Latest news with #DanWolken
USA Today
3 days ago
- Politics
- USA Today
College sports leaders have no good reasons to expand CFP, March Madness
College sports leaders have no good reasons to expand CFP, March Madness SEC and Big Ten leaders, plus many others, are waging war against problems that don't really exist; struggling for the sake of struggle. Show Caption Hide Caption How coaches salaries and the NIL bill affects college football Dan Wolken breaks down the annual college football coaches compensation package to discuss salaries and how the NIL bill affects them. Sports Pulse The more we've heard this week from the leaders of college athletics about their urgent need to expand the College Football Playoff and the NCAA men's basketball tournament, the less clear it becomes why they're expanding in the first place. It would be one thing if there was an obvious business case why it's necessary for March Madness to go from 68 to 72 or 74 teams, as NCAA president Charlie Baker suggested could be imminent Thursday in comments at the Big 12's spring meetings. The same goes for the CFP, whose format was a major talking point every day at the SEC's meetings, with a looming decision about whether to expand from 12 to 16. But after months of debate on both fronts, what's become clear is that expansion is going to happen for no reason other than a vapid sense of inertia sprung from the bruised egos of sports executives – who subconsciously understand their own fundamental weakness and ineffectiveness are to blame for the spiral of chaos that college sports can't seem to escape. At least when they push a button to expand a postseason, it feels like they're doing something. That's an explanation. It's not a reason. When the NFL expanded its playoffs from 12 to 14 in 2020, changing its format for the first time in three decades, the obvious factor was an influx of money: Hundreds of millions of dollars, in fact, half of which gets split with players. When the NBA shook up its postseason and created the play-in tournament, the primary motivation was to keep more teams competitive late in the season and discourage tanking. Those are sensible reasons everyone can understand. But neither Baker nor one of the prominent conference commissioners like the SEC's Greg Sankey or the Big Ten's Tony Petitti have been able to articulate a clear and concise mission statement for what expansion of either tournament is supposed to accomplish. They just want to do it. Here's how thin the rationale is regarding March Madness: Speaking with reporters in Orlando, Baker cited the committee snubbing Missouri Valley Conference regular-season champion Indiana State in 2024 despite a 32-7 record, suggesting an expansion would get the NCAA tournament closer to including the "best" 68 teams. Of course, the NCAA tournament has always worked this way. Excellent mid-major teams that lose in their conference tournament often don't get in. And as the track record of the tournament clearly shows, the vast majority of bids in an expanded field would go to power conference teams with questionable records. The push to expand March Madness precedes Baker's tenure, which began in March 2023. In fact, you can trace the momentum back to March of 2022 when Texas A&M was left out despite a late-season surge to the championship game of the SEC tournament, converting Sankey into a public proponent of expansion. But the idea that tournament spots are being filled by automatic qualifiers from mid-major conferences with less chance to do damage in the tournament than Texas A&M's 2022 team, for instance, isn't new. It's part of the deal, and there's no real demand to move the cut line other than from those who are inconvenienced by it. In fact, one of the big obstacles to March Madness expansion – and the reason it didn't happen years ago – is that there's not a huge pot of television money out there for a few more games between mediocre basketball teams on Tuesday and Wednesday of tournament week. Not only is expansion unlikely to boost profits in a significant way, it's an open question whether the NCAA can expand the tournament without diluting the shares of its revenue distribution model, which are worth about $2 million per team per round. A similar dynamic is at play in the CFP debate. 12-team CFP worked; trashing it makes no sense There were clear incentives for the conference commissioners when they first floated expanding the football tournament from four to 12 teams back in 2021. Not only had TV ratings leveled off, perhaps due to many of the same programs populating the field year after year, but going to 12 would both guarantee access for all the power conference champions and set the table for a $1.3 billion per year contract with ABC/ESPN beginning in 2026 – nearly triple the original 12-year deal that established the CFP. But that's where things get murky. Even before the first 12-team playoff last year, conference commissioners were *already* batting around a 14-team model for 2026. That has now morphed into a likely 16-team bracket. The financial terms of the TV deal, however, will not change in a significant way, whether they land at 12, 14 or 16. So why do it? Not because it's a great business proposition – in fact, there's a legitimate concern about playoff oversaturation and potential second-order effects – but because the more you expand access, the more access everyone wants. That's what we have seen over the last week, especially from the SEC meetings as Sankey and others in the league launched a breathtaking, shameless propaganda effort attempting to rewrite recent history. Getting a mere three teams into last year's 12-team playoff while the Big Ten won its second straight title seems to have done a psychological number on those folks. Rather than admit the truth – the SEC didn't have an amazing year in 2024 and the playing field nationally has been leveled to some extent by NIL and the transfer portal – they are arguing to shape the next CFP format based on a level of conference strength that certainly existed in the past but hasn't in the NIL/transfer portal era. One prominent athletics director, Florida's Scott Stricklin, questioned whether the football bracket should be chosen by committee. Another unnamed administrator went so far as to muse that the SEC and Big Ten should think about just holding their own playoff, according to Yahoo! Sports. If you take a step back and look at what's happening from a 30,000-foot view, it smacks of famed political scientist Francis Fukuyama's 'The End of History,' where he writes about how the triumph of Western liberalism and consumerism has unwittingly created this kind of regressive condition that shows up in so many facets of life and culture. 'If men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation,' he wrote, 'then they will struggle against the just cause. They will struggle for the sake of struggle. They will struggle, in other words, out of a certain boredom: for they cannot imagine living in a world without struggle.' That kind of feels like what's going on here. Aside from a small adjustment in how it was seeded, nothing about the 12-team playoff seemed problematic. If anything, it was widely praised for delivering what the original expansion proponents wanted: Geographic diversity, representation for the four power conferences and the Group of Five, first-round playoff games in college venues and a lot of interesting games from the quarterfinals on. In other words, it worked. And there is no obvious reason – financial or otherwise – to have chucked it in the trash already while the four power conferences launch a war amongst themselves about how much access gets allocated to each conference, and by whom. The angst is especially confusing from the SEC, which just got a record 14 bids to the men's basketball tournament (including national champion Florida), has eight of the 16 national seeds for the baseball tournament and five of the eight teams in the Women's College World Series. They're doing just fine, and there is a long track record of being justly rewarded when their teams perform at the highest level. There's little doubt that will happen again in football regardless of which playoff system gets implemented. It just didn't happen last year because the SEC, for once, did not deserve it. But the Big Ten and the SEC are, as Fukuyama wrote, struggling for the sake of struggle. The more power they have amassed by reshaping the landscape through realignment, the more they claim the system is broken. Some believe their end game is a separation from the NCAA, creating a world where they don't have to share a business partnership with conferences and schools they believe aren't bringing as much value to the table. The reality, though, is that any such move would draw a level of scrutiny – legal and political – they are not currently prepared to handle, not to mention the arduous work of building out the infrastructure for all kinds of unglamorous stuff the NCAA already provides. So instead, they wage war against problems that don't really exist, reach for solutions that create actual problems and then fail to solve the problems right in front of their face. The push to expand the NCAA tournament and the CFP are merely symptoms of an affluenza swallowing the highest levels of college sports. Knowing they've failed miserably to execute on the important issues they truly need to solve to ensure the long-term health of their business, the likes of Sankey and Petitti and many others have elevated tedium to a crisis. So a crisis is what they shall have.
USA Today
08-05-2025
- Business
- USA Today
NCAA files revised revenue-sharing settlement addressing judge's objection on roster limits
NCAA files revised revenue-sharing settlement addressing judge's objection on roster limits Show Caption Hide Caption How coaches salaries and the NIL bill affects college football Dan Wolken breaks down the annual college football coaches compensation package to discuss salaries and how the NIL bill affects them. Sports Pulse Lawyers for the NCAA and for the athletes involved in the proposed settlement of three athlete-compensation antitrust cases against the NCAA and Power Five conferences made filings with a federal judge on Wednesday, May 7 that they said address the one concern she had said was preventing her from granting final approval to the deal. The issue involves around roster limits that had been set to go into effect immediately as part of the agreement. On April 23, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken said that the immediate implementation of roster limits made the proposed settlement 'not fair' because thousands of athletes who are supposed to be benefiting from the deal stood to lose their places on teams after the current school year. Wilken gave the sides two weeks to address her concerns, and in a new filing, the plaintiffs' lawyers wrote that they and the NCAA have agreed to arrangement under which: 'any athlete who would have lost their roster spot (or a promised roster spot) for the 2025-2026 academic year due to the immediate implementation of roster limits will be exempt from any roster limits at any Division I institution, for the duration of their college athletics careers.' However, Laura Reathaford, a lawyer for one objector, told USA TODAY Sports she will be filing a separate brief – an indication that objectors will be continuing to try to make their case with Wilken. In her order two weeks ago, Wilken asked that Reathaford and two other lawyers for objectors be included in discussions about revisions to the roster limits that also were included a mediator and lawyers for the plaintiffs, the NCAA and the Power Five conferences that also are defendants in the case.
USA Today
29-04-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Pac-12 secures TV deal with CBS, ESPN, The CW for 2025 college football season
Pac-12 secures TV deal with CBS, ESPN, The CW for 2025 college football season Show Caption Hide Caption The Pac-12 may have saved itself by adding Mountain West teams, but does it matter? USA TODAY Sports' Dan Wolken breaks down the news that a handful of Mountain West teams will join the Pac-12 and explains why not much is going to change. The Pac-12 has secured a media rights deal – at least for the upcoming college football season. The two-team conference announced on Tuesday that all 13 home games for Oregon State and Washington State during the 2025 season will air on one of three different networks, with nine games on The CW, two on CBS and two on ESPN. "Having Pac-12 football featured across three leading broadcasters in CBS, The CW and ESPN in 2025 will provide tremendous exposure to showcase Oregon State, Washington State and our brand in the Pac-12's final season before expansion," Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould said in a statement. "We are thrilled to continue our partnership with The CW, to welcome a new partner in CBS Sports and to see a return of Pac-12 football on ESPN." The financial terms of the contracts have not yet been revealed. REQUIRED READING: Big Ten powers lead too-early college football Top 25 rankings after spring practice Oregon State and Washington State are the remnants of what had been one of college football's Power Five conferences prior to the 2024 season, when UCLA, USC, Oregon and Washington left their longtime home for the Big Ten; Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Arizona State bolted for the Big 12; and Stanford and Cal departed for the ACC. After the 2025 football season, the Pac-12 will be expanding to include San Diego State, Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and Utah State, all of which will be coming from the Mountain West. A media rights deal for the reconfigured conference hasn't yet been secured, though Tuesday's announcement could offer an idea of what television networks could be involved in broadcasting games for the seven-team league. Beyond Oregon State and Washington State's two scheduled meetings, the Pac-12's 2025 media rights deal includes two games that will be conference matchups starting in 2026 – Oregon State's game against Fresno State and Washington State's game against San Diego State, both of which are on Sept. 6. REQUIRED READING: College football fans can only take so much nonsensical changes of transfer portal, playoff Pac-12 football TV schedule 2025 Here's a look at the Pac-12's full television schedule for the 2025 football season: All times Eastern
USA Today
24-04-2025
- Business
- USA Today
Kentucky planning overhaul of college athletics department into new school corporate entity
Kentucky planning overhaul of college athletics department into new school corporate entity Show Caption Hide Caption How coaches salaries and the NIL bill affects college football Dan Wolken breaks down the annual college football coaches compensation package to discuss salaries and how the NIL bill affects them. Sports Pulse The University of Kentucky is moving toward housing its athletics department under a new university corporate entity that school officials say will improve their flexibility to handle rising financial pressure from the proposed settlement of three athlete-compensation antitrust cases against the NCAA and Power Five conferences and related demands. Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart and the university's executive vice president for finance and administration, Eric Monday, said they were unsure of whether the new entity – being called Champions Blue LLC – would be unique in college sports. But they said that, within the school's structure, it is being modeled on entities under which its hospitals and other medical services enterprises are housed. Implementation of the new athletics structure is pending approvals from the Kentucky board of trustees' athletics committee, which was meeting April 24, and the full board, which is scheduled to meet April 25. Kentucky's athletics department had nearly $202 million in operating revenue and nearly $197 million operating expense in its 2023-24 fiscal year, according to the annual financial report it submits to the NCAA. That puts the Wildcats among the top 15 publics schools in both categories, according to data compiled by USA TODAY Sports in conjunction with its partnership with the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database at Syracuse University. Barnhart said the athletics department estimates that its expenses for the 2025-26 fiscal year will increase by around $50 million because of the proposed class-action settlement, which failed to receive final approval from a federal judge on April 23 – although the judge is giving the principals 14 days to work out issues related to a component of the deal that the judge ruled is unfair to a sizable group of athlete plaintiffs. If approved, Division I schools would be able to start paying athletes directly for use of their name, image and likeness (NIL), subject to a per-school cap that would increase over time and be based on a percentage of certain athletics revenues. In addition, the NCAA's current system of team-by-team scholarship limits would be lifted and athletes would continue to be allowed to have NIL deals with non-school entities. Barnhart and Kentucky spokesman Jay Blanton said the estimated $50 million increase in expenses comes from its expected NIL payments to athletes (likely $20 million to $23 million), an increase in the number of athletic scholarships it awards ($4 million to $5 million), inflation, spending by the school in connection with efforts it can make to assist athletes with outside NIL deal and an expected loss of sponsorship revenue from companies that instead choose to make NIL deals with athletes. Monday and Barnhart said that the new entity would allow the athletics department to undertake a variety of business development opportunities and to offer pay and benefit programs to employees – and potentially to athletes – that it cannot under current university policies or cannot do so in an efficient manner. Barnhart and Monday mentioned public-private partnerships and a number of athletic facility and fan-experience projects. 'You've heard other departments talk about business districts and things like that,' Barnhart said. 'And those are conversations that are all on the table but really difficult to perform in our current structure. And so this gives us more flexibility to do that.' Wake Forest, Oklahoma and Kansas are among schools working on mixed-use projects that include new or refurbished athletics facilities. 'We've got some ideas on some things that we're going to have to run the run the traps on, so to speak, to say, 'Hey, does this work? Does it make sense? Can it produce the things we think are necessary for us to move forward?' Barnhart said. 'I do know this … in the old way of life, there were literally four to five buckets that you got all of your revenue from. We're going to have those four to five buckets become eight to 10 buckets, and we're going to have to figure out other ways to do our work.'
USA Today
09-04-2025
- Climate
- USA Today
2025 Masters: Five bold predictions include Rory McIlroy playoff scenario
Hear this story AUGUSTA, Ga. – As the Masters gets underway, here are sports columnist Dan Wolken's five bold predictions for how this week will turn out. This year will produce the lowest (real) winning score since 2015 Putting aside Dustin Johnson's 20-under par during the COVID Masters played in November 2020 when course conditions were completely different than in the spring, nobody has come close over the past decade to Jordan Spieth's 18-under in 2015. The winner this year will need to be around that neighborhood because of the ideal scoring conditions in store this weekend. In recent years, Augusta National has been impacted by severe weather on at least one or two days including last year when ridiculous 30-40 mph winds swept through Thursday and Friday. But this year, there's really no wind in the forecast and only a small chance of rain Friday, which would do nothing but soften the course a bit. Combined with the rain the course received Monday, it's going to be about 70 degrees and sunny every day with calm conditions. It should be a birdie assault on Augusta. The winner of the Masters will eagle No. 13 on Sunday Lengthening the 13th hole to 545 yards with the new back tee box seems to have had a big impact on scoring. There were just 108 birdies for the entire tournament each of the past two years since the change and only 12 combined eagles on the hole known as 'Azalea.' Compare that to, say, 2019 when there were 158 birdies and 17 eagles. Increasing the distance from 510 yards has brought the average score up fractionally, from around 4.6 strokes most years to around 4.7 and change the past two. Of course, weather plays a big factor so it'll take several more years to see the true impact of making the hole 35 yards longer. But Fred Ridley, the tournament chairman, said Wednesday he believes more players are going for the green in two because drives that leak out to the right are not reaching the trees like they used to. 'Our motivation was to create more excitement and have more players go for the green,' he said. With more players trying to eagle the hole but fewer actually doing it, it makes sense that someone is going to hit the right approach and create separation on the leaderboard at that key spot on the course. Why not this year? Phil Mickelson will be in the mix Sunday Lefty feels a little bit like a museum artifact these days, given that he's 54 and hasn't won an official tournament since the Charles Schwab Cup Championship on the senior tour in November 2021. But he does know his way around Augusta, as he proved two years ago by sneaking into a tie for second behind Jon Rahm with a final round 65. Interestingly, that was only Mickelson's third top 10 since he last won the tournament in 2010. But what's more important is that he seems to be in good form lately with a third and a sixth place in the past three LIV events. Winning the event is probably beyond his reach, but it's not a shock to see an old guy on the leaderboard at the Masters simply due to knowing how to play the course. This feels like a good spot for the three-time champion to make one last big run at the title. Rory McIlroy will lose the Masters in a playoff At this point, the world's No. 2-ranked player has lost majors in just about every heartbreaking way known to man, especially the past few years. Couldn't make a birdie putt in the final round at St. Andrews. Couldn't hold off Wyndham Clark at L.A. Country Club. Couldn't close the deal against Bryson DeChambeau at Pinehurst. What's the one thing he hasn't done? Lose a major in a playoff. Before McIlroy wins his career Grand Slam at the Masters, he has to complete has Grand Slam of disappointments. You can say he already has his what-if moment at this course back in 2011 when he had the lead going into the back nine on Sunday before blowing up with a triple bogey on No. 10 and a four-putt on No. 12. But that was a long, long time ago and the current Rory cycle demands that he lose a major in a playoff before he starts winning them again. Those are the rules. There will be a first-time Masters winner this year Who beats McIlroy in the playoff? It will be someone crowned as a major champion for the first time. The highest-ranked player without a major is a fairly obvious pick: Ludvig Aberg, the 25-year-old Swede who finished second last year in his Masters debut. But Aberg hasn't played that well lately, missing the cut in his two most recent events. Next on the list is Russell Henley. Russell who? He's not a household name, but the native Georgian is playing the best golf of his life at 35 and ranked No. 10 in the world after winning the Arnold Palmer Invitational last month. After that comes Viktor Hovland, who would admit that his swing is a mess. Then Maverick McNealy, who has never played the Masters or finished better than 23rd in a major. Then it's Tommy Fleetwood, who can't seem to put it all together when it counts. Next comes Sepp Straka, who is too streaky to pick. Then we get to Patrick Cantlay, who is probably due to win a major and has played well this year. So that's the pick. It's Cantlay. Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Dan Wolken on social media@
