This is an article version of the CBS Sports HQ AM Newsletter, the ultimate guide to every day in sports. An offseason of high spending and eligibility battles made this roster construction cycle easily the most chaotic in college basketball history. Power Five rosters cost, on average, more than $10 million as the result of an NIL and revenue-sharing arms race.
Are the players really worth it? A lot of them will prove to be. It is, of course, no coincidence that the most expensive rosters are also some of the most talented.
Look at Duke and Florida, which boast five players inside the preseason Top 100 And 1 rankings. That's more than anyone else. Gators small forward Thomas Haugh, who our Matt Norlander says is a big reason why Florida could be the first team in 18 years to open the season ranked No. 1 and win the national championship.
As for Duke, here is where each of its top five standouts landed in our preseason player rankings: 11. Senior SG John Blackwell 19. Freshman PF Joaquim Boumtje Boumtje 25.
Junior C Patrick Ngongba II 51. Sophomore W Dame Sarr 90. Sophomore PG Cayden Boozer The stretch run of the 2026 college football season is here.
The second half of the campaign kicks off with only a couple of premier matchups, but even the lighter slates carry CFP implications this deep into the year. There are resume-building opportunities in the Big 12 and SEC, where the numbers tell us Houston, Ole Miss and Texas each account for one of the 14 best playoff cases in the nation. Notice the one team absent from that list?
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