New Year's Day has long been synonymous with college football. This year, that includes

championship playoff games. But it's also a key week for the future of those teams. Starting

tomorrow, the window opens for players to transfer to other schools through the so-called

portal. It's part of what some have called a Wild West in college sports, where universities can now pay players millions of dollars through a system abbreviated as NIL.

To help us understand this reshaping of college sports and what it means for athletics, I spoke recently with Stuart Mandel, editor-in-chief of college football coverage for the athletic.

Stuart Mandel, thank you for joining us.

Two things are happening right now.

The name, image, and likeness changes,

which mean that colleges can pay athletes, in some cases, millions of dollars,

but also the opening of the transfer portal, which is later this week.

Do we know how these two things are going to play out?

Well, this is the first cycle since the NCAA versus House settlement that allows

schools to directly pay their athletes up to $20.5 million.

And so the way it's supposed to work when the portal opens is,

you know, those deals don't need to be approved by anybody. But if you're going to offer a player

an NIL deal from a third party, that is supposed to require approval from this new organization

called the College Sports Commission, but a lot of

people are skeptical that that will actually work. So it seems like there's a real wild west here.

There's a question of if these rules can be broken, who will we find loopholes around these rules?

And there's also for coaches a lot of frustration. I want to play a recent rant from the Arkansas basketball coach

John Kalapari. He's talking about all the transferring happening by these students who may transfer

from school to school to school. He uses a northeastern word that means essentially a sham. And here's what

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