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Ferris State football takes home its fourth national championship in the last five years. Ferris broke the DII record for points scored in a season, with 844. (link)

Slippery Rock AD Roberta Page sat down with Butler Eagle Sports to dive into the two new sports on The Rock: men’s wrestling and women’s flag football. Page notes the wrestling program has one of the strongest alumni groups for the university. “We met with that wrestling alumni group multiple times, and it made sense. It made sense from where they were coming from. It made sense from where we were coming from. So we took a really strong, hard look at it and really what we wanted to look at is, how can we provide a three-year runway for the university to say, ‘Listen, let's financially sustain it from the alumni base, and then let's do it for a couple of years, and then it'll be sustained, and then the university can take it over.’” SRU also evaluated the addition of women’s wrestling, given the fixed costs for the men’s program, but “flag [football] just took off like a lightning rod.” Page emphasized the driver for adding two new sports was to provide more opportunities for student-athletes, not to boost their enrollment. More. (link)

DII SAAC has taken its positions on the 17 legislative proposals up for a vote at the 2026 NCAA Convention next month, supporting all proposals except the fifth year of eligibility and football championship date changes. Rationale for opposing the fifth year of eligibility includes state regulations against receiving nonathletically related financial aid for more than four years, the elimination of the medical hardship waivers, the lack of master’s degree programs at certain institutions and the ability to participate in up to 30% of the maximum number of contests during freshman year without using a season of competition, with all of those possibly contributing to athletics “becoming more of a priority than academics, which is contrary to the Division II Life in the Balance philosophy.” SAAC also met to discuss how to allocate dollars previously allocated to festivals and identified initial priorities of “enhanced web streaming production, in-game and postgame interviews, nutrition stations and awarding individual trophies for winning a regional championship.” More. (link)

Last week’s ruling granting a preliminary injunction to former Tennessee (DI) Football HC Jeremy Pruitt, that, for now, prohibits the NCAA from enforcing a six-year show-cause penalty, has longtime NCAA observers believing it “could serve as the groundwork for anyone looking to challenge any NCAA penalty, including show causes.” Per ESPN’s Dan Wetzel: “NCAA enforcement was already struggling with penalties written for a bygone era in the rapidly changing landscape of college athletics. What were once bedrock sanctions such as scholarship reductions are largely moot and easily worked around in an era where direct revenue-sharing or NIL deals can allow for a star player to just pay his own tuition as a ‘walk-on,’ for example. The show cause was still effective at keeping rule-breaking coaches out of the college game. Now, perhaps, even that is at risk due to the NCAA's own infractions structure.” Mars Law Firm Founder Tom Mars: “This can become an existential threat to the enforcement system. The rules on their face are inconsistent with how justice is administered everywhere else in the United States.” More. (link) 

The Denver Post’s Kyle Newman profiles the mental evolution of MSU Denver’s women’s volleyball program en route to their first national championship. After four consecutive defeats in the regional final, HC Jenny Glenn worked with Freedom Lab and mental coach Trisha Kroll to help strengthen the team’s mentality. Glenn: “We’ve been in regional championships, we’ve been really talented. But when pressure situations came, I felt like we cared so much that the expectations and how much we wanted it for ourselves just overrode our ability to perform in those moments. We kept coming up against that, and I wanted to figure out a way to get past that.” Kroll began working with the team in earnest during their mountain retreat in August, at which time each player and coach found their “true identity.” Kroll: “We’re only born with two fears: Fear of loud noises, and the fear of falling. All other fears we learn along the way. The two groups of people that have the lowest fear of failure are babies and butt-kickers, and (the Roadrunners) became butt-kickers because they unlearned the fear of failure, the fear of judgment. They leaned into their ‘true identities,’ which can’t be earned or lost. They realized it was like their fingerprints on this whole process, and they dissociated themselves from outcome. And once they were able to fully understand all that (midway through the season), they played in complete freedom.” Glenn in closing: “We’re talented and we’re good at volleyball and we train hard, but our ability to do what we did superseded all of that because we knew who we were as a team. (MSU Denver) Team No. 57’s identity was fearless. Stand firm on love. Get in, and stay in, and seek the fruit of your ‘true identity.’ That identity, as a team and individually, was formed in our retreat in August. And it’s exactly who we were on December 13th, winning the national championship. Nothing that happened changed that.” (link)

Pablo Torre Finds Out’s eponymous host reports: “Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) … is talking with leagues and players associations and sportsbooks about federal legislation that will heavily regulate prop bets.” Schatz in a statement: “In just a few years, sports betting has grown into a billion-dollar industry, changing the way fans engage with sports, while providing new revenue streams for leagues. But when every in-game moment and outcome can be wagered on, it creates real risks. Integrity is essential to competitive sport, and recent allegations about gambling in the NBA and MLB have made it clear we need federal protections. We’re working on legislation to stop the kind of prop betting that gives a single bad actor the ability to manipulate a specific, singular outcome for a big payout. This is about protecting fans and restoring public trust in sports.” (link)

Belmont Abbey raised more than $370K during its Giving Tuesday. (link)

It’s Personnel…
➤ Midwestern State promotes Asst. AD Amanda Snodgrass to Executive Assoc. AD/SWA. (link)
➤ Simon Fraser Men’s Soccer HC Clint Schneider will transition to a new role as advancement officer after more than 10 seasons at the helm. (link)
➤ This morning’s edition of Coaches.wire is ready for your perusal. (link)

Paramount has amended its offer to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery with billionaire Larry Ellison agreeing to “personally guarantee $40.4B of equity financing for the deal and publish records related to the family trust that backstops it,” per The Wall Street Journal’s Lauren Thomas. This comes after Warner previously recommended its shareholders reject Paramount’s bid stating it felt Netflix’s proposal for its studios and HBO Max streaming service was still superior.  Thomas: “Warner’s rejection had focused on what it had called an ‘illusory’ offer, raising concerns about the credibility of the equity being offered by Paramount. It had focused on the structure of the Ellison family’s commitment to funding the deal, and called for Ellison to provide a more enforceable personal commitment. Paramount’s revised offer aimed to address those concerns. … It also increased the fee it would pay if the deal was blocked by regulators, matching Netflix’s unusually high $5.8B offer. Paramount extended the expiration date of its tender offer to Jan. 21, from Jan. 8. … Warner and its shareholders will now have to decide if the new Paramount bid answers their doubts about closing the deal.” (link) 

TikTok has signed agreements with investors regarding the sale of its U.S. unit to a joint venture, per CNBC, which reports company CEO Shou Chew confirmed in a memo to employees the closing date of January 22, 2026, for the new deal. CNBC: “[Chew] notes that they have signed the agreement and he notes that the U.S. joint venture will be half-held … by a consortium of new investors including Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX with 15% each, 30.1% held by affiliates of certain existing investors of ByteDance and 19.9% retained by ByteDance.” The U.S. joint venture is expected to oversee data protection, algorithm security, content moderation and software assurance. (link)