Happy Friday. Cruising into the weekend with Olivia Benson energy.

1. Barry Odom on creating breaks

By many measures — and by the eye test — Purdue was a helluva lot better than its 2-10 record last season.

How did Barry Odom handle that in-season? What does he take away from that moving forward?

“It was hard. Any way that you look at it,” Odom told The Inside Zone. “I mean, losing, because we wanted a couple more wins to validate all the things that we’re talking about and the work that the guys were putting in and that never came in. And I understand I’m in a results-driven business, and at the end of the day it’s how many did you win and how many did you lose? So that was hard.

“But I will give the team credit. They kept showing up every single practice and every single day with the mindset and an attitude to continue to go forward. And I do believe that over that season, you look at the development that we made and the number of guys that are on our team now, it’ll pay off. And again, that doesn’t help last year’s record and every single day, we have to own that and we got to change it. And there’s not anybody more motivated to do that than myself and our staff and our players.”

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It’s only hump day.

What else do the leaders of this enterprise have in-store for us this week?

1. A new low in Lubbock, and for college football

The school that fired Mike Leach and posted a losing record with Patrick Mahomes managed to outdo itself this week.

Texas Tech fought, and won, to get Brendan Sorsby eligible for this season. The quarterback was granted a temporary injunction Monday that is set to keep him on the field this fall, after serving a two-game suspension to open the season.

Sorsby, of course, was ruled ineligible by the NCAA after he was found to have wagered roughly $90,000 over the past four years, a run that included betting on Indiana football while he was a member of the Hoosiers’ program.

Among those bets that Sorsby placed while wearing the crimson and white, according to ESPN’s Mark Schlabach and David Purdum: Under on his teammate’s passing yards in October of 2022, and under on the first half of a September 2023 game. (Sorsby said he was unaware of those bets.)

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Happy Monday. It’s a big night, and week, for my personal fandom in another sport, so let’s riff a bit on what all of that means, as this week keeps taking me back to a January night in South Florida. (But not the night.)

1. Anything is possible, right?

The climb is everything.

Sitting in a downtown Miami bar surrounded by Indiana fans on the eve of the national title game in January, that much became apparent.

Look at all that crimson invading Hurricanes’ territory. Look at how a surprising championship run had brought together the nation’s largest alumni base in a way that nothing else in this world could.

The game was 24 hours away, but this? This was what it was all about.

The Hoosiers went on to win the next night. Maybe they’ll go on to do it again this coming season. It would still be a thrill for their fans, yes, but nothing could possibly compare to the chase that accompanied that first time. (Or the ticket prices, for that matter.)

I’m a diehard Knicks fan. I’ve never really hid that. I just haven’t had much reason to openly brag about it for much of the past two decades.

New York hasn’t lost in 46 days. Now it’s not only favored to win a title — it’s favored to sweep.

This is a ride I could have never imagined. Anyone baring the same scars I have would be lying to you if they told you different.

Other Knicks teams in my lifetime have given me hope, yes. But this is the first time I can say that I expect them to win a championship.

It’s different. It’s new. It’s unfamiliar, but it’s the type of unfamiliar you only get once.

I know better than to look ahead. This isn’t just sports; it’s the damn Knicks we’re talking about here. I’ve seen some stuff.

But right now I’m in the same zone that those Hoosiers fans were in back on Jan. 19, riding the momentum of a charmed run, feeling damn near invincible after a lifetime of getting kicked in the you-know-what.

A moment like this only comes around once.

And I’m going to take full advantage of it … even if I can’t spare an extra 15 grand for a ticket to it.

This is why we watch, we root, we follow. It doesn’t always make sense, and it doesn’t always have to.

How else do you explain the sports year we’ve had so far in 2026?

2. MAC commish unloads on Power 4

Where do you want to start with Jon Steinbrecher’s comments at MAC spring meetings?

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Happy National Donut Day!

And go Knicks.

1. Why Barry Odom believes in Ryan Browne

Just half of the Big Ten’s 2025 starting quarterbacks return for 2026.

Purdue, which went 2-10 last season, has one of those nine signal callers.

Yet Barry Odom believes that Ryan Browne has the potential to flash this season, given the third-year junior’s experience and the influx of talent at the skill positions that the Boilermakers amassed this offseason.

“I think you look at, I think, number one, he did some really good things last year,” Odom told The Inside Zone. “Certainly he made some mistakes, but also surround him with 10 guys that are going to do their job every single play, be accountable to that. Make improvements in the guys that are returning and then the guys that we recruited here, it’s going to make his job as a quarterback a lot easier when you got more dependable, accountable players around him.

“So I think that number one, we’ll see an improvement there, it’s going to make his job a little bit easier. He has poured into what it takes to be a really good quarterback.”

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CHICAGO — Surprise, surprise: Bret Bielema has some thoughts on the state of college football.

But rather than take shots at the SEC, the 56-year-old Bielema instead provided some context to the changing landscape of the sport, and explained why it will take more than three straight national championships for the Big Ten to truly overtake its southern rivals in the national perception department.

Bielema held court with reporters on Tuesday at Brickhouse, the bar outside Wrigley Field, which hosted Illini Night as the Cubs played the Athletics.

1. Bret Bielema provides context around Big Ten bump

No one carries the flag for the Big Ten the way Bret Bielema does.

The sixth-year Illinois coach did just that last week when tweeting in response to Greg Sankey’s comments about the SEC’s depth.

And though Bielema didn’t expand much on Sankey’s specific comments before he sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” Tuesday night at Wrigley Field, Bielema did dive into why he thinks the Big Ten still suffers from a perception issue against the SEC when it comes to both conferences’ non-Playoff teams.

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HOUSTON — Welcome to June.

The Inside Zone recently visited with two head coaches who have extensive experience with deep playoff runs at smaller levels.

Not surprisingly, both coaches are in favor of a 24-team field at the FBS level.

So let’s let Willie Fritz and David Braun take it away from here.

1. Fritz: “It’s not as many as people think”

Big 12 coaches unanimously voted last week in favor of a 24-team College Football Playoff system.

One man who knows how that might actually work?

Willie Fritz.

The third-year Houston coach was back in his office on Friday after attending his conference’s spring meetings in Dallas. And he explained to The Inside Zone just what an expanded format may look like.

Fritz enters his 34th season as a college head coach. Remember, he’s won two national junior college championships (Blinn), he’s made a 16-team Division II tournament (Central Missouri), he’s made multiple deep runs in the 24-team FCS tournament (Sam Houston State), and he’s enjoyed plenty of bowl success in his three different FBS jobs (Georgia Southern, Tulane, Houston).

So allow the 66-year-old Fritz to explain what all of this may entail.

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It’s 100 days till the Sunday of Week 1 … which just got one extra juicy game.

1. Northwestern gears up for a new era

EVANSTON, Ill. — Like many, Northwestern will host official visitors this weekend.

And what the Wildcats can now show these prospects is a little different from what they’ve shown them in the past — or what any program can show recruits right now:

A brand-new stadium.

“One thing is very clear,” ‘Cats coach David Braun told The Inside Zone this week. “We will be playing in the best football stadium in the world. Period. That is without question.”

The $875 million new Ryan Field will make its official game debut under Friday night lights, as Northwestern hosts Penn State on Oct. 2.

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Happy Early Hump Day.

1. Will the SEC stabilize things?

Is the SEC suddenly the voice of reason?

Will Greg Sankey and Co. hold the line and keep the sport from fundamentally altering itself by expanding its playoff format to 24 teams?

Maybe?

It’s Spring Meeting SZN, which means there is a lot of talking. We heard it last year around this time, as SEC coaches panicked over the idea of Indiana making the 12-team CFP field the year before and overcompensated by complaining about the selection process, among other things.

That gave way to the Big Ten using its media days last July to advocate for a 16-team system that guaranteed four automatic berths for the conference, to be determined by a play-in weekend featuring six teams.

And now here we are, a year later, with the Big Ten getting widely laughed at — before getting widely supported — for tossing out a 24-team idea and the SEC being the lone big dog not willing to give in just yet.

And with Sankey calling out the Big Ten for dismissing a 16-team format that the Big Ten itself had championed less than a year ago.

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Happy Friday! We are less than 100 days away from the season.

1. Brendan Sorsby may be lucky

There are lots of ways to look at the Brendan Sorsby scandal.

Chris Vannini may have put it best, though.

Forget the NCAA consequences here; that’s almost another discussion for another day.

Think about how much worse it could have been for Sorsby had he been caught gambling in real time.

Remember, Sorsby reportedly placed bets on Indiana while he was redshirting with the Hoosiers as a freshman in 2022.

He could have been deemed permanently ineligible back then.

Instead, he played. And played a lot. And well.

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Good morning. Did my Knicks really do that last night?

1. Jamie Pollard says the quiet part out loud

Give Jamie Pollard credit. The man is having himself a nice run in 2026.

The longtime Iowa State athletic director kept his standout men’s basketball coach, T.J. Otzelberger, despite heavy interest from North Carolina. And he has been on a roll with public comments lately regarding potentially seismic happenings in college athletics.

Of the Cyclones declining a $30 million line of credit from the Big 12 via the conference’s deal with RedBird Capital and Weatherford Capital, Pollard told the Quad City times last week:

“Pretty simple — if we need a loan we can get one with a much lower interest rate than what was being offered.”

Many in the industry have said this privately. Few have said it publicly.

Then came this week, when Pollard spoke ahead of a Cyclone Tailgate Tour stop about the looming threat of a Big Ten-SEC breakaway from the NCAA.

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Happy Monday!

1, The Year of the Quarterback

This season really could be the Year of the Quarterback. Draft talk and pro prospects aside, this campaign is loaded with elite college signal callers.

CJ Carr, Arch Manning, Dante Moore, Julian Sayin and Gunner Stockton all return to teams that are expected to make up most of the top-5 of the preseason polls. Trinidad Chambliss is back at Ole Miss. And with veteran passers such as Josh Hoover (Indiana) and Darian Mensah (Miami) finding new homes at top-tier programs, experience won’t be hard to find across the country.

So, who’s the best?

I joined The Bill and Doug Show to participate in their QB draft, and I lucked out by having the first pick.

Spoiler: I took Carr.

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Three thoughts to take you into the weekend …

1. Slow down the CFP expansion talk

Remember the good ol’ days, when the college football world was laughing at the Big Ten’s leaked 24-team College Football Playoff proposal?

You know, three full months ago.

Now, the tenor has completely changed.

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips capped his conference’s spring meetings this week by voicing his support for the 24-team system. So, too, did Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua. Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark is on record as saying he wants 24.

Even some in the SEC — whose commissioner, Greg Sankey, is pretty much the lone holdout at this point — have done the same.

Didn’t most of these guys want 16 back in January, even if they couldn’t quite push that format across the finish line?

And at this time last year, wasn’t 14 the buzz, with a 4-4-2-2-1-1 format a popular talking point?

(That would be four guaranteed Big Ten berths, four guaranteed SEC berths, two guaranteed ACC berths, two guaranteed Big 12 berths, one guaranteed G5 berth and one at-large, for those who may be confused by such things.)

Seriously: These guys change their minds about postseason play the way my kids change their minds about what they want for dinner every night.

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A run to the national championship game two seasons ago meant that Marcus Freeman had outperformed his contract.

By just how much, we’ll have to wait and see.

Notre Dame released its Form 990 for the 2024-25 academic year on Wednesday, revealing that Freeman was once again the university’s highest-paid employee, earning $8,137,948.

The reporting period — which was from July 1, 2024 through June 30, 2025 — covers the Irish’s march to the College Football Playoff national championship game in Freeman’s third season leading the program.

The school and the coach had announced in December of 2024 that they had agreed to a contract extension — and they agreed to another new deal in December of 2025, sources say — meaning that the $8 million-plus figure, like many figures in college athletics these days, is dated.

Still, the tax forms pull back the curtain a bit on just how much schools are spending to win.

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“Hump Day. Finally.” — Ole Miss this week, probably

1. What happened to Wisconsin stability?

Let’s say you’re Chris Brooks Jr.

You’re a three-star receiver out of St. Louis, and you commit to Wisconsin in the spring of 2022.

Five games into your freshman season, while you’re redshirting, your head coach, former Badgers quarterback Paul Chryst, gets fired. A new coach, legendary UW safety Jim Leonhard, takes over. And after seven games of Leonhard, yet another new coach, Luke Fickell, comes in to lead the program.

You stick it out. You suffer a foot injury that first spring under Fickell, and it costs you the next campaign, when the Badgers go 7-6 without you for the second straight season.

As it turns out, that’s the high water mark of your career to date.

Wisconsin goes 5-7 and 4-8 the next two seasons, unthinkable records for a program that had just made 22 straight bowl games.

In addition to the head-coaching turnover, you go through three different position coaches (Alvis Whitted, Kenny Guiton, Jordan Reid) across those four seasons. You get another (Ari Confesor) as you enter your fifth year in Madison.

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Happy International World Ego Awareness Day, which seems fitting for a guy who started a column named after himself.

1. All in the Family

Chip Kelly may not come across as your typical elder statesman among college football coaches, but it is hard to call him anything other than that after seeing the commitment he landed on Sunday at Northwestern.

R.J. Day, a three-star quarterback from Ohio’s St. Francis DeSales High, pledged his allegiance to the Wildcats on Mother’s Day.

Day is the son of Ohio State head coach Ryan Day. And while it is always funny to imagine one Big Ten head coach getting the red-carpet treatment from another Big Ten school, the bonds here all tie to Kelly, the 62-year-old first-year offensive coordinator for the Wildcats.

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Happy Friday. And an early Happy Mother’s Day to all.

(And a personal pro-tip: If you have to get your wisdom teeth out, don’t wait till you’re almost 40. The pain is real!)

1. Get your DVRs (and calendars) ready

Network upfronts take place next week, with Fox and NBC going Monday and ABC going Tuesday.

What’s that mean for you?

Kick time releases!

At least for a few notable dates.

There’s no use in predicting how these will unfold, even if some can be as reliable as the sunrise (Michigan-Ohio State to be at noon ET on Fox). But it is always an exciting reminder of how the season isn’t all that far away.

Notre Dame — which has its own money machine, ICYMI — got the fun started on Thursday, announcing its home kickoff dates on NBC.

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Good morning. Could the college football calendar as we know it undergo big changes next season?

1. AFCA makes its voice heard

As far as the abundance of college committees goes, I’m partial to the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) because it is run by coaches who actually have skin in the game and have a better idea of what works and what doesn’t. And the AFCA made its proposal to the college football calendar clear Tuesday:

• Eliminate conference championship games

• Cut scheduled open dates from two to one

• Preserve a window for Army-Navy, while allowing for other games that day outside the window

• Reduce the minimum number of days between games to no fewer than six

The AFCA also asked that future Playoff models “maximize the number of participants while honoring the proposed completion date.”

Just two weeks earlier, the NCAA’s Football Oversight Committee recommended that the regular season begin in Week Zero in 2027.

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Happy Monday. Happy Star Wars Day to those who celebrate.

1. TV dispute worth watching

I don’t know about you, but I’m fascinated to see the fallout of the Big Ten’s dispute with the ACC and ESPN over broadcast rights surrounding next season’s Duke-Michigan men’s basketball game at Madison Square Garden.

The dispute, reported by Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger, highlights the tricky territory of these arrangements. More power to Duke for trying to monetize its brand through its landmark three-game package on Amazon. But didn’t USC try to do something similar with Netflix for the Notre Dame game, only for the Big Ten to stop that from happening?

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Happy Friday. Happy Justin Timberlake Meme Day.

Three thoughts to get you through another weekend without college football …

1. Developed (W)Here

We covered draft development thoroughly earlier this week, but here are a few more nuggets to chew on:

Nine different states had 10 or more of its high school players selected in last week’s NFL Draft. Some may surprise you. Some may not:

• Texas: 33

• Florida: 27 (includes 7 boarding state-based boarding school draftees)

• Georgia: 22

• California: 19

• Ohio: 11

• Virginia: 11

• Alabama: 10

• Illinois: 10

• Maryland: 10

IMG Academy led all prep schools with five total draft picks.

Keeping it to traditional four-year high schools, however, just three different high schools had three or more players drafted:

• Saint Frances Academy (Baltimore): 4

• Mater Dei (Chula Vista, Calif.): 3

• Marist (Chicago): 3

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Good morning. Here are three college football thoughts to chew on as you begin your day.

1. Terry Smith continues to speak the truth

Terry Smith is sometimes too honest for his own good. But no one in Happy Valley will take issue with what Smith said about Drew Allar after the former Penn State QB was drafted by the Steelers.

Speaking this week to 93.7 The Fan in Pittsburgh, Smith, the Nittany Lions’ associate head coach, said:

“I’ve been known as the truth teller here at Penn State. I think unfairly to Drew, our system wasn’t built for him. It wasn’t made for him. Some of the decisions were taken out of his control.”

Smith covered much more ground in the interview, as detailed by Lions247 here.

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