Virginia Tech is hiring James Franklin as its next football coach, the school announced Monday night. Franklin will be introduced at a press conference in Blacksburg on Tuesday morning.

The move will give Penn State a $40 million discount on the buyout money it owes to Franklin, who was fired just 36 days ago on Oct. 12, following a 3–3 start to the season for the Nittany Lions. 

Franklin, who coached at Penn State from 2014 until his firing last month, had a buyout at Penn State of $49.7 million, which would have been the third largest of all time in college football. However, Penn State and Franklin negotiated his buyout down to $9 million, according to multiple reports. That settlement will remove the offset language in his contract, which would have called for Penn State to pay Franklin the difference between what it would have owed him and his new salary, if it were lower.

Financial terms of Franklin’s new contract with Virginia Tech have not been released. His most recent salary in Happy Valley was $8.5 million.

Virginia Tech is 3–7 this season, and it has been under the leadership of interim head coach Philip Montgomery, after firing Brent Pry on Sept. 14, following an 0–3 start. Pry, who was hired ahead of the 2022 season, was owed a buyout of roughly $6 million.

Bigger Budget in Blacksburg

In September, Virginia Tech approved $229 million of new funding for the athletic department over the next four years, after AD Whit Babcock said the school was lacking sufficient funding.

Of note, Virginia Tech is a longtime Nike school. Penn State is switching from Nike to Adidas in 2026, and that move led to questions about Adidas potentially wanting Penn State to fire Franklin, although those claims remain unconfirmed.

Franklin is the first major hire of what will be a busy hiring season in college football, with prime vacancies still unresolved at LSU, Florida, and Penn State, among others.

YouTube TV’s multiyear carriage agreement with ESPN parent company Disney, reached after 15 difficult days of a channel blackout, is aimed in part at pushing boundaries in traditional television distribution.

The pact marked a significant reversal after Disney had appeared dug in for a potentially protracted outage on the No. 4 U.S. pay-TV distributor. As the dust settles, though, the parties have a goal of helping forge a new model for how TV distribution works. 

“Over the past few years, we’ve led the way in creating innovative deals with key partners—each one unique, and each designed to recognize the full value of our programming,” ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro and Disney Entertainment co-chairs Dana Walden and Alan Bergman wrote in a joint company memo. “This new agreement reflects the same creativity and commitment to doing what’s best for both our audiences and our business.”

While specific contract details were not disclosed, the deal contains one particularly notable component: the full features of ESPN Unlimited, the highest level of ESPN’s new direct-to-consumer offering, will be integrated into YouTube TV. 

That element—known within the television business as ingestion—bears some similarity to deals Disney has with other major distributors such as Spectrum. The YouTube TV–ESPN DTC integration, however, will be entirely a streaming-based one, involving the largest virtual multichannel video programming distributor (vMVPD). 

Additionally, YouTube TV has a clear aim of building beyond its current base of about 10 million subscribers and ultimately passing Spectrum, Comcast, and DirecTV to become the nation’s top distributor.

Ingestion has quickly become a critical part of many other carriage deals between distributors and programmers as the lines blur further between linear programming and streaming. NBCUniversal recently addressed this by resurrecting the former NBC Sports Network, which mirrors much of the sports content on Peacock and will be carried on YouTube TV.

“Amazing win for YouTube TV subscribers as they will ingest ESPN+ and ESPN Unlimited content into YouTube TV,” tweeted LightShed Partners analyst Rich Greenfield. “No need to use the ESPN app to watch content. This is the biggest issue in [the] streaming wars that isn’t getting enough attention.”

Core Approach

Disney has a critical precedent of turning a former contract combatant into an important ally in a fast-changing television business. Two years ago, the company was locked in a similarly bitter carriage fight with Spectrum, the top distributor in the country. After 11 days of a blackout, the parties reached a broad-based deal that included Charter gaining the ability to include the ESPN DTC service in its bundles.

Now, the relationship has taken another big step as ESPN DTC is also part of a larger suite of streaming apps from multiple programmers that can be acquired and managed through a single, Spectrum-controlled platform.

“It’s about taking friction out of the whole process for the consumer, and that’s nothing but goodness for Disney and for ESPN,” Pitaro said last month. 

Meanwhile, it will bear close watching what happens to YouTube TV’s base price—$82.99—in the wake of a sweep of carriage deals this year that includes all four major U.S. broadcast networks and their parent companies. Within the last nine months, YouTube TV reached pacts with CBS parent Paramount, NBC parent NBCUniversal, and Fox, in addition to the deal with Disney, which owns ABC.

The Broncos, backed by the richest ownership group in the NFL, enter their Week 12 bye with the best record in the league, as the franchise’s transformation continues on and off the field.

Sunday’s victory over the Chiefs, who have won the AFC West nine seasons in a row, was Denver’s eighth win in a row this season, catapulting the team to a 9–2 record, tied with the Patriots atop the NFL’s standings. The Broncos are three games clear of Kansas City in the division, and two up on the Chargers.

Denver is 27–19, including last season’s wild-card playoff loss to the Bills, since paying up big-time for Sean Payton ahead of the 2023 season. Payton, one of the NFL’s highest-paid coaches with an estimated $18 million salary, was the first big move by the Walton-Penner ownership group, which bought the Broncos for $4.65 billion in 2022, at the time representing a record sale price for an NFL team.

With a net worth well north of $100 billion, the Walton-Penner family is believed to be at least five times richer than the NFL’s second-wealthiest majority owner, Panthers owner David Tepper. Led by CEO Greg Penner, the son-in-law of Walmart heir and fellow co-owner Rob Walton, the Broncos have been investing in the franchise in multiple facets.

Most notably, the Broncos in September announced plans to build a privately financed, multibillion-dollar retractable roof stadium in downtown Denver, with a targeted completion date of 2031.

A new stadium would complement a new $175 million training facility, also privately financed, that is under construction and on pace to open ahead of the 2026 season. 

In the meantime, the Broncos have set a new standard for field conditions in the NFL. Sunday’s home game against the Chiefs was played on a brand-new field, marking the fourth consecutive year the Broncos have replaced the natural grass surface at Empower Field at Mile High midseason.

On the field, Denver is led by second-year quarterback Bo Nix, who has a salary-cap hit of just $4.23 million this season. Nix is ninth in the NFL with 2,421 passing yards and eighth in the league with 18 touchdown passes.