MIAMI — Mark Cuban embraced an Indiana football player on the field during the national championship postgame celebration. “Thanks for the support,” the player said while Cuban beamed. 

On the field after the Hoosiers won their first-ever national championship, completing a historic 16–0 season, Cuban was one of the most popular people. Fans and fellow alums wanted pictures with him. Reporters swarmed him. Players hugged him. Cuban embraced quarterback Fernando Mendoza as if the star quarterback were one of his sons.

Cuban would be popular in most scenarios: He’s a billionaire, a television personality, and minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks. But now—when players can finally, legally, get paid—he’s more than just a famous alum or someone who helped pay for an athletics facility. He’s helping fund player compensation directly.

Cuban declined to say how much he gave to this history-making roster, and made it clear during a pregame conversation with Front Office Sports that it wasn’t all about the money. But one thing is clear: Whether it’s to galvanize a fan base, offer business advice, or provide cold hard cash, in the revenue-sharing and NIL era of college sports, everybody needs a billionaire.

Cuban, a 1981 graduate of Indiana, had little involvement in the athletic department up until recently. In 2023, the Hoosiers went 3–9, one of the worst teams in college football. The name, image, and likeness era was underway. But while that new dynamic gave plenty of lackluster teams new life to compete, it seemed like no amount of money would save the Hoosiers. 

But in November 2023, Indiana hired head coach Curt Cignetti, who turned the program around almost overnight. They won 11 games last year and made their first appearance in the College Football Playoff. It was Cignetti who inspired Cuban to contribute to the Hoosiers’ war chest. They bonded not just over football but also over the fact that they were born in the same Pittsburgh-area hospital. During an ESPN interview on Monday morning, Cuban described Cignetti’s pitch to him as akin to a business plan he received on his show Shark Tank.

“We kind of hit it off right off the bat,” Cignetti told reporters of his relationship with Cuban. He joked: “If Mark Cuban wanted to give $10 million, that would be like me donating $10,000.”

It also helps, of course, that Indiana’s billionaire happens to have experience building a professional sports franchise. Cuban spoke at length about his relationship with AD Scott Dolson, and conversations they had over the years about his time building an organization with the Mavericks. Dolson described Cuban’s influence as “phenomenal.” 

“Every team … has to have an identity. You have to understand how you want people to fit in,” Cuban told FOS. “You have to understand how you use economics, and I think what’s really set IU apart is—we’re not like, ‘O.K., let’s raise as much money as we can to pay everybody more.’ It’s more about, how do we structure, how do we build a culture, how do we set roles so that when guys come in they’re happy and they know exactly what they’re going to do.”

The team Cignetti put together doesn’t appear to be an NIL juggernaut. Many teams spent well over $20 million this year—in combined NIL and revenue-sharing dollars. Yes, there was Heisman Trophy winner and transfer Fernando Mendoza, who likely cost the program a decent amount of money amid a bidding war in the transfer portal. But the roster famously doesn’t have any five-stars, a testament to Cignetti’s ability to recruit players who will succeed on the field, rather than those in the headlines or on top of recruiting rankings. 

“Our NIL is nowhere near what people think it is, so you can throw that out,” Cignetti said during his championship press conference.

But Cignetti has also said that success breeds more success. And he already has more money to work. Cuban previously told FOS he increased his donation to the Hoosiers—and with that money, they’ve already begun to assemble another top-notch roster. 

“It’s not necessarily what I’ve given, it’s what the whole, all alumni have given—that’s what matters,” Cuban said on the field during the pregame. “It’s more important how we spend that money—and with who.” 

With this year’s College Football Playoff officially in the books, attention shifts to the 2026–27 postseason, which will have a number of notable changes—and still has some unresolved questions.

In the meantime, the Big Ten continues to dominate the current era of the CFP, with the conference winning each of the last three national championships, following a four-year streak for the SEC. The Big Ten’s Ohio State, Indiana, and Oregon are already among the top betting favorites to win next year’s title. The SEC’s Texas is one of the favorites, too, alongside Notre Dame.

Bigger Is Better?

The biggest unknown lingering over the CFP is whether it will expand from 12 to 16 teams.

The CFP management committee—the 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame AD Pete Bevacqua—ended a Sunday meeting without a decision on expansion. There is a hard Friday deadline, which was pushed back from Dec. 1, to inform ESPN of any format changes for the 2026–27 season.

Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti and the SEC’s Greg Sankey have the ultimate sign-off and must agree for a new format to go forward. But Petitti has pushed for a 24-team model, while Sankey has pushed for a 16-team model.

Expanding to 16 teams would create four more first-round games, which have been played at home campus stadiums the past two years.

Best of the Rest

The Pac-12 is relaunching later this year with seven new teams (including six full-time FBS football-playing members) and fresh media-rights deals.

But the Pac-12, previously a part of the Power 5 league, will now be considered part of the new Group of 6 conferences, whose place in the CFP picture has been a point of controversy for some. This season, two Group of 6 schools—Tulane and James Madison—reached the CFP, due to the current format that gives automatic bids to the five highest-ranked conference champions. 

However, that’s changing next season, as the champions of the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC will get automatic CFP bids, regardless of their rankings. The highest-ranked Group of 6 conference champion will also get an automatic bid. If Notre Dame is ranked inside the top 12, it will also receive an automatic bid.

Meanwhile, Bowl Season organizers would support facilitating a separate Group of 6 playoff, if those conferences wanted to crown their own national champion. CFP leaders would need to meet further to make any more changes regarding the Group of 6’s standing.

Mark Your Calendar

Next season’s CFP title game will be played in Las Vegas for the first time, and on the latest date in the matchup’s history: Jan. 25, 2027.

The next three CFP national championship contests will be played on the fourth Monday of January, before the 2030 games shifts back to the third Monday of the month (Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend). Next year’s sporting calendar is creating later dates than normal for other leagues, too. The 2027 Super Bowl will be played on Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day, also that game’s latest date ever.

ESPN’s six-year, $7.8 billion media-rights extension also kicks in next season, which will put the CFP title game on ABC for the first time, alongside simulcasts on ESPN and other Disney-owned platforms.

As expected over the past week, Netflix has converted its bid for TNT Sports parent company Warner Bros. Discovery to an all-cash structure, responding to rising pressure that includes a hostile bid from Paramount. 

The new deal, disclosed early Tuesday, maintains the same overall price of $27.75 per share for WBD, and in turn enterprise value of $82.7 billion, but removes a prior stock consideration of $4.50 worth of Netflix stock for each WBD shareholder. Since the original Netflix-WBD agreement, reached in early December, shares in the streaming giant have fallen about 15%, placing a heightened financial burden and risk on WBD investors. 

Additionally, CBS Sports parent company Paramount continues to press on its hostile bid for WBD, even though eight offers for WBD—spanning a time before and after WBD put itself up for sale—have all been turned down by the WBD board, most recently earlier this month. 

WBD’s board of directors has approved the new structure, and the two companies said it will provide a quicker timeline and more certainty toward closing, with a WBD shareholder vote slated for April.

“By amending our agreement today, we are underscoring what we have believed all along: not only does our transaction provide superior stockholder value, it is also fundamentally pro-consumer, pro-innovation, pro-creator, and pro-growth,” said Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters.

Looking Ahead

Netflix is looking to acquire WBD’s studios and streaming businesses, while WBD also plans to continue with a planned split of the company that will create Discovery Global, a new holding entity that would house TNT Sports. That split, and the Netflix deal, are slated to close in the latter half of 2026, and a new sports-centric streaming service is under development within TNT Sports and Discovery Global. 

WBD shareholders will also get equity in Discovery Global, something that Paramount has alleged in its own analysis will have little to no value for investors. WBD, however, projected in new filings Tuesday that Discovery Global will have an equity value of at least $1.33 per share as a stand-alone entity and as much as $6.86 per share. To help further sweeten the appeal of the planned split, WBD also said Tuesday that it is reducing the debt that will be borne to Discovery Global at the separation by $260 million. 

“We can now deliver the incredible value of our combination with Netflix at even greater levels of certainty, while providing our stockholders the opportunity to participate in management’s strategic plans to realize the value of Discovery Global’s iconic brands and global reach,” said WBD board chair Samuel A. Di Piazza Jr. 

While the Netflix deal proceeds, Paramount is still looking for a way in with its all-cash, $30 per share bid for all of WBD. Paramount’s latest moves have included initiating a lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill, calling the Netflix bid “presumptively unlawful,” and then suing WBD. A suit from Paramount filed recently in the Delaware Court of Chancery alleged a breach of fiduciary duty and claimed that WBD failed to disclose “basic, material valuation information” integral to shareholders as they decide which bid to accept. 

Paramount is also planning a proxy fight and says it will put up its own slate of directors for election to the WBD board.

Netflix, meanwhile, will also release its 2025 fourth-quarter earnings after the close of Tuesday trading.