Washington State coach Jimmy Rogers has agreed to a six-year deal to become the next coach at Iowa State, the school announced Friday.

Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard moved quickly to replace departing coach Matt Campbell, who agreed to an eight-year deal to take over Penn State on Friday, and landed Rogers, a proven winner at the FCS level who just concluded his first regular season at Washington State.

“Jimmy Rogers is a rising star in college athletics who has very strong ties to the Midwest both as a player and as a coach,” Pollard said in a statement. “He has been on my short-list ever since the first time I met him. He immediately impressed me with his interest in Iowa State University and told me during our first visit several years ago that he wanted to be the next head coach at Iowa State.

“Since our initial meeting, I have stayed in close contact with him and have been very impressed with his work ethic and understanding of what it takes to be successful at Iowa State,” Pollard added. “He is a proven winner who has demonstrated throughout his career that he will fit our culture.”

Rogers, 38, has a 33-9 record over three seasons as a head coach. He went 6-6 in his debut season at Washington State after overseeing a significant roster rebuild following the departure of coach Jake Dickert to Wake Forest.

“My family and I are excited to be joining the Iowa State University community and the Cyclone football program,” Rogers said in a statement. “Iowa State has been one of the nation’s top programs for the last decade and we look forward to building upon its upward trajectory. I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity that Jamie Pollard has given me to lead the Cyclones.”

Rogers previously spent 12 years at South Dakota State and led his alma mater to an FCS national championship in 2023 with a 15-0 season in his first year as the Jackrabbits’ head coach after taking over for longtime coach John Stiegelmeier.

Rogers carried a 29-game win streak into his second year as coach and achieved a No. 3 finish in 2024 with a run to the FCS playoff semifinals and a 12-3 season.

The Jackrabbits also won the FCS national championship in 2022 after Rogers was elevated to being the team’s sole defensive coordinator, and they played for another FCS title in 2020.

Campbell, the winningest coach in Iowa State history with 72 victories, led the Cyclones to eight winning seasons during his decade at the helm and two appearances in the Big 12 championship game.

The Cyclones went 8-4 this season and are awaiting their bowl selection on Sunday.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Duke coach Manny Diaz says his team has embraced all the doomsday scenarios that have been laid out this week as his 7-5 team prepares to play No. 17 Virginia in the ACC championship game.

If Duke wins the game, there is the possibility the ACC champion would get left out of the 12-team College Football Playoff, as three Group of 5 teams are ranked higher than the Blue Devils. No. 24 North Texas and No. 20 Tulane play in the American title game, while No. 25 James Madison plays Troy in the Sun Belt title game, both on Friday.

“We love it, doomsday scenario and nightmares and this and that the other,” Diaz said. “Our guys deserve to be here. That’s the first thing. There’s a notion that we won a scratch-off lottery-ticket-type deal to get here. We won by the most objective metric possible. We won the second-most games in the league, and everyone else who won the same amount of games that we won, we had the hardest schedule.

“We complain all the time about the subjectivity in college football and rankings and committees and whatnot, and this is the most objective way to determine who the champions are, and the two teams are here that deserve to be here. We’re one of them.”

Duke finished in a five-way tie in the ACC at 6-2. One of the teams that finished in that tie was No. 12 Miami (10-2), a team on the bubble for an at-large CFP berth. The Blue Devils won the fifth tiebreaker, which was conference opponent win percentage. Miami coach Dan Radakovich said earlier in the week the ACC should revisit its championship game tiebreaker policy to ensure the league was putting its “best foot forward.”

Diaz noted his team finished plus-16 in turnover margin in conference games, one of the biggest reasons it is in Charlotte.

The two teams met earlier in November, with Virginia winning 34-17. The top five conference champions are guaranteed a spot in the CFP, regardless of conference. Duke lost three nonconference games, including two on the road to teams outside the Power 4 — at Tulane and at UConn.

Diaz has remained adamant that despite seeing three Group of 5 teams ranked, if his team wins the ACC, it deserves to make the field.

He also noted the point spread in the Big Ten title game between Indiana and Ohio State is the same as the point spread in the ACC title game. Ohio State and Virginia are each favored by 4.

“Those guys in Vegas, they tend to know things,” Diaz said. “No one’s talking about how Indiana doesn’t deserve to be in the Big Ten championship game, because, of course, they do. And I think Duke deserves to be here the same exact way.”

Georgia‘s athletic department is headed to court to try to obtain $390,000 in damages from a former standout defensive end who transferred from the school after his sophomore season in a potentially precedent-setting case.

The Bulldogs have asked a judge to force former defensive end Damon Wilson, currently the top pass rusher on Missouri‘s defensive line, to enter into arbitration to settle a clause in his former contract that serves effectively as a buyout fee for exiting his deal early. Wilson played for Georgia as a freshman and sophomore before transferring to Missouri in January, two weeks after signing a new deal with Georgia’s Classic City Collective.

Many schools and collectives have started to include liquidated damages clauses in their contracts with athletes to protect their investment in players and deter transfers. Georgia is one of the first programs to publicly try to enforce the clause by filing suit against a player.

“When the University of Georgia Athletic Association enters binding agreements with student-athletes, we honor our commitments and expect student-athletes to do the same,” athletics spokesperson Steven Drummond said in a statement to ESPN on Friday.

Wilson was served last week in Missouri with a summons to appear in court, according to legal documents.

“After all the facts come out, people will be shocked at how the University of Georgia treated a student athlete,” said Bogdan Susan, a Missouri-based attorney who is representing Wilson along with attorney Jeff Jensen. “It has never been about the money for Damon, he just wants to play the game he loves and pursue his dream of playing in the NFL.”

Susan and Jensen did not represent Wilson when he negotiated his contact with Georgia. He and his lawyers have 30 days from the time he received his court summons to provide a response.

The Bulldogs paid Wilson a total of $30,000 from the disputed contract. Because of the way the deal was crafted, Georgia says Wilson owed it $390,000 in a lump sum within 30 days of his decision to leave the team. Drummond declined to comment when asked why the damages being sought are much higher than the amount Wilson was paid.

Wilson signed a term sheet with Classic City Collective in December 2024, shortly before Georgia lost in a quarterfinal playoff game to Notre Dame, ending his sophomore season. The 14-month contract — which was attached to Georgia’s legal filing — was worth $500,000 to be distributed in monthly payments of $30,000 with two additional $40,000 bonus payments that would be paid shortly after the NCAA transfer portal windows closed.

The deal states that if Wilson withdrew from the Georgia team or entered the transfer portal, he would owe the collective a lump-sum payment equal to the rest of the money he’d have received had he stayed for the length of the contract. (The two bonus payments apparently were not included in the damages calculation.) Classic City signed over the rights to those damages to Georgia’s athletic department July 1 when many schools took over player payments from their collectives.

Georgia’s filing claims Wilson received his first $30,000 payment Dec. 24, 2024. Less than two weeks later, he declared his plans to transfer.

Legal experts say Georgia’s attorneys will have to convince an arbitrator that $390,000 in damages is a reasonable assessment of the harm the athletic department suffered due to Wilson’s departure. Liquidated damages are not legally allowed to be used as punishment or primarily as an incentive to keep someone from breaking a contract.

In one of the only other examples of a school trying to enforce a similar clause, Arkansas‘ NIL collective filed a complaint in the spring against quarterback Madden Iamaleava and wide receiver Dazmin James after both players transferred out of the program. The Iamaleava case was “resolved to Arkansas’s satisfaction,” according to a source familiar with the matter. James’ attorney, Darren Heitner, told ESPN that the wide receiver “stood his ground” and that Arkansas has not moved forward to date with further attempts to collect damages.

“To me, [these clauses] are clearly penalty provisions masquerading as liquidated damages,” Heitner said.

Several attorneys who have reviewed athlete NIL contracts for ESPN in the past say they believe schools and their collectives are using liquidated damages clauses in bad faith to punish players who break their contract early.

Schools and collectives have not used the negotiated buyout clauses that typically appear in coaching contracts for athletes because the teams aren’t technically paying them to play their sport. Instead, the school pays players for the right to use their name, image and likeness in promotional material. Paying for play could make it more likely that courts would deem athletes to be employees, which almost all college sports leaders want to avoid.

Wilson’s case could help set a precedent on whether liquidated damages clauses will serve as an effective, defensible substitute for more traditional buyout fees.