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NCAA President Charlie Baker has sent Congressional members a letter urging them to vote yes on the SCORE Act with Front Office Sports’ Amanda Christovich noting a vote is expected to be “called for Wednesday, but could change.” From the letter: “This week, when you vote on the SCORE Act, you have the chance to secure a sustainable and equitable future for college sports. This legislation, which is supported by student-athlete representatives and schools across all three divisions and subdivisions, including 31 Division I conferences, addresses the threats facing college sports in limited, sensible, and effective ways.” Full letter text. (link)

Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger reports on a newly-introduced college sports bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan (D-MA) titled the “College Athletics Reform Act (CARA), which establishes a federal NIL policy, creates a bi-partisan commission for governance recs & amends [the] Sports Broadcasting Act.” In response to the news, Kennyhertz Perry LLC attorney Mit Winter writes: “This bill would kill the CSC & the House settlement. It prohibits the NCAA/CSC from restricting athletes from receiving NIL [money] and from taking adverse action against athletes because of receipt of NIL [money]. It also prevents athletes from being required to disclose NIL deals” and “allows states and athletes to sue to enjoin and enforce violations of the bill. International athletes would also be able to receive NIL [money] in the same manner as US athletes.” (link, link); Full bill text. (link)

More from Northwest Conference Commissioner Shana Levine and Asst. Commissioner Abby Jarvis’ Small College Conversation as Levine shares her thoughts on the value of media rights for Division III broadly: “I also see media rights as a really exciting thing, an opportunity in the future. I know where we are in the world of college athletics; there's uncertainty around the governance model going forward and the funding model going forward. Just in conference meetings, everyone now all of a sudden knows the exact year that the renegotiation is happening for the contract with basketball rights. Everyone's like, ‘2032.’ You're like, ‘Okay, so everyone's now tracking on these dates.’ I think that's new. So even just being aware of if that DIII funding or the NCAA funding changes drastically, I see media rights as an opportunity for Division III to even potentially come together. There'd be huge bargaining power if you had all of DIII in one space, right? We're the largest division, broad-based sports sponsorship. So I can see that as a plan B, plan C, plan D, or whatever it may be. If the funding model to the NCAA changes drastically and we need to leverage our division-wide media rights to help fund championships or fund the division, I think those are opportunities in the future that we just need to keep considering and exploring. It's not the right answer now, but having those as backup plans is something I think, at least for us, our presidents are expecting us to be thinking through, and honestly for the health of the division and our positions, we need to be thinking through.” Full conversation. (link)

The WIAC names retired CCIW Executive Director Maureen Harty as its interim commissioner, starting today. (link) 

Check out the third-round matchups for the football championship. (link)

In examining consolidation within the sports tech industry, SBJ’s Joe Lemire reports that Hudl’s rapid expansion continues, with the Lincoln-based company now serving 325K teams across 40 sports and making 18 acquisitions to date. Hudl Co-Founder/CEO David Graff says the company evaluates build/partner/buy options with discipline: “We are a technology company first, so we have that natural bias towards build, but over the years, we’ve done a great job of taking a pretty agnostic, very data-driven approach to really looking at all three dynamics and then really assessing them on each of their own merits, regardless of where our natural bias may be.” Meanwhile, Catapult CEO Will Lopes outlines where the broader industry sits on the tech adoption curve: “The sports world is somewhere between the digitization and optimization space, depending on which sport and which leagues you’re talking to.” Overall, Lopes believes disruption is still early: “I am so bullish on the industry that I don’t know if acquisition is a necessary path for growth. I actually think the world of sport has not been disrupted by technology yet.” (link)

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Katie Lewis chats with Arcadia Men’s Wrestling HC David Stevens and Women’s Wrestling HC Michael Childs about the addition of the upstart programs. Stevens on the support of the college: “Why I’m grateful to be at Arcadia is the support they give us. High school and even college programs are usually focused on other sports that more people are familiar with. But here at Arcadia, we feel like they’re really investing in us and giving us a great opportunity. This is a place that I want to continue to grow. … Compared to most wrestling rooms, we have a very open facility. We have three full-size wrestling mats and a turf field. We have treadmills, standalone bikes, and a weight room.” Childs on the pitch to new student-athletes: “I think that the biggest challenge for us is bringing our student-athletes along to understand what this commitment is. It’s not just your morning lifts and your daily practices. It’s a lifestyle. We’ll potentially be seeing world team members in competitions, All-Americans, and Olympians. So it’s really exciting, and it’s really challenging.” Stevens adds: “We tell every recruit that if you join this team, you become part of a family. We haven’t had the early success that we expected or that we wanted. But I think that’s what a family does, is that even through the hardships, we don’t give up on each other. We truly believe that we’re going to do something special here in our first year.” (link)

Wabash supporters have launched the Little Giants-focused Scarlet Banners Collective. (link)

Wittenberg names Ohio Dominican Assoc. HC/alum BJ Coad as its new Football HC. (link)

Coaches.wire…
➤ Bethel (MN) selects former St. Thomas (DI) HC Sheila McGill as its next Women’s Soccer HC. (link)
➤ Farmingdale State will hire a new women’s volleyball HC after the departure of HC Kellie Block. (link)
➤ Marietta names high school HC John Badgley as its next Men’s and Women’s Golf HC. (link)
➤ Willamette Women’s Triathlon HC Brett Franz will transition to a new role at Assoc. AD for Compliance and Recruitment. (link)
➤ Check out all of the coaching moves from the Thanksgiving holiday in this morning’s Coaches.wire. (link) 

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Beth McMurtrie argues college grading is “broken” as professors fear tougher evaluation will lead to negative course evaluations, while students exert pressure on instructors to raise grades they don’t like. Grand Valley State (DII) Professor Robert Talbert: “We’re getting a little bit tired of the mutual nonaggression pact, where I teach an easy class and then you give me good evaluations, and we just kind of call it a day. Perhaps nobody has ever been happy with grading, but I get the sense of deep dissatisfaction with, and an awareness of, a real, inherent dysfunctionality in traditional grading.” McMurtrie: “Today, students are arriving less prepared for college-level work, including with a more limited capacity to work independently and read at length, professors say. Many instructors say they no longer expect as much from their students as they did 10 or 15 years ago, so an A doesn’t mean what it used to. Yet grades still serve an important sorting function. … And grade inflation — or specifically grade compression, in which a majority of grades are A’s — fails to signal who the strongest students are.” Harvard (DI) Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh: “It used to be very typical that a student would come and think that he or she wanted to study something, and then take that first intro class and realize, oh, this is not for me. This is not my area of strength. I need to do something else. What happens now is that students stay on the path that they think they want because nothing is pushing them off it. But the path that they think they want is not really their area of passion. It’s something that their parents think is a very good idea for them. It’s something that they think will get them a job.” Much more. (link)