Colleges and Universities

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Golf

      13-Year-Old Boy Drove Truck That Hit Van in Texas, Killing 9, Officials Say

      by

      The fiery crash killed a golf coach and six of his players, along with the boy and a man who was traveling with him.A 13-year-old boy was behind the wheel of a pickup truck that struck a van in Texas on Tuesday night in a collision that killed nine people, including a college golf coach and six of his players, along with the boy and a man traveling with him, officials said on Thursday.Bruce Landsberg, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said at a news conference that the truck’s left front tire was a spare that had blown out before the truck veered into the lane the golf team’s van was traveling in and struck the van head-on. It was unclear at what speeds the vehicles were traveling, but Mr. Landsberg noted that the speed limit in the area is 75 miles per hour.“It was very clearly a high-speed, head-on collision between two heavy vehicles,” he said. “There is no question about the force of impact.” Both vehicles went up in flames in the collision near Andrews, Texas, about 50 miles east of the state line with New Mexico.It was unclear why the 13-year-old boy, whose name was not released by the authorities on Thursday, was driving the truck. Henrich Siemens, 38, of Seminole County, Texas, who was also in the truck, was killed in the collision, the authorities said.The University of the Southwest identified the victims from that institution as Tyler James, 26, the coach, and the student-athletes Travis Garcia, Karisa Raines, Mauricio Sanchez, Tiago Sousa, Laci Stone and Jackson Zinn. Most of the golfers were freshmen at the university, a private, Christian institution in Hobbs, N.M., near the state line with Texas.Two golfers who were in the van, Dayton Price and Hayden Underhill, were critically injured but survived the crash, and they were undergoing medical treatment in Lubbock, Texas, on Thursday, a spokesman for the university said at a news conference.Ryan Tipton, provost of University of the Southwest, said on Thursday that both players were “making steady progress.”“One of the students is eating chicken soup,” Mr. Tipton said. “Every day it’s a game of inches. There is no indication of how long it’s going to take, but they are both stable and recovering and every day making more progress.”In Texas, 14-year-olds can begin a classroom phase of a driver’s education course, but they cannot apply for a learner’s license until they are 15, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.In a statement on Wednesday, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said state officials were helping to investigate the collision.“We grieve with the loved ones of the individuals whose lives were horrifically taken too soon in this fatal vehicle crash near Andrews last night,” Mr. Abbott said.Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico said on Wednesday that she was “deeply saddened” by the news.“This is a terrible, tragic accident,” she said. More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Basket

      After Hiatuses, These Teams Are Back in the NCAA Women’s Tournament

      by

      Some teams — like Illinois State and Massachusetts — will have already made history before taking the floor.The N.C.A.A. basketball tournaments always represent the chance to make history.Some teams have already done that before taking the floor.Massachusetts, a No. 12 seed in the women’s bracket, set a program record with 26 wins en route to making its first tournament in 24 years.UMass, the Atlantic 10 Conference tournament champion, will face No. 5 Notre Dame in Oklahoma. Coach Tory Verdi took over in 2016, when the Minutewomen weren’t exactly a high-profile program.But make no mistake; the Minutewomen aren’t just happy to be in the tournament. They want to shake up the field.“I feel like all of us really step up to that challenge, like the bigger the stage, the better we play,” Sam Breen, a graduate forward and the A-10 player of the year, said this week.Breen leads a group that has witnessed the program’s rebuilding, and one which includes Sydney Taylor and Destiney Philoxy, who were both second-team all-conference.Here are four more teams looking to create a new tournament narrative after years away from the biggest stage.HowardKaiya Creek, right, and Howard reached the tournament for the first time since 2001 and beat Incarnate Word in the First Four.Sean Rayford/Associated PressOn Wednesday, Howard made history twice in the same game: By defeating No. 16 seed Incarnate Word, 55-51, in South Carolina, the Bison won the first women’s First Four game.It was also Howard’s first tournament victory — ever.The Bison (21-9) made the field by winning the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference tournament final, avenging their loss to North Carolina A&T in the championship game last season. Top-seeded Howard handled No. 2 Norfolk State, 61-44.So, for the first time in 21 years, the Bison are part of the N.C.A.A. tournament, and they already have a win under their belt thanks to a 15-point double-double from Brooklyn Fort-Davis.Their reward? A date on Friday with No. 1 seed South Carolina, one of the favorites in the field.FairfieldFairfield Coach Joe Frager is hoping to lead the Stags on a deep tournament run in his final season.Matt Rourke/Associated PressFairfield Coach Joe Frager knew this season would be his last.In October, ahead of his 15th season with the Stags, he said he would step away at the end of the year, citing his health.Frager has led postseason runs before: His Southern Connecticut State squad won the 2007 N.C.A.A. Division II championship in 2007, his last year there before he went to Fairfield.Under his predecessor, Dianne Nolan, the Stags earned an at-large bid to the 2001 N.C.A.A. tournament.They hadn’t been back since.“This has been a special season due to the efforts of our coaching staff and players,” Frager said. “This group has been focused and goal-oriented from beginning to end, and that speaks volumes about the leadership provided by our seniors. Right now, I am very much in the moment. I’m sure after some time passes, I’ll be able to savor the memories of this great season.”Fairfield (25-6) defeated Manhattan to take the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament championship and earn an automatic qualifier. The Stags are led by the senior forward Lou Lopez-Senechal, who scored 24 points in the conference title game. They’ll play Texas, a No. 2 seed and the Big 12 Conference tournament champion, on Friday.Nevada-Las VegasU.N.L.V.’s Essence Booker scored 25 points in the Mountain West Conference tournament championship game.Rick Bowmer/Associated PressU.N.L.V. (26-6) hasn’t been to the tournament since 2002. A win over Colorado State in the Mountain West Conference tournament championship game put it back there 20 years later.As a No. 13 seed, U.N.L.V. has an immediate challenge on Saturday night in the form of No. 4 seed Arizona, which lost to Stanford in last year’s title game.Coach Lindy La Rocque took over the program in 2021, and a year later has it back on college basketball’s biggest stage.U.N.L.V. averages 75.6 points per game, its most since 2009-10. The team is led by Essence Booker, who was named the Mountain West tournament’s most valuable player after dropping 25 points in the championship game.Texas at ArlingtonStarr Jacobs, the Sun Belt Conference player of the year, has played only a single Division I season.After transferring from Temple College, a junior college in Texas, she became the first U.T.A. player to average more than 20 points per game. She also led U.T.A. (20-7) to its first tournament appearance in 15 years.As a No. 14 seed, the team will face third-seeded Iowa State on Friday night. It will be the program’s last time representing the Sun Belt, as the university will join the Western Athletic Conference next season.Before then, though, U.T.A. wants to show its star power — or rather, Starr power.Illinois StateThe Redbirds, the Missouri Valley Conference tournament champions, have won a single N.C.A.A. tournament game, in 1989. They haven’t even had the chance since 2008.No. 15 seeded Illinois State (19-13) will play on Friday against No. 2 seed Iowa, the Big Ten tournament champion and one of the most dynamic and high-profile teams of the N.C.A.A. tournament.The Redbirds are 1-5 in the N.C.A.A. tournament, and it won’t be easy to beat the Caitlin Clark-led Hawkeyes.Juliunn Redmond leads the Redbirds in scoring with 17.6 points per game, while the all-conference forward DeAnna Wilson has tallied eight double-doubles this season.LongwoodLongwood’s Kyla McMakin, right, leads the Lancers in scoring. Longwood beat Campbell in the Big South tournament title game.Rusty Jones/Associated PressWhen Longwood takes the court Thursday night in Raleigh, N.C., it will have been more than a decade in the making.The No. 16-seeded Lancers, who completed their transition to Division I in the 2007-8 season, struggled through years of losing seasons before making the tournament. Just three seasons ago, they finished 3-27.Now, behind the Big South Conference player of the year Akila Smith, who is tied for third in Division I in blocks with Kansas State’s Ayoka Lee, the Lancers (21-11) will get a chance in a play-in game against Mount St. Mary’s. A win on Thursday would earn them a date with No. 1 North Carolina State. More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Golf

      Coach and Six College Golfers Die in Texas Bus Wreck

      by

      The University of the Southwest said its golf coach, Tyler James, was among the dead and that two people were in critical condition.Seven people from the University of the Southwest died after its men’s and women’s golf teams were involved in a fatal wreck in Texas on Tuesday night, officials from the Christian university in New Mexico said Wednesday.“The U.S.W. campus community is shocked and saddened today as we mourn the loss of members of our university family,” the university said in a statement that also said that two passengers were in critical condition and being treated in Lubbock, Texas.Although the university did not identify any of the victims by name, it said its golf coach was among the people who had died in the wreck, which it said happened when its bus was “struck by oncoming traffic.” A spokeswoman for the university in Hobbs, N.M., said the only people aboard the bus were the golf coach, Tyler James, and students.The Texas Department of Public Safety, which is investigating the wreck, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. But a spokesman, Sgt. Steven Blanco, told local news outlets that the other vehicle involved in the crash had been a pickup and that at least one person in the truck died.“It’s a very tragic scene,” the sergeant told KWES-TV near the crash site on Tuesday night. “It’s very, very tragic.”The golf teams had traveled to Texas, where many of their players had gone to high school, to compete in a collegiate tournament in Midland. The crash happened in nearby Andrews County.James was new to the nondenominational religious university, hired just last summer as coach after he had worked at other Christian universities and at a high school about 120 miles southwest of Fort Worth.The U.S.W. sports program, which competes in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, is a part of the undergraduate experience for most students, according to federal records. Between July 2019 and June 2020, it earned revenues of about $3.5 million and recorded just more than that in expenses. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Basket

      Across Town, Tony Bland Is Adjusting to a Different World

      by

      Bland, a former U.S.C. assistant coach arrested in 2017 as part of an F.B.I. investigation, is now coaching at a Los Angeles-area high school. He still hopes he can return to the college level.PLAYA DEL REY, Calif. — In an alternate universe, Tony Bland might have been a world away on Tuesday night, on the sideline at the University of Southern California’s sold-out Galen Center, coaching the home team in a nationally televised, high-stakes men’s basketball game against Arizona.Instead, Bland was in a well-worn high school gym about 20 miles away with the St. Bernard High School boys basketball team in a state playoff game.He is trying his best to, as he says, plant himself where his feet are, to think about where he is and not stew about what he once had — a college career that had him on the fast track to possibly becoming a head coach.Still, the reminders are hard to miss: After St. Bernard dispatched feisty Long Beach Poly, 52-40, Bland was congratulated by Wyking Jones, a University of Washington assistant recruiting one of his players. In the stands was the U.C.L.A. assistant Rod Palmer, whose son Joshua is a freshman at St. Bernard. One of his team’s leaders is Jason Hart Jr., whose father was on the U.S.C. coaching staff with Bland and now coaches in the N.B.A.’s G League.The triggers are particularly strong in March, when college basketball takes center stage in the American sports landscape and deep N.C.A.A. tournament runs, like U.S.C.’s to last year’s regional final, can be springboards for coaches with aspirations.“It’s the competitive itch,” Bland said. “The what if? Ascending the college coaching ranks to maybe soon be a head coach. How I would have done it. I remember when I used to do this. It’s the whole thing.”Everything changed for Bland on Sept. 26, 2017, when armed federal agents — their weapons drawn — stormed into his hotel room in Tampa, Fla., and arrested Bland as part of a nationwide college basketball corruption scandal. Bland was one of 10 people arrested that day as a result of an investigation that targeted some of the nation’s most prominent programs and that federal prosecutors boasted would expose the sport’s shady underbelly.“We have your playbook,” the F.B.I.’s William Sweeney thundered, sending a chill through the college basketball world when he added that the investigation, which had been fortified by wiretaps, was ongoing.Now, some four and a half years later, it has long been clear how empty those overinflated proclamations have been. (The same can be said for the breathless exclamations that a sea change in the sport was at hand.)The N.C.A.A. has done little more than slap a few schools on the wrist, and Rick Pitino is the only head coach who was fired in 2017 — a result less of his culpability than that the investigation was the latest in a string of embarrassing incidents during his tenure at Louisville. (Pitino now coaches Iona).Federal authorities fought in court in 2019 to keep Louisiana State Coach Will Wade off the witness stand. Wade is in his fifth year at L.S.U.Jeff Blake/USA Today Sports, via ReutersAnd the Feds, rather than exposing top college coaches, went lengths to shield them. They fought in court in 2019 to keep Louisiana State’s Will Wade, Arizona’s Sean Miller — who was fired last year — and other coaches off the witness stand. They also fought to keep an undercover agent from testifying, the reasons for which became clear last week: An F.B.I. agent pleaded guilty to gambling with $13,500 in government money at a Las Vegas casino in late July 2017, dates and circumstances that coincide with the sting operation that nabbed Bland and others.So, the head coaches who were accused in court of having known about — or even having facilitated — payments to players have almost all continued to collect million-dollar salaries, and business has proceeded as usual. (Arizona, Auburn and Kansas — all implicated in the scheme — are ranked second, fifth and sixth, respectively, in this week’s Associated Press poll.)“If anyone thinks that there is such a thing as a clean big-time program, they need to wake up and smell the donkey” manure, wrote Merl Code, a former shoe company employee, in his recently published book, “Black Market: An Insider’s Journey Into the High-Stakes World of College Basketball,” using an expletive. “Somewhere along the line, even the so-called cleanest of programs has some dirt if you look close enough.”Code, like Christian Dawkins, an aspiring agent, was sentenced to prison for his role in shunting money to top high school prospects and/or their families — a practice that has long been against N.C.A.A. rules, but one that has looked far less illicit as schools have made millions off the backs of an unpaid, largely Black labor force.(Code said Pitino and Kansas Coach Bill Self knew about payments he facilitated to players; both have denied any involvement.)Lamont Evans, Emanuel Richardson and Chuck Person were all fired from their assistant coach roles for accepting bribes.USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe case has only underscored the racial dynamic that is coming under greater scrutiny in major college sports: Coaches and top administrators, most of them white, enriching themselves thanks to the athletes, largely Black, who power their team’s success. All but one of the nine people who have been convicted or pleaded guilty in the corruption case are Black.Chuck Person (Auburn), Emanuel Richardson (Arizona), Lamont Evans (South Carolina and Oklahoma State), Preston Murphy (Creighton), Corey Barker (Texas Christian and New Mexico State) and Bland were all fired as assistants for accepting bribes. Murphy and Barker were not charged with crimes because they had returned the bribes.All have also been hit with show-cause penalties ranging from two years to 10, meaning that any college that wants to hire them has to explain to the N.C.A.A. why it wants to do so.The penalties effectively serve as a ban, and so many of the coaches are working as trainers, running workouts and camps for anyone who will pay them. Bland seems to be the only one coaching at a school.“I’m not saying these guys did anything wrong,” Bland said of the head coaches. “But what the assistant coaches went down for, I don’t know if they anticipated something more coming from it. I don’t know if there was supposed to be a Part B. This whole scheme and TV and bust for that? I don’t understand it.”Bland pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery — accepting $4,100 from Dawkins to steer players to a financial adviser — and received two years probation.Bland said he accepted only $2,100 from Dawkins, a friend for about a decade who told him to enjoy a night out in Las Vegas as a thanks for meeting with the financial adviser. He said, though, that he had little choice but to accept the plea deal because, if his case went to trial, it would be lumped in with those of four other defendants. “It was a business decision,” said Bland, who said he was so traumatized by the arrest that he couldn’t sleep in a hotel room. “I had to protect my family.”Bland, 42, said his wife urged him to think beyond basketball and reminded him that he had much to offer, but a few decades ago, the game is what carried him from South Los Angeles to Westchester High, the powerhouse public school that’s just around the bend from St. Bernard. A state championship helped earn him a scholarship to Syracuse and San Diego State.Bland felt at home in those same Los Angeles gyms when he returned to recruit one of the nation’s most fertile talent grounds, first as an assistant at San Diego State and then at U.S.C. He volunteered at St. Bernard, then took over as coach before last season.“We had a team, but he’s building a program,” said Jamie Mark, the athletic director, who had spent most of her career working for a sports agency. “And I think Tony likes the idea of building something.”The opportunity to coach has meant something for Bland, too. He has not given up hope of returning to the college game and one day being a head coach. “The people in college basketball understand my situation,” he said, later adding that his former boss at U.S.C., Andy Enfield, remains one of his biggest supporters. (Enfield is recruiting one of Bland’s best players, Tyler Rolison, a junior guard.)But he also knows there is more to the equation. A college coach is going to have to sell his athletic director on hiring Bland, and the athletic director will have to explain it to the university president. And so, with two more years left on his show-cause penalty, Bland said he knew better than to look too far down the road — or even across town.“This right here,” Bland said Tuesday night, sitting on the bleachers of a nearly empty gym, “has been helping to rehabilitate my soul.” More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Football

      Terry Brennan, Youthful Notre Dame Football Coach, Dies at 93

      by

      One of Leahy’s Lads as a player on national championship teams, he was hired as coach at 25 and fired at 30.Terry Brennan was one of Leahy’s Lads, the elusive runners, strong-armed passers and muscular linemen who propelled Notre Dame to four national football championships under Coach Frank Leahy in the 1940s.Brennan played halfback on two of those teams, and he starred in the annual rivalry with Army. But he was remembered most for succeeding Leahy at age 25, a move that startled the college football world.Notre Dame announced Wednesday that Brennan, who was living in Wilmette, Ill., has died at 93. It did not provide details.Brennan took over a football program that had transformed Notre Dame from a small, largely unknown Roman Catholic institution in South Bend, Ind., to a storied name in popular culture. But his coaching résumé was limited to three high school championship teams in Chicago and one year as Leahy’s freshman coach.When Leahy retired and Brennan replaced him in February 1954, the sports columnist Red Smith saw turbulence looming.“He’s only 25,” Smith wrote. “By the time he’s 30, he’ll be a good deal more than five years older. Coaching Notre Dame is the most coveted job in football, and probably the most nerve-racking.”At the age of 30, Brennan was fired.He had coached four winning teams in five seasons. His 1957 team pulled off one of college football’s greatest upsets, a 7-0 road victory over Oklahoma, snapping its record-setting 47-game winning streak. But he had been faced with a reduction in athletic scholarships ordered by Notre Dame’s president, the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, who was determined to have Notre Dame viewed as a renowned academic institution and only secondly as a football powerhouse. Father Hesburgh had, in fact, taught Brennan at Notre Dame and had admired his intellect.Brennan was probably doomed by his failure to win a national championship, something that Notre Dame’s alumni had come to expect virtually every year. And Leahy, in retirement, feuded with him, questioning the team’s fighting spirit.Brennan’s firing, four days before Christmas in 1958, was widely condemned in the football world.“Notre Dame won’t look very good in the eyes of the country,” said Louisiana State’s Paul Dietzel, the 1958 college coach of the year.The Indiana Catholic and Record, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, said that the real losers in Brennan’s firing were “the priests and laymen at Notre Dame who were trying, successfully, we believe, to remake the public image of Notre Dame from football factory to first-class university.”Terence Patrick Brennan was born on June 11, 1928, in Milwaukee. He was a high school football star, then made the Notre Dame lineup as a freshman in 1945, when most of the regulars were serving in World War II.In the postwar years, Notre Dame, led by quarterback Johnny Lujack, vied with Army for college football supremacy. Brennan, playing on both offense and defense, made a key play in their 1946 game at Yankee Stadium, a matchup of unbeaten squads, intercepting a halfback option pass by Army’s Glenn Davis on the Irish 8-yard line late in the first period. The teams played to a 0-0 tie, but Notre Dame was voted national champions.In the 1947 Army game Brennan ran the opening kickoff back 97 yards for a touchdown and scored again on a 3-yard run in the first period, sending Notre Dame to a 27-7 victory and another national title.He led the Irish in receiving and scoring in 1946 and ’47 and he rushed for 1,269 career yards, but knee problems kept him from a pro football career.Brennan coached Mount Carmel High School of Chicago to three consecutive Catholic league championships while obtaining a law degree from DePaul University in Chicago, then became Leahy’s freshman coach in 1953. Leahy developed health problems that season, leading to his retirement.Brennan had trouble getting into Notre Dame’s stadium for his first home game as head coach, against Texas, when he encountered roadblocks funneling traffic. “The police wouldn’t let me down Notre Dame Avenue, nor would they believe I was the head coach,” he once recalled. “I guess I looked too young.”Notre Dame went 9-1 and 8-2 in Brennan’s first two seasons as coach with players recruited by Leahy. But with the talent drying up in the face of scholarship restrictions and enhanced admission requirements for athletes, the Irish could no longer dominate. Notre Dame plunged to 2-8 in 1956, though quarterback Paul Hornung won the Heisman Trophy.On the eve of the 1956 season finale, at Southern California, Leahy said: “It’s not the losses that upset me. It’s the attitude. What has happened to the old Notre Dame spirit?”Brennan’s teams went 7-3 and 6-4 in the following two seasons, but with Notre Dame’s glory days clearly at an end, he was asked to resign. He was fired after refusing to do so, telling Sports Illustrated soon afterward that he didn’t want to be seen as “quitting and running out.”He was replaced by Joe Kuharich, a Notre Dame guard of the 1930s who had been coaching the Washington Redskins. Kuharich never had a winning team in four seasons at Notre Dame.Brennan became an investment banker in Chicago. He never coached football again.Brennan in survived by four sons, Terry, Chris, Joe and Matt; two daughters, Denise Dwyer and Jane Lipton; 25 grandchildren and 32 great-grandchildren. His wife, Mary Louise, died in 2001.Looking back at his firing, Brennan felt that criticism from Leahy had turned Notre Dame alumni against him. “Psychologically in his mind, if the person who followed him succeeded, somehow that took away from what he did,” Brennan told The South Bend Tribune in 1999. “I had absolutely no use for him.”“It’s a real shame, kind of sad,” Hornung said of Brennan. “He could have been one of the great coaches in Notre Dame history.” More

    • 150 Shares149 Views

      in Basket

      Teenage Ballers Can Cash in Earlier Than Ever. But at What Cost?

      by

      Male players as young as 16 have many options to play high-level basketball before the N.B.A. without going to college — and get paid big money to do it.In February, Ramses Melendez, who goes by RJ, announced his college decision in a video posted to his social media accounts. A 4-star forward in the class of 2021, Melendez followed a typical formula for the video: a highlight reel and then a jersey reveal. He strayed from the script for a moment, though, when he acknowledged in a voice-over that “it wasn’t easy to make this decision.”A couple of months later, an unusual phone call made that decision even more difficult.On the other end of the line was Timothy Fuller, a former college basketball coach and the director of recruiting for a new league, Overtime Elite. Backed by investors ranging from the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to the Nets All-Star forward Kevin Durant, Overtime Elite aims to be an alternative to college as a path to the N.B.A. for high-level high school basketball players as young as 16.Fuller had seen Melendez play, and he wanted to offer him a spot in the nascent league. Fuller told Melendez that Overtime would help him prepare for the pros. Fuller also told Melendez that, unlike college, the league could pay him.A lot.Melendez declined to reveal a dollar figure during a recent interview at Rucker Park in New York City, where he was preparing to play in the Omni Elite tournament. But he did say that it was in line with Overtime’s other announced deals.In May, Overtime signed Matt and Ryan Bewley, twin brothers in Florida who are rising high school juniors, to two-year deals reportedly worth at least $1 million apiece. The league has since signed another set of Florida basketball twins for an undisclosed sum, and its leaders have said that it will eventually acquire 30 players who are each making a minimum annual salary of $100,000.“The money was nice, but it wasn’t the most important factor in my decision,” Melendez said. “I want my next step to get me ready to play in the N.B.A. I asked myself: What’s the best way to get there?”This year’s N.B.A. draft, whose order was announced last week with Detroit landing the top pick, isn’t likely to feature any players from the newest alternative paths when it takes place on July 29. But the 2022 draft will be a different story, and players and coaches from middle school to college have taken notice — and taken action.For top-flight high school basketball players, recruiting has often been a high-wire walk without much of a safety net. These teenagers have to discern the trustworthiness of college coaches who text and call them relentlessly, promising playing time and a sure path to the pros. And they have to be wary of boosters and agents and other unscrupulous characters who often offer money and benefits that run afoul of N.C.A.A. rules and the law.Now the best men’s players also have to decide whether it’s worth it to forfeit their college eligibility by turning pro during or immediately after high school.Because of the N.B.A.’s so-called one-and-done rule, American players must be 19 years old and one year removed from their high school graduating class to be eligible to be drafted. But no rule says they must attend college during that year. These new leagues are hoping to lure top players away from the N.C.A.A. with something colleges can’t match: a salary.In addition to Overtime Elite, there is also the N.B.A.’s own elite developmental team, the G League Ignite, which pays top players far and above the salaries for the G League’s regular teams. There is the Professional Collegiate League, which is backed by former Obama administration officials and aims to place 96 players on eight teams this fall. Those players will be compensated up to $150,000 each and receive a lifetime academic scholarship.And there are also overseas professional leagues, from Australia to Europe to China, pursuing American high school stars.“Before it was just, ‘What college am I going to?’” said Samson Johnson, a center from New Jersey who has committed to play for Connecticut in 2021-22. “Now there’s a lot of leagues, and it’s hard to keep up with all this new information. How can you be sure what’s real? It’s risky.”Among top prospects, the G League Ignite team has become the most attractive alternative to college. The G League enjoys the N.B.A.’s backing, and it also has proved it can develop N.B.A. draft prospects.Last year, the Ignite team inked the 5-star guard Jalen Green to a $500,000 contract. Despite playing a shortened season because of the coronavirus pandemic, Green is still considered a top-five pick for this year’s N.B.A. draft in July.Seeing other players succeed in the G League was part of the reason Scoot Henderson decided to graduate from high school early and sign a two-year, $1 million deal with the Ignite.“I wanted to be myself, and I wanted to own myself,” Scoot Henderson said. “With the G League, I get to play at a high level every night.”Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesHenderson had garnered interest from a professional league in China, from Overtime and from just about every college basketball powerhouse in the country.His decision came down to college or the Ignite team, which offered money, competition and the opportunity to sign endorsements. Despite some scattered progress on names, images and likeness reforms, it remains unclear whether N.C.A.A. athletes will be able to sign endorsement deals this year.“I wanted to be myself, and I wanted to own myself,” Henderson said. “With the G League, I get to play at a high level every night. I can also run camps and sign autographs and sponsor products.”Henderson had an added benefit while weighing his options. His A.A.U. coach, Parrish Johnson, is a longtime friend of Ignite Coach Brian Shaw.But not every elite high school player is so lucky. The N.C.A.A. doesn’t allow high school players to have contacts with agents, so they have to rely on the advice of coaches and family members who are not often familiar with the nuances of professional athletic contracts.Darrell Miller’s son, Brandon, is a top-15 prospect in the class of 2022. Whenever Darrell learns about a new league, he pulls out his laptop and starts Googling. Sometimes he’ll find himself with a dozen tabs open as they’re waiting at the airport for a flight to another A.A.U. tournament.“The scary part is: You just don’t know,” he said. “These are start-ups. They look really nice. They have the coaches. They have the board members. But then you get this feeling: What if? What if that check doesn’t clear? What if my son’s stock drops? If you’re a professional athlete, you’re not allowed to make the same mistakes you can as a college kid. If you choose the wrong college, you can transfer. If you choose the wrong pro league, what’s your backup plan?”Some high school and A.A.U. coaches, who are often players’ closest confidants, are also uncomfortable with their roles.“Your biggest nightmare as a coach is to push a kid in a certain direction and have it not work out,” said Vonzell Thomas, who coaches the A.A.U. team Southern Assault. “Then for the rest of that kid’s life, whenever he thinks of you, he’ll think: That’s the guy who screwed up my life. You never want your name to come up when a kid gets asked why he didn’t make it.”Melendez discussed the Overtime offer with his parents and coaches. They looked at the contract together. Ultimately, he decided to turn the league down and stick with his decision to play at Illinois. It felt, for now, like the safer decision.“I said no because I’ve heard some N.B.A. players talk about how they regret not playing in college,” he said. “I don’t want to find myself in that situation. I didn’t want to wake up next year and feel like I’d made a big mistake. These leagues may turn out to be great opportunities, but I want to be able to see some history first. I want to make sure it works. These decisions change your entire life.” More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Basket

      Coach K’s Retirement From Duke and the End of the College ‘Supercoach’

      by

      Mike Krzyzewski of Duke announced his retirement shortly after his Tobacco Road nemesis, Roy Williams, announced his, as the N.C.A.A prepares to grant athletes greater agency.Is the supercoach soon to be extinct?Jim Boeheim, how much longer will you hold on at Syracuse?John Calipari, what about your long ride at Kentucky?Tom Izzo at Michigan State, and even Nick Saban, the czar of college football at Alabama, have you been double-checking your retirement plans?Together, you represent the last of a dying breed.The herd of such coaches — transcendent, paternalistic, charismatic, leading the most vaunted men’s programs in the most popular sports — thinned significantly last week when Mike Krzyzewski, a coaching legend, announced his plans to decamp from Duke. At the end of next season, with 42 years and at least five national titles in the bag, Krzyzewski will pull the curtains on a remarkable career.The transition isn’t just a monumental moment in the history of Duke basketball, royalty in college sports. It also signals broad, fundamental change. As amateur and professional players disrupt the status quo, they are sparking a revolution that is giving athletes increased power while diminishing the prevalence of coaches’ unquestioned authority.Nowhere is that more apparent than in college, particularly in football and men’s basketball, where supercoaches are now an endangered species.It was not long ago when they strode unquestioned across the college sports firmament. More famous than all but a few of their players, they weren’t just coaches, they were archetypes, part of a mythology in American sports that connects to the days of Knute Rockne at Notre Dame.The annual games pitting Duke against North Carolina were billed as a test of deities — first Krzyzewski against Dean Smith, then Coach K against Roy Williams.But Williams retired two months ago, after 48 years, suddenly and surprisingly. An avowed traditionalist, it was clear that he had seen enough of the changes shaping the future of college sports.“I’m old school,” Roy Williams has said of the new N.C.A.A. transfer rules. “I believe if you have a little adversity, you ought to fight through it, and it makes you stronger at the end.”Tom Pennington/Getty ImagesUpstart disrupter leagues such as Overtime Elite and the Professional Collegiate League are set to take on the establishment, even as the G League flourishes as a minor league alternative to the N.B.A. They are offering lucrative contracts to the best high school players — Overtime Elite offers $100,000 annually — legitimizing payments to players who have long operated under the table in the college game.Krzyzewski earns in the neighborhood of $10 million a year, a mogul who operates atop an economic caste system that has kept the athletes unpaid at the bottom of the barrel.Players have fought for the ability to be paid, too, and soon they will finally be able to earn significant sums by trading on their marketability as the N.C.A.A. prepares to respond to legislation sweeping the country that will allow student-athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness. Eventually they may end up getting salaries from their universities for their work on the field and court. A push continues to allow them to unionize.Coaches have always had the freedom to walk away from their contracts for better deals at other colleges.Players fought for similar mobility.Now they can transfer to another school and play immediately, instead of being penalized with sitting out for a year. Baylor just won the men’s national title in basketball on the strength of players who started their careers at other universities.What’s the supercoach take on that kind of player freedom?“I’m old school,” said Roy Williams, considering the matter before he retired. “I believe if you have a little adversity, you ought to fight through it, and it makes you stronger at the end. I believe when you make a commitment, that commitment should be solid.”The irony is thick. In 2003, Williams bolted to North Carolina from Kansas. He left the Kansas players he had recruited, no doubt with promises that he was going to stay put, in the rearview mirror.Gone are the days of reeling in top players like Duke’s Grant Hill and Christian Laettner, watching them mature for four years and riding their talents to multiple national titles.Gone, too, are the days when athletes didn’t have options. They kept complaints quiet or risked being banished to the bench, maybe for good. Today’s college athletes can take their concerns to far-flung audiences on social media or easily move to another university.All of this makes players less likely to follow every last dictate without question. It lays siege to the kind of authority that has powered the best-known men’s coaches in the biggest college sports for over a hundred years.In the news conference announcing his departure, Krzyzewski said his retirement had nothing to do with the swiftly evolving landscape.“I’ve been in it for 46 years,” he said. “Do you think the game has never changed? We’ve always had to adapt to the changes in culture, the changes in rules, the changes in the world. We’re going through one right now.”That’s a dodge.Equating today’s tectonic shifts to the relatively minor changes of yesteryear — the introductions of the 3-point line or the shot clock, for instance — misses the mark.The world of old seems quaint now. Think of the 1980s, after Krzyzewski went to Durham after coaching at West Point.Along with Coach K at Duke and Smith at North Carolina, Jim Valvano strode the sideline at North Carolina State. Not far away, in the mighty Big East Conference, stood Lou Carnesecca (and his famed sweater) at St. John’s. Rollie Massimino was at Villanova. John Thompson at Georgetown. And a much younger version of Boeheim, now 74, at Syracuse.Apologies to the younger generation, to the likes of Baylor’s 50-year-old men’s basketball coach, Scott Drew, but it will never be that way again. Not with the players getting in on the action, getting a share of the pie, demanding their rights.The time is right for change. Ten years down the line, what will the landscape look like?Nobody can say for sure, which is both exciting and daunting. But this much seems inevitable: The supercoach, secure in power, dictating the terms, firm in archetypal fame, is unlikely to still be around. More

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in Football

      Former Penn State President Will Serve 2 Months in Jail in Child Abuse Scandal

      by

      Graham B. Spanier, who was found guilty in 2017 of one misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child, must report to prison on July 9.Graham B. Spanier, the former president of Pennsylvania State University, must serve two months in jail followed by two months of house arrest for his role in a child abuse scandal that rocked the university a decade ago, a judge reaffirmed on Wednesday, according to prosecutors.The judge, John A. Boccabella, upheld the sentence he issued four years ago after Mr. Spanier, 72, was found guilty of one misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child.Prosecutors said Mr. Spanier had failed to report child abuse allegations to law enforcement officials when he learned that Jerry Sandusky, an assistant coach of the vaunted Nittany Lions football team, had been seen abusing a boy in a locker room shower on campus.Mr. Spanier must report to the Centre County Correctional Facility in Bellefonte, Pa., to begin serving the sentence on July 9, prosecutors said.“He made a mistake and he’s going to pay for his mistake, but I don’t consider him to be a danger to society as I would a criminal,” Judge Boccabella said in the Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas, according to The Associated Press.Mr. Spanier had remained free as he sought relief after the conviction, which had been overturned by a federal judge in 2019 before it was reinstated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in December.Mr. Sandusky was convicted in 2012 of sexually abusing 10 young boys and was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison. In 2013, Penn State agreed to pay $59.7 million to 26 sexual abuse victims in exchange for an end to their claims against the university.The abuse shocked the university and badly tarnished the reputation of its celebrated head coach, Joe Paterno, who was among those suspected of turning a blind eye to Mr. Sandusky’s conduct. Mr. Paterno was dismissed and died in 2012.Mr. Spanier had served as president of Penn State for 16 years before he was forced out in 2011. His case drew attention not only because of his stature as a university president but also because he had spoken publicly about his own history of being abused as a child by his father, who beat him severely.“The single most important thing I can say is that I’m sorry,” he told the court when he was sentenced in 2017. “I deeply regret that I did not intervene far more carefully.”On Wednesday, Judge Boccabella upheld the original sentence of four to 12 months of incarceration that he had issued in 2017, prosecutors said. In addition to the two months in jail and two months of house arrest, Mr. Spanier will also have to serve two years of probation and complete 200 hours of community service, prosecutors said.“Today marks the end of a long road towards justice for the children endangered by Mr. Spanier’s inaction — choosing to cover up the abuse at the hands of Jerry Sandusky rather than reporting it to law enforcement,” Pennsylvania’s attorney general, Josh Shapiro, said in a statement. “There are consequences for failing to protect children in Pennsylvania.”Mr. Spanier’s lawyer, Samuel W. Silver, had asked that his client be allowed to serve his sentence at home.Mr. Silver said that Mr. Spanier underwent open-heart surgery in September 2019 and had an advanced stage of prostate cancer, putting him at risk from the coronavirus, The A.P. reported. Mr. Spanier is fully vaccinated, Mr. Silver said.“Fortunately, things are not as dire as they were a year ago,” Judge Boccabella said, according to The A.P.In an email on Wednesday, Mr. Silver said that he had argued in court that “in light of the circumstances, the attorney general’s insistence that Dr. Spanier should now be confined in a correctional facility is remarkable.” More