Story byEDDIE PELLSSat, January 17, 2026 at 5:45 PM UTC·6 min readMIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Once the legal wrangling over paying players finally got settled last summer, there was hope that college football might finally stumble into something resembling stability. Or at least find its footing for a couple of months. It was too much to ask, at least right away. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAmong the headlines over the past few months: lawsuits over eligibility, bickering about the transfer portal, stalled congressional legislation, fights about outside investment into conferences, the future of the College Football Playoff and, of course, the decades-old dilemma over coaches leaving programs for huge amounts of money the players still will never see. The sport’s problems popped up almost every week over a wild season, on and off the field, that ends Monday when Indiana meets Miami, which itself navigated the chaos to produce the most unlikely of title games.“This is messy, in part, because there’s a lot, and it’s happening very quickly, and people are trying to find clarity within it,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said. At the core of the mess is the lawsuit settlement approved by a federal judge allowing schools to pay up to $20.5 million to their players.
