Latest news with #TrevAlberts
Reuters
2 days ago
- Business
- 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
USA Today
2 days ago
- Sport
- USA Today
Texas A&M star third baseman will reportedly return for the 2026 season
Texas A&M star third baseman will reportedly return for the 2026 season Friday's news was both positive and negative for the Texas A&M fan base after Athletic Director Trev Alberts announced that first-year head baseball coach Michael Earley will return for a second season in 2026, following the Aggies' 30-26 and 11-19 records in SEC play. This was a surprise to many given Texas A&M's bizarre season, which included early non-conference losses combined with three consecutive SEC series losses before the Aggies randomly found their footing, winning series against Tennessee (road), South Carolina, Arkansas, and LSU, before last-place Missouri shockingly swept A&M in Blue Bell Park. The loss to the Tigers ultimately ended the Aggies' postseason hopes, following their defeat to Georgia at the end of the regular season. Despite wins over Mississippi State and Auburn in the SEC Tournament, Texas A&M was eliminated from the postseason after a close 4-3 loss to LSU, casting doubt on Earley's future. This week, Trev Alberts stated that he would "evaluate" Earley's performance during his rookie coaching season, concluding that the injuries the team dealt with at the plate and on the mound ultimately proved too much to handle, which included star sophomore third baseman Gavin Grahovac. With the news that Michael Earley will stay in College Station, Grahovac reportedly told TexAgs analyst Ryan Brauninger that he will officially return next season after serving as the program's first base coach towards the end of the year, while continuing to rehab, and will be in full health going into the winter months. Before his injury, Grahovac recorded five hits and two home runs in six games, hitting .227 at the plate. This is just the start of the future return announcement, with Earley's return finalized. Contact/Follow us @AggiesWire on X and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Texas A&M news, notes and opinions. Follow Cameron on X: @CameronOhnysty.
USA Today
2 days ago
- Business
- USA Today
Texas A&M AD Trev Alberts confirms scholarship expansion amid NCAA Settlement
Texas A&M AD Trev Alberts confirms scholarship expansion amid NCAA Settlement The world of college athletics is in a strange place right now, and there are several tough decisions athletics departments are going to have to navigate over the next few years. College football, the primary revenue driver for many programs, presents differing perspectives on how institutions should navigate financial strategies following the anticipated approval of the House v. NCAA settlement. According to The National Law Review, the settlement aims to: Distribute over $2.5 billion to former players who participated in competitive Division I college sports from 2016-2024 Create a revenue-sharing model that will allow schools to compensate their student-athletes directly Attempt to establish more oversight and control over student-athlete NIL payments One of the issues that will arise is the ability for teams to pay the student athletes, allowing them to remain competitive without having to eliminate other sports or scholarships. During the annual meetings, both Texas A&M President General Mark A. Welsh and Athletic Director Trev Alberts confirmed that despite this, they plan on funding every roster position while increasing the scholarship allotment. For an in-depth analysis, check out the National Law Review's coverage on how the settlement will reshape college athletics. Contact/Follow us @AggiesWire on X and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Texas A&M news, notes and opinions. Follow Jarrett Johnson on X: @whosnextsports1.
San Francisco Chronicle
3 days ago
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
College sports lurches forward, hoping to find a level playing field with fewer lawsuits
MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. (AP) — On the one hand, what this new version of cash-infused college sports needs are rules that everybody follows. On the other, they need to be able to enforce those rules without getting sued into oblivion. Enter the College Sports Commission, a newly created operation that will be in charge of counting the money, deciding what a 'fair market' deal for players looks like and, if things go well, helping everyone in the system avoid trips to court whenever a decision comes down that someone doesn't like. With name, image, likeness payments taking over in college, this group will essentially become what the NCAA committee on infractions used to be – the college sports police, only with the promise of being faster, maybe fairer and maybe more transparent. In a signal of what the CSC's most serious mission might be, the schools from the four biggest conferences are being asked to sign a document pledging not to rely on state laws – some of which are more permissive of payments to players -- to work around the rules the commission is making. 'We need to get out of this situation where something happens, and we run to our attorney general and file suit,' said Trev Alberts of Texas A&M, one of 10 athletic directors who are part of another group, the Settlement Implementation Committee, that is helping oversee the transition. 'That chaos isn't sustainable. You're looking for a durable system that actually has some stability and ultimate fairness.' Number crunching to figure out what's fair The first, and presumably more straightforward, is data being compiled by LBi Software, which will track how much schools are spending on every athlete, up to the $20.5 million cap each is allowed to distribute in the first year of the new arrangement expected to begin July 1. This sounds easy but comes with the assumption that universities – which, for decades, have sought to eke out every edge they can, rulebook or no – will provide accurate data. 'Over history, boosters have looked for ways to give their schools an advantage,' said Gabe Feldman, a sports law professor at Tulane. 'I think that will continue even with the settlement. It's anyone's guess as to how that manifests, and what the new competitive landscape looks like.' Adding some level of transparency to the process, along with the CSC's ability to deliver sanctions if it identifies cheaters, will be key to the new venture's success. 'There's legal risk that prohibits you from doing that,' Alberts said. 'But we want to start as transparent as we can be, because we think it engenders trust.' Good intentions aside, Alberts concedes, 'I don't think it's illogical to think that, at first, it's probably going to be a little wonky.' How much should an endorsement deal be worth? Some of the wonkiest bookkeeping figures to come from the second category of number crunching, and that involves third-party NIL deals. The CSC hired Deloitte to run a so-called clearinghouse called 'NIL Go," which will be in charge of evaluating third-party deals worth $600 or more. Because these deals aren't allowed to pay players simply for playing – that's still technically forbidden in college sports -- but instead for some service they provide (an endorsement, a social media shoutout and so forth), every deal needs to be evaluated to show it is worth a fair price for what the player is doing. In a sobering revelation, Deloitte shared with sports leaders earlier this month that around 70% of third-party deals given to players since NIL became allowable in 2021 would have been denied by the new clearinghouse. All these valuations, of course, are subject to interpretation. It's much easier to set the price of a stock, or a bicycle, than the value of an athlete's endorsement deal. This is where things figure to get dicey. Though the committee has an appeals process, then an arbitration process, ultimately, some of these cases are destined to be challenged in court. 'You're just waiting to see, what is a 'valid business purpose' (for an NIL deal), and what are the guidelines around that?" said Rob Lang, a business litigation partner at Thompson Coburn who deals with sports cases. 'You can see all the lawyer fights coming out of that.' Avoiding court, coordinating state laws are new priorities In fact, elements of all this are ripe to be challenged in court, which might explain why the power conferences drafted the document pledging fealty to the new rules in the first place. For instance, Feldman called a law recently enacted in Tennessee viewed by many as the most athlete-friendly statute in the country 'the next step in the evolution" of state efforts to bar the NCAA from limiting NIL compensation for athletes with an eye on winning battles for recruits and retaining roster talent. 'What we've seen over the last few years is states trying to one-up each other to make their institutions more attractive places for people to go," he said. 'This is the next iteration of that. It may set up a showdown between the schools, the NCAA and the states.' Greg Sankey, the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, said a league spanning 12 states cannot operate well if all those states have different rules about how and when it is legal to pay players. The SEC has been drafting legislation for states to pass to unify the rules across the conference. Ultimately, Sankey and a lot of other people would love to see a national law passed by Congress that does that for all states and all conferences. That will take months, if not years, which is why the new committee drafted the document for the schools to sign. 'We are all defendant schools and conferences and you inherently agree to this,' Alberts said of the document. 'I sat in the room with all of our football coaches, 'Do you want to be governed?' The answer is 'yes.''
Associated Press
3 days ago
- Business
- Associated Press
College sports lurches forward, hoping to find a level playing field with fewer lawsuits
MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. (AP) — On the one hand, what this new version of cash-infused college sports needs are rules that everybody follows. On the other, they need to be able to enforce those rules without getting sued into oblivion. Enter the College Sports Commission, a newly created operation that will be in charge of counting the money, deciding what a 'fair market' deal for players looks like and, if things go well, helping everyone in the system avoid trips to court whenever a decision comes down that someone doesn't like. With name, image, likeness payments taking over in college, this group will essentially become what the NCAA committee on infractions used to be – the college sports police, only with the promise of being faster, maybe fairer and maybe more transparent. In a signal of what the CSC's most serious mission might be, the schools from the four biggest conferences are being asked to sign a document pledging not to rely on state laws – some of which are more permissive of payments to players -- to work around the rules the commission is making. 'We need to get out of this situation where something happens, and we run to our attorney general and file suit,' said Trev Alberts of Texas A&M, one of 10 athletic directors who are part of another group, the Settlement Implementation Committee, that is helping oversee the transition. 'That chaos isn't sustainable. You're looking for a durable system that actually has some stability and ultimate fairness.' Number crunching to figure out what's fair In this new landsacpe, two different companies will be in charge of two kinds of number crunching. The first, and presumably more straightforward, is data being compiled by LBi Software, which will track how much schools are spending on every athlete, up to the $20.5 million cap each is allowed to distribute in the first year of the new arrangement expected to begin July 1. This sounds easy but comes with the assumption that universities – which, for decades, have sought to eke out every edge they can, rulebook or no – will provide accurate data. 'Over history, boosters have looked for ways to give their schools an advantage,' said Gabe Feldman, a sports law professor at Tulane. 'I think that will continue even with the settlement. It's anyone's guess as to how that manifests, and what the new competitive landscape looks like.' Adding some level of transparency to the process, along with the CSC's ability to deliver sanctions if it identifies cheaters, will be key to the new venture's success. 'There's legal risk that prohibits you from doing that,' Alberts said. 'But we want to start as transparent as we can be, because we think it engenders trust.' Good intentions aside, Alberts concedes, 'I don't think it's illogical to think that, at first, it's probably going to be a little wonky.' How much should an endorsement deal be worth? Some of the wonkiest bookkeeping figures to come from the second category of number crunching, and that involves third-party NIL deals. The CSC hired Deloitte to run a so-called clearinghouse called 'NIL Go,' which will be in charge of evaluating third-party deals worth $600 or more. Because these deals aren't allowed to pay players simply for playing – that's still technically forbidden in college sports -- but instead for some service they provide (an endorsement, a social media shoutout and so forth), every deal needs to be evaluated to show it is worth a fair price for what the player is doing. In a sobering revelation, Deloitte shared with sports leaders earlier this month that around 70% of third-party deals given to players since NIL became allowable in 2021 would have been denied by the new clearinghouse. All these valuations, of course, are subject to interpretation. It's much easier to set the price of a stock, or a bicycle, than the value of an athlete's endorsement deal. This is where things figure to get dicey. Though the committee has an appeals process, then an arbitration process, ultimately, some of these cases are destined to be challenged in court. 'You're just waiting to see, what is a 'valid business purpose' (for an NIL deal), and what are the guidelines around that?' said Rob Lang, a business litigation partner at Thompson Coburn who deals with sports cases. 'You can see all the lawyer fights coming out of that.' Avoiding court, coordinating state laws are new priorities In fact, elements of all this are ripe to be challenged in court, which might explain why the power conferences drafted the document pledging fealty to the new rules in the first place. For instance, Feldman called a law recently enacted in Tennessee viewed by many as the most athlete-friendly statute in the country 'the next step in the evolution' of state efforts to bar the NCAA from limiting NIL compensation for athletes with an eye on winning battles for recruits and retaining roster talent. 'What we've seen over the last few years is states trying to one-up each other to make their institutions more attractive places for people to go,' he said. 'This is the next iteration of that. It may set up a showdown between the schools, the NCAA and the states.' Greg Sankey, the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, said a league spanning 12 states cannot operate well if all those states have different rules about how and when it is legal to pay players. The SEC has been drafting legislation for states to pass to unify the rules across the conference. Ultimately, Sankey and a lot of other people would love to see a national law passed by Congress that does that for all states and all conferences. That will take months, if not years, which is why the new committee drafted the document for the schools to sign. 'We are all defendant schools and conferences and you inherently agree to this,' Alberts said of the document. 'I sat in the room with all of our football coaches, 'Do you want to be governed?' The answer is 'yes.'' ___ AP college sports:
