an unmistakable contrast, however.

“That’s not just lip service to a couple tickets in the corner of some venue, but a meaningful number of tickets,” LA28 SVP Allison-Katz-Mayfield said of the push for lower-cost access.

Nielsen Ratings, Including Sports, Under Fire: ‘Deep Instability’ [[link removed]]

Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel process to measure television and streaming viewership is once more at the center of controversy, and the National Football League is part of it.

The Video Advertising Bureau, which represents the television and premium video industry, released a study [[link removed]] Tuesday alleging that the audience methodology is showing “deep instability” and is unreliable in several meaningful respects. As part of its research, the VAB said 30 NFL games were among findings that show “severe variability” between traditional, panel-based viewership counts, and the newly enhanced ones that include tens of millions of additional data points from set-top boxes and smart TVs.

“It turns out the begrudging Upfront use of Nielsen’s not-really-ready Big Data trading currency has already gone to worst-case scenario on early returns,” said VAB president and CEO Sean Cunningham.

Nielsen, however, pointed to numerous problems in the VAB study, such as using live-only data instead of live and same-day viewing, as is customary in the television industry, as well as omitting factors such as out-of-home viewership that are critical, particularly in sports.

“This report is seriously flawed and manipulated,” Nielsen said in a statement. “From what we have seen, the VAB incorrectly pulled our data and the bureau does not know how to do a proper ratings analysis. For example, they pulled data for live sports without accounting for the same games airing in different time zones across the U.S. The VAB is wasting the time and money of its members.”

Counting Issues

The back-and-forth debate regarding Big Data + Panel reflects the particularly high stakes around television viewership, the advertising revenue that supports it, and the NFL’s outsized role in that, given its role as the most-watched programming in U.S. television.

Soon after the start of the 2025 season and the Sept. 1 formal rollout of Big Data + Panel [[link removed]], the NFL said it had some specific issues with the new methodology [[link removed]], but added it was continuing to work with Nielsen to resolve them.

“We’re happy with the steps we’ve taken forward for 2025, but there’s more work to be done,” NFL chief data and analytics officer Paul Ballew told Front Office Sports in September.

Since then, the NFL has had a banner 2025 season for viewership that included a new record audience for a regular-season game [[link removed]] and audience gains that transcend the new methodology [[link removed]].

The NFL did not comment on the VAB study. While acknowledging strides are being made, the league still believes its audiences are being undercounted to some degree, and that Nielsen to date has made comparatively more progress on a separate expansion of counting out-of-home audiences [[link removed]].

“We still think there’s more opportunity [for further audience growth] once the Big Data element gets captured by Nielsen appropriately,” said NFL EVP of media distribution Hans Schroeder last month.

Scripps Rejects Sinclair’s Bid, Keeps Sports Media Future Uncertain [[link removed]]

Stephen R. Sylvanie-Imagn Images

E.W. Scripps Co. has rejected the acquisition bid from rival local television station owner Sinclair Inc., sending another wave of uncertainty through the sports media business.

Three weeks after Sinclair tendered its bid [[link removed]] for Scripps, the Ohio-based owner of 60 stations and Ion, and two weeks after Scripps created a poison pill [[link removed]] to thwart it, the company’s board unanimously and formally turned down the proposal.

“After careful consideration, Scripps’ board determined that Sinclair’s unsolicited acquisition proposal is not in the best interests of Scripps and its shareholders,” said Scripps board chair Kim Williams late Tuesday. “The board nonetheless remains open to evaluating opportunities to enhance shareholder value and will continue to consider any course of action, including any acquisition proposal, that is in the best interest of shareholders.”

Sinclair, the owner of Tennis Channel and 178 local stations, had argued that a union of the two companies was vital to achieve greater scale in a rapidly changing media industry. In pursuit of that, Sinclair had already amassed a 9.9% equity stake in Scripps and had proposed creating a combined company with a market capitalization of $2.9 billion.

The next steps for either company are unclear. While Scripps signaled openness to takeover offers, it still has its shareholder rights plan—acting as the poison pill against an unapproved acquisition—in place for another 50 weeks.

Sports programming is a core element in any of these considerations, particularly on the Scripps side. The Ion network owned by Scripps reached a multiyear extension of its rights deal with the WNBA [[link removed]] this past June.

The Scripps sports portfolio, meanwhile, also includes rights to the NWSL [[link removed]], the Big Sky Conference, and local rights to a handful of pro teams, including the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Panthers, the Golden Knights, the Mammoth, the Lightning, and defending WNBA champion Aces. With these pacts, Scripps has been at the heart of a broader resurgence for sports in over-the-air television.

Editors’ Picks Nick Saban Joins Nashville Predators Ownership Group [[link removed]]by Margaret Fleming [[link removed]]It’s Saban’s first sports ownership stake. Could Chiefs and Cowboys Missing Playoffs Slow NFL Ratings Train? [[link removed]]by Michael McCarthy [[link removed]]The league’s two biggest draws are almost certain to miss the postseason. Grand Slam Track’s Top Creditors Include Star Athletes [[link removed]]by Margaret Fleming [[link removed]]The league owes Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone more than $350,000. Question of the Day

Do you think Arch Manning made the right decision by staying at Texas?

YES [[link removed]] NO [[link removed]]

Tuesday’s result: 37% of respondents think the Packers can still make a Super Bowl run without Micah Parsons.

Advertise [[link removed]] Awards [[link removed]] Learning [[link removed]] Events [[link removed]] Video [[link removed]] Show [[link removed]] Written by David Rumsey [[link removed]], Eric Fisher [[link removed]] Edited by Matthew Tabeek [[link removed]], Catherine Chen [[link removed]]

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