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Kenny Dillingham said the quiet part out loud last Saturday. We need to find one of these really rich people in this city to step up and stroke a check. … We live in Phoenix, Arizona. You’re telling me there’s not one person who could stroke a $20 million check right now? There is somebody out here who can. Who is Kenny Dillingham, and what is he talking about? Dillingham is the youthful (35), vibrant, innovative head football coach at Arizona State University (ASU). What he’s talking about is a “plan” to make ASU’s football program elite. Give him $20 million, and he could “recruit” enough talent to elevate his Sun Devils to an even higher level than their lofty status — 8–4 this past season, but 11–3 and a botched targeting call away from beating Texas in a double-overtime playoff game last year. It might even be enough to keep his current quarterback, Sam Leavitt (currently making $2.1 million), from jumping into the transfer portal. (RELATED: Fourth and Funded: College Football’s Fiscal Fumble) And it might put ASU in the same financial ballpark as fellow Big 12 foe Texas Tech. The Red Raiders ponied up $28 mil for their football roster, thanks to big-money boosters. They got their quarterback cheap (only $1 million), which freed up funds for an elite edge rusher ($1.2 million) and an offensive tackle ($5.1 million for three years). Through name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals, Tech also decided to become a softball power. They inveigled a pitcher from Stanford to Lubbock for $1 million; the new talent took them to within a game of a championship this past year. As it’s a yearly deal, they renewed the contract — she’ll get a million this year too. (RELATED: Figures Flip the Field) But Tech is only one among many. A Michigan booster anteed up $3 million a year for a quarterback — $12 mil if he stays four years. BYU “landed” a basketball prospect for $4.1 million. The going rate for “average” quarterbacks is $1–2 million per year. Basketball programs routinely pop a mil or two on transfer players; some work out, but some count their millions while sitting on the bench. This is where “amateur” sports is these days. It’s been five years since the Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA was not exempt from antitrust regulations, leading ultimately to the NCAA allowing student-athletes to make money off their name, image, and likeness. Also in 2021, the rule that athletes in the major sports (football, men’s and women’s basketball, hockey, and baseball) had to sit out a year of competition if they transferred to another major school was dropped. In June 2025, the House v. NCAA case was settled, which opened the door to major colleges paying athletes directly — to the tune of $20.5 million per annum. The net effect of all this? Major college sports have become professional. The net effect of all this? Major college sports have become professional. Players receive direct payments from the universities but can also engage in side deals through NIL. They can move from school to school anytime they want, without restriction or penalty, which is tantamount to free agency. The only thing still “college” about big-time sports is that jocks still have to show up for class at their 101 courses once in a while — at least theoretically. Tradition has been forfeited to the almighty dollar. One tradition most imperiled is the idea of the student-athlete. The idea behind college sports has always been that these athletes were not professionals; that they participated in the college experience like everybody else. They attended class, took notes, studied for tests, and had to get a passing grade. It may be romantic — Pollyannish, in fact — to retain the idea of the student-athlete, but it’s the thing that keeps fans on board, loyal to the college. Richard Vedder, a professor emeritus at Ohio University, told William McGurn of the Wall Street Journal: “College and universities are all invested in the idea that the guys on the field are students because they are afraid that the bottom would drop out of all the millions they are taking in if alumni and fans had to acknowledge the reality that the athletes really aren’t students but professional athletes paid for their services.” (RELATED: College Football Is About to Change Forever) Loyalty to a school is also a thing of the past. Time was that a fan could build an attachment to a player and sustain it for years. It was always a thrill to see a promising young player and remark, “And he’s only a freshman. We have him for three more years.” Not anymore. With unrestricted free agency — called the transfer portal — players are here one year, gone the next. Some of them spend their four years of eligibility at four different schools. Some teams flip a roster significantly — some almost entirely — every year. A good player on a lower-tier team is snapped up by an upper-level team — who offers hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more — while unproductive players from upper-level teams seek playing time at lower-tier schools. The athletes care so little for the name on the front of their uniforms and so entirely for the name on the back. If the players care so little about their school, how long until the fans follow suit? One wonders how long donors will accept poor returns on investments when a player they are paying big bucks via NIL doesn’t live up to his promise. Will they keep ponying up the $2 mil NIL deal to the quarterback who throws interceptions and fails to win games, to the projected hoops star who averages 2.7 points per game and spends most of his time watching the action? The system is broken. The question then is: Can it be fixed? Requiring athletes to sign and adhere to contracts would be a start. If they’re going to be pros, they should be treated as pros. An NIL “salary cap” would also go far to bring order to the chaos, put a limit on how much each school can dole out in NIL money. And third, regulate the transfer portal somehow, for example, by limiting “free” transfers to one per athlete. Absent the imposition of such sanity, however, Kenny Dillingham has the right idea. His only problem is, he’s lowballing the amount. Twenty million is not enough. READ MORE from Tom Raabe: The Altogether Predictable Sports Gambling Scandal Reduce the Importance of the Foot in Football Democrats’ ‘Trans’ Intransigence

The U.S. economy grew this summer at a surprisingly strong 4.3 percent annual rate in the third quarter, the most rapid expansion in two years, as corporate profits and consumer spending, as well as exports, all increased. The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) — the government’s official economic scorecard — rose at a seasonally and inflation-adjusted 4.3 percent annual rate in the third quarter. The report on the July through September period was delayed due to the government shutdown. “Today’s blockbuster, expectation-smashing GDP report is the latest proof that President Trump’s America First trade and economic agenda continues to turn the page on the Biden economic disaster: American consumers are spending, and American exports are surging,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said. Gross domestic product is a broad measure of the goods and services produced across the economy. Economists had expected the economy to grow at only a 3.2 percent annual rate after the second quarter’s 3.8 percent growth. (RELATED: Trump Proved ‘Experts’ Wrong About Tariffs) Trump’s tariffs were supposed to increase inflation and thus dampen consumer spending. Just the converse occurred. (RELATED: The Trump Administration’s Agenda Is on a Crash Course With… Itself) Prior to the inflation adjustment, the economy grew at an 8.2 percent rate. “If the economy keeps producing at this level, then there isn’t as much need to worry about a slowing economy,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer for Northlight Asset Management, adding that inflation (although currently subdued) could return as the greatest concern about the economy. (RELATED: Economists Complain About Trump’s New Inflation Figures) Real final sales to private domestic purchasers, a slice of GDP that some economists view as a clearer measure of the health of the private sector, grew at a 3.0 percent annual rate, up from the second quarter. This suggests that demand from consumers and businesses remained strong and gathered momentum over the summer. Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of U.S. economic activity, grew much faster than expected, expanding at a seasonally and inflation-adjusted annual rate of 3.5 percent. That’s up from 2.5 percent in the second quarter and above the 2.7 percent expected. Another consistent driver in the U.S. economy, spending on artificial intelligence, was also evident in the latest data. Investment in intellectual property, the category that covers AI, grew 5.4 percent in the third quarter, following an even bigger jump of 15 percent in the second quarter. That figure was 6.5 percent in the first quarter. Donald Trump’s trade policies appear to have added to growth in the third quarter, as exports rose 8.8 percent while imports fell 4.7 percent. (Exports add to GDP while imports, because they represent foreign production, are subtracted.) Government spending added 0.39 points to growth. Corporate profits soared in the third quarter, rising at a 17.9 percent annual rate after adjusting for inventory pricing effects and depreciation. The sector helped drive growth, skyrocketing by more than $166 billion, up from a $6.8 billion increase during the previous quarter. The main drag was private inventory investment, which subtracted 0.22 points as wholesalers and manufacturers drew down stocks. This is likely to reverse in future quarters, adding to growth in future quarters. Fixed investment grew only 1.0 percent, with residential investment (offices and warehouses) declining 5.1 percent, reflecting the sluggish housing market. However, that decline was much less than the 13.8 percent slide in the second quarter. Outside of the first quarter, when the economy shrank for the first time in three years as companies rushed to import goods ahead of President Donald Trump’s tariff rollout, the U.S. economy has continued to expand at a healthy rate. That’s despite much higher borrowing rates the Fed imposed in 2022 and 2023 in its drive to curb the inflation that surged as the United States bounced back with unexpected strength from the brief but devastating COVID recession of 2020. Though inflation remains only marginally above the Fed’s 2 percent target, the central bank cut its benchmark lending rate three times in a row to close out 2025, mostly out of concern for a job market that has steadily lost momentum since spring. Tuesday’s report is a sign that the White House is on its way toward meeting some of the lofty projections Trump’s allies had set when the president returned to the White House earlier this year. Business investments in equipment and intellectual property — which includes software and technological research — both continued to climb during the last quarter. Note of caution: While the economy’s expansion has surpassed expectations in consecutive quarters, those gains have failed to reverse an uptick in the jobless rate. The Conference Board’s closely watched consumer confidence gauge dipped on Tuesday, a sign that the public’s view of the labor market and future earnings has dimmed somewhat. The U.S. could be experiencing what economist Mohamed El-Erian has described as the decoupling of GDP growth from employment. In economics, that means more output with the same or fewer workers — great for business, not so for workers. Investments in artificial intelligence — along with the wealth that was generated by an AI-related stock market bull run — have been major economic drivers this year. And the arrival of that technology is diminishing “labor” as an engine of economic growth. If workers don’t benefit from the upside, that could make GDP as an indicator of prosperity less relevant in the domestic political landscape moving forward. The decoupling of GDP from the employment issue could be significant in the 2026 midterms and beyond. Still, given the predictable negative press surrounding Trump’s economic agenda, administration officials are treating the GDP report as a sign that the president’s plans are indeed working. The GDP figure shows strength where economists should want to see it — consumer spending, capital expenditures, corporate profits, and, of course, a smaller trade gap. President Trump’s America First tariff agenda continues to exasperate his critics, defying mainstream economists and legacy journalists. It seems they will only be happy when (under the auspices of this president) the data says America is not doing well. And we’re nowhere near that. READ MORE from F. Andrew Wolf: Economists Complain About Trump’s New Inflation Figures It Is Not Time to PAUSE Immigration, Again The Netflix-Warner Bros. Merger — Is ‘Going to the Movies’ Over?

by George McClellan, America Outloud: We’re near the end of the eleventh month of Trump’s first year of his second term. It is the Christmas Holiday season to be followed soon by the coming New Year’s and all that implies. It is a resting period while the radicals reload. A quick look back at the […]

from The Conservative Treehouse: It’s easy to think about the things we have yet to achieve.  However, author and friend of the Treehouse Jack Cashill documents a great deal of success and presents a year in review that deserves attention. [SEE HERE] In his substack article, Cashill runs through some of the big wins that were […]

In a heartwarming story making headlines this Christmas season, outgoing Fibrebond CEO Graham Walker shared $240 million in bonuses, paid out over five years, with his 540 full-time employees after selling the family-founded manufacturing firm to Eaton for $1.7 billion earlier this year.

Since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump has boldly reversed decades of U.S. trade policy, building a strong tariff framework around an economy long marked by open markets — a strategic shift he argues restores America’s advantage.