If FIFA Doesn't Want People To Think It's Corrupt, It Should Stop Doing Things That Look Corrupt

Plus: Are college football bowl games dead, and can the playoff be fixed?

Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! Find your walk-up music this week—but more importantly, find a fan who will follow you around to play it.

Today we're talking about FIFA and some troubling developments that are starting to affect actual competitive soccer, in addition to the off-field corruption we're used to. Then we'll move on to the college football fervor that everyone is talking about.

But first, we're firing up more pick'em action for Free Agent subscribers with Bowl Mania on ESPN. Bowls already start this Saturday, so you need to join by then if you want to play. As with our NFL Eliminator Challenge, there's no entry fee—and no prize other than a shoutout here.

Speaking of the NFL Eliminator Challenge, our champion was sewn up long ago back in week five when "Primetime Paulie Rothrock" was the last picker standing. But he kept on picking anyway—and winning, until this week when the Chiefs let him down. Five weeks short of a perfect season is impressive stuff!

Locker Room Links

• Ever wondered how much a PGA Tour golfer travels in a year? Michael Kim shared a cool graphic of his travels, including 68,000(!) miles and 250-plus days on the road.
• The SCORE Act, to regulate college sports, blew a 3–1 series lead in Congress (and Lane Kiffin might be why?).
• Clickbait for Reason's Eric Boehm: "The Philippines, a nation without winters, might make the Olympics in curling."
• The New Yorker has a big article lamenting the spread of (expensive) luxury amenities in sports stadiums, though, as experts point out, there's no mention of how taxpayer funding is encouraging this.
• President Donald Trump thinks we should start calling soccer "football," and even said "We have to come up with another name for the NFL." (Just a reminder to the world that Brits came up with the word soccer, not Americans.)
• The Vancouver Whitecaps were MLS runners-up this year, but thanks to a lease dispute with the British Columbian government (who own their stadium, BC Place), they might not be in Vancouver next season.
• Elsewhere in Reason: It's the last day of our annual Webathon! Many thanks to the 1,000-plus people who helped us surpass our $600,000 goal. If you haven't yet, please give today to help Reason do fun stuff like this newsletter.
• Absolutely the funniest thing I laughed at last weekend:
  

  NEW: The #FIFAWorldCup match in Seattle on June 26 had already been designated as a "Pride Match" before the fixtures were decided. Now we know the teams who will play in it… Egypt and Iran.

  Both nations have draconian anti-gay laws.

  For @outsports https://t.co/PGoRTPjmCC

  — Jon Holmes (@jonboy79) December 7, 2025

FIFA? Corrupt? Never.

FIFA has long looked corrupt in its business dealings off the field. But now that corruption is seemingly seeping onto the field, too.

The latest laughable FIFA action came on Friday. After the Nobel Peace Prize went to María Corina Machado (a very worthy recipient) instead of Trump back in October, FIFA invented a new Peace Prize. At the glitzy World Cup Draw in Washington, D.C., on Friday, FIFA surprised no one by giving that prize to Trump. Yes, FIFA is sucking up to Trump in embarrassing fashion. But FIFA needs Trump's cooperation to run its mega event smoothly next summer. Or at the very least, FIFA needs to be in Trump's good graces so that the Justice Department doesn't investigate FIFA officials for corruption, like what happened a decade ago and brought down the last FIFA president.

But more than pandering to Trump, I'm worried about potentially corrupt FIFA actions that are affecting the actual competition.

For example, consider the special treatment that superstar Cristiano Ronaldo seemed to get from FIFA disciplinarians last month. After getting a red card while playing for Portugal last month, he picked up a three-match suspension. Two of those matches should have been Portugal's first two games at the World Cup—but FIFA decided the suspension for those two games would be "deferred for a one-year probation period," as ESPN put it. "FIFA cited its disciplinary rules that allow for parts of a sanction to be probationary, though it is rare in cases of a three-game ban for two of them to be deferred." It's probably good and wise for players to start the World Cup on a clean slate, but making an exception for Ronaldo stinks of special treatment for better TV ratings and ticket sales. (Weirdly, Ronaldo visited Trump in the White House between getting the red card and the suspension decision.)

But at least Portugal qualified for the World Cup fair and square. Consider Lionel Messi and Inter Miami's suspicious inclusion in the 2025 Club World Cup.

When FIFA expanded the event to 32 teams, it got to make up some new rules on the fly. Previous Club World Cups included a slot for the most recent champion of the league in the country hosting the tournament. In 2024, however, FIFA didn't want to wait around to find out who would win the MLS Cup playoffs and be crowned league champion—instead it suddenly gave the slot to Messi's Inter Miami team, who had won the Supporters' Shield trophy for best regular season record. (The LA Galaxy won the MLS Cup playoffs that year and didn't get to play in the Club World Cup.)

Maybe these events are all the result of the (only slightly plausible) reasons given by FIFA, but it sure doesn't seem that way. If everything going on is proper, FIFA's track record of corruption sure isn't helping it look guilt-free.

Bowls Are Dead. Long Live Bowls.

The death of nonplayoff college football bowl games is "inevitable" and the bowls surely "can't survive," if commentators are to be believed.

Notre Dame took its ball and went home. Iowa State and Kansas State don't have coaches and decided not to play. Even a bunch of 5–7 teams would rather skip the spectacle.

At least 7 teams that were 5-7 have now declined a bowl bid: Florida State, Auburn, UCF, Baylor, Rutgers, Temple & Kansas, sources told @On3sports. The quest continues to find an opponent for Georgia Southern in the Birmingham Bowl

— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) December 8, 2025

So are nonplayoff bowl games as good as dead? As a wise man used to say, not so fast.

The old system is definitely dead, to be sure. Picking the most prestigious nonplayoff bowl based on bowl reputation (maybe the Citrus Bowl?) is like rummaging around in the trash bin for a prized antique. 

But people like to watch live sports, especially football, on TV. Sports are the hottest commodity in live entertainment—that's why even a juggernaut like Netflix is starting to get involved in sports (surely the Netflix Bowl can't be too far off?).

So the bowls might not look like they used to, but they'll stay around. Some will be gimmicky like the Pop-Tarts Bowl or the Duke's Mayo Bowl. Some will find other ways to be relevant. With conference members changing, I'd love to see bowls skip long-term conference tie-ins and just try to schedule old-school rivalries or infrequent regional rivalries, like Texas against Houston or Southern Methodist. Or schools could organize one-off bowls on their own or pitch an agreed-upon matchup to existing bowls. We could have had Mormons vs. Catholics in BYU vs. Notre Dame, or a rematch of the 2006 Rose Bowl between USC and Texas—except, you know, in the Alamo Bowl or whatever instead. (I realize I keep trying to move Texas into other bowl games, but their real matchup against Michigan is also fun.)

If bowls can be born or killed this quickly, then maybe bowl set-ups aren't as set in stone as we thought.

Either way, the economics are going to get interesting. Can a bigger bowl convince draft-bound players to participate with NIL money? Could boosters? ESPN owns and operates 17 bowl games and is showing 33 total nonplayoff bowl games this season. If college sports are basically one big marketing program to attract student applicants, can ESPN make sure schools get enough eyeballs and dollars to make it worth their while?

Busted Brackets

I don't have much to add about the playoff bracket itself. As a card-carrying Notre Dame hater, I am biased and enjoying their misery. Especially now that USC is in the Big Ten, Notre Dame should join the Big Ten as a full member (or at least as a partial member on the same terms Notre Dame now has with the ACC).

My take, which most people won't like, is that I would have punished Alabama for getting a third loss, even if it happened in the conference championship game, and dropped them out of the bracket. They had their chance to prove they're the best team in the country, but they have three losses. Even if they win out, 14–3 shouldn't be a championship-winning record.

I will reiterate my complaint that the playoff always should have been eight teams, but the ever-growing playoff cow is out of the barn on that, and it's not going back in. As I wrote at the start of the season: "Keep the playoff at 12 teams, with all 12 selected and seeded by committee without any automatic qualification or byes for conference champions (as in the college basketball system, conference championships would still matter for about 24 hours until the bracket is announced). The committee should more strongly emphasize strength of schedule to encourage interconference games that will give them a better idea of how the conferences stack against each other."

My only addition is that I'm more open to a guaranteed bid or two for the Group of 5 conferences than before, since those teams don't get the chance to prove themselves against teams in the better conferences every week. That might kick out a better team (sorry not sorry, Notre Dame) but not a team that could truly argue it was the best in the country during the regular season. If a minor-conference team can upset a big program, that will just increase the intrigue of the playoff—it's a huge part of what makes March Madness so great, after all.

Replay of the Week

Three turnovers on the same play was always going to win replay of the week. (Here is the Monsters Inc. version.)

Da'Shawn Hand picks off Jalen Hurts.
Da'Shawn Hand fumbles.
Jalen Hurts recovers.
Jalen Hurts fumbles.
Troy Dye recovers. @Chargers ball.

CHAOS! pic.twitter.com/qHHMF3hFcG

— NFL (@NFL) December 9, 2025

That's all for this week. Enjoy watching the real game of the weekend, the Cricket Celebration Bowl between South Carolina State and Prairie View A&M (consider this one last reminder to join us for bowl pick'em).