Nashville, Tenn. – The athletic director at a mid-sized school that’s making a splash this season has a modest proposal for taming what many say is a transfer-portal system run amok in college sports.
Sean Frazier, the AD at Northern Illinois – remember, the team that beat national finalist Notre Dame earlier this season – is talking about a “talent acquisition fee.”
When schools sign players from other teams, they would pay those teams a fee in exchange for the player. It’s not that different from the way transactions go down with what are known as “transfer fees” in European soccer.
It’s an idea that Frazier, admittedly, is still sketching out on cocktail napkins. But he thinks it might help the small guys sustain their programs while adding transparency to deals involving some of the 11,000-plus football players across all divisions who enter the portal – the terms of some of those life-changing transactions themselves pecked out on cell phones in the middle of the night.
“At the end of the day, the kid deserves the compensation and support,” Frazier said in an interview with The Associated Press at the NCAA convention this week. “But the institution, to keep the cycle going, they deserve something as well. We’re not in the situation to continue to do that if we keep losing our best and brightest.”
Buoyed by that win over Notre Dame, and a steady string of success over the years, Frazier’s school recently announced it was moving its football program from the Mid-American into the Mountain West Conference starting in 2026.
The Mountain West, with champion Boise State in the College Football Playoff this season, is arguably the most formidable of the so-called Group of Five conferences. There are also 129 schools in the FCS – the Football Championship Subdivision that is the latest iteration of what used to be called Division I-AA.
With the House Settlement set to reshape college sports, allowing institutions to pay players directly while also reshaping roster sizes across all sports, smaller schools like NIU have decisions to make. Will they opt into the revenue-sharing agreements that allow the schools to directly pay the players for their name, image, likeness deals? Or will they stick with the model of having third-party collectives broker those deals?
The schools have until March 1 to decide. Neither choice avoids the stark realities of the new college football: It’s more expensive than it used to be, and big schools will always have the resources to draw in promising players who honed their skills at small schools.
Frazier used the example of 285-pound defensive tackle Skyler Gill-Howard, who came to NIU as a walk-on, got better each year, had five sacks for the Huskies this season, then entered the transfer portal and will play his last year of eligibility at Texas Tech.
“He did a wonderful job. Our coaching staff did a great job developing him,” Frazier said. “The heartache of it is, he’s gone. From the G5 perspective, we’re fine with the developmental side of things. There’s a certain level of respect there. But this could help institutions like us, where there’s a flat fee, or dollar amount, that’s a show of appreciation for the development of the game.”
Any plan like this would face roadblocks aplenty. As the recent takedowns of the NCAA in court that have led to today’s changes have reiterated, the U.S. court system generally doesn’t like things that restrict players’ ability to make money.
“I’d see very little chance for something like that to happen,” Gabe Feldman, a sports law expert at Tulane, said of Frazier’s fee idea. “There are lots of ideas out there, but that doesn’t mean they’ll go into effect.”
LSU QB in car crash
LSU reserve quarterback Colin Hurley was hospitalized following a car crash into an oak tree near campus early Thursday morning.
His condition was described as “stable” in a statement from his family that was released by the university.
Hurley, a freshman from Jacksonville, Florida, who has yet to play for the Tigers, was found unresponsive behind the wheel but breathing by the Baton Rouge Fire Department just before 3 a.m., according to documentation from emergency first responders that was obtained by WBRZ-TV.
LSU Police, who also responded to the scene, declined to comment on a possible cause of the accident and said their report would not be publicly available for at least seven to 10 days.
LSU officials deferred comment to the 17-year-old Hurley’s family because he is a minor.
Extension for Dillingham
Arizona State football coach Kenny Dillingham is getting a big raise following the Sun Devils’ unexpected trip to the College Football Playoff.
The Arizona Board of Regents approved on Thursday a contract extension for Dillingham through 2029 and a salary increase to $5.8 million starting this year, with a $100,000 increase each Jan. 1 for the duration of the term. He made $4.1 million last season.
The contract includes one-year extensions and raises for reaching certain benchmarks, up to a $450,000 increase for an 11-win season.
The 34-year-old Dillingham orchestrated one of the biggest turnarounds in recent college football history, taking the No. 10 Sun Devils from three wins a year ago to the New Year’s Day Peach Bowl against No. 4 Texas. Arizona State mounted a massive comeback in the CFP quarterfinal behind running back Cam Skattebo before losing 39-31 in double overtime.
Dillingham picked up significant bonuses during Arizona State’s run, which included a Big 12 championship in the Sun Devils’ first year in the league after being picked to finish last in the preseason poll.
The former Oregon offensive coordinator was the youngest head coach in the FBS when he took over a struggling Arizona State program at 33 last year. The Sun Devils were hit hard by injuries during his first season while playing with the cloud of an NCAA investigation into recruiting practices by former coach Herm Edwards.
The uber-enthusiastic Dillingham pushed all the right buttons this season, leading a team that won six straight games into the CFP for the first time. Dillingham made a shrewd move by landing quarterback Sam Leavitt out of the transfer portal – among others – and has fully utilized Skattebo, who finished fifth in the Heisman Trophy vote.
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