Hello and welcome to FOIAball 2026, where we are giving you the only thing we can: More FOIAball.
We’re here early with a fun little short story because we missed you last week. Then you’ll see us later in the week (tomorrow?) with the launch of FOIAbites. And also, hopefully, our usual Thursday feature. It’s a lot. So strap in.
Who won this year’s transfer portal? I don’t know. Texas Tech, probably, bringing in Brendan Sorsby. We here at FOIAball do not profess to know ball.
We much prefer the circus around the sport. And this transfer portal, our inaugural Three Ring Award goes to the University of Tulsa. The Golden Hurricanes opened the sport’s first-ever portal hype house, where the team’s top brass is living Real World-style for two weeks, trying to entice transfers through a 24/7 social media stunt.
The school’s coach, GM, and both coordinators will all be staying in a local Airbnb, turning their recruitment efforts into endless content and, hopefully, top-tier talent.
Tulsa, alas, is a private university. So FOIAball can’t just ask for invoices to see how much the whole deal cost.
But records requesting isn’t our only skill. We still remember how to do some other forms of journalism. It only took us a few minutes to track down the listing, which reveals the two-week stay will cost the team about $17,000. (And which, we later learned, had already been sussed out by The Athletic’s David Ubben.)
The house Tulsa picked is the exemplar of Zillennial group vacation bait—every nook and cranny an Instagram opportunity—with a pool, a putt-putt course, an oversized chess set, an arcade, a karaoke room, and a fire pit.
You can check out the listing here.
And because why not, we DMed the owner, Jonathan, through the site to see if he’d be willing to chat. To our surprise, he was.
Here is our conversation, which has been lightly edited for clarity.
FOIAball: Can you describe how this came about?
Jonathan: Our background has always been designing really unique homes that really stand out. And if you look at the design of this home, the exterior of the house is blue, most of the interior is blue, which coordinates with Tulsa's colors. They reached out to me, I think about a month or two months ago. So we had some back and forth and figured out a good time for them to do it. Obviously, our calendar was available, and we made it work for them.
FOIAball: Did the school give you any sort of insight into why they decided to do this
Jonathan: I would say, and this is a pure speculation, if I were the team, you want to start off with a strong first impression. And I think that's the reason why they chose this place. The college football landscape has changed. You now pay players. They have this ability to earn through their own brand equity. You think about that approach with the transfer portal, looking at it from the perspective of a player. Is this a place that aligns with my style, my personality?
They want a fun space. They want something that is Instagrammable. And this property provides all the above and then some. It’s a space that fits the different personalities of many people. You could be gaming. You could be doing karaoke. You could be swimming in the heated pool. And hosting the transfer portal in the number one Airbnb in Tulsa? That's a statement.
FOIAball: What are you most excited about by this?
Jonathan: I'm certainly excited to see how the space we created is utilized in a way that I hadn’t imagined when I first bought this property.
FOIAball: How long have you owned the place?
Jonathan: For a couple years now.
FOIAball: Are you a Tulsa football fan?
Jonathan: I did not grow up in the Tulsa area, so I wouldn't say I'm a Tulsa football fan. But, certainly, I followed them over the years. It would be disingenuous of me to say I'm a fan, because I wasn't. I wasn't born and raised there. But I followed them over the past two years.
FOIAball: Do you have a different college football team?
Jonathan: Not currently. I haven't really followed it a lot.
FOIAball: Given the notoriety of Airbnbs, where sometimes owners will film you, where they have all these crazy rules, how do you feel about the scenario being flipped? Where they're actually filming themselves. They’re having people over. It's sort of the opposite.
Jonathan: We've obviously had a conversation with Mason [Behiel], the GM, and we felt like it was a good alignment with what they were looking for. I take a lot of joy in seeing the property being used in a unique way. We've had, you know, worse guests.
The group that's in there right now has been respectful. They’re very communicative. Like I said, we had multiple conversations with Mason before we approved the stay. So we were on the same wavelength before we even agreed to allow commercial photography and commercial videography in the house.
FOIAball: I'm guessing the answer is obviously no, but you don't have any worries about them wrecking the space.
Jonathan: No.
FOIAball: Did they put down any extra deposit or extra cleaning fees or stuff like that?
Jonathan: No, we do the same for all guests. We treat everyone the same.
FOIAball: How many people do you think they’ll wind up having there over the course of the two weeks?
Jonathan: I don't think it would be appropriate for me to answer that.
FOIAball: Totally. I'm not trying to get you in trouble with the school. I did see in the house rules that the hot tub is closed this time of year. Did you get it open for them?
Jonthan: No, it is closed. But the pool is open all year round. We heat it up.
FOIAball: What's your favorite amenity in the house?
Jonathan: What I like most is when you walk in, you have the karaoke room, you have the fireplace, and then you have this big neon sign and wallpaper that says “From Oklahoma With Love.” I think it really encapsulates the entire design and the personality of the home.
FOIAball: What are your expectations for Tulsa football next year? How do you think they'll do after having rented out your place?
Jonathan: Well, I mean, I hope they are on a trajectory to be better than how they've done in this past season or seasons, right? I think I am going to be personally invested in their success. They rented our place. So, yeah, I wish them the best of luck.
We at FOIAball with them luck as well. Go Golden Hurricanes. But… a
Another important tenet of journalism is to talk to multiple sources. So we reached out to Steven Godfrey, of Yahoo’s College Football Enquirer and Phantom Island, who randomly happened to stay at the above Airbnb earlier this summer.
“Honestly, it was the weirdest Airbnb I’ve ever stayed in,” he said.
You can hear Steven’s whole discussion about it here.