Latest news with #collegeSports
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
New ACC men's basketball schedule trashes a century of NC basketball history
Let's be perfectly clear about this. There is no room for argument on this point. Rivalries made college sports. Then and now. Then: Army-Navy. The Ivy League. Michigan-Ohio State. Oklahoma-Texas. California-Stanford. Advertisement And now: UCLA-USC. Alabama-Auburn. Duke-UNC. The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party. Without those rivalries, especially in this era where players are getting paid millions and enjoying unrestricted free agency, college football and basketball will soon just be low-rent minor leagues with no emotional connection to their fans. Business, not personal. Which brings us to N.C. State-North Carolina, the original Triangle rivalry, long before North Carolina and Duke caught ESPN's fancy. North Carolina's Seth Trimble drives to the basket against N.C. State's Dontrez Styles and Ben Middlebrooks during the first half of the Tar Heels' game at Lenovo Center on Saturday, Jan. 11, 2025, in Raleigh, N.C. Kaitlin McKeown/kmckeown@ Thanks to the ACC's innovative new men's basketball schedule format, the Wolfpack won't play in Chapel Hill this year for the first time since 1919, when Wake Forest was still in Wake Forest. Advertisement Nor will N.C. State go to Cameron Indoor Stadium, not as uncommon an occurrence these days, but still the site of one of the most unexpectedly dramatic games of the ACC schedule last winter. That one can deliver, too. It's certainly a game more worth playing than Clemson-Pittsburgh, the ACC-endorsed home-and-home grudge match that's ready to sweep the nation. The new format is the result of going from 20 conference games to 18, and the stated purpose of all of these changes is to maximize the ACC's chances of getting more teams into the NCAA tournament. It all seems like a lot of effort when the actual answer is simply a combination of 'get good' and 'stop losing to bad teams,' but even if this works, it will come at the expense of games people want to watch. When the idea was proposed, it seemed safe to assume this 'secondary partner' business would be a wink-wink way to preserve the handful of non-primary matchups that matter to fans and ESPN, like State-Carolina, while allowing would-be tournament teams to avoid resume-deflating games against teams figured to fill out the bottom of the standings. That, at least, would have made some sense. Duke's Cooper Flagg (2) drives to the basket against North Carolina forward Jae'Lyn Withers (24) in the second half on Saturday, February 1, 2025 at Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, N.C. Robert Willett/rwillett@ But now we're sacrificing the kind of games that made the ACC a conference other schools wanted to join in the service of some nebulous attempt to game a system that can only be gamed by winning games the ACC keeps losing. Tweaking the schedule isn't going to paper over a 2-14 performance in the ACC-SEC Challenge. Advertisement Is there really more value in N.C. State playing Virginia twice than sending the Wolfpack to Chapel Hill? Is there really more value in Duke playing Louisville twice? You can at least argue those. There's zero, absolutely zero, value in North Carolina playing Syracuse twice, there's no debate about that. That's a waste of everyone's time. In an era where 'bad for ratings' is no longer a joke, you'd think ACC schools would be more interested in playing games that people might want to watch. We're already dropping one matchup entirely — Duke won't play Jai Lucas' Miami at all, for example — just to make this secondary-partner thing work, so it would have been easy to drop others and protect historically important rivalries. Why can't one team have multiple secondary partners while others don't? If N.C. State isn't playing California already, what's the big deal if it doesn't play Florida State too? Of course, not everyone is lamenting these circumstances. You'll be shocked — shocked! — to learn Notre Dame's secondary partner is Stanford, the school the Irish managed to drag into the ACC to ensure it remained a power-conference football opponent, the one other ACC school aside from Boston College with which the Irish share some history. Whatever Notre Dame's record is in actual ACC competition, it remains undefeated politically. North Carolina's R.J. Davis (4) drives to the basket between Duke's Tyrese Proctor (5) and Kyle Filipowski (30) in the second half on Saturday, February 4, 2023 at Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, N.C. Robert Willett/rwillett@ At least that's vaguely a rivalry, at least in football. We're walking away from more than a century of basketball history so Georgia Tech can play California twice. There was an easy solution: N.C. State and North Carolina are secondary partners, just as Boston College and Miami are — with legitimate roots in the old Big East — and just as Notre Dame and Stanford are. Advertisement Rivalries matter. The Triangle accounts for 10 of the ACC's last 14 Final Fours in part because the standard here is so high. Everyone knows the attention that surrounds Duke-UNC is a rising tide that lifts every boat, and State's games against those two are a lot closer to that than outsiders realize. The attachment to college sports is personal. My school. My team. My jersey. But rivalries are the glue that holds it together. Our affiliations mix and mingle, in the office, in the gym, even across the dinner table. It's not the love of Ohio State that leads an entire state to avoid using a single letter for a week; it's the enmity for (M)ichigan. North Carolina cannot exist as North Carolina, fully, without Duke or N.C. State, nor can Duke or N.C. State without Carolina. Duke's Tyrese Proctor and N.C. State's Jayden Taylor dive after a loose ball during the first half of the Wolfpack's game against Duke on Monday, Jan. 27, 2025, at Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, N.C. Kaitlin McKeown/kmckeown@ College conferences once understood this. They were built on that concept, as groupings of like-minded, regionally collocated universities that wanted to play each other on a regular basis. Because those were the opponents that fans and alumni — and players and coaches — wanted to face! Advertisement Without that friction, without that commonality, especially in this era of transient, semi-professional players, college sports is buying a ticket to irrelevance. If N.C. State's not going to go to Chapel Hill as it has every year since World War I, what's the difference between the ACC and the Durham Bulls and Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs? The Bulls aren't asking you for donations on top of the ticket price, for one thing. This new schedule isn't going to help get more teams into the NCAA tournament if the ACC doesn't win more games in November and December. That's the original sin here. The schedule may help, in a best-case scenario, an edge case or two on Selection Sunday, but the stage is set long before ACC schools start playing each other. We're sacrificing State-Carolina and Duke-State for the 'greater good' of the ACC, but it actually hurts everyone. Never miss a Luke DeCock column. Sign up at to have them delivered directly to your email inbox as soon as they post. Luke DeCock's Latest: Never miss a column on the Canes, ACC or other Triangle sports
Globe and Mail
5 days ago
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Brag House Provides Update on Status of Form 10-Q Filing and Reaffirms Strategic Focus on Gen Z Engagement and Learfield Partnership Expansion
NEW YORK, May 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Brag House Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: TBH), the Gen Z engagement platform at the intersection of gaming, college sports, and digital media, today announced that it continues to diligently work on its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended March 31, 2025. As anticipated, on May 27, 2025, the Company received notice from the Nasdaq Stock Market that it is not in compliance with Nasdaq Listing Rule 5250(c)(1) due to the delayed filing of its Form 10-Q. Brag House intends to file its Form 10-Q before the date it would have to submit a compliance plan on July 28 to Nasdaq for continued listing. The Nasdaq notice has no immediate effect on the listing or trading of Brag House's common stock on the Nasdaq Capital Market. "We remain committed to transparency and full compliance with our SEC reporting obligations," said Lavell Juan Malloy II, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Brag House. "As a recently public company, our team is working diligently to complete all necessary disclosures and filings while maintaining our strategic focus." As Brag House continues to enhance its operational infrastructure, the Company remains focused on executing its long-term vision to revolutionize casual gaming on college campuses through school-spirit-based digital experiences and NIL-integrated content. Earlier this month, Brag House, in partnership with Florida Gators Athletics and Learfield's Florida Gators Sports Properties, launched the inaugural Brag Gators Gauntlet: Baseball Edition. The event, hosted ahead of the Gators' baseball game against Alabama, featured a Fortnite tournament with a baseball-inspired scoring format and saw strong turnout from both current students and alumni. The activation served as a gamified digital tailgate, offering a new layer of engagement for college sports fans. 'This is the foundation of a broader initiative,' added Malloy. 'By merging college sports with interactive digital gaming formats, we're building a new layer of fan engagement that serves students, alumni, schools, and brand partners alike.' Following the successful debut event, Brag House and Learfield will host the next activation in the Brag Gators Gauntlet series on July 19, 2025, giving students and fans another opportunity to experience what is quickly becoming a new sports medium. The Company plans to roll out additional events at select universities across the country throughout the remainder of 2025. About Brag House Brag House is a leading media technology gaming platform dedicated to transforming casual college gaming into a vibrant, community-driven experience. By seamlessly merging gaming, social interaction, and cutting-edge technology, the Company provides an inclusive and engaging environment for casual gamers while enabling brands to authentically connect with the influential Gen Z demographic. The platform offers live-streaming capabilities, gamification features, and custom tournament services, fostering meaningful engagement between users and brands. For more information, please visit Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve risks and uncertainties, including the Company's ability to regain compliance with Nasdaq listing rules and timely file the Form 10-Q. For a full discussion of these risks, please refer to Brag House's SEC filings. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements.
Associated Press
6 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:
New York Times
6 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
Charlie Baker unfazed by speculation of SEC leaving NCAA, stumps for tournament expansion
ORLANDO, Fla. — On Monday, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey stirred speculation about his conference's future in the NCAA. On Thursday, NCAA president Charlie Baker didn't sound too worried. 'I tend to believe what I hear from people when I speak to them directly,' Baker said Thursday during the Big 12 spring meetings at the Waldorf Astoria Orlando. Advertisement Speaking from the SEC spring meetings in Destin, Fla., earlier this week, Sankey said, 'I have people in my room asking, 'Why are we still in the NCAA?'' As the NCAA determines which voices should get the most power at the table, the SEC is seeking more authority than the governance proposal, which would give 65 percent of NCAA decision-making power to the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC. Sankey, for what it's worth, also pointed out that any concerns his members have had with the NCAA haven't kept teams from accepting invitations to its national basketball or golf tournaments. That line suggests that fears of an SEC succession are premature but still worth hearing. 'Their voice matters a great deal in part because they take college sports seriously and play at a very high level, just like the Big 12 does and just like many others do…' Baker said. 'But I think there's a path forward here where we can figure out a way to keep everybody in a place where they're comfortable that they're both being heard and having the opportunity to play and compete.' Baker was also asked about two other notable topics during an informal media session with reporters. Baker said the NCAA has had 'good conversations' with TV partners CBS and Warner Bros. Discovery about adding teams to the men's basketball tournament. The current 68-team field could grow to either 72 or 76 teams as soon as next year. 'I think our goal here is to try to sort of either get to yes or no sometime in the next few months because there's a lot of logistical work that would be associated with doing this if we were to go down this road,' Baker said. The debate over tournament expansion has lingered for months. Baker's case for a larger field centers on balancing the need to include teams that win their conference tournament without snubbing at-large teams that are among the nation's best 68. He cited the 2023-24 Indiana State team that went 26-5 in the regular season but went to the NIT after losing to Drake in the final of the Missouri Valley Conference tournament. Advertisement 'It's a way to get them in,' Baker said. Baker said he has not heard much about a presidential commission on college sports since plans fizzled last week. The idea was to have a group led by former Alabama coach Nick Saban and Texas Tech board of regents chair Cody Campbell explore issues like name, image and likeness and the transfer portal with an eye toward potential solutions from the White House or Congress. 'We've done a bunch of things that were important to Washington with respect to some of their issues with us,' Baker said, highlighting changes like post-eligibility health insurance and more access to mental health services. 'And I think we've seen enough, especially in the sort of burgeoning state law space, to be able to make a pretty compelling case about state preemption and some of the other issues we're dealing with. From my point of view, as many voices at the table works for me. I think these issues are important, and they certainly matter a lot to schools and to kids and to college sports.'
Wall Street Journal
6 days ago
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
The SEC Launches Its Latest College Sports Power Grab
This was already shaping up to be a seismic summer for college sports. For weeks, officials have been bracing for a multibillion-dollar antitrust settlement that will launch the sport into a new era in which colleges will share revenue with the athletes who help generate it.
