Happy New Year to all!  Welcome to the first full week of 2026.  

  

For each of you, I wish nothing but the best as we begin a new year together. 

The Bold Type is changing strategy a bit today.  I will provide the key highlights over the past week in The Big West, but also want to provide some personal thoughts on the current situation and future of the NCAA.  Therefore, rather than start with a song, I will start with a quote and end with a quote and song.  

  

Let’s get to The Bold Type! 


 

   QUOTE OF THE DAY   

“Do something, lead, follow or get out of the way.”  Credited to Ted Turner 

  
 

   CONGRATULATIONS   

• To ALL Big West men’s volleyball programs, who are ranked in the season’s first AVCA National Collegiate Men's Volleyball Poll!  A reminder the 2026 NCAA Championship will increase its field size to 12! 
  • #2 Hawai’i 
  • #3 Long Beach State 
  • #6 UC Irvine 
  • #10 UC San Diego 
  • # 11 CSUN 
  • #16 UC Santa Barbara 
• To Defending national champion Long Beach State, picked to win the conference crown in The Big West preseason polling! Read more >>> 
• To our amazing student-athletes of the week! 
  • Men's Basketball - Kyle Evans, UC Irvine 
  • Women's Basketball - Cristina Jones, Cal State Fullerton 
  • Men's Swimming & Diving - Tim Brown, Hawai’i 
  • Women's Swimming & Diving - Quincy Key, Hawai’i 

 

   THE BIG WEST MEN'S VOLLEYBALL PREVIEW PRESENTED BY THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS    

The show, which debuted last Tuesday, is now available on demand on ESPN+! If you want to see the extended interviews with Big West players and coaches, please visit The Big West website at www.BigWest.org and visit the “Multimedia” section in the middle of the home page or head to The Big West’s YouTube channel. 

   BIG WEST BASKETBALL CONFERENCE PLAY IS BACK!   

UC Irvine has edged out to the lead in league play, with a 4-0 record on both the men’s and women’s side of the standings. This week, the Anteater men and women both see themselves as part of the Spectrum SportsNet television package, live from the Bren Events Center:   

• Thursday, Jan. 8 at 7 p.m. PT – Long Beach State at UC Irvine men’s basketball  

• Saturday, Jan. 10 at 2 p.m. PT – Hawai'i at UC Irvine women’s basketball  

Tune in on Spectrum SportsNet to catch the games or head to ESPN+ to watch all Big West home basketball, all season long! 

 

   BIG WEST BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPS TICKETS ON SALE NOW!   

The Big West is back for the 2026 Credit Union 1 Big West Basketball Championships! See eight men’s and women’s teams battle for a conference title and an automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament. Catch the action March 11th through the 14th at Lee’s Family Forum in Henderson. Nevada! Get tickets now at bigwest.org/tickets or visit your favorite school’s ticket office!  

  

   PERSONAL THOUGHTS ON THE NCAA AS WE START 2026   

As we begin a new year, I want to briefly step back from the daily scoreboard and share a few personal reflections on the current state and future direction of college athletics. The thoughts below are mine alone, shaped by more than three decades working across FBS and non-football conferences. They are not offered as definitive solutions, but as questions and observations I believe our industry must be willing to confront if we are serious about long-term stability, fairness, and keeping student-athletes at the center of what we do. 

• Against the backdrop of national instability, I am extremely excited about the additions of Utah Valley University, California Baptist University, and Sacramento State University to The Big West. These institutions bring competitive athletic programs, institutional alignment, and a clear commitment to the student-athlete experience. Early results already reflect that competitiveness, with Utah Valley and Cal Baptist currently a combined 4–0 against Big West men’s basketball programs this season. More importantly, the three additions reinforce that thoughtful, regional, values-based growth remains possible—even in a challenging national environment. 

• Many of the most significant challenges facing NCAA Division I stem from an inability of the CFP-4 conferences to consistently work together in the broader interest of the national membership. With the NCAA membership voting in 2025 to give the CFP-4 conferences nearly full decision-making authority in Division I via weighted voting, doing what is best for the overall enterprise is now their responsibility.   Strong concern exists.  If consensus cannot be reached on the future structure of the College Football Playoff, it raises a fundamental question: how will significantly weighted voting authority be used to bring stability, establish meaningful guardrails, and enact legislation that allows all institutions to compete fairly while keeping student-athletes at the center of decisions being made?? 

• Coaches’ salaries are not the central problem facing college athletics. The real issue is leadership—and the decisions made by institutional leaders to approve, fund, and sustain those salaries. Focusing solely on compensation levels ignores the responsibility of governance structures to set overall enterprise priorities, establish guardrails, and ensure that spending aligns with institutional values and long-term sustainability. 

• During its October 2025 meeting, the NCAA Board of Directors recommended the creation of a working group to evaluate the NCAA’s role in supporting Bowl Subdivision football. I am fully supportive of this review. FBS football does not generate revenue for the NCAA, yet the NCAA continues to provide financial distributions and remains the primary legal shield and regulatory entity bearing disproportionate risk on behalf of all member institutions. The working group will collaborate closely with the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Subdivision Oversight Committees, among other stakeholders.  I encourage transparency by this working group and ultimately the NCAA Board of Directors on their discussions and decisions in this important initiative for every institution and conference in the NCAA.   

• For decades, the National Football League has effectively relied on college football as its primary developmental system. Yet beyond limited support for scouting access, there has been little direct financial investment by the NFL into the college game—particularly at a level that meaningfully offsets the legal, medical, operational, and competitive pressures now facing institutions. This raises a legitimate question: should the future structure of college football include a more direct financial partnership with the NFL, one that reflects the value college football provides to the NFL and allows for clearer separation between football and the broader NCAA governance model? Such a discussion could also prompt a long-overdue reevaluation of the NFL’s three-year draft eligibility rule. 

• As college athletics adapts to a new era defined by revenue sharing, NIL, and unrestricted transfer movement, it is important to be clear-eyed: perfect competitive equity has never existed in Division I and is not a realistic goal. Fairness, however, should be. When a student-athlete transfers after an institution has invested significant resources in recruiting, housing, education, medical care, academic support, and athlete development—and is then acquired by another program offering substantial financial compensation—it raises a fundamental question of sustainability. Many Big West institutions recruit and develop high school student-athletes who prove they can compete successfully at the Division I level, only to see those student-athletes later recruited directly off their rosters by higher-resourced programs, leaving the original institution with empty roster spots and the cost of restarting the development cycle. A development-based transfer fee, similar in concept to models used in international soccer such as the Premier League, should be established and could provide reasonable remuneration to institutions that made those investments, while a modest additional  levy—such as the Premier League’s 4% mechanism—could help offset escalating legal and operational costs born disproportionately by lower-resourced programs. Such an approach would not create competitive equity, but it could promote fairness, sustainability, and the long-term health of Division I athletics. 

As we move into 2026, the path forward will not be defined by achieving perfect competitive equity—an outcome that has never existed in Division I athletics. Instead, it will be shaped by leadership: by the willingness to work together for the overall good of DI, to align authority with accountability, and to make thoughtful, collective decisions that strengthen the overall health of Division I athletics while keeping student-athletes and education at the center of everything we do. 

  

   THE DRAKE GROUP RELEASES STATE-BY-STATE NIL LEGISLATION DATABASE   

The purpose of updating this 2021 database created by The Drake Group is to provide legislative policymakers, athletics administrators, and college athletes with current knowledge of state laws related to NIL and other third-party employment. School administrators need to understand what laws require in their own states and the states where their teams compete, to best guide their student-athletes, especially when laws involve taxation or other athlete obligations. Athletes and their agents must understand these obligations, rights, and opportunities related to earning NIL and other forms of compensation. Athletic governance organizations (such as NCAA, NAIA, NJCAA, conferences, and state athletic associations) need to address enforcement responsibilities when their rules conflict with state laws. Knowledge of state laws can help federal policymakers understand rights and benefits that should be included or compensation practices that should be prohibited by federal legislation. State legislators may use the database to identify model laws from other states to replicate or to determine what laws are necessary in their own state to protect athletes, schools, and colleges, or to influence the success of athletics programs in their area. 

Categorized by state and whether a bill is a current law, pending further action, died in committee or chamber, an executive order, or was rescinded, the database provides the following information: 

• Bill number, effective date, and a link to the actual legislation 

• Whether the bill applies to colleges only or applies to both high schools and colleges 

• Prohibitions or required provisions including scholarship and participation eligibility 

• NIL contract disclosure provisions 

• Institution/team contract disclosure and conflict provisions 

• Whether schools, conferences, or the NCAA are permitted to provide NIL compensation to athletes 

• Agent provisions 

• NIL taxes and employment 

• Other provisions  

The database can be accessed as a downloadable PDF or Excel document HERE. 

   

   MEDIA REPORTS ON NCAA AND LEGAL MATTERS   

• NCAA President Charlie Baker on the potential of granting eligibility to men’s basketball student-athletes who’ve previously signed NBA contracts, remarks: “The NCAA has not and will not grant eligibility to any prospective or returning student-athletes who have signed an NBA contract (including a two-way contract). As schools are increasingly recruiting individuals with international league experience, the NCAA is exercising discretion in applying the actual and necessary expenses bylaw to ensure that prospective student-athletes with experience in American basketball leagues are not at a disadvantage compared to their international counterparts. (link) 
• In response to NCAA President Charlie Baker’s assertion that eligibility will not be granted to any individuals who have signed NBA contracts, Heitner Legal Founder Darren Heitner observes: “The bright line has been established. If you played in the NBA, you can't play basketball in the NCAA. How long until we see a legal challenge?” Sportico’s Michael McCann responds: “Once ex-G League players—who are unionized employees & pro players—were allowed to play NCAA D-1, that opens the door to argue ex-NBA players should be allowed, too. Whether the basketball difference would matter enough in antitrust review is [the] $1M question.” (link) 
• Bloomberg’s Elizabeth Rembert reports that U.S. colleges went on a borrowing spree in 2025, issuing over $34B in municipal debt—a 28% YoY increase and the highest volume since at least 2014. Driven by favorable rates, infrastructure needs (like Texas Tech’s stadium renovation and Boston University’s dorm overhaul), and fears of losing tax-exempt status due to legislative changes, schools aggressively tapped the market, with over 70% of issuance occurring in the first half of the year. While bankers from Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Barclays expect volume to cool slightly in 2026 as institutions adopt a more conservative approach amid federal funding uncertainty, they anticipate continued robust activity from large public universities and academic medical centers.  (link) 
• Can Texas Tech Board of Regents Chair Cody Campbell be the one to fix college sports? That’s the question ESPN’s Dan Murphy seeks to answer in profiling the billionaire booster that’s “become the loudest, most controversial voice in a fight to shape the future of college sports” with some leaders believing he doesn’t possess the requisite experience to understand their industry. Campbell: “I'm a threat to the status quo. But the status quo is failing. ... A lot of people want to hold on to the way things used to be. The fact is, we've already crossed the Rubicon. … Everything has changed in the last four years, and I've been directly involved on an extremely detailed level for those four years. I'm not sure that experience gained 30 years ago in college sports is necessarily that relevant today.” Much more. (link)  
• The college sports system is “irreparably broken, yet more popular than ever,” per the Boston Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy, who recently sat down with NCAA President Charlie Baker and outgoing Knight Commission member/former Northeastern/Dartmouth AD Peter Roby to discuss today’s college sports environment… 
  • Baker: “I think to say that the power conferences don’t care about education is wrong. …  I worry a lot about the transfer stuff having an impact on graduate rates, but the transfer rules we had were taken away from us in a court decision in West Virginia a couple of years ago. … Most of the student-athletes I talk to really want to be students first and want to play sports. They do not want to be employees. That’s not how they want to roll. … The thing that people don’t see that I get to see all the time is the kids. They make me glad I am in this role. They are smart, proud, accomplished. The lessons they learn playing sports about teamwork and putting your own interests aside and being able to take constructive criticism and do the grind. They’re applicable everywhere for the rest of their lives. … There’s a lot about [his job] that’s frustrating. But I spent most of my career in healthcare and government, and those can be frustrating environments, as well.” 
  • Roby: “Schools continue to complain about rising costs and the need for more revenue, yet they are paying out multimillion-dollar buyouts for fired coaches and hiring coaches at $12M per year. The way things are trending, the NCAA will not exist in its current form in the next few years. It will only manage sports championships. … It’s time to separate [schools with the biggest school-based NIL programs] from schools that believe in the primacy of education and the personal development of young people. … Let’s create another division within Division I to allow like-minded schools to compete on a more level playing field academically, philosophically, and athletically.” More. (link)  
• Hawai’i AD Matt Elliott joined the Hawai’i Sports Network’s Wake Up in the Den show to discuss a number of topics including his recent visit to the state legislature seeking $5M in supplemental NIL funding: “We wanted to … lay out [student-athlete NIL] realities and … what we're seeing in the Mountain West and other comparable conferences, to explain that we believe if we have $5M, or approximately $5M, to start our NIL fund each year, then we can be competitive. More from Elliott. (link)  
• The Division I Cabinet is set to discuss allowing sponsored jersey patches in competition during the 2026 NCAA Convention over Jan. 13-16, per SBJ’s Ben Portnoy, who notes the talks don’t necessarily mean a vote on the topic will be held as one is not currently scheduled as part of the event’s agenda. (link)  

 
 

   SONG OF THE WEEK   

“Auld Lang Syne” by Rod Stewart 

  

A close for 2025 and today from the movie Spiderman: 

“With great power comes great responsibility.” 

Be bold. 2026 is upon us. 

Dan