What we'll be talking about in January '26

Let us be the last ones to wish you Happy New Year—or make predictions for 2025.

Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we break down the intersection of sports and money—with an extra bit of humor and opinion. On Saturdays we hit the biggest stories of the week, and the news that left us scratching our heads….

CLUB SPORTICO COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF BRACKET UPDATE 🏆: After some quarterfinal excitement (and a couple snoozers), only three perfect brackets remain, each with a different champion pick. Meanwhile, not a single entrant believed in Penn State??? For shame.

The CFP resumes Thursday.

The Sportico Story of the Week 🏀: It was a busy week over on the mother-site, where Anthony Crupi enumerated the NFL’s continued TV dominance in 2024 and Eben broke the news that Denver has secured the NWSL’s 16th franchise. But I was most thankful for Michael McCann’s explanation of the Dartmouth men’s basketball team’s decision to drop its bid for unionization. The move comes ahead of changes at the National Labor Relations Board under president-elect Donald Trump, and signals what’s next in the political battle over college sports (more on that below 👇).

The Non-Sportico Story of the Week 🏌️‍♂️: I’m not a huge golf person, but I will be tuning in on Tuesday for the launch of TGL, a new sport/league that mixes simulator golf with the real thing inside a custom-built arena. If the concept is entirely new to you, I think you’ll enjoy this feature in GOLF explaining what they’re up to in Florida.

Prediction Time 🔮

[Insert paragraph here about how doing predictions this time of year is unimaginative and they’re generally uninformative, but at least they offer the chance to have a little fun when not taken too seriously]

And now, here are my guesses for what we’ll be talking about in sports business come this time in 2026!