{"id":396157,"date":"2026-01-08T23:50:19","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T23:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/396157\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T23:50:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T23:50:19","slug":"college-footballs-new-world-order-has-arrived","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/396157\/","title":{"rendered":"College Football\u2019s New World Order Has Arrived"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ole Miss. Indiana. Miami. Oregon. Sweeping changes to college football were supposed to make the sport\u2019s historic powers more powerful. Something else happened instead.<\/p>\n

By the time Lane Kiffin and Ole Miss made their swaggering pitch to players in the transfer portal in April 2022, they had already landed more than two-thirds of that year\u2019s recruiting class. There was promising quarterback Jaxson Dart, who had started three games as a true freshman for USC. There was defensive tackle J.J. Pegues, a recently converted tight end out of Auburn. There was Zach Evans, a running back who\u2019d once been the first five-star recruit in the modern era to go to TCU. And there was a deep corps of receivers, including two from in-state rival Mississippi State.<\/p>\n

Some of them were eventually stars of \u201cTransfer to the Sip,\u201d<\/a> an invitation to join the growing class in Oxford. The video showed the players disembarking from a private jet and being driven through campus on a luxury bus over the Gucci Mane and Lil Durk song \u201cRumors.\u201d<\/p>\n

The clip was the culmination of a complete reversal of opinion by Kiffin, who only four months earlier had groused about the sweeping changes in major college football. \u201cLet\u2019s not make a mistake: We have free agency in college football,\u201d Kiffin said in December 2021<\/a>, a few weeks after clinching Ole Miss\u2019s first 10-win regular season in program history. \u201cIt\u2019s a new world.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it was a world in which Kiffin and Ole Miss were desperate to compete. They would have to either embrace the inevitable change or continue to trail next-door neighbors Alabama and LSU, who had then combined to win eight national titles in the previous 18 seasons. They embraced it: Ole Miss is now considered one of college football\u2019s \u201cbig spenders\u201d<\/a>\u2014and the program has gotten what it paid for.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More on the CFP<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

More on the CFP<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ole Miss finished with 247Sports\u2019 second-ranked portal class<\/a> in 2022, and then landed the second-, first-, and fourth-ranked transfer classes over the next three seasons. That success accelerated the Rebels\u2019 rise, which will take center stage Thursday in the College Football Playoff semifinal in the Fiesta Bowl.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Rebels are joined in college football\u2019s final four by three other programs\u2014no. 1 seed Indiana, no. 5 seed Oregon, and no. 10 seed Miami\u2014that have used the transfer portal and court-ordered NCAA rule changes about player compensation to outperform their historical baselines. Of that group, only the Hurricanes count as something of a traditional power, and that was a generation ago, before most of today\u2019s players were born. Indiana and Oregon have never won national titles; Ole Miss last won a share of one in 1960; and Miami won most recently in 2001.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, they\u2019re all on the cusp of improbable glory, because they took advantage of new ways of roster building and benefited from increased access to the playoff with the CFP\u2019s expansion to 12 teams. The future is here: Call it college football\u2019s new world order.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The extra playoff spots were seemingly engineered to reward underachieving traditional powers, which routinely had teams that just missed the cut in the four-team format. They would help the likes of Ohio State, which had barely missed the CFP four times in the previous nine years, or Oklahoma, which had two-loss teams excluded in both 2016 and 2020.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Indeed, in the first edition of the expanded CFP last season, two-loss Ohio State took advantage of the mulligan. The Buckeyes entered the playoff as the no. 8 seed, won four games by an average margin of 18 points, and secured a national championship. \u201cI think the most important thing for our team is that we had a chance to play together for another week,\u201d Buckeyes head coach Ryan Day said after a 41-21 win over Oregon in the Rose Bowl. \u201cSo when you lose, you\u2019ve got to figure out how to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was the new system working as intended.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Almost every change in recent years has redounded to the heavyweights\u2019 benefit. College football is awash in billions of dollars and draws record TV ratings<\/a>, as the SEC and Big Ten\u2014the sport\u2019s most powerful and wealthiest conferences\u2014have pushed for more schools and more revenue at every turn. The real tipping point came in 2021<\/a>, when the NCAA\u2019s new rules about name, image, and likeness rights went into effect, and the organization changed legislation to allow all athletes to transfer once without sitting out a season, which soon led to immediate eligibility with unlimited transfers. Suddenly, the Georgias and Ohio States of the world had their pick of talent from most other rosters and retained all the same structural advantages that have always made them appealing to blue-chip athletes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The other change came in July 2021, when Texas and Oklahoma announced that they would leave the Big 12 for the SEC. That led to another round of scrambling among other leagues, including the most audacious expansion yet: USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington abandoning the Pac-12 for the Big Ten. That changed the makeup of the Big 12 and ACC and killed the Pac-12 as we knew it, which currently exists as a two-team league of Washington State and Oregon State and plans to add five Mountain West schools and Texas State in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Add it all up, and the SEC and Big Ten were well positioned to snag more at-large berths in the 12-team playoff. They\u2019d collect more playoff TV revenue. And the rich would invariably get richer.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s partly held true, but something funny happened before the bluebloods in these conferences could count all their money: A handful of upstart programs\u2014Indiana, Ole Miss, Texas Tech, and Vanderbilt\u2014found ways to thrive like they never had before. Meanwhile, usually reliable contenders like Alabama, LSU, Michigan, and Penn State have slipped.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would argue that some traditional powerhouses aren\u2019t flourishing as much,\u201d former Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, one of the architects of the 12-team format, told The Athletic<\/a>. \u201cYou\u2019re changing out who\u2019s in that position but are there really more (championship contenders)? I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

None of the teams playing in this season\u2019s semifinal were ranked higher than seventh (Oregon) in the preseason AP poll. Miami started the year at no. 10, Indiana was no. 20, and Ole Miss was no. 21.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In fact, very little about this season was predictable. The programs assumed to be the class of the sport almost universally flopped: AP preseason no. 1 Texas, no. 2 Penn State, and no. 4 Clemson all missed the playoff. No. 3 Ohio State and no. 5 Georgia both lost in the quarterfinals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Opportunity generated money among schools that haven\u2019t traditionally competed for titles, and that money led to further opportunity. And the sport\u2019s unexpected final four could inspire other longtime bottom feeders in prominent conferences to follow suit. We may have entered an era when anyone can contend, so long as they\u2019re willing to spend millions to get there.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Top seed Indiana has plunged unprecedented levels of money into its program, going from $23.9 million in 2021 to $61.6 million last season. It was the first year in nearly 20 years that Indiana finished above the Big Ten median<\/a> in total football spending. \u201cI felt a real commitment from the president Pam Whitten and the athletic director Scott Dolson to get football going,\u201d Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti, who agreed to a new eight-year, $93 million contract in October, told<\/a> The Daily Hoosier in May. \u201cI mean, football generates 90 percent of the athletic revenue across the country, and they wanted to get it rolling. I think you can win anywhere in America with the proper commitment from the top.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miami has consistently been one of the biggest players in the game since Mario Cristobal left Oregon to return to his alma mater before the 2022 season. CBS Sports referred<\/a> to the Hurricanes as one of the sport\u2019s \u201celite spenders.\u201d After signing transfer classes ranked 12th, seventh, and 10th in the previous three seasons, Miami landed the third-ranked class in 2025, according to 247. That group included quarterback Carson Beck, who came from Georgia after reportedly signing a $4 million deal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And, of course, it\u2019s little surprise that Oregon has been spreading its cash around with help from Nike cofounder and Ducks superfan Phil Knight and his collective, Division Street.<\/p>\n

Ole Miss joined that group in recent years behind Kiffin\u2019s aggressive approach toward the portal and NIL, giving the Rebels a leg up on some of their nearby rivals. The result has been the best season in program history, and administrators have indicated they\u2019ll continue those efforts even after Kiffin decamped for LSU last month. Already, Ole Miss has renewed commitments from quarterback Trinidad Chambliss (assuming he\u2019s granted an NCAA waiver to receive a sixth year of eligibility), running back Kewan Lacy, and other contributors to run it back next fall.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in a really good place,\u201d Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter told<\/a> CBS Sports. \u201cThe brand is really strong. Clearly, we\u2019re proving that we can win at a high level and make deep runs in the playoffs. So why would these guys want to leave? I think that\u2019s what we have to continue to build here in Oxford.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kiffin left Ole Miss for a historic powerhouse, but it remains unclear how much history matters in the current landscape. The new world order is here\u2014and the season and semifinals that no one saw coming may only be the start.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Joel Anderson<\/p>\n

<\/a>Joel Anderson is a senior staff writer at The Ringer and a cohost of \u2018The Press Box.\u2019 He most recently worked at Slate, where he was host of Seasons 3, 6, and 8 of the award-winning \u2018Slow Burn\u2019 narrative podcast series. He\u2019s also worked at ESPN and BuzzFeed News, among several other outlets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ole Miss. Indiana. Miami. Oregon. Sweeping changes to college football were supposed to make the sport\u2019s historic powers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-396157","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396157\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}