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☆ Paychecks, Drafts and Firings: The Possible Future of College Sports
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-22 | by ( Billy Witz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

As Elijah Higgins sat on a witness stand this week, he detailed the similarities between his experience last season as a rookie tight end for the Arizona Cardinals and the four years he had spent playing football at Stanford University. Five or six days a week at each level of play, he was immersed in football activities: lifting weights, practice, film study, physical therapy and playing games. There are some differences, Higgins allowed. The only other distinction is that, in contrast to Stanford, he now earns a paycheck. last season was $750,000.

Persons: Elijah Higgins, Higgins Organizations: Arizona Cardinals, Stanford University ., National Football League, Stanford

☆ The Caitlin Clark Show Rolls On
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-02 | by ( Billy Witz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

One way to view the meteoric growth of women’s college basketball is through the career arc of its current protagonist: Caitlin Clark, the University of Iowa’s stone-cold mad bomber. Her first college game came in an eerily quiet setting: no fans, players spaced out on bleachers and some wearing masks to protect against the coronavirus. Eventually that season, the atmosphere livened up with cardboard cutouts in the seats. Her last game will come this weekend in an altogether different environment: a packed-to-the-rafters arena in Cleveland that will roar with her every touch, untold millions tuning in on television and Clark as a million-dollar pitch woman starring in national commercials.

Persons: Caitlin Clark, Clark Organizations: University of Locations: Cleveland

☆ The Many Ways Men’s Sweet 16 Players Are Being Paid
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-28 | by ( David A. Fahrenthold | Billy Witz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

$500 signed basketball Branded vodka and coffee “Buzzer beater” quesadillaThe Many Ways Men’s Sweet 16 Players Are Being PaidThis year’s N.C.A.A. basketball tournament is being played amid a revolutionary change in college sports: The best players are now openly recruited, retained and rewarded with cash. — under pressure from the Justice Department and state legislatures — allowed players to be paid for the use of their “name, image and likeness.” The idea was to let players endorse shoes or sports drinks. (The average men’s basketball player with a collective contract at a top school is paid $63,450, according to Opendorse, a company that processes payments to players from collectives. Every team in the men’s Sweet Sixteen has been touched by this change, which has brought windfalls to players but instability to the college game.

Persons: —, ” —, windfalls Organizations: Justice Department

“The tankers and cargo ships of 1950 aren’t the tankers and cargo ships of today,” said James Salmon, a spokesman for the Delaware River and Bay Authority. “It’s going to do a number on them,” he said of a modern ship and the hazard it poses to a bridge like the one in Baltimore. Image The new bridge ship collision protection system project on the Delaware Memorial Bridge will install eight stone-filled “dolphin” cylinders, each measuring 80 feet in diameter. Credit... Delaware River and Bay AuthorityThe situation with the Key Bridge is “unique,” said Jim Tymon, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, which represents state transportation departments. A protection system was subsequently built around the new pier.

Persons: ”, James Salmon, Francis Scott Key, Michael Rubino, don’t, Joseph Ahlstrom, It’s, “ It’s, Dali, hurtled, Jim Tymon, ” John Snyder, Pete Buttigieg, “, Paul, Gerald Desmond Bridge, Matt Gresham, Joong Kim, Michael Forsythe Organizations: Bay Authority, Port, SUNY Maritime College, New York State, American Association of State, Transportation, National Transportation Safety, Sunshine Skyway, Administration, Baltimore Sun, Union, National Oceanic, Atmospheric Administration, Liberty University Locations: Delaware, Bay, Baltimore, Port of Los Angeles, . Delaware, Maryland, Tampa Bay, Tampa, U.S, Minnesota, Union Pacific, St, New York, Bayonne, New Jersey, Staten Island, Long Beach, Calif, New Orleans, Mississippi, Port of New Orleans

☆ More Teams in March Madness? Say Goodbye to the Cinderella Stories.
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-22 | by ( Billy Witz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Greg Sankey, the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, is the ultimate soft power player. Instead, he speaks opaquely, often requiring something like a college sports Kremlinologist to interpret his intentions. constitution and scoffing out of existence the possibility that the SEC would be shut out of the football playoff last season. Recently, he teamed up with the Big Ten commissioner, Tony Petitti, to leverage a deal that will award their conferences about 60 percent of the television revenue for the 12-team College Football Playoff that begins next year, leaving crumbs for everyone else. So, when Sankey told ESPN this month that it was time to rethink the N.C.A.A.

Persons: Greg Sankey, coauthoring, Tony Petitti, Sankey Organizations: Southeastern Conference, SEC, Big, Football, ESPN Locations: Oklahoma, Texas

☆ This Man Turned the Worst Job in College Basketball Into a Slam Dunk
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-08 | by ( Billy Witz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

A little over a year ago, the University of South Carolina Salkehatchie posted a job opening for its men’s basketball coach. It might have been a single sentence: applications being accepted for the worst college coaching job in the country. The school, a junior college at a rural outpost about an hour’s drive west of Charleston, had shut down its men’s basketball program before last season after going through four coaches in eight months. The facilities: a gym whose court is seven feet short of regulation, whose showers don’t have running water and whose men’s locker room doesn’t have a toilet. The job would test career ambitions, which made it perfect for Matt Lynch.

Persons: University of South Carolina Salkehatchie, Matt Lynch Organizations: University of South Locations: University of South Carolina, Charleston

☆ ‘Scary and Daunting’: Dartmouth Players Detail How Union Plan Came Together
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-05 | by ( Billy Witz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Members of the Dartmouth College men’s basketball team congregated at the stately Hanover Inn near campus on a dreary, drizzly Tuesday and walked over to a small office building where they smiled for a group photo. Then they went up to a second-floor conference room and took a vote that had been six months — or rather, many years — in the making. When the yellow sheets of paper were tallied and certified about an hour later, the basketball players had accomplished something no other college athletes had done. By a 13-2 vote, they had formed a union. “It’s definitely becoming more real,” Cade Haskins, a junior on the basketball team and a leader of the effort, said to about a dozen reporters after the vote.

Persons: “ It’s, ” Cade Haskins, ” Haskins Organizations: Dartmouth College men’s, Ivy League Locations: Hanover

☆ The Super Bowl in Las Vegas: What Would Hunter S. Thompson Think?
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-10 | by ( Billy Witz | Sinna Nasseri | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

“When you bring an act into this town, you want to bring it in heavy. Don’t waste any time with cheap shucks and misdemeanors. Get right into felonies.”It’s been more than a half-century since Hunter S. Thompson went in search of the American dream on his drug-addled, off-the-rails road trip to Las Vegas. His 1971 book, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” became an essential read for generations of teenagers who were just starting to question the world and came to define the desert gambling mecca. The book also gave birth to a new literary form, gonzo journalism, in which the reporter was a leading character — in this case a pill-popping, pot-smoking, tequila-swilling, acid-dropping “dope fiend” plunging headlong into the story.

Persons: ” It’s, Hunter S, Thompson, ” Locations: Las Vegas

The attorneys general of Tennessee and Virginia filed suit on Wednesday against the N.C.A.A., saying the body that regulates college athletics has no right to block the increasingly common practice of wealthy boosters paying to attract top recruits. The suit was filed a day after the disclosure that the N.C.A.A. was investigating the University of Tennessee’s football program for recruiting violations involving a donor group that arranges to pay athletes. The driving force behind that change has been donor collectives, which are groups of alumni and other boosters who donate money that is used to compensate top athletes, sometimes in amounts approaching professional levels. In effect, the collectives pay salaries disguised as endorsements, and they now play a central role in the process of wooing players in football, basketball and other sports.

Organizations: University of Tennessee’s Locations: Tennessee, Virginia

The N.C.A.A. Having the booster group pay for the trip by the quarterback, Nico Iamaleava, would be a violation of N.C.A.A. The inquiry comes after the N.C.A.A. penalized Tennessee for different recruiting violations and signals the N.C.A.A.’s growing concern about the scale and influence of the money being injected into college sports by donor collectives. News of the investigation into Tennessee’s athletic program was first reported by Sports Illustrated.

Persons: —, Nico Iamaleava Organizations: University of Tennessee’s, Sports Illustrated Locations: Tennessee

☆ Your College Football Team Went Undefeated? Sorry, That’s Not Good Enough.
▼ + stars: | 2023-12-04 | by ( Billy Witz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The metaphorical white puffs of smoke sent up by the College Football Playoff selection committee on Sunday signaled that the panel had chosen the four teams that would vie for this season’s championship — and that Florida State, unbeaten champions of the Atlantic Coast Conference, was not among them. This caused smoke of a different sort to emanate from the Seminoles’ ears. Florida State’s résumé was hard to beat. The Seminoles began the season by walloping Louisiana State, which was led by the presumptive Heisman Trophy winner, quarterback Jayden Daniels. The Seminoles’ only shortcoming was being shorthanded: Their star quarterback, Jordan Travis, broke his leg last month against North Alabama.

Persons: résumé, Jayden Daniels, Jordan Travis, Tate Rodemaker, Brock Glenn Organizations: College Football, Florida State, Atlantic Coast Conference, Seminoles, walloping Louisiana State, Clemson, persevering, Michigan, North, Louisville Locations: Florida, Washington, Texas, Alabama, North Alabama

☆ A’s Will Finally Turn Out the Lights on Pro Sports in Oakland
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-17 | by ( Billy Witz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

One by one, they have left Oakland. Then, a year later, it was the itinerant Raiders heading to Las Vegas, the eye patch on their gridiron bandit logo obscuring an apparently wandering eye. The Athletics have another year on their lease in Oakland and their new stadium — a $1.5 billion, 30,000-seat ballpark with a retractable roof for which the Nevada Legislature approved public financing — won’t be ready until 2028. The Nevada teacher’s union is angling to put the subsidy on the ballot for voters. But the A’s impending move, as inevitable as it has seemed, landed in Oakland like a fastball to the ribs.

Organizations: Oakland, Warriors, Raiders, Major League Baseball, Athletics, Nevada Legislature Locations: San Francisco, Las Vegas, Oakland, Nevada

What began as a seemingly ordinary Wednesday evening in Lewiston, Maine, turned horrific after a gunman entered a bowling alley and a local bar and began shooting, killing 18 people and injuring at least 13 others. On Friday afternoon the authorities in Maine released the names of the dead from Wednesday’s mass shooting incidents. Seven victims died at the Just-in-Time Recreation bowling alley, and eight at Schemengees Bar & Grille about four miles away. The youngest victim in the Lewiston mass shooting was 14 years old, and the oldest was 76. Joseph Walker, who went by Joey, was tending bar at Schemengees when the shooting began.

Persons: Joseph Walker, Joey, Leroy Walker Sr, “, Mr, Walker Organizations: Schemengees, Maine Medical Center Locations: Lewiston , Maine, Maine, Lewiston, Schemengees, Auburn

The key to recruiting top college football players these days is not just a lavish training facility or a storied coach. The rapid rise of big-dollar payments to student-athletes from so-called donor collectives has emerged as one of the biggest issues in college sports, transforming how players are recruited and encouraging a form of free agency for those looking to transfer. And because many of the groups are set up as charities or with charitable arms that make donations tax-deductible, they are drawing scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service. two years ago to allow payments to student-athletes. While in theory they operate independently of athletic programs, collectives have become deeply embedded in the economics of college sports, offering vast supplements to the scholarships that schools provide.

Organizations: Internal Revenue Service

☆ His Team Was a Chaotic Punchline. Then He Found a New Spot in the Sport.
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-15 | by ( Billy Witz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The University of Louisville football team’s fortunes are unlikely to rise and fall on the squat legs of Mario Agyen, a 5-foot-7, 190-pound, walk-on running back who joined the team in the middle of last season after an end-of-summer tryout. Still, amid the daily reminders of where he stands in the team’s 114-player hierarchy, Agyen rarely forgets the distance he traveled to get there, leaving home in the Bronx five years ago with little more than a dufflebag stuffed with clothes, $1.98 in his bank account and an inexhaustible supply of determination to be a college football player. Now, when he takes the elevator up to the football players’ commissary each morning, choosing what type of egg-white omelet a chef will prepare for him, and how much fresh fruit, turkey bacon, pearl sugar waffles, oatmeal or grits he’ll pile onto his plate, he often thinks about how he started. Agyen often woke up famished, wondering if his breakfast would consist of one frozen waffle or two and where he’d be sleeping at night. Once, he was so hungry — and so broke — that he texted a former teacher asking to have a couple pizzas delivered to him.

Persons: Mario Agyen, Agyen Organizations: University of Louisville Locations: Bronx

☆ Conferences Are Changing. The Sport Is, Too.
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-01 | by ( Billy Witz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When the college football season kicks off in earnest this Labor Day weekend, it will be a test to keep an eye on the ball. The focus for a few days may be on blocking, tackling and quick-trigger assessments of who’s up and who’s down, but then what in a sport that is on the cusp of unprecedented upheaval? Consider what college football will look like in a year. Texas and Oklahoma, anchors of the Big 12 Conference, will be in the Southeastern Conference. And after this season, the College Football Playoff will balloon from four teams to 12.

Organizations: Labor, Big, Southeastern Conference, Atlantic Coast, Stanford, College Football, National Labor Relations Board Locations: Texas, Oklahoma, California, Berkeley, Duke, North Carolina

☆ The Big Ten Lands Oregon and Washington, Leaving the Pac-12 Bereft
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-04 | by ( Billy Witz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

A new media rights deal would be announced “in the near future,” he said at the conference’s football media day. Kliavkoff waved off concerns about the Big 12 poaching his schools. By the end of Friday, the Pac-12 was cooked. A week after Colorado jumped to the Big 12, two of the conference’s remaining cornerstones, Oregon and Washington, refused to agree to a proposed television contract they deemed insufficient and instead headed to the Big Ten. Later, Arizona leapt to the Big 12, taking Arizona State and Utah with them.

Persons: George Kliavkoff, —, ”, Kliavkoff, ” Kliavkoff Organizations: University of Southern, Big, Colorado, Arizona State Locations: Las Vegas, University of Southern California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah

It was the sixth lawsuit against Northwestern University in nine days, and the allegations had become, somehow, both familiar and even more appalling. A young alumnus of the football program, Simba Short, said he had been restrained and sexually abused in a well-rehearsed hazing ritual. That he had witnessed a teammate struggling to breathe after he was sexually abused while being held underwater. That players had been forced to drink until they vomited, and that coaches could have intervened, but did not. Short’s experiences troubled him so deeply that he attempted to harm himself and was hospitalized in 2016, according to the complaint he filed in Chicago on Thursday — only the latest to allege a pattern of sexually abusive hazing and racism in the university’s sports program.

Persons: Simba Short Organizations: Northwestern University, Big Locations: Chicago, Lake Michigan

LeBron James Jr., the son of the N.B.A. star LeBron James, suffered a cardiac arrest while practicing at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles on Monday and was taken to the hospital for treatment in the intensive care unit, according to a statement from a spokesman for LeBron James and his wife, Savannah. The younger James, known as Bronny, is now in stable condition and no longer in the I.C.U., the statement said. “LeBron and Savannah wish to publicly send their deepest thanks and appreciation to the U.S.C. He is the eldest of the Lakers star LeBron James’s three children.

Persons: LeBron James Jr, LeBron James, James, LeBron, Bronny James, LeBron James’s Organizations: University of Southern, Los Angeles Fire Department, Street, Galen Center, U.S.C, Lakers, Ohio State Locations: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Savannah, Oregon

☆ One Small Change Goes a Long Way After College Hoops Corruption Scandal
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-29 | by ( Billy Witz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Tyler Boston has several strikes against him. For one, he’s a 5-foot-10 high school senior without the size to be easily noticed by college recruiters. For another, college basketball coaches can afford to be picky with high school players because the transfer portal is brimming with older players who have an extra pandemic year of eligibility. The DMV Live event was among the roughly 50 N.C.A.A.-certified events around the country in which college coaches were permitted to make in-person evaluations of players with their high school teams. stadium, to the New York City Public Schools Athletic League Showcase in Brooklyn.

Persons: Tyler Boston Organizations: Boston, Las, of Columbia, DMV, New York City Public Schools Athletic League Locations: Atlanta, Las Vegas, Potomac, Md, Washington, of Columbia , Maryland, Virginia, Appleton , Wis, Brooklyn

☆ The N.C.A.A. Wants More Money From TV. Maxing That Out Could Prove Tricky.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-16 | by ( Billy Witz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

For more than 20 years, fans of college sports like softball, baseball, women’s basketball and more than two dozen others have known just where to find N.C.A.A. championships — on ESPN’s spectrum of channels. The arrangement has worked well for both parties: The N.C.A.A. A sign of how comfortable the N.C.A.A. and ESPN were with their partnership came in 2011, when they agreed to a 13-year, $500 million renewal without the N.C.A.A.’s ever taking the rights to market.

Persons: ’ Organizations: ESPN

☆ As the Final Four Finishes, a Parallel Transfer Season Plays Out, Too
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-01 | by ( Billy Witz | Adam Zagoria | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

HOUSTON — It wasn’t long before Kansas and North Carolina tipped off for the men’s college basketball championship in New Orleans last April that Darrion Trammell called San Diego State Coach Brian Dutcher with some news. Now, a full year later, it is easy to see the consequence of that decision. Trammell, a transfer from Seattle University who was courted by Texas Tech and Southern California, among others, has been an indispensable cog for San Diego State, which has reached the men’s Final Four for the first time. He scored 21 points in the upset of top-ranked Alabama, and his free throw with 1.2 seconds left lifted the Aztecs over Creighton in the South Regional final. “It’s wild how it’s all worked out,” Trammell said on Friday, one day before San Diego State was set to play Florida Atlantic for a spot in the national championship game.

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