Friday was the last day of the college football transfer window, and boy was there some drama thanks to Miami’s apparent desperate push to land a high-profile quarterback for 2026. The push appears to have come at Duke’s expense, as Darian Mensah announced his intent to enter the portal after having previously announced his return. Mensah was set to make $4 million in Durham next season but by all accounts is headed to Miami instead.
But did the Hurricanes first try to get their grubby mitts on CJ
Bailey? It sounds like it.
A last-minute departure would have been a disaster, leaving almost no time for the program to find a suitable replacement. (Duke was or is trying to convince DJ Lagway not to go to Baylor, but the Blue Devils are facing a significant downgrade regardless.) So, uh, glad that didn’t happen!
The entire saga underscores the untenable nature of the current setup in college sports—this nebulous territory between amateur and pro only reaps disorder, and as long as there are no consequences for tempering, as long as players don’t have to honor their contracts, the sports will suffer. Along with everybody’s sanity.
Miami’s actions are demonstrably bad for ACC football, for one thing, undercutting another league program’s season as they have, and while I don’t have much sympathy for Duke, the situation is ludicrous. It is long past time to simply formalize what everyone in college athletics know to be true but avoids acknowledging, which is that these players are professionals, that they are employees of the schools for which they play, and that free-agency-at-a-whim is far more damaging in the long term than whatever added financial costs schools are afraid to saddle.
