The Morning: A change in college football

Plus, Israel, TikTok and Trump.

View in browser|nytimes.com January 19, 2025 Good morning. Today, my colleague Kevin Draper explains a major change in college football. We're also covering Israel, TikTok and Trump. —David Leonhardt In Arlington, Texas.  Jerome Miron/USA Today Sports, via Reuters Managing the chaos By Kevin Draper I'm an investigative reporter, with a focus on sports. Notre Dame and Ohio State will meet tomorrow in the college football national championship game. After the final whistle, the authors of the victory will be paraded across your television. You will hear from the head coach, the quarterback, maybe the athletic director. Who you probably won't hear from, though, is the person who built the winning team: the general manager. General managers, once purely the domain of professional sports, are taking over college football. In today's newsletter, I'll explain why. Enter the G.M. Managing a roster of over 100 players, and a staff of dozens, was always a difficult job for a coach. Now it is impossible. That's because the sport has changed drastically in the past few years. Players can be paid — for some, more than they would get in the N.F.L. — without sacrificing eligibility. And they can transfer to different schools between each season. "The job is too big for a college coach," said Andrew Luck, the former Stanford quarterback who recently returned to his alma mater as its football general manager. "The role has changed. The system has changed so much and continues to change." Luck, like most general managers, is largely responsible for securing money and signing players, many of whom announce they wish to change schools by entering the sport's so-called transfer portal. The portal was most recently open from Dec. 9 to 28. Not only was that over the holidays, but it was also when dozens of teams were competing in bowl games. Without a general manager, a coach would have to prepare for a big game while also evaluating thousands of potential players to build next year's roster. Andrew Luck Josie Lepe/Associated Press "The transfer portal was intense," said Luck, a college football optimist who stayed at Stanford to finish his degree in 2011, even when he was projected to be the first pick in the N.F.L. draft. "If I had any romantic notion of the thing, the business side, it was lost there." On the field The influence of general managers will be apparent tomorrow night: Both teams' starting quarterbacks are transfers. Notre Dame will be led by Riley Leonard, who spent the past three seasons at Duke, and Ohio State will be led by Will Howard, who spent four seasons at Kansas State. Of course, not all players are transfers. A majority of players on both rosters were recruited straight from high school, as they have always been. One big difference for those players, however, is they were paid to be there. Ryan Day, Ohio State's coach, said in 2022 that it would cost $13 million to keep his team together. Four months ago, Ohio State's athletic director revised that figure upward and said $20 million was being spent on the team's roster. Looking to the future Notre Dame and Ohio State are both powerhouses. But the College Football Playoff — the 12-team tournament that led to the championship game — also included relative upstarts like Boise State, Arizona State and Southern Methodist University. Will the changes to college football further entrench the dominance of the blue bloods, the few programs that can raise and spend $20 million or more on a roster? Or will they allow less prestigious teams to strategically spend the dollars they do have to poach players that otherwise might have gone to the big teams? Luck, whose Stanford Cardinal program hasn't had a winning record for seven seasons, hopes it is the latter. "I still want to believe there is space for a broad college football landscape," he said, "that if you hit enough of the right notes, every program has a chance to succeed and win championships." For more: Read my story about how general managers have made the college game more appealing for some coaches, including Bill Belichick, the new head coach for the University of North Carolina. THE LATEST NEWS Gaza Cease-Fire In Gaza. Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters A cease-fire and hostage release agreement between Israel and Hamas took effect this morning. Israel delayed the cease-fire for nearly three hours until Hamas named the three hostages to be released today. Israel and Hamas have agreed to observe a 42-day truce, during which Hamas will release 33 of the roughly 100 hostages it still holds and Israel will free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. After 15 months of war, Gazans spoke of the houses they would rebuild and the graves they would visit once they returned home. Some hostage families are picturing their loves ones' return without knowing whether they have survived, The Wall Street Journal reports. TikTok TikTok shuttered service in the U.S. last night, hours before the government's ban was set to take effect. The app showed users a message that read, in part, "We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution." Before the platform went dark, users posted videos filled with sadness and silliness. "It's like losing a relative," one creator said. For an app with such devoted users, TikTok's end came with a surprising lack of outrage, our tech columnist writes. Trump Transition Donald Trump Eric Lee/The New York Times Donald Trump promised to punish his adversaries. On the eve of his inauguration, many of them are preparing to become targets. In Washington, the defiance that marked the beginning of Trump's first term has given way to deference, Peter Baker writes. Across the country, there are few signs of the mass protests that birthed "the resistance" eight years ago. Trump's wealthy cabinet picks are moving to Washington, prompting a boom in the capital's luxury real estate market. Fox News is preparing to cover an administration likely to be filled with former employees. Cryptocurrency, overseas real estate and merchandising: Here's an illustrated guide to the web of conflicts in the new administration. How do Americans feel about the future? The Times asked people across the country. Hear responses from the hopeful and the fearful. Other Big Stories Strong winds are expected to create extreme fire risk in Southern California tomorrow. Poor planning and strained resources allowed firestorms to overrun Los Angeles. See a timeline. A winter storm is expected to bring at least six inches of snow to America's Northeast. In Iran, an unidentified gunman killed two high-profile judges outside the Supreme Court. The authorities described it as a terrorist attack. THE SUNDAY DEBATE Should Trump enforce the TikTok law? Yes. If Trump doesn't enforce the law, he'll show weakness in national security. "His duty as President is to enforce the TikTok law, not ignore it in the hope of cutting a deal with China's dictator," The Wall Street Journal's editorial board writes. No. TikTok is too important to our culture and politics. "A ban would dismantle a one-of-a-kind informational and cultural ecosystem, silencing millions in the process," Senator Ed Markey writes for The Boston Globe. FROM OPINION "Hamilton" premiered 10 years ago, during an era of liberal optimism. Watching it now feels like a trip to a distant past, Ezekiel Kweku writes. Pico Iyer lost his home to a wildfire in 1990. It taught him to put less stock in material things, he writes. Here are columns by Maureen Dowd on Trump's return to Washington and Nicholas Kristof on reasons to feel optimistic. Receive free access to handpicked articles via text message. Now you can get Times journalism sent right to your phone. Each article will be accessible for 30 days. Sign up now MORNING READS Julie Packard Ian C. Bates for The New York Times Under the sea: A conversation with the longtime leader of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, who loves giant kelp and the mola mola. The Ethicist: "Can I go to church when I don't believe?" Wedding trends: Some couples are sharing their vows in private. Most clicked: The most popular link in The Morning this week covered 35 wellness tips that health experts swear by. Vows: She was immediately smitten. He took a while to notice. Lives Lived: André Soltner was a chef whose reverence for classic French cooking and the homey specialties of his native Alsace helped place New York's Lutèce among the most celebrated restaurants in the U.S. He died at 92. BOOK OF THE WEEK President Gerald Ford's son chats with White House staff in 1974. David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images By Elisabeth Egan "The Residence," by Kate Andersen Brower: On the eve of the inauguration of the 47th president of the United States, why not take a breezy spin through the 132-room, 55,000 square foot building the first family calls home? Brower, who covered the Obama administration for Bloomberg News, takes readers behind the scenes with butlers, chefs, ushers, engineers, electricians, carpenters and florists as guides. One might wonder how, exactly, White House staff manage to switch out the furniture in a mere six hours on the first day of a new administration. They're fueled by a combination of sweat, stress and teamwork, according to Brower, whose sources (gently) spill the tea on past residents and their furry friends. Fans of "The Residence" (2015) can look forward to the Netflix adaptation — a mystery drama starring Uzo Aduba and Giancarlo Esposito — this March. More on books Whether you're looking for tales of marriages gone wrong or nail biters in hard-to-reach locations, let us help you find your next thriller. The novelist Adam Haslett's shelves are lined with books on drug trafficking and Kant. THE INTERVIEW Curtis Yarvin Philip Montgomery for The New York Times By David Marchese This week's subject for The Interview is the political blogger and computer engineer Curtis Yarvin. His aggressively antidemocratic ideas have found a receptive audience among powerful conservatives, including Vice President-elect JD Vance. So why is democracy so bad? It's not even that democracy is bad; it's just that it's very weak. And the fact that it's very weak is easily seen by the fact that very unpopular policies like mass immigration persist despite strong majorities being against them. The thing that you have not isolated is why having a strongman would be better for people's lives. Can you answer that? Yes. I think that having an effective government and an efficient government is better for people's lives. When I ask people to answer that question, I ask them to look around the room and point out everything in the room that was made by a monarchy, because these things that we call companies are actually little monarchies. You're looking around, and you see, for example, a laptop, and that laptop was made by Apple, which is a monarchy. Why do you have such faith in the ability of C.E.O.s? Most start-ups fail. We can all point to C.E.O.s who have been ineffective. It seems like such a simplistic way of thinking. It's not a simplistic way of thinking, and having worked inside the salt mines where C.E.O.s do their C.E.O.ing, and having been a C.E.O. myself, I think I have a better sense of it than most people. If you took any of the Fortune 500 C.E.O.s, just pick one at random and put him or her in charge of Washington. I think you'd get something much, much better than what's there. It doesn't have to be Elon Musk. Read more of the interview here. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Photograph by Marcus Schaefer for The New York Times Click the cover image above to read this week's magazine. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Upgrade work lunches. Improve your sex life with an intimacy retreat. Transform a space with peel-and-stick wallpaper. Use a kitchen product to keep toilets stain free. MEAL PLAN Linda Xiao for The New York Times In this week's Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, Emily Weinstein lavishes praise on an affordable dinner warrior: chicken. She suggests making a 15-minute ginger-lime chicken and a sheet-pan fish tikka with spinach. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today's Spelling Bee. Yesterday's pangram was headlamp. Can you put eight historical events — including the revolt of Spartacus, the development of zero, and the creation of Jazzercise — in chronological order? Take this week's Flashback quiz. And here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for the Morning newsletter from The New York Times, or as part of your New York Times account. To stop receiving The Morning, unsubscribe. To opt out of other promotional emails from The Times, including those regarding The Athletic, manage your email settings. To opt out of updates and offers sent from The Athletic, submit a request. Subscribe to The TimesGet The New York Times app Connect with us on: Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018