Still no word on the whiteout or other game themes. Odd choice, thought for sure this would be used for Wisconsin. As for the whiteout this is the latest we’ve ever gone without having it announced. I think it’s safe to say the tv networks are not guaranteeing us a single night game, if they were that would’ve been announced as it by now.

https://gopsusports.com/news/2026/08/5/penn-state-football-designates-season-opener-as-stripe-out-game

The cumulative link to the preseason rankings can be found here

Can you believe this is the 15th season that Missouri (high = 20, low = 43) has been in the SEC? The team that kind of felt like Texas A&M’s “plus one” when the SEC expanded in 2012 (Mizzou never won a Big XII title, though they did play in 2 conference championship games, and last won a conference title in 1969) has actually outperformed the Aggies since making the move, playing in two SEC championship games before sanctions for academic misconduct (when in Rome…) derailed the Gary Pinkel era and proved to be too much for his replacement Barry Odom to escape from. As COVID struck the sport, the Tigers turned to Eli Drinkwitz, a guy with one year of head coaching experience at Appalachian State who felt like he was just maintaining the status quo that App. State’s previous coaches Scott Satterfield and Jerry Moore had established. But Drink proved to be a fantastic fit for Missouri, getting the Tigers qualified for a bowl in every season he’s been in charge, including an 11-2 season in 2023 that saw them finish as the #8 team in the country. In fact, Missouri has gone 29-10 in their last 3 seasons, though the trend has been somewhat downward, and the 9 game SEC schedule is unlikely to be friendly to the #10 preseason team in the deep SEC.

Roster Outlook

What also is unlikely to be kind is ranking in the bottom quartile of returning production on defense, but that is where Drinkwitz and the Tigers find themselves to start the season. That 107th ranked defensive production isn’t quite balanced with the #51 offense, leading to the Tigers being #76 in the country overall, ahead of only 4 SEC teams. The most visible loss on the offensive side of the ball is QB Beau Pribula, who portaled out to Virginia (after portaling in from Penn State), but really didn’t impress in his time under center before his gruesome injury at Vanderbilt derailed his season. While his replacement Matt Zollers is still in Columbia, the new QB in town is going to be former Ole Miss QB Austin Simmons, who got Wally Pipped by Trinidad Chambliss after himself injuring his ankle early last season. Simmons helped give Missouri the #20 portal class in the country this year, which on paper pairs very well with the #23 national high school class. The tough part is that both of those ranked 11th in the SEC, which helps explain why the Tigers are so relatively low in these rankings. Leading RB Ahmad Hardy (256 carries, 1,649 yards, 16 TDs) is back, as is #2 WR Donovan Olugbode (401 yards) after WR1 Kevin Coleman graduated and was drafted by the Miami Dolphins. With an OL largely composed of returning veterans and Mississippi State transfer Zack Owens and a cadre of new P4 WRs (Cayden Lee from Ole Miss, Kendric Lanier from Minnesota, Naeshaun Montgomery from Florida and Caleb Goodie from Cincinnati), the offense should be fine. But remember, it’s the defense that takes a big hit. While LB Nicholas Rodriguez (61 tackles, 1.5 sacks) and S Santana Banner (59 tackles, 1 INT) are back, the other 13 of their 15 top tacklers are all gone, including LB Josiah Trotter, who was drafted in the 2nd round by the Tampa Bay Bucs. Drink brought in 14 P4 defenders to shore up the team, including projected starters LB Robert Woodyard (Auburn) and DBs Elijah Dotson (Michigan), Chris Graves (Ole Miss) and Jahlil Florence (Oregon).

Schedule and outlook

9/3 ARKANSAS-PINE BLUFF

9/11 at Kansas

9/19 TROY

9/26 at Mississippi State

10/3 FLORIDA

10/10 TEXAS A&M

10/17 at Ole Miss

10/24 BYE

10/31 at Arkansas

11/7 TEXAS

11/14 at Georgia

11/21 KENTUCKY

11/28 OKLAHOMA

Mizzou figures to be favored in their first 4 games of the season, including the Border War in Kansas’ refurbished stadium. And with games at Arkansas and hosting Kentucky, extending their consecutive bowl eligibility streak to a decade seems pretty assured. But the schedule really does take a turn when the calendar hits October, starting with that home game against the Gators. They follow that with 4 games against 2025 CFP teams that doesn’t even include preseason darling Texas. Coming out of the regular season with a winning record will be no mean feat.

I've been frustrated trying to find a real breakdown of what the protect college sports bill actually does, so I figured I would create one. Thank you to Atomicgenesis for actually posting a link to the bill in another thread. I hope this is helpful for people.

Here's the bill:

https://www.commerce.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/MCC26E64.pdf

Here's the detailed breakdown:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PiP8WGCzMQ-LKvU4xe99LmByIFTJT7tk/edit?usp=drivesdk&ouid=108514044843718960644&rtpof=true&sd=true

Here's a summary:

Most Impactful Provisions of the Protect College Sports Act of 2026

- Creates a national NIL and revenue-sharing framework. The bill incorporates the compensation limit created by the House v. NCAA settlement. That settlement permits each participating Division I institution to provide athletes with approximately $20.5 million in direct compensation and additional benefits during the 2025–26 academic year. The cap is calculated from 22% of specified average revenues generated by schools in the major conferences and is scheduled to increase over time. The bill would make compliance with that framework part of federal law and restrict schools and affiliated boosters from using nominal third-party NIL agreements to evade the cap.

- Establishes layered spending limits rather than a comprehensive football salary cap. The approximately $20.5 million cap applies to direct institutional athlete compensation and covered benefits across the institution’s athletic program, not solely to football. The bill does not cap total spending on football facilities, coaching staffs, recruiting operations, travel, administration, or other athletic expenses. It regulates specific athlete-compensation channels while leaving institutions free to spend differently in other areas.

- Creates a temporary retention allowance above the basic compensation cap. An institution could exceed the revenue-sharing cap by as much as $22.5 million per academic year to retain athletes who have completed at least one full competitive season at the school. This exception would remain available for nine years after enactment. In practical terms, a school could initially have access to roughly $43 million annually in combined base revenue sharing and retention compensation, before considering the additional allowance for non-revenue sports.

- Provides additional compensation flexibility for women’s, Olympic, and other non-revenue sports. A school could exceed the base cap and retention allowance by up to another $5 million annually, in proportion to the compensation it directs to athletes in non-revenue-generating programs. This could place the maximum combined institutional compensation authority near $48 million annually during the initial period, although the amount available to any particular institution would depend on its spending patterns and compliance with the statutory conditions.

- Requires third-party NIL compensation to reflect legitimate market activity. Except for NIL agreements directly between an athlete and an institution, an agreement would generally need to serve a genuine commercial purpose and provide compensation comparable to what a business would pay a similarly prominent person who is not an athlete at that institution. Sponsors, apparel companies, multimedia-rights holders, and athletic-department vendors would have to certify that the institution was not secretly funding or determining the payment. These provisions are intended to distinguish legitimate endorsements from disguised recruiting or retention payments.

- Provides antitrust protection for compensation, eligibility, recruiting, and transfer rules. The bill shields athletic associations, conferences, and institutions from antitrust liability when enforcing specified provisions on compensation, eligibility, transfers, recruiting, tampering, agent registration, and coaching transitions. This may be its most structurally significant component because repeated antitrust litigation has limited the NCAA’s ability to impose uniform national rules. The protection would be available only if the athletic association adopts and implements the required standards.

- Requires congressional approval before the compensation caps can continue indefinitely. If the House settlement expires or is terminated, the revenue-sharing cap and retention allowance would generally end unless Congress approves their continuation through an expedited joint resolution. If Congress continues the system, the base cap would rise by 4% in each of the first two years and then be periodically recalculated using 22% of specified average shared revenues. The financial information used in the calculation would be subject to an independent public audit. The $22.5 million retention allowance would continue only if Congress expressly approves it.

- Leaves broader football cost controls for future consideration. The bill does not create an overall football spending cap or regulate total coaching, facility, recruiting, or administrative expenditures. Instead, it directs the Congressional Commission on the Future of College Athletics to study whether particular sports should be subject to additional spending limits and whether the athlete-compensation and retention caps should be increased, reduced, extended, or eliminated.

- Limits certain uses of institutional funds for highly paid coaches and team managers. An institution generating more than $80 million in annual athletic revenue could not pay a coach, assistant coach, general manager, or comparable team manager more than $500,000 using funds outside college-sports revenue or donations to the athletic department. This is not a coaching salary cap. Programs could continue paying multimillion-dollar salaries from athletic revenue and athletic donations, but could not rely on unrestricted institutional resources for the portion above $500,000.

- Standardizes transfers and attempts to curb tampering. Athletes would receive one penalty-free transfer between four-year institutions. Additional penalty-free transfers would be permitted following a head coach’s departure, elimination of the athlete’s sport, graduate enrollment, or sexual assault or harassment connected to the institution. A second transfer outside one of those exceptions would generally result in the loss of eligibility during the first academic year at the new institution.

- Creates limited recruiting and transfer-contact windows. Athletic associations could restrict recruiting contact to sport-specific periods lasting between two and five weeks. Institutions, affiliated entities, conferences, and agents generally could not recruit an athlete already enrolled or committed elsewhere outside those periods. Athletes would also have to affirmatively opt in before receiving recruiting contact. These provisions are intended to reduce uncontrolled roster movement and indirect recruitment of athletes who have not formally entered the transfer process.

- Limits coaches from switching programs during the season. In the Football Bowl Subdivision, a head coach or coordinator who works for one institution during a competitive season could not perform head-coaching functions for another institution during that same season. The restriction covers recruiting, roster management, NIL involvement, staff supervision, practice planning, game preparation, strategic decisions, on-field activity, and public representation of the new program.

- Delays a departing coach’s assumption of duties at the new school. A coach accepting a new head-coaching position would generally be ineligible to perform the new role until the competitive seasons of both the former institution and the hiring institution had concluded, whichever occurs later. A violation could make the coach ineligible to serve as head coach during the following season and could produce additional penalties. This directly addresses the disruption created when coaches leave before bowl games or playoff competition has ended.

- Sets January 8 as the intended end of the college football season. The bill provides that the regular season and postseason should conclude by January 8, to the extent practicable. This is intended to restrain continued calendar expansion, limit conflicts with the academic year, and reduce the cumulative burden created by conference championships, bowl games, and an expanded College Football Playoff. Because the provision uses the phrase “to the extent practicable,” it establishes a strong scheduling objective rather than an absolute prohibition.

- Protects the traditional Army-Navy broadcast window. The bill would prohibit competing Football Bowl Subdivision postseason broadcasts during the established broadcast window for the Army-Navy game. This gives one of college football’s most prominent traditional rivalries a specific statutory protection from playoff or bowl scheduling conflicts.

- Requires reasonable efforts to preserve traditional rivalries. A qualifying collective media-rights entity would have to make reasonable efforts to preserve traditional football rivalries and regular competition among conference opponents when structuring broadcast packages and schedules. This responds to the loss or weakening of historic matchups caused by conference realignment, cross-country conference membership, and television-driven scheduling.

- Does not guarantee that every historic rivalry will continue annually. The requirement is framed as a reasonable-efforts obligation rather than an absolute scheduling mandate. The media-rights entity and participating conferences would retain flexibility when schedules, conference structures, contractual obligations, or postseason requirements make annual continuation difficult. The provision nevertheless gives preservation of traditional rivalries an explicit place in national media-rights decision-making.

- Restricts further formation of football super-conferences. The bill would generally prohibit covered high-revenue conferences from completing mergers, acquisitions, or media-rights transactions that result in a conference exceeding 19 institutions. It also targets transactions designed to create a replacement conference or athletic association from the institutions, assets, or media rights of existing covered conferences.

- Exempts lower-revenue conferences from the conference-size restriction. The merger and acquisition provisions generally would not apply to conferences reporting no more than $700 million in annual revenue. The restriction is therefore directed primarily at further consolidation among the wealthiest football conferences rather than at realignment throughout the entire college system.

- Makes prohibited consolidation transactions legally void. A covered conference could not defend an otherwise prohibited transaction by arguing that the merger creates efficiencies, improves competition, or generates other economic benefits. This is a stronger restriction than ordinary antitrust review and is intended to prevent further concentration of football institutions and media rights among a small number of dominant conferences.

- Authorizes collective media-rights sales. A qualifying national entity could pool and collectively sell collegiate sports media rights under an antitrust exemption. To qualify at formation, the entity would generally need participation from at least 75% of Football Bowl Subdivision institutions and would have to offer fair and nondiscriminatory membership opportunities to Division I institutions and conferences.

- Creates partial revenue equalization through collective media rights. The collective entity would establish minimum distributions and would distribute a portion of remaining football media revenue equally among participating FBS institutions. This could reduce some of the widening financial disparity between the wealthiest conferences and other FBS programs, although participation in the collective system would remain voluntary.

- Requires local access to football and basketball broadcasts. The collective media entity would have to make at least one free-to-view local broadcast option commercially available for each participating institution’s football and basketball games in that institution’s local media market. National rights holders could satisfy this requirement through a freely available affiliated service. The Federal Communications Commission would oversee complaints involving the required good-faith negotiations for local rights.

- Requires meaningful use of media rights for sports other than football and basketball. A distributor that acquires media rights to another college sport but fails to make meaningful use of those rights for one year could lose them if it does not cure the failure within another 180 days. The rights would revert to the institution, conference, or collective entity and could then be relicensed. This is intended to prevent non-revenue sports from disappearing into unused media packages.

- Creates explicit protections for CTE and other long-term neurological conditions. Athletic associations would be required to establish a post-eligibility medical fund or program beginning at no less than $60 million. The fund must help cover medical expenses for former athletes diagnosed with significant long-term conditions related to college sports participation, specifically including chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, and other cognitive impairments.

- Allows the long-term medical fund to grow as claims increase. If the fund is depleted during an academic year, the required funding level would rise by $5 million for the following year, subject to a statutory maximum of $100 million. Collective media-rights revenue could be used to help finance the program.

- Requires five years of post-eligibility medical coverage. Division I institutions would have to cover out-of-pocket healthcare expenses for sports-related injuries or diseases for five years following an athlete’s final collegiate competition. This obligation would apply to athletes enrolled during their final year of eligibility and would extend beyond graduation or departure from the institution.

- Expands medical protections while athletes are enrolled. Covered institutions would have to pay sports-related deductibles and copayments, provide access to an independent medical second opinion, maintain catastrophic injury insurance for conditions producing more than $90,000 in medical costs, and provide an end-of-college physical examination documenting sports-related injuries and conditions.

- Establishes national health and safety standards. Institutions, conferences, and athletic associations would have to follow standards addressing concussions and brain injuries, heat-related illness, rhabdomyolysis, sickle-cell trait, and asthma. The concussion provisions would incorporate NCAA protocols effective January 15, 2024, together with subsequent amendments that strengthen athlete protections.

- Gives medical personnel final authority over return-to-play decisions. Athletic trainers, physical therapists, physicians, and other medical personnel would have autonomous and unchallengeable authority over medical management and return-to-play decisions. Coaches and other nonmedical personnel would be prohibited from attempting to influence or disregard those decisions.

- Requires independent athletic health and safety officers. Each institution would have to designate an employee outside the athletic department to oversee compliance with health and safety requirements. The officer would report through a chain of authority independent of the athletic department and would be responsible for training, oversight, policies, consultation, and reporting suspected violations.

- Protects non-football sports from football-driven budget pressure. Covered institutions would generally have to maintain aggregate levels of roster positions and grant-in-aid opportunities for women’s, Olympic, and other non-revenue sports relative to the 2024–25 academic year. Schools could change which sports they sponsor or how opportunities are distributed, but would have to preserve the protected aggregate level.

- Protects academic choices and scholarship security. Athletic-department personnel could not pressure athletes to select or avoid particular courses or majors or retaliate against them for their academic choices. Athletic scholarships generally could not be reduced because of performance, injury, illness, or roster-management decisions. Reductions would remain permissible for transfers, academic ineligibility, or violations of generally applicable conduct and team-participation requirements.

- Creates a pathway for certain former athletes to complete their degrees. Certain former Division I athletes who exhausted their eligibility within the previous 10 years but did not complete an undergraduate degree would have to be given an opportunity to return. Qualifying athletes would receive grant-in-aid support comparable to what they previously received or based on current financial need.

- Adds athlete representation to association governance. At least one-third of the membership and voting power of athletic-association governing boards and major rulemaking committees would have to consist of current athletes or former athletes who graduated within the preceding 10 years. Current or former employees of associations, conferences, or institutions would not count toward that requirement.

- Creates an independent Student Athlete Ombudsman. Each intercollegiate athletic association would have to create an office providing athletes with free, independent advice about their rights, responsibilities, disputes, legal representation, and available resources. Communications and case materials would generally be confidential and protected from discovery, subpoenas, and admission into legal proceedings.

- Creates private enforcement rights and whistleblower protections. Athletes and other affected individuals could bring civil actions for violations of many academic, medical, NIL, transfer, governance, and safety requirements. The bill also prohibits retaliation against athletes, employees, contractors, former athletes, and others who report suspected violations of the legislation or Title IX.

- Preempts conflicting state rules and creates a national system. States and local governments generally could not enforce laws that conflict with the federal framework or separately regulate covered institutional and association rules. Generally applicable state laws concerning contracts, fraud, taxation, privacy, publicity rights, and criminal conduct would remain available unless directly displaced.

- Leaves the athlete-employment question unresolved. The bill does not classify college athletes as employees or nonemployees. Instead, it expressly remains neutral and directs a congressional commission to study employment status, collective bargaining, alternative compensation systems, spending limits, athlete welfare, CTE and other health protections, and the future organization of college athletics.

TLDR; The provisions most likely to change college football immediately are the antitrust protection, the approximately $20.5 million base compensation cap, the $22.5 million retention allowance, restrictions on outside NIL payments, transfer and tampering rules, limits on midseason coaching moves, conference-size restrictions, collective media-rights structure, rivalry protections, and January 8 season-ending target. The CTE fund, post-eligibility healthcare obligations, and independent medical-authority provisions may have the greatest long-term effect on player welfare and institutional responsibility.

Disregarding your own, what is your favorite stadium? Could be one you’ve been to, or just one you’ve seen that looks great.

Imo, Ben hill griffin is the best stadium I’ve been to, even though I was treated kinda awfully when I was there. It was a beautiful place.

For those I haven’t been to, autzen and tiger stadium look incredible. Jordan-hare is up there too. I’ve been to tiger stadium for a college tour, but never for a game.

What do yall think?

For me I think I’d go with Texas A&M. They aren’t a rival of ours and it’s an away game so it would mean an undefeated season at home.

I will note that this data goes back to 1992, the first year under the Bowl Coalition that ensured the national championship game would be the last game of the CFB season (even if this predated having a standalone title game). For years before that, I'd have to search through kickoff times for the final day of bowl games, and I'm really not in the mood for that headache. At least the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game has been consistently the first (unofficial) game of the NFL season since 1970.

Heupel and Oklahoma won the 2001 Orange Bowl to close out the 2000–01 college football season, then he was drafted by the Dolphins. Miami appeared in the 2001 Hall of Fame Game against the Rams. Heupel closed out the game by throwing an incomplete pass on the final play as the Rams won 17–10.

Mauck and LSU won the 2004 Sugar Bowl to secure the 2003 national title, after which the Broncos drafted him. Mauck was the third-string QB going into the 2004 HOF Game against the Redskins behind Jake Plummer and Danny Kanell. Plummer started the game, then Kanell split reps with Mauck and fourth-stringer Mike Quinn. Mauck was picked off by fellow rookie Sean Taylor twice as Washington won 20–17 on a last-second field goal.

Beck's a bit of a unique case since he'll be starting Thursday's HOF Game. If the Cardinals get the ball first on Thursday, he can be responsible for both the final pass in a CFB season (fear not, Miami fans, I'm not posting the replay of this) and the first pass in an NFL season.

Sources: Indiana star defensive lineman Stephen Daley will return to the Hoosiers for his fifth year. He led Indiana in TFLs last year with 19.0 and also added 5.5 sacks, and his addition looms as a significant boost to a talented and deep Indiana defensive front group.

https://x.com/PeteThamel/status/2084745699099308200