Category: College sports

Another week is through, and the countdown to college football returning is down to 43 days. After a relatively quiet week, there has been a considerable amount of news coming out over the last 24 hours regarding multiple major stories in college athletics.

The biggest story is the penalties the University of Tennessee’s football program has received for what the NCAA has called “hundreds of violations” over a three-year stretch. The NCAA released its findings and penalties on Friday morning.

During the NCAA’s investigation of the Volunteers’ football program, they found that the program committed 17 Level I violations “encompassing more than 200 individual infractions – most of which involve recruiting rule violations and direct payments to prospects, current student-athletes, and their families.”

Here are some of the notable penalties that the Volunteers received from the NCAA;

• Five-years of probation
• $8 million fine
• A reduction in scholarships by a total of 28 during the term of probation (at least two per year)
• Tennessee will not be allowed to purchase advertising for postseason football telecasts “in which it is a participant.

Additionally, former head coach Jeremy Pruitt, in which all the violations occurred under has a six-year show-cause order. If a school hires him within those six years, he will be suspended for one year. Pruitt is currently an assistant coach in the NFL for the New York Giants.

Check out the rest of our top college stories, including Northwestern naming an interim head football coach, the Bobby Dodd Preseason Watchlist, and more from the College Wires.

College football season is nearing closer, and Wednesday marks a big day in the offseason. Media days every year are a sign of the impending fall camps getting underway, and the Big 12 has the honor of kicking off the festivities. On Wednesday afternoon, the Big 12 will host each of the conference’s 14  programs and media at AT&T Stadium in Dallas for the first of a two-day session.

Over the last week, College Sports Wire has taken an extensive look at the Big 12, including BYU, UCF, Cincinnati, and Houston’s biggest challenges and expectations entering the conference, and offering up one question for each of the conference’s 14 teams entering Wednesday.

Additionally, the Big 12 media voted on the conference’s preseason All-Big 12 team and the projected order of finish in the conference this fall.

The first media session on Wednesday will start at noon central time, with Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark beginning the proceedings. He’ll talk extensively with the media before the defending Big 12 champions, the TCU Horned Frogs, take the podium at 1:15 p.m. CT. The schedule for Wednesday is as follows – all times are central time, and each program will finish taking questions approximately 10 minutes before the next program is scheduled to take the podium.

12:00 p.m. – Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark

1:15 p.m. – TCU

1:45 p.m. – Houston

2:10 p.m. – Kansas

2:35 p.m. – Baylor

3:00 p.m. – Oklahoma State

3:25 p.m. – Texas

3:50 p.m. – BYU

The proceedings will continue early on Thursday morning with the National Football Foundation COO Matthew Sign, beginning at 9:00 a.m. CT; the full schedule for day two is the following;

9:00 a.m. – National Football Foundation COO Matthew Sign

9:15 a.m. – Kansas State

9:45 a.m. – UCF

10:10 a.m. – Texas Tech

10:35 a.m. – Cicninnati

11:00 a.m. – West Virginia

11:25 a.m. – Iowa State

11:50 a.m. – Oklahoma

Check out the rest of our top college stories, including a starting quarterback drafted in the MLB Draft and more from the College Wires.

It was an eventful Monday in college sports, especially regarding coaches, as Northwestern fired head football coach Pat Fitzgerald and the ongoing saga between West Virginia and former men’s basketball head coach Bob Huggins continues. That being said,  we start off our College Sports Roundup in the Lonestar State. A report from the Austin Business Journal shows that student-athletes from the University of Texas have earned at least $15.5 million in NIL (name, image, and likeness) deals over the last two years.

According to the report, nearly 87% of that money, a little over $13.5 million, was NIL deals for football and men’s basketball student-athletes. On3’s NIL database and player evaluation currently has three Texas athletes with NIL valuations of over $1 million, with freshman quarterback Arch Manning leading the way at $2.8 million.

Of Texas’s top 20 NIL valuations, 18 are football players, with track and field star Sam Hurley ($991K) and basketball star Marcus Carr (173) being the only non-football athletes in the top 20.

It shouldn’t be shocking that the University of Texas has found great success regarding NIL. The sports-centric school has a rich athletic history and has frequently been near the top regarding athletic department revenue. According to the most recent numbers available in the USA Today “NCAA Finances: Revneue and Expenses by School” database, the University of Texas had the second highest athletic department revenue last year, bringing in $239.2 million. Only Ohio State had more revenue from its athletic department.

Check out the rest of our top college stories, which include Meta announcing a NIL incubator, Northwestern’s next steps, Wisconsin reinstating one of their top defenders from last season, and more from the College Wires.

Another weekend without college sports is complete, leaving just 46 days until the beginning of the college football season on August 26. It was a quieter weekend around college athletics, but there were still some notable stories to make their way across the interwebs.

Below, we look at a few of the biggest stories from the weekend and more from the College Wires.

One of the biggest news stories from the weekend is the next part in the saga of Bob Huggins. Over the weekend, Huggins and his lawyer David. A Campbell claimed that he never resigned from the University of West Virginia after announcing his resignation from the program following a DUI arrest in Pittsburgh.

According to a letter obtained from the Associated Press and West Virginia Metro News, “There is no signed writing or proper note setting forth Coach Huggins’ resignation from employment with West Virginia.

Huggins is also threatening to sue the university if he is not reinstated though the letter sent to West Virginia from Huggins’ counsel states that “Coach Huggins does not desire litigation. Rather he is simply looking for the correction of a clear breach of his employment agreement with WVU.”.

In response to Huggins and Campbell, West Virginia called the allegations confusing, stating, “We are frankly confused by the allegations within the letter.” They would later state within the same letter that “Huggins met with members of the men’s basketball staff and student-athletes to announce that he would no longer be coaching the team.” The letter states this occurred on June 17, 2023. Additionally, West Virginia claims the same evening, “Mr. Huggins clearly communicated his resignation and retirement to the University in writing via email,”

Before proceeding, West Virginia is looking for clarity on who is representing Huggins in the manner going forward, as the letter claimed he submitted his resignation alongside a “long-standing lawyer who has historically presented him,” James “Rocky” Gianola.

With this just beginning, it marks another step in what has been a sad downfall for a hall-of-fame head coach.

Josh Eilert is currently West Virginia’s interim head coach after serving 16 seasons on the Mountaineers staff.

Check out the rest of our top college stories:

College Sports Wire is checking in on all the latest news from around the world of college athletics on Friday. We begin with four conferences uniting to form an officiating alliance.

On Thursday, the Big 12, alongside the American Athletic Conference, Mountainwest Conference, and Southland Conference, announced a “football officiating alliance.”

According to the brief press release from the Big 12,

“Over 300 officials will be under the alliance’s umbrella, ensuring consistent training, evaluation and grading processes across the conferences. The alliance conferences will use this pipeline to develop a “bench” of officials that have been trained and evaluated under consistent philosophies and mechanics.

Each conference will have its own coordinator of officials to manage their respective officiating programs, with the alliance overseen by Big 12 Coordinator of Officials, Greg Burks.”

The alliance comes at a time when finding officials has become difficult for some college football programs. The Big 12 faced several issues regarding officials over the last several years, while the Pac-12 is also facing its own challenges after seeing multiple officials leave the conference this offseason. 

Beyond the announcement of the officiating alliance, today’s ‘College Sports Roundup’ looks at the still murky future of San Diego State’s conference allegiance, a suspension of a prominent Power Five head, and more.

Now that the calendar has flipped to July, the Big 12 Conference and American Athletic Conferences have officially welcomed new member institutions.

The Big 12 welcomed four new full-time members in BYU, Central Florida, Cincinnati, and Houston. They will join Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, TCU, Texas Tech, and West Virginia as members of the conference. Oklahoma and Texas are also members of the conference for the 2023-2024 academic year but will depart on July 1, 2024, for the SEC.

BYU comes to the Big 12 after being independent from 2011 through this past academic year. The university was most recently a member of the Mountain West Conference from 1999 through 2021.

Central Florida, Cincinnati, and Houston all come to the conference after being part of the American Athletic Conference since its beginning in 2013.

On Friday, AAC commissioner Mike Aresco released a statement on the departure of Central Florida, Cincinnati, and Houston.

“As we witness renewal as well as change in welcoming six new schools on July 1, I want to take a moment to thank and congratulate our three departing schools, Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF for all the contributions they have made to our conference and to wish them much success in their new conference.”

Aresco also commented on the achievements that the three schools had while as part of The American will “always be a lasting legacy for The American” and that the conference “will be rooting for them in the new home,” with the exception of whenever they may see them again in a competition setting.

While the AAC says goodbye to those institutions, they also welcome six new universities into the fold in; Charlotte, FAU, North Texas, Rice, UAB, and UTSA. They will join the conference’s nine remaining members in East Carolina, Memphis, Navy, South Florida, SMU, Temple, Tulane, Tulsa, and Wichita State.

𝗔 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗱𝗮𝘆. 𝗔 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗲𝗿𝗮.#𝗔𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗣𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿 𝘅 #𝗣𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗙𝗼𝗿𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱 pic.twitter.com/sxHxSnPWcg

— The American (@American_Conf) July 1, 2023

Notably Navy is only part of the conference for football only while Wichita State only competes in the AAC for basketball and Olympic sports.

Beyond the Big 12 and AAC welcoming their new institutions, there is an update on the future of San Diego State, and more from the College Wires discussed in today’s roundup.

On Wednesday, the DI Council proposed a quite significant change when it comes to membership requirements for FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision)  schools. While this won’t affect any schools currently in the FBS, it could become quite a barrier for FCS (Football Championship Subdivision)  programs looking to move into the FBS.

Part of the requirement changes would include; “90% of the total number of allowable scholarships over a two-year rolling period across at least 16 sports, including football”. The total amount of scholarships that a school offers each year would have to be at least 210 and equate to at least $6 million of aid.

The biggest change however would be to increase the transition fee for each school from $5,000 to $5 Million. This is a significant monetary investment for any university to take.

The union also proposed removing football attendance requirements as well.

Notably, while these requirements have been proposed and could be approved in the near future, the new requirements would not go into effect prior to August 1, 2027.

Since 2010, 14 schools have made the jump from FCS to FBS with James Madison, Sam Houston, and Jacksonville State being the last three programs to do so.

Last December, it was reported by ESPN that 10 FCS schools, Stephen F. Austin, Abilene Christian, Utah Tech, Southern Utah, Tarleton State, Austin Peay, Eastern Kentucky, Central Arkansas, and North Alabama were looking to create a new football-only conference, and move up to the FBS level for the 2025 season. UT Rio Grande Valley would also be a member of that conference as they expect to launch a football program in 2025.