
Reports: Eric Olen to be named New Mexico coach
March 30 - Eric Olen is leaving UC San Diego and will become the head basketball coach at New Mexico, multiple outlets reported Sunday.
ESPN reported Olen agreed to a five-year contract to replace Richard Pitino, who resigned Wednesday to accept the same job at Xavier.
Olen, 44, has been the head coach of the Tritons since Oct. 1, 2013, promoted following nine seasons as an assistant coach. He oversaw the program's transition to Division I, leading the Tritons to the NCAA Tournament this season in their first year of postseason eligibility at that level.
The Tritons finished the season with a 30-5 overall record and were 18-2 in the Big West, winning regular season and tournament titles. He was named the Big West Coach of the Year for the second consecutive season.
UC San Diego was the No. 12 seed in the South Region and narrowly lost to No. 5 Michigan, 68-65, in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
As a Division I member the past five seasons, the Tritons are 81-63 under Olen.
In Division II, he had a 159-56 record and won three California Collegiate Athletic Association regular-season titles and four conference tournament crowns in seven seasons.
New Mexico finished the 2024-25 season with a 27-8 record and a regular-season Mountain West championship. In the first round of the NCAA Tournament, 10th-seeded New Mexico upset Marquette 75-66 before losing 71-63 to No. 2 seed Michigan State in the second round of play in the South Region.

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The Independent
18 hours ago
- The Independent
Female athletes worry for future after $2.8 billion NCAA settlement
As news of the $2.8 billion NCAA settlement broke at AthleteCon, college athletes Sydney Moore and Sabrina Ootsburg found themselves in a unique position. Surrounded by hundreds of their peers, they felt like the only ones who truly grasped the situation's gravity. Moore recounted a conversation with a Division I football player, who exclaimed, "I'm about to get paid!" Her response was pointed: "Yes, you are about to get paid, and a lot of your women athlete friends are about to get cut." While Moore admitted her response might be a projection, the House settlement, which allows college athletes to directly receive revenue from their schools and offers financial stability to some, also raises concerns for others. Starting July 1, schools can share up to $20.5 million with their athletes annually. However, projections estimate that 75 per cent of these funds will go to football, leaving non-revenue-generating sports, which include almost everything outside football and basketball, in a precarious position. It's a query that is top of mind for Ootsburg as she enters her senior year at Belmont, where she competes on the track and field team. 'My initial thought was, 'is this good or bad? What does this mean for me? How does this affect me? But more importantly, in the bigger picture, how does it affect athletes as a whole?'' Ootsburg said. 'You look at the numbers where it says most of the revenue, up to 75 per cent to 85 per cent, will go toward football players. You understand it's coming from the TV deals, but then it's like, how does that affect you on the back end?' Ootsburg asked. 'Let's say $800,000 goes toward other athletes. Will they be able to afford other things like care, facilities, resources or even just snacks?' Moore has similar concerns. She says most female athletes aren't worried about how much – if any – money they'll receive. They fear how changes could impact the student athlete experience. 'A lot of us would much rather know that our resources and our experience as a student athlete is going to stay the same, or possibly get better, rather than be given $3,000, but now I have to cover my meals, I have to pay for my insurance, I have to buy ankle braces because we don't have any, and the athletic training room isn't stocked,' Moore said over the weekend as news of Friday night's settlement approval spread. One of the biggest problems, Ootsburg and Moore said, is that athletes aren't familiar with the changes. At AthleteCon in Charlotte, North Carolina, they said, perhaps the biggest change in college sports history was a push notification generally shrugged off by those directly impacted. 'Athletes do not know what's happening,' Ootsburg said. 'Talking to my teammates, it's so new, and they see the headlines and they're like, 'Ok, cool, but is someone going to explain this?' because they can read it, but then there's so many underlying factors that go into this. This is a complex problem that you have to understand the nuances behind, and not every athlete truly does.' Some coaches, too, are still trying to understand what's coming. Mike White, coach of the national champion Texas softball team, called it 'the great unknown right now.' 'My athletic director, Chris Del Conte, said it's like sailing out on a flat world and coming off the edge; we just don't know what's going to be out there yet, especially the way the landscape is changing,' he said at the Women's College World Series in Oklahoma City. 'Who knows what it's going to be?' What about the walk-ons? Jake Rimmel got a crash course on the settlement in the fall of 2024, when he said he was cut from the Virginia Tech cross-country team alongside several other walk-ons. The topic held up the House case for weeks as the judge basically forced schools to give athletes cut in anticipation of approval a chance to play – they have to earn the spot, no guarantees – without counting against roster limits. Rimmel packed up and moved back to his parents' house in Purcellville, Virginia. For the past six months, he's held on to a glimmer of hope that maybe he could return. 'The past six months have been very tough," he said. "I've felt so alone through this, even though I wasn't. I just felt like the whole world was out there – I would see teammates of mine and other people I knew just doing all of these things and still being part of a team. I felt like I was sidelined and on pause, while they're continuing to do all these things.' News that the settlement had been approved sent Rimmel looking for details. 'I didn't see much about roster limits," he said. 'Everyone wants to talk about NIL and the revenue-sharing and I mean, that's definitely a big piece of it, but I just didn't see anything about the roster limits, and that's obviously my biggest concern.' The answer only presents more questions for Rimmel. 'We were hoping for more of a forced decision with the grandfathering, which now it's only voluntary, so I'm a little skeptical of things because I have zero clue how schools are going to react to that," Rimmel told The Associated Press. Rimmel is still deciding what's best for him, but echoed Moore and Ootsburg in saying that answers are not obvious: 'I'm just hoping the schools can make the right decisions with things and have the best interest of the people who were cut.'


The Independent
3 days ago
- The Independent
A $2.8 billion settlement will change college sports forever. Here's how
A federal judge has approved terms of a sprawling $2.8 billion antitrust settlement that will upend the way college sports have been run for more than a century. In short, schools can now directly pay players through licensing deals — a concept that goes against the foundation of amateurism that college sports was built upon. Some questions and answers about this monumental change for college athletics: Q: What is the House settlement and why does it matter? A: Grant House is a former Arizona State swimmer who sued the defendants (the NCAA and the five biggest athletic conferences in the nation). His lawsuit and two others were combined and over several years the dispute wound up with the settlement that ends a decades-old prohibition on schools cutting checks directly to athletes. Now, each school will be able to make payments to athletes for use of their name, image and likeness (NIL). For reference, there are nearly 200,000 athletes and 350 schools in Division I alone and 500,000 and 1,100 schools across the entire NCAA. Q: How much will the schools pay the athletes and where will the money come from? A: In Year 1, each school can share up to about $20.5 million with their athletes, a number that represents 22% of their revenue from things like media rights, ticket sales and sponsorships. Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne famously told Congress 'those are resources and revenues that don't exist.' Some of the money will come via ever-growing TV rights packages, especially for the College Football Playoff. But some schools are increasing costs to fans through 'talent fees,' concession price hikes and 'athletic fees' added to tuition costs. Q: What about scholarships? Wasn't that like paying the athletes? A: Scholarships and 'cost of attendance' have always been part of the deal for many Division I athletes and there is certainly value to that, especially if athletes get their degree. The NCAA says its member schools hand out nearly $4 billion in athletic scholarships every year. But athletes have long argued that it was hardly enough to compensate them for the millions in revenue they helped produce for the schools, which went to a lot of places, including multimillion-dollar coaches' salaries. They took those arguments to court and won. Q: Haven't players been getting paid for a while now? A: Yes, since 2021. Facing losses in court and a growing number of state laws targeting its amateurism policies, the NCAA cleared the way for athletes to receive NIL money from third parties, including so-called donor-backed collectives that support various schools. Under House, the school can pay that money directly to athletes and the collectives are still in the game. Q: But will $20.5 million cover all the costs for the athletes? A: Probably not. But under terms of the settlement, third parties are still allowed to cut deals with the players. Some call it a workaround, but most simply view this as the new reality in college sports as schools battle to land top talent and then keep them on campus. Top quarterbacks are reportedly getting paid around $2 million a year, which would eat up about 10% of a typical school's NIL budget for all its athletes. Q: Are there any rules or is it a free-for-all? A: The defendant conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC and Pac-12) are creating an enforcement arm that is essentially taking over for the NCAA, which used to police recruiting violations and the like. Among this new entity's biggest functions is to analyze third-party deals worth $600 or more to make sure they are paying players an appropriate 'market value' for the services being provided. The so-called College Sports Commission promises to be quicker and more efficient than the NCAA. Schools are being asked to sign a contract saying they will abide by the rules of this new structure, even if it means going against laws passed in their individual states. Q: What about players who played before NIL was allowed? A: A key component of the settlement is the $2.7 billion in back pay going to athletes who competed between 2016-24 and were either fully or partially shut out from those payments under previous NCAA rules. That money will come from the NCAA and its conferences (but really from the schools, who will receive lower-than-normal payouts from things like March Madness). Q: Who will get most of the money? A: Since football and men's basketball are the primary revenue drivers at most schools, and that money helps fund all the other sports, it stands to reason that the football and basketball players will get most of the money. But that is one of the most difficult calculations for the schools to make. There could be Title IX equity concerns as well. Q: What about all the swimmers, gymnasts and other Olympic sports athletes? A: The settlement calls for roster limits that will reduce the number of players on all teams while making all of those players – not just a portion – eligible for full scholarships. This figures to have an outsize impact on Olympic-sport athletes, whose scholarships cost as much as that of a football player but whose sports don't produce revenue. There are concerns that the pipeline of college talent for Team USA will take a hit. Q: So, once this is finished, all of college sports' problems are solved, right? A: The new enforcement arm seems ripe for litigation. There are also the issues of collective bargaining and whether athletes should flat-out be considered employees, a notion the NCAA and schools are generally not interested in, despite Tennessee athletic director Danny White's suggestion that collective bargaining is a potential solution to a lot of headaches. NCAA President Charlie Baker has been pushing Congress for a limited antitrust exemption that would protect college sports from another series of lawsuits but so far nothing has emerged from Capitol Hill. ___


Reuters
31-05-2025
- Reuters
Michael Earley to be retained as Aggies' head baseball coach
May 31 - Texas A&M Director of Athletics Trev Alberts announced today that first-year head baseball coach Michael Earley would return to College Station for the 2025-26 academic year. "Earlier today, I met with Coach Earley to discuss the state of our baseball program. I appreciate Mike's work in taking a holistic view of what changes need to be made so that we have a baseball program that meets our high standards," Alberts said. "Baseball success is critically important to Texas A&M. I am confident in Mike's ability to execute the needed change and fully support his vision going forward." Earley took over for Jim Schlossnagle, who guided the Aggies to a pair of College World Series appearances in his three seasons at the helm. In 2024, Texas A&M made it to the championship finals, but fell in three games (2-1) to national champion Tennessee. Schlossnagle took the University of Texas head coaching position one day after the decisive third game and Earley, the program's hitting coach, was elevated to the top spot in the dugout. Texas A&M was the consensus No. 1 pick in the preseason, but struggled to a 30-26 record, which included a 11-19 mark and 14th place finish in the SEC. The Aggies failed to earn an NCAA Tournament bid for just the second time since 2007. The nucleus of the team is expected to return, but Alberts did not address the statuses of hitting coach Caleb Longley and pitching coach Jason Kelly. --Field Level Media