Miami receiver gets real about NCAA, ‘People are not playing for football’
They are the first student-athlete empowered generation, a group that enjoys a world not of checks and balances but imbalances and big checks.
A group that many of their predecessors detest. Detest out of envy. Detest because they don’t think an unregulated, for-pay system is good for the kid, or the sport. Even the players themselves who enjoy this power, leverage and money can acknowledge it’s heavily flawed.
“All of the NIL stuff,” University of Miami senior wide receiver CJ Daniels said, “people are not playing for football. I would just want football just to be football without all of this, but that’s not going to happen.”
On Monday morning, the teams playing in the Cotton Bowl, Ohio State and Miami, participated in media day; it is the rare chance when all of the players and coaches are available to the media, and not policed or restricted.
Miami will play Ohio State at 6:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve at AT&T Stadium in the Cotton Bowl, in the quarterfinals of the College Football Playoff.
These players enjoy this new age of college sports, and live its realities. While pundits, coaches and administrators breathlessly offer solutions to college football’s first-world problems, the players have ideas, too.
I asked players and coaches from Miami and Ohio State what they would change to make college football “better.”
Ohio State junior offensive lineman Phil Daniels
“Bring back two transfer portal periods, not just one. Everybody gets contracts. Not crazy contracts, a normal contract. Everybody gets a normal baseline pay. You get half of your money up-front, and if you stay the season and come back you get the second contract, but if you leave you don’t get all of it. If you are going to leave, you can’t just take everything.
“Take care of coaches, so we can make sure it’s equal. Make sure food is good for everybody. Make sure no one is doing illegal workouts.”
Miami senior wide receiver CJ Daniels
“I wouldn’t even know where to begin. When I started my [college] career, I was at Liberty [for four years]. Then I went to LSU. Now I’m here [at Miami]. It has changed so much since I started [in 2020]. People now play to put themselves in the best positions for their families.
“It’s been a great experience, and when I started, we didn’t have NIL or things like that. We were at Liberty with a bunch of guys who were there for a purpose. It was football. Two years later, NIL starts going crazy, and I was able to make the most out of my opportunity. It’s a good and a bad, and I was fortunate enough to catch it.”
Ohio State junior offensive lineman Josh Padilla
“There need to be some guidelines in the college game, because some of the percentages I have heard are crazy. Percentages to agents. The highest one I’ve heard is a player paying an agent 12 percent. There needs to be a standard in that. Teams need to agree on a standard, and they need to follow it. It’s a wild age we’re living in.”
Ohio State junior defensive back Jermaine Mathews Jr.
“Players should be able to transfer because coaches do it, and they do it a lot, unexpectedly, and they never talk to you sometimes, so I think the transfer portal needs structure. There should be a cap on how many times you can do it. No more than twice. Three [schools] is reasonable. I don’t think if you played for seven straight years, and you transferred six times, I don’t really understand that.
“The other thing I would change is playoff format. I would change it to one Group of Five team is in. I don’t know how two got in this year. You can’t take them completely out.
“And you should play every game. Unless you are declaring for the draft, you should play every game.”
Miami senior center James Brockermeyer
“There is not a perfect way to do it, but the way the schedule is you’re put in really tough spots [to transfer]. Penn State’s quarterback last year had to transfer right before their playoff game. It happens with coaches, too. Look at what happened to [former Ole Miss coach] Lane Kiffin. He can’t coach his team through the playoff. The schedule should be reworked in a better way that would be more proper and fair to the coaches and fans.”
Ohio State coach Ryan Day
“While I wouldn’t say there is one thing I would change in terms of a rule, or whatever, to me it’s the overall structure of how it’s put together, and it starts there needs to be a governing head that can start making decisions in short order.”
This story was originally published December 30, 2025 at 4:30 AM.
