D1.ticker Top Ten - The most clicked stories of the past week |
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#10: Thirteen years ago we started D1.ticker with a fun little idea and every day since a consistently-timed email has hit your inbox efficiently recapping the most important college athletics business news. We’ve expanded with value-add publications like CRO.ticker and Coaches.wire, as well as rapidly-growing services like D1.relocation and Collegiate Sports Connect, among others. Oh, and have we mentioned that CollegeSports.jobs has surpassed the NCAA Market as the most popular place to post an industry administrative or coaching job (I’m sure you’ve seen our promotion of this fact… it’s a pretty notable growth marker and evidence of the value we’ve created)? All of our efforts continue to be focused on saving you time and making your life easier. We greatly appreciate your support and love pointing back to that very first edition with a smile to its simplicity (why did we not include first names for so long?), evidence of how we’ve grown and a commitment to staying focused on winning your trust every single day. (link)
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#9: New Mexico taps Deputy AD/COO Ryan Berryman as its Interim AD. (link) |
#8: The college sports system is “irreparably broken, yet more popular than ever,” per the Boston Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy, who recently sat down with NCAA President Charlie Baker and outgoing Knight Commission member/former Northeastern/Dartmouth AD Peter Roby to discuss today’s college sports environment…
➤ Baker: “I think to say that the power conferences don’t care about education is wrong. … I worry a lot about the transfer stuff having an impact on graduate rates, but the transfer rules we had were taken away from us in a court decision in West Virginia a couple of years ago. … Most of the student-athletes I talk to really want to be students first and want to play sports. They do not want to be employees. That’s not how they want to roll. … The thing that people don’t see that I get to see all the time is the kids. They make me glad I am in this role. They are smart, proud, accomplished. The lessons they learn playing sports about teamwork and putting your own interests aside and being able to take constructive criticism and do the grind. They’re applicable everywhere for the rest of their lives. … There’s a lot about [his job] that’s frustrating. But I spent most of my career in healthcare and government, and those can be frustrating environments, as well.”
➤ Roby: “Schools continue to complain about rising costs and the need for more revenue, yet they are paying out multimillion-dollar buyouts for fired coaches and hiring coaches at $12M per year. The way things are trending, the NCAA will not exist in its current form in the next few years. It will only manage sports championships. … It’s time to separate [schools with the biggest school-based NIL programs] from schools that believe in the primacy of education and the personal development of young people. … Let’s create another division within Division I to allow like-minded schools to compete on a more level playing field academically, philosophically, and athletically.” More. (link)
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#7: Overall, 12 of the 23 non-College Football Playoff bowls contested to this point have witnessed an attendance decrease YoY to 2024, per SBJ’s Emma Grace Jimenez, who notes the composite decline is 7.24% from 562,404 to 521,645. The largest YoY drop was based almost entirely on team match-up geography with the Union Home Mortgage Gasparilla Bowl, held in Tampa, Fla., dropping from 41,497 for last year’s matchup between Florida and Tulane to just 13,336 for this year’s game between NC State and Memphis. The Bad Boy Mowers Pinstripe Bowl between Penn State and Clemson at New York’s Yankee Stadium witnessed the largest YoY attendance increase at +11,039. Full bowl attendance list. (link)
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#6: ESPN’s Pete Thamel reports contract terms for new Michigan Football HC Kyle Whittingham include a five-year deal at an average of $8.2M per year. Seventy-five percent of the pact is guaranteed. (link)
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#5: ESPN’s Dave Wilson dives into the history of the Pop-Tarts Bowl Trophy. In 2023 it was not an actual toaster, but all of that changed in 2024. To get to functional toaster status, Pop-Tarts reached out to GE Appliances, which recommended its FirstBuild lab on Louisville’s campus to tackle the job. Wilson explains: “[Trophy engineer Josh] Price used a CAD (computer-aided design) station to mock up a design based on the existing trophy. He stripped a toaster down to its bare minimum and figured out how much room he'd need. Then he used the exact specifications for an NCAA football and 3D printed it, but everyone told him it didn't look right. Too pointy. Untethered from reality, he realized he could veer from exact replicas and began asking the really important design questions. Like: Since he can't put the lever on the front like a toaster at home, should it have a giant slot-machine-type arm for maximum cheesiness? Should there be an ‘insane mode’ to launch the Pop-Tarts really high?” Price: “The YouTuber in me was like, I'll launch 'em into the cheap seats.” Price settled on bending the springs to make sure there was just enough “popping action” for the big reveal, but not enough to launch breakfast across the kitchen at home. The creation earned Price and the FirstBuild lab at Louisville the Viral Trophy Invention of the Year. In Price’s own words: “Incandescent bulbs are awesome, but that thing is awesomer.” Lots more. (link)
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#4: The Athletic's Stewart Mandel & Ralph Russo caught up with agents, leaders of collectives & GMs to get a sense of how some departments are working around the $20.5M revenue share cap. Four examples: “1) Say a school agrees to pay a player $200,000. If his agent is taking a 20 percent commission, then in reality, he’s making $160,000. So, the collective pays the agent his fee directly, and the program saves $40,000 in cap space; 2) Say a school promises a player $200,000, and wants to split it between rev-share and the collective, but it fears that CSC won’t approve a $100,000 collective deal. The parties agree to the amount verbally, then the collective submits smaller deals throughout the year (for autograph signings, charity appearances, etc.) that eventually add up to the total; 3) It’s believed that at least one school’s collective paid their entire incoming freshman class what they would have earned in rev share, so that the payments don’t get counted against the cap; and, 4) And then there’s the simplest, but riskiest, workaround of all: Just don’t report the deals. Which was probably happening already.” (link)
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#3: Buffzone.com’s Brian Howell reports Colorado’s Board of Regents has approved a five-year contract that will make Fernando Lovo the highest-paid AD in CU history at $1.2M-per-year, plus incentives. Lovo is slated to start his role in Boulder on Thursday with Howell adding that with current AD Rick George remaining at Colorado through the end of the school year, “essentially, CU will have two ADs for the next 5-6 months, as George helps Lovo through the transition period.” Lovo is also eligible for fundraising incentives as part of his deal, ranging from $200K for raising $25M in FY27/$30M in FY28; to $250K for bringing in $35M in FY29/$40M in FY30; to $150K for raising $25M over the last six months of 2030. Yahoo Sports' Ross Dellenger was one of the first to report Lovo as a target. (link, link, link, link)
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#2: With news that European big man James Nnaji will join Baylor for the second half of the hoops season, here’s a full list of NBA Draft picks - including Nnaji who was selected by the Detroit Pistons with the 31st pick back in 2023 - who are now eligible to play college basketball. (link)
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#1: This year’s edition of LSU Women’s Basketball HC Kim Mulkey lookalike contest did not disappoint. A young fan took home the fur-trimmed sparkle jacket prize. If there is a better fan-involved contest out there, let us know. (link)
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