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    The N.C.A.A. Agreed to Pay Players. It Won’t Call Them Employees.

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    The argument is the organization’s attempt to maintain the last vestiges of its amateur model and to prevent college athletes from collectively bargaining.The immediate takeaway from the landmark $2.8 billion settlement that the N.C.A.A. and the major athletic conferences accepted on Thursday was that it cut straight at the heart of the organization’s cherished model of amateurism: Schools can now pay their athletes directly.But another bedrock principle remains intact, and maintaining it is likely to be a priority for the N.C.A.A.: that players who are paid by the universities are not employed by them, and therefore do not have the right to collectively bargain.Congress must “establish that our athletes are not employees, but students seeking college degrees,” John I. Jenkins, the president of the University of Notre Dame, said in a statement when the agreement was announced.It is the N.C.A.A.’s attempt to salvage the last vestiges of its amateur model, which for decades barred college athletes from being paid by schools or anyone else without risking their eligibility. That stance came under greater legal and political scrutiny in recent years, leading to the settlement, which still requires approval by a judge.On its face, the argument may seem peculiar. Over the past decade, public pressure and a series of court rulings — not to mention the reality that college athletics generated billions of dollars in annual revenue and that athletes received none of it — have forced the N.C.A.A. to unravel restrictions on player compensation. A California law that made it illegal to block college athletes from name, image and licensing, or N.I.L., deals paved the way for athletes to seek compensation, some of them receiving seven figures annually.At the same time, college sports have become an increasingly national enterprise. Regional rivalries and traditions have been tossed aside as schools have switched conference allegiances in pursuit of TV money. Individual conferences can now stretch from Palo Alto, Calif., to Chestnut Hill, Mass., meaning many athletes in a variety of sports are spending more time traveling to games and less time on campus.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The NCAA Agreed to Pay Players. It Won’t Call Them Employees.

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      The argument is the organization’s attempt to maintain the last vestiges of its amateur model and to prevent college athletes from collectively bargaining.The immediate takeaway from the landmark $2.8 billion settlement that the N.C.A.A. and the major athletic conferences accepted on Thursday was that it cut straight at the heart of the organization’s cherished model of amateurism: Schools can now pay their athletes directly.But another bedrock principle remains intact, and maintaining it is likely to be a priority for the N.C.A.A.: that players who are paid by the universities are not employed by them, and therefore do not have the right to collectively bargain.Congress must “establish that our athletes are not employees, but students seeking college degrees,” John I. Jenkins, the president of the University of Notre Dame, said in a statement when the agreement was announced.It is the N.C.A.A.’s attempt to salvage the last vestiges of its amateur model, which for decades barred college athletes from being paid by schools or anyone else without risking their eligibility. That stance came under greater legal and political scrutiny in recent years, leading to the settlement, which still requires approval by a judge.On its face, the argument may seem peculiar. Over the past decade, public pressure and a series of court rulings — not to mention the reality that college athletics generated billions of dollars in annual revenue and that athletes received none of it — have forced the N.C.A.A. to unravel restrictions on player compensation. A California law that made it illegal to block college athletes from name, image and licensing, or N.I.L., deals paved the way for athletes to seek compensation, some of them receiving seven figures annually.At the same time, college sports have become an increasingly national enterprise. Regional rivalries and traditions have been tossed aside as schools have switched conference allegiances in pursuit of TV money. Individual conferences can now stretch from Palo Alto, Calif., to Chestnut Hill, Mass., meaning many athletes in a variety of sports are spending more time traveling to games and less time on campus.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      LSU’s Kim Mulkey Courts Controversy in Style

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      Inside the coach’s winning fashion playbook.The smog of a Washington Post exposé may have been hanging over Kim Mulkey’s head during the L.S.U. game on Saturday afternoon, but the highest paid coach in women’s collegiate basketball wasn’t going to hide. How could you tell?Well, in part because at the start of the N.C.A.A. tournament, she had given a news conference threatening a lawsuit about the article, thus calling to attention to it. In part because there she was, running up and down the sidelines and screaming her head off. And it part because … goodness, what was she wearing?A gleaming pantsuit covered in a jumble of Op Art sequined squiggles, as if Big Bird had met Liberace and they’d teamed up for “Project Runway.”Kim Mulkey, resplendent in sequins at the L.S.U. Sweet Sixteen game on March 30.Gregory Fisher/USA Today, via ReutersEven in the context of basketball, a sport in which players and coaches understood the power of personal branding through clothes long before almost any other athletes, Ms. Mulkey stands out. More than perhaps anyone else in the league — possibly in all of women’s basketball — she has made her image a talking point, a reflection of her own larger-than-life personality and a tool to draw attention to her sport. She is basketball’s avatar of the Trumpian era, offering a new version of The Mulkey Show at every game and costuming herself for the moment. As her team meets the University of Iowa again in the Elite Eight, brand Mulkey will most likely be raising the stakes once more.It would be wrong to call her clothes “fashion.” They have little to do with trends or silhouette. But love what she wears or hate it, love how she behaves or hate it, her sometimes ridiculous, always eye-catching outfits are, like her winning record, abrasive personality, problematic comments about Covid-19 and reported homophobia, impossible to ignore.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lefty Driesell, Basketball Coach Who Put Maryland on the Map, Dies at 92

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      He built Maryland into a national powerhouse and became the first coach to win more than 100 games at each of four major college programs.Lefty Driesell, the Hall of Fame coach who built nationally prominent basketball teams at the University of Maryland in the 1970s, and who at his retirement in 2003 was the nation’s fourth-winningest N.C.A.A. Division I men’s coach, died on Saturday at his home in Virginia Beach. He was 92.His death was announced by the university.Driesell (pronounced drih-ZELL) was the first coach to win more than 100 games at each of four major college programs. Over five decades, his teams won a total of 786 games.He coached at Maryland from 1969 until October 1986, posting a 348-159 overall record in College Park. His Terps reached eight N.C.A.A. postseason tournaments, won the 1972 National Invitation Tournament championship and captured an Atlantic Coast Conference tournament championship in 1984. They finished high in The Associated Press’s national college basketball rankings of the early 1970s.He was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018.Driesell was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., in 2018.Maddie Meyer/Getty ImagesAcross Davidson, Maryland, James Madison and Georgia State, Driesell had an overall record of 786-394. He coached James Madison to four consecutive appearances in the N.I.T. and led the team to the N.C.A.A. national tournament in 1994.He closed out his coaching career at Georgia State, where he was head coach from 1997 to 2003. He led the team to a huge upset of Wisconsin in the opening round of the 2001 N.C.A.A. tournament.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dartmouth Players Are Employees Who Can Unionize, U.S. Official Says

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      A regional director for the National Labor Relations Board cleared the way for the collegiate men’s basketball team to hold a vote.A federal official said Monday that members of the Dartmouth men’s basketball team were university employees, clearing a path for the team to take a vote that could make it the first unionized college sports program in the country.In a statement, the National Labor Relations Board’s regional director in Boston, Laura Sacks, said that because Dartmouth had “the right to control the work” of the team and because the team did that work “in exchange for compensation” like equipment and game tickets, the players were employees under the National Labor Relations Act.A date for the election on whether to unionize has not yet been set, and the result would need to be certified by the N.L.R.B. The university and the N.C.A.A. are expected to appeal the director’s decision.In September, all 15 players on the team’s varsity roster signed and filed a petition to the labor board to unionize with the Service Employees International Union. On Oct. 5, Dartmouth’s lawyers responded by arguing that the players did not have the right to collectively bargain because, as members of the Ivy League, they received no athletic scholarships and because the program lost money each year.The N.C.A.A. and its member schools have long resisted unionization attempts by college athletes, defending the student-athlete model that has come under fire by labor activists, judges and elected officials over the years.In 2014, the Northwestern football team led the highest-profile attempt by a college program to unionize, arguing that because the players were compensated through scholarships, they had the right to bargain collectively.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      N.C.A.A. Investigates Booster Club Funding for College Sports

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      The University of Tennessee’s football program is under investigation for recruiting violations involving a donor collective, signaling an effort to rein in the role of outside money in college sports.The N.C.A.A. is investigating the University of Tennessee’s football program for recruiting violations involving a group of outside donors, signaling an escalation of efforts to rein in the growing influence of money flooding into college sports, according to documents and people familiar with the case.The investigation is focused on Tennessee’s high-profile donor collective, a group of alumni and wealthy boosters who support the team by channeling payments and other benefits to players. The inquiry is looking at, among other things, the group’s role in flying a high-profile recruit to campus on a private jet while the football team was wooing him, one person familiar with the case said.Having the booster group pay for the trip by the recruit, Nico Iamaleava, now Tennessee’s starting quarterback, would be a violation of N.C.A.A. rules. The inquiry comes after the N.C.A.A. penalized Tennessee for earlier recruiting violations and signals the organization’s growing concern about the huge sums being injected into the nominally amateur world of college sports by donor collectives.The case could have profound implications for the direction of high-profile programs across the country, especially in football, where outside money raised and disbursed to players by collectives has reshaped the economics of the game. News of the investigation into Tennessee’s athletic program was first reported by Sports Illustrated.Officials at Tennessee are concerned that the investigation could result in a devastating blow to its football program, according to a person briefed on the matter. The program is already on probation for the earlier recruiting violations, and school officials are worried about the potential for the N.C.A.A. to take drastic action, like banning the team from postseason play and disqualifying players.Facing that possibility, the school has hired several law firms and is considering a range of legal options to stave off any consequences.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Johnny Green, Jumpin’ Knicks All-Star, Dies at 89

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      An All-Star forward — and an all-American at Michigan State — he was known as Jumpin’ Johnny, able to soar over taller opponents for 14 seasons in the N.B.A.Johnny Green, an All-Star forward for the Knicks in the 1960s who gained acclaim for his leaping ability and rebounding prowess through 14 National Basketball Association seasons, died on Thursday in Huntington, N.Y. He was 89.His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by his son Johnny Jr., who said his father had had heart and kidney problems for about a year.Jumpin’ Johnny, as he came to be known, was 6-foot-5 and about 200 pounds, but he often bested taller and huskier frontline opponents, snaring rebounds, blocking shots and hitting short-range baskets.He was durable as well; he avoided serious injuries and had some of his best seasons late in his career. He played in the N.B.A. until he was 39, retiring after the 1972-73 season.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Walter Davis, Basketball Star With a Velvet Touch, Dies at 69

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      “Walter is a good shooter until the fourth period,” one coach said of Davis, a standout in both college and the N.B.A. “Then he becomes a great shooter.”Walter Davis of the University of North Carolina in action against Duke in 1976. He averaged 15.7 points a game over four seasons there.Harold Valentine/Associated PressWalter Davis, whose smooth shooting propelled him to basketball stardom with the University of North Carolina and the Phoenix Suns, but who late in his career struggled with drug addiction, died on Thursday while visiting family in Charlotte, N.C. He was 69.The university announced his death but did not specify a cause.Davis, a 6-foot-6 forward, played at North Carolina from 1973 to 1977 for Dean Smith, one of the most successful coaches in college history. He averaged 15.7 points a game over four seasons on Tar Heels teams that also included Bobby Jones, Phil Ford and Mitch Kupchak.In one of Davis’s signature games, in March 1974, North Carolina was losing to Duke, 86-78, with 17 seconds left. After North Carolina closed the deficit to two points with time expiring, Davis tied it with a shot from a distance estimated at between 30 and 35 feet. (The basket would have counted for three points and won the game today, but the three-point shot was not officially introduced by the N.C.A.A. until 1986.) North Carolina went on to win in overtime, 96-92.“I wasn’t trying to bank it in,” Davis, then a freshman, said afterward. “It wasn’t a desperation shot. I was just trying to do my part, that’s all. I didn’t allow myself to think about anything. I just told myself it could only do two things, go in or come back out.”In 1976 he was a member of the United States team, also coached by Dean Smith, that won a gold medal at the Olympics in Montreal. A year later, he led North Carolina with 20 points — and 10 of his team’s last 12 — when it lost to Marquette, 67-59, in the final game of the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament.He was twice selected for all-Atlantic Coast Conference teams.His nephew Hubert is currently the North Carolina coach.Walter Davis was born on Sept. 9, 1954, in Pineville, N.C. His high school in Charlotte won three state titles in basketball before he left to attend prep school in Delaware. He arrived at North Carolina in 1973.In 1977, Davis had surgery on a broken finger after North Carolina won the A.C.C. tournament in his senior year. “Before they put me out, I remember looking up and Coach Smith was right there,” he told Ken Rosenthal for his book “Dean Smith: A Tribute” (2001). “I remember seeing him and having the screws drilled into my finger.”Davis was drafted by the Phoenix Suns in the first round of the 1977 N.B.A. draft. After averaging 24.2 points a game — the highest average of any season in his career — he was voted the league’s Rookie of the Year. He remained a steady performer throughout his 11 seasons with Phoenix, averaging 20.5 points a game as a small forward and shooting guard.Davis was a steady performer in his 11 seasons with the Phoenix Suns, averaging 20.5 points a game as a small forward and shooting guard.Focus on Sport/Getty ImagesDuring a game in 1983, he set a league record by scoring 34 points (on 15 field goals and four free throws) against Seattle before missing a shot.“I don’t remember a sweeter shot,” Alvan Adams, one of his teammates, told NBA.com in 2015. “He was a feared shooter. The other team knew it, too.”Chuck Daly, then the Detroit Pistons’ coach, told The New York Times in 1987: “Walter is a good shooter until the fourth period. Then he becomes a great shooter.”Davis had two nicknames: Sweet D and Greyhound.In his later years in Phoenix, Davis dealt with drug problems. In 1986, he spent a month in a drug rehabilitation center to treat cocaine and alcohol dependency. Early the next year he told The Times, “The scariest part is knowing that it is a disease that I will have to work on for the rest of my life.”When he relapsed in 1987, Davis was suspended by the league and once again entered a drug rehabilitation facility. He also received immunity from prosecution when he agreed to testify against several current and former Suns teammates, who were indicted on drug charges.In his testimony, The Arizona Republic reported, Davis said that he had first used cocaine in his second season in the league after being introduced to it by a teammate, Gar Heard. When asked by a prosecutor who else was there, he said, “Pretty much the whole team.”Later that year, Davis said that prosecutors had forced him to testify against his teammates.“I had no choice,” he told Sports Illustrated. “The last thing I wanted to do was get my teammates and friends indicted. If I’d known I was going to do that, I’d have probably gone to jail instead.”Davis left the Suns in 1988 to sign as a free agent with the Denver Nuggets. He was traded to the Portland Trail Blazers in 1991 and then re-signed with Denver, where he played in the 1991-92 season before retiring.Davis was honored by the Suns and the Black Chamber of Arizona during a Black History Month celebration in Phoenix in 2016. Barry Gossage/NBAE, via Getty ImagesDavis averaged 18.9 points a game for his career and played in six All-Star Games.After his retirement, he worked as an announcer and community ambassador for the Nuggets and a scout for the Washington Wizards.Information on survivors was not immediately available. More

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      The Not-So-Genteel Side of Tennis Is in the College Playoffs

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      It took roughly an hour for the last rounds of the N.C.A.A. Division I men’s tennis championships to get real.The top doubles teams from Virginia and Kentucky were locked in an epic tiebreaker to decide who would take the often crucial doubles point into the singles portion of their matchup. The Cavaliers and the Wildcats took turns saving match points with clutch volleys and gutsy passing shots, as their teammates and fans howled and taunted after every winner and error.One last Virginia forehand sailed long and wide, giving Kentucky the tiebreaker, 11-9, and the early advantage in the team competition. The howls got louder and the taunts more rowdy. The All England Club this was not.The college version of this supposedly genteel sport — especially the competition that unfolds in the final segment of the N.C.A.A. championships — is where tennis morphs into something more like the spectacle of pro wrestling.Players roar after nearly every point. Coaches regularly wander across the courts mid-game for quick pep talks and to give strategy tips. The crowds cheer double faults and mis-hits, and the fans scream for action on one court when someone is about to serve on another court just a few feet away. The school colors pop off the courts — Texas Christian purple, Texas Longhorn burnt orange, North Carolina baby blue, Stanford cardinal — and provide a welcome respite from the corporate apparel seen throughout the pro game.North Carolina women’s players practicing before their match.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesClaremont-Mudd-Scripps players using tubs with ice water for recovery after practice.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesIt is tennis with the volume turned up to 11, something the often staid and stale pro tours could learn from.“No place else I’d rather be,” said Fiona Crawley, a junior at the University of North Carolina, who is the top-ranked woman in the country playing for the top-ranked team. “This is my life.”Crawley, from San Antonio, is majoring in English and comparative literature. Her plan after graduation involves getting her “butt kicked on the tour for two years because I love to travel,” then becoming a teacher.The top-ranked University of Texas men’s team also has the No. 1 player on its side of the sport, with junior Eliot Spizzirri leading the top-ranked Longhorns into the final eight. He is thrilled to not be grinding the back roads of the pro circuit just yet.“It almost feels like a different sport,” Spizzirri said of college tennis. “You look to your left and your right and your best friends are competing right next to you and you don’t want to let them down.”An ocean away from all of this, Madrid, Rome and Paris are serving as the hot spots in the pro game this month during the European clay court swing. Yet for pure, high-octane intensity from the first ball to the last, it is hard to beat what is unfolding here on the steamy courts of the U.S.T.A. National Campus.Eliot Spizzirri of Texas during a doubles match.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesThis year the U.S.T.A. is hosting the final rounds of 14 major collegiate championship competitions from Division I, II and III. It’s part of a pitch the U.S.T.A. is making to the N.C.A.A. to make the training center in Orlando the permanent home of the final phase of the Division I tournaments, which means the quarterfinals onward for the teams, plus separate singles and doubles competitions.The idea is to make getting to Orlando for tennis akin to getting to Omaha for the men’s College World Series, a yearly destination for Division I baseball teams since 1950.“This is an opportunity to enhance the college game,” said Lew Sherr, the chief executive of the U.S.T.A.One argument for the sprawling campus is its seating for spectators, which cuts through the spine of the courts and makes it easier to watch simultaneous matches that have implications for one another.But a hurdle may be the weather. Playing tennis in Orlando in May can sometimes feel like playing on the surface of the sun, and matches have been suspended because of rain. A thunderstorm on Thursday meant the suspension of Division I play for the night, and there aren’t enough indoor courts to offer a backup plan.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesNo matter the venue, though, college tennis has been having a bit of a moment lately within the sport, making a case as a viable option for young prospects.Cameron Norrie, who played at Texas Christian, is ranked 13th in the world. Ben Shelton, an N.C.A.A. champion last year, wowed at the Australian Open. Jennifer Brady (U.C.L.A.) and Danielle Collins (Virginia) have made the Australian Open singles final in recent years.The ATP top 100 includes a dozen former college players, and the men’s tour even joined forces with collegiate tennis to guarantee top-ranked college players spots in lower-tier pro tournaments.This season, North Carolina State has featured Diana Shnaider, a 19-year-old Russian who made the second round of the Australian Open. She has already won a small WTA tournament.Attending college, if only for a year, was Shnaider’s hedge against professional tennis potentially banning Russians from competing because of the war in Ukraine. It was also a lot cheaper than paying for coaching and court time in Moscow. After the team finals, she will turn professional and head to Paris for the French Open.“It’s made me better,” Shnaider said of the college tennis experience.Still, much of the tennis establishment has long looked down at its version in college sports, an institution that is big in the United States but not in other countries. For critics, campus life that can include parties and papers and exams can distract from the focus on the sport, softening players compared with the rigors of the minor leagues of the pro game.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesJacob Langston for The New York TimesDavid Roditi, a former tour pro who has coached Texas Christian the past 13 seasons, said college tennis has a uniquely rowdy and pressurized proving ground that players can only understand with experience. Plus, most players don’t peak until their 20s anyway, he said, so what is the rush to go pro? He’s seen too many players burn out on the lonely tour life long before their prime.“They quit before they can find out how good they could be,” Roditi said. “In college you get four years of safety.”There are limits to scholarships, of course, and the competition is generally not as rigorous as on the pro circuits. Still, Roditi has been successfully selling the ideals of college athletics abroad for several years. His team has players from Scotland, England, France, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. Jacob Fearnley, his top player, grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland.Fearnley said he was small as a teenager and needed time to develop and get stronger. Turning professional after high school would have been foolish, he said. Spizzirri, the Texas star, has a similar tale. Both are now long, lean and powerful.Fearnley said he has played low-level pro tournaments that were a snooze compared with what he has learned to deal with in college. During an early road match against Michigan near the beginning of his college career, the crowd yelled at him after every double fault and told him he was a hopeless tennis player. He crumbled then, but not anymore.“It’s just noise,” Fearnley said the other day ahead of another showdown with Michigan. “That’s what our coach tells us. You learn the only thing that matters is you and your opponent and what’s happening on the court.”Cleeve Harper of Texas cheering on his teammates.Jacob Langston for The New York Times More