Last season was a bit of a disaster for Nico Iamaleava. After making the playoffs as a freshman at Tennessee, his representation tried to squeeze the Vols for more money than he realistically deserved, causing him to hit the transfer portal.

From there, Nico signed with UCLA for less money, where his passing stats took a bit of a step back, and the Bruins struggled to contend in the Big 10, finishing the season 3-9. UCLA went on to fire DeShaun Foster and showed some mild signs of life down the stretch, but still landed just 13th in the Big 10.

UCLA football has been in a bit of a rut for a while now, but a program of their stature shouldn’t be in this situation. Thankfully, they decided to make a riskier hire this offseason, bringing in former James Madison coach Bob Chesney to try to right this ship. Chesney is a winner. Success has followed him to every stop he’s made in his coaching career, garnering a 132-52 record over his career.

More importantly, he’s built great cultures wherever he’s been. The Bruins lost a ton of their roster, but thankfully will essentially be JMU on the West Coast in 2026. Chesney had to rework his entire roster, bringing in 41 transfers, 10 of whom are from JMU. That continuity will be great for a coach who has to fix so much in what has been the best conference in football over the last few years.

I don’t think UCLA will be any sort of contender in the Big 10, but they’re more talented than they have been the last few years. Nico was the but of a lot of jokes last year, and a lot of that was not his fault. He was simply one part of a bad team. This year, he and Chesney have higher expectations and, at the very least, should be in a bowl game.

It’s not even just this season; Chesney has hit the ground running on his 2027 recruiting class, currently boasting the 4th-ranked class in the nation, signing 9 4-star prospects.

However, getting back to 2026, UCLA has a lot of talent with starting experience. They hit the non-JMU portal hard at offensive line and defense, while they’ll be relying on Wayne Knight and Landon Ellis to continue their successes with the Dukes. Knight was quietly one of the best running backs in the country last year, totaling 1,373 yards, good for the 7th-best in the country.

Despite Iamaleava finding some success using his legs last year, UCLA still had the 80th-ranked rush offense in yards per game. Between new additions on the offensive line and Wayne Knight, UCLA could have one of the most underrated rushing attacks in the country.

The most important thing for UCLA is a steady hand running the show. Chesney’s best ability in year one of this rebuilding is raising the Bruins floor. They can’t have the bad early-season losses they did in 2025, and I just don’t see that happening under this new regime. Currently, UCLA’s win total entering 2026 is at 5.5, and I would hammer that over.

I just don’t see this team missing a bowl game.

Brendan Sorsby’s college football career has to be over.

No matter what Texas Tech or Sorsby himself try to argue, a player who reportedly placed over 20,000 sports gambling bets over the last four years — including on his team’s games when he was at Indiana, per ESPN — can not continue to play that sport at the college level if that proves to be true.

An NCAA investigation is currently ongoing to determine the veracity and severity of the betting. But given the fact that Sorsby has checked himself into treatment for gambling addiction recovery, it seems likely that investigation is going to find some damning evidence that will be too much to overlook.

It remains to be seen how this could affect the NFL career of a prolific quarterback who was one of the top quarterbacks in this year’s transfer portal class after breaking out the last two seasons at Cincinnati. We’ll see if a team takes a chance on him in the supplemental draft, which seems the likeliest path forward.

For now, Sorsby has taken an indefinite leave of absence from Texas Tech. He also serves as an unfortunate example for the NCAA of how the proliferation of gambling, particularly on college sports, can create problems.

Mind you, the NCAA hasn’t outright pushed for gambling to grow exponentially as it has since it was legalized at the national level in 2018. But it also hasn’t seemed to object to how sports betting ad reads have taken over college sports broadcasts, promoting odds boosts, parlays, promos and various other deals sportsbooks are offering to try and differentiate themselves in a quickly crowding market.

The steps some states have taken to put some guardrails in place — a number of states, including Illinois, do not allow bets to be placed on games involving teams from that state — are possible fixes for the problem. But it goes deeper than just that, as even Sorsby betting on a different college football team or other sports that the NCAA holds championships for would be against the association’s rules.

This is certainly a watershed moment for college athletics when it comes to gambling. A top player and likely Heisman candidate on a team which made the College Football Playoff last year and was going to be favored to make it again this year as the Big 12 champion is now almost certainly going to be ineligible.

This situation paired with the one going on in professional baseball right now where two Cleveland Guardians pitchers are facing criminal charges for allegedly throwing balls on purpose to help gamblers fix bets for single-pitch results — ironically another type of bet Sorsby reportedly made when at Cincinnati Reds games — speaks to the problem of the moment.

As more and more states have implemented legalized sports gambling — we’re up to 39 states this year — it gets tougher and tougher to avoid sportsbooks, which can at times come off as downright predatory.

Sorsby is not that different from plenty of other Americans who have fallen under the allure of a gambling addiction. It’s just that he’s in a prominent enough position that maybe some positive change can come from his situation.

Because it seems clear that something has to change.