As college football buyouts continue to expand at a record pace this season, the money schools have paid to fired coaches in the College Football Playoff era has recently set a new mark, too.

Since the 2014 season, the first time the CFP was implemented and officially replaced the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), severance pay for FBS coaches at public universities is nearing $1 billion, according to data in a new report from the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. 

Including buyouts for head coaches and assistant coaches, the total for the past 12 fiscal years, which includes the previous calendar year’s football season (i.e., the 2015 fiscal year contains coaches fired during or after the 2014 season), has likely already surpassed $1 billion.

• 2015: $32.3 million
• 2016: $39.9 million
• 2017: $48.3 million
• 2018: $104.1 million
• 2019: $68.9 million
• 2020: $61.6 million
• 2021: $84.7 million
• 2022: $98.2 million
• 2023: $103.1 million
• 2024: $120.7 million
• 2025: $34.7 million
• 2026: $185 million

The figures from fiscal years 2015 to 2024 are actual amounts from NCAA financial reports; the fiscal years 2025 and 2026 (the current season) are based on various media reports, and don’t include buyouts for assistant coaches, which will increase the amount even further.

A Cap for Coaching Salaries?

The latest Knight Commission data arrives after Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R., Wash.) last week proposed a bill—the Correcting Opportunity and Accountability in Collegiate Hiring Act (COACH Act)—that would limit any athletics salary, including football coaches, to no more than 10 times a school’s tuition costs.

“As Congress debates the merits of federal legislation to place limits and guardrails on college athlete compensation, it should also examine the conditions that allow for the continued growth of excessive compensation and severance for football coaches at non-profit universities,” Knight Commission CEO Amy Privette Perko said in a statement.

This season, LSU leads the way with a $53 million buyout for firing Brian Kelly, followed by Penn State’s $49.7 million buyout of James Franklin. The largest buyout ever remains the $77 million Texas A&M agreed to pay Jimbo Fisher in 2023.

There won’t be a record free-agent deal again this offseason for Major League Baseball, like during the past years, but the upcoming Hot Stove season will still be impactful for the sport on multiple fronts. 

The latest free-agent class doesn’t have a marquee talent along the lines of Shohei Ohtani, who signed with the Dodgers for $700 million after the 2023 season, or Juan Soto, who signed with the Mets last December in an unprecedented pact worth $765 million over 15 years. Still, there are multiple All-Star-caliber bats and arms who are available and will almost certainly sign nine-figure contracts, and in some cases, approach $500 million deals. The forthcoming market will also serve as an early indicator of the effect of an uncertain labor situation on club spending. 

Among the key players who are leading the free-agent market:

• Kyle Tucker: The Cubs outfielder battled injuries this year and was briefly benched in pursuit of a “reset.” Tucker, however, remains arguably the top talent on the market, and since he won’t turn 29 until January, he is younger than most other leading figures in the market. 
• Kyle Schwarber: The Phillies designated hitter had another standout season, and he could finish second in National League Most Valuable Player voting behind Ohtani. Schwarber will turn 33 in March and has said he has greatly enjoyed his time in Philadelphia. 
• Alex Bregman: After seeing a more limited free-agent market last year amid declining performance in Houston, the third baseman largely returned to form this year in Boston, though he grappled with injuries limiting him to 114 games. 
• Pete Alonso: Another player who saw relatively limited market interest a year ago, Alonso signed a two-year, $54 million deal in February with the Mets that included an opt-out after the 2025 season. He then posted another productive season in which he became the club’s all-time leader in home runs. Alonso is a fan favorite in New York, and club owner Steve Cohen will be under considerable pressure to not let him leave. 
• Bo Bichette: The Blue Jays infielder has been a cornerstone figure for the team as it’s risen into a championship contender, but he has battled multiple injuries during the last two years. 

The qualifying offer value this year will be worth a MLB-record $22.025 million. That offer, if made to free agents, gives a team a compensatory draft pick if the player signs elsewhere, but it also can complicate the player’s market options. Historically, players have accepted the qualifying offer less than 10% of the time. Some players, such as Alonso and Bregman, have already received such offers, and they cannot be tendered again. 

Players can begin to sign deals with new teams later this week after an initial quiet period. The free-agent market, however, will likely take a bit longer to develop, as teams have until later this month to render decisions on qualifying offers and tendering contracts to players unsigned for 2026, including their arbitration-eligible ones.

Labor Matters

Amid a darkening labor situation between MLB and the MLB Players Association, this winter will provide initial clues on how clubs view the matter. 

The current labor deal expires in December 2026. Though MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has said that no management proposals have been finalized, players fear that owners will seek a salary cap that the union has long resisted. 

If free-agent dollars become more constricted this winter, it could be seen as a sign that some teams believe a long work stoppage is possible. 

Japanese Market

After Dodgers stars such as Ohtani, Roki Sasaki, and World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto played key roles in the club’s repeat title this year, the Japanese market is expected to be meaningful again this winter.

Several players from Nippon Professional Baseball could be posted to MLB clubs. Foremost among them is slugger Munetaka Murakami. The Yakult Swallows infielder is a two-time Central League MVP and won Japan’s Triple Crown in 2022 at just 22 years old. 

Game 7 of the World Series was big on drama as the Dodgers survived the Blue Jays to become the first repeat World Series winner in 25 years—and Fox was a major beneficiary. 

The network says that according to preliminary viewership data, the Dodgers’ 5–4 win over the Blue Jays in 11 innings Saturday averaged 25.98 million viewers in the U.S. across all Fox platforms, representing the most-watched World Series game since 2017’s Game 7 won by the Astros over the Dodgers.

This is a fast-national number from Nielsen, along with data from Adobe Analytics, and is not a final figure reflecting Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel measurement process. That figure, along with audience data from Canadian broadcasters Sportsnet and TVA Sports, is expected in the coming days. 

Still, the initial viewership number from Fox reflects just how much of a draw the deciding World Series game was.

The Blue Jays were just two outs away from securing their first championship in 32 years, but a game-tying home run in the ninth inning by Dodgers infielder Miguel Rojas dramatically swung the game in favor of Los Angeles, and a go-ahead home run from catcher Will Smith two innings later sealed it. 

As that unfolded, Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto returned to the mound after starting and throwing six innings in Game 6 to close out Game 7 en route to winning World Series Most Valuable Player.

“To do what we’ve done in this span of time is pretty remarkable,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, referring to the team’s back-to-back titles and three in six seasons. “I guess I’ll let the pundits and all the fans talk about if it’s a dynasty or not, but I’m pretty happy with where we’re at.”

Among the other milestones from the initial Game 7 viewership data:

• The Dodgers-Blue Jays game beat the last World Series Game 7, 2019’s clash between the Nationals and Astros, in viewership by 10%.
• The game peaked on Fox with an audience of 31.5 million, with that happening between 11:30 p.m. and 11:45 p.m.
• The Game 7 average audience beats the draw from the deciding Game 5 in last year’s World Series between the Yankees and Dodgers, another major draw among recent Fall Classics, by 40%.
• The contest’s linear audience beat Game 7 of the NBA Finals in June on ABC between the Pacers and Thunder in viewership by 53%.

Notably, this has all been achieved as this year’s World Series matchup only had one U.S. home market measured by Nielsen, leading to expected drops in American viewership during the initial five games of the series. More than countering that, however, was record-setting viewership on Canada’s Sportsnet, owned by Blue Jays parent company Rogers Communications, as the entire nation gravitated to their home team. 

Games 6 and 7, in which the Dodgers became just the ninth MLB team to win those games on the road to win the World Series, then took the audience to an entirely different level.

“This World Series really demonstrates why it’s not just spin when we (and the NBA) say length of series matters more than matchup,” tweeted Fox Sports president of insights and analytics Mike Mulvihill. “Average viewership for this series will end up pretty close to [Yankees-Dodgers] last year, but we got 60% more innings. Makes all the difference.”