Football
MIAMI — In a Dec. 19 Instagram post announcing his intention to remain at Duke for the 2026 football season, quarterback Darian Mensah declared, “This team, this locker room, this family welcomed me with open arms … When the odds were against us, we kept fighting. I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world.”
Four weeks later, barely beating the deadline to enter the transfer portal, Mensah traded it. He’s walking out on the second season of a two-year contract.
Words are cheap. Quarterbacks are not.
Mensah’s expected landing spot: Atlantic Coast Conference rival Miami. The Hurricanes are multitasking by preparing for the College Football Playoff championship game against Indiana on Monday while also lining up a third straight QB portal strike. They landed Cam Ward in 2024, launching him toward being the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft. Then they landed Carson Beck, who has led Miami within a game of its first national championship since the 2001 season.
Mensah appears to be the next star QB up at The U. It’s probably a good football decision. It also carries extremely bad optics.
Mensah is completely screwing over the Blue Devils, who are out of time to land a high-caliber replacement in the portal. (Mensah’s backup, Henry Belin IV, recently portaled to Missouri State.) But modern college football is so bereft of shame that bad optics are hardly a concern at all. Coaches can bail on playoff teams, and players can bail on an annual basis.
The first rule of modern college football is that loyalty is disposable. The second rule is that there is always another school willing to drop a bag at the feet of a high-caliber quarterback.
How big is the bag for Mensah? Perhaps the biggest on record, as Miami was running out of options after whiffing on a couple of other portal candidates. Alabama QB Ty Simpson told On3 recently that the Hurricanes offered him $6.5 million to withdraw from the draft and suit up for Miami in 2026—an overture he turned down. The offer for Mensah figures to be at least that big.
Hurricanes athletic director Dan Radakovich took time from basking in the glow of this time-game run to address the sport’s runaway player economy Saturday. Count him among those who are fine with a virtual unlimited payroll.
“I don’t think there should be a cap,” he said. “I can’t tell [Ohio State athletic director] Ross Bjork what to do at Ohio Stadium, building another club or suites to make money for his program. I don’t care what he’s going to pay [football coach] Ryan Day. We don’t need that. What we need is disclosure. If you’re going to this school, I don’t need your agent telling me, you’re making this [amount], when you’re really making this.
“We’ve never been able to ‘rule’ ourselves into competitive equality. Schools are going to invest differently. … I really think we could go around the mulberry bush for an awful long time, but if we just let market forces work—I think over a period of time we’d get level water here.”
Whether the Hurricanes tampered with Mensah or ran everything through his agent, who knows. But the market is being driven ever higher for QBs—especially experienced QBs—with the results of the playoff serving as clear examples why.
Indiana leaped from good to great this season with the arrival of Fernando Mendoza, who won the Heisman Trophy and now figures to be the first QB taken in the draft. Miami snatching Beck (at great cost) solidified a team that already had massive talent along both lines of scrimmage. Despite coming from well off the radar in Division II, Trinidad Chambliss helped elevate Mississippi to playoff semifinal status.
It perpetuates a pattern—Ohio State won it all last year with first-year transfer QB Will Howard, and Notre Dame made the title game with first-year transfer Riley Leonard. Building a great team still requires many parts, but quarterback is the place to start and the place to spend an increasingly large amount.
(Perhaps not coincidentally, the Buckeyes and Irish fell short of expectations and aspirations this season with young QBs who were in their first season as starters. Both Julian Sayin at Ohio State and CJ Carr at Notre Dame had excellent years, but Sayin finished poorly and Carr started slowly. Getting old and staying old at that position looks smarter every season.)
The House v. NCAA settlement allowing the maximum revenue sharing of $20.5 million per year for an entire athletic department now functions as the floor for many power-conference schools. The actual amounts being spent over that number are roughly double at some programs, industry experts believe. Whether all those deals can be adequately policed by the College Sports Commission, the new rules enforcement entity created by the Power 4 conferences, remains very much in doubt.
“Wish I had an answer for that one,” Radakovich said.
Within the current structure, Miami is pushing as aggressively as anyone. In addition to throwing money at Mensah, offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson could offer proof of offensive concept with Ward and Beck.
“Success breeds success,” Dawson said. “Especially in the nature of college football today, it’s good to be marketable. And so putting things out there and being able to develop guys to the next level and being able to sell that helps.
“I had to sell Cam before the success, which is sometimes harder. I had to sell him on the picture of like, ‘Look, man, I’m going to put you in a position where these NFL teams are going to view you as the top quarterback because you’re going to play in a system where you’re going to have to make checks, a lot of the things that you see in the NFL. And you’re going to play behind an O-line that can really block.’ And then flipping the page to next year and getting Carson, it was important to show that this offense is not just for one type [of] quarterback.”
Having a one-time, two-week portal is a good concept, although I’d prefer it to be in the spring instead of the winter, when the season is still ongoing. But it has also spiked the urgency to make something happen in a short period of time, with splurge spending part of the deal.
Success is probably helping NIL donations flow from ecstatic Miami fans. So is the projected $20 million in success initiative money the Hurricanes are getting from the ACC. Combine available cash with a scarcity of available quarterback talent, and the Hurricanes were positioned to spend big—maybe even overspend—on Mensah.
While he’s securing one bag, Duke is left holding another one.
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Read More Johnathon Coby