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      125 Years After the First College Golf Match, a Rematch

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      Intercollegiate golf was born in 1896 when Yale thrashed Columbia with mashies and niblicks. Armed with titanium drivers, Columbia sought revenge.On a fall day in 1896, a group of Yale students, caught up in a new sports craze called golf, traveled from their New Haven, Conn., campus by train and stagecoach to a course north of New York City — one of the few clubs in the country at the time — to take on some chaps from Columbia.In what became the first intercollegiate match in the country, Yale swept Columbia, with all six golfers winning their matches.Earlier this month, after 125 years, Columbia finally got its rematch.“This is an extraordinary day for our game — the collegiate game was born 125 years ago,” Columbia’s current coach, Rich Mueller, said to the two teams gathered on the practice green of the Saint Andrew’s Golf Club in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.Yes, the first college golf match was played between two Ivy League teams that have rarely cracked the top 100 Division I schools in decades.Of course, these were different times in college sports. For decades after the first intercollegiate football game was played by Princeton and Rutgers in 1869, Ivy League football teams would remain athletic powerhouses making national headlines.Similarly, in college golf, the 1896 match signaled the beginning of Ivy dominance. The following year, the first college national championships were held, and nearly every team and individual title through 1930 was won by an Ivy League school — especially Yale, whose 21 national titles are still the most of any college.The original article in The New York Times on Nov. 8, 1896.The New York TimesThis was long before big warm-weather state schools like Houston (16 national titles) and Oklahoma (11) enjoyed dominant eras after the N.C.A.A. took over the national championships in 1939 and became feeders for the P.G.A. Tour.The Yale men’s golf coach, Colin Sheehan, who loves his golf history, recently came across two New York Times articles from 1896 covering the Yale-Columbia match, which he promptly mentioned to Mueller.The coaches arranged a commemorative replaying of this match that became the crucible of intercollegiate golf, to get their players fired up about college golf history and traditions, and to make for some spirited competition.The original match was played on Nov. 6, 1896, at the Ardsley Casino, which had opened the previous year as one of the country’s first 18-hole courses and whose members included prominent financiers such as Jay Gould, Cornelius Vanderbilt and J. Pierpont Morgan.The club, now called the Ardsley Country Club, in nearby Dobbs Ferry, was not available to host the match this fall. And because of logistical problems with the original date, the coaches scheduled the match for Oct. 22 at Saint Andrew’s, which is Columbia’s home course and has its own place in golf history.Athletes from Columbia University practice golf indoors in 1932.Columbia University ArchivesFounded in 1888, the club claims to be the oldest continually operating golf club in the country (though several clubs make claims to various versions of this title) and is one of the five clubs that in 1894 founded the United States Golf Association.In fact, Columbia and Yale have had many rematches over the years, with Yale winning most, but both teams now largely play a tournament-only schedule instead of head-to-head matches.So they agreed to play this one as an unofficial scrimmage. Still, the importance of this momentous challenge match seemed to register with the players as they pulled up to the club not in stagecoaches but in sleek passenger vans.They filed out dressed in bright golf shirts, baseball hats and khakis or shorts — a far cry from their 1896 counterparts, who wore knickers, monogrammed blazers, tweed caps, dress shirts and bow ties.The 1896 teams played their best six players in a holes-won format, with the victor being the team with the most total holes won by all players. The coaches decided to keep that now-obscure format for the rematch and to play their full starting lineups of seven players each.Columbia defeated Yale in the rematch.Misha Friedman for The New York TimesAn official on the first tee — Mueller’s son, Kurt, 9 — announced each twosome along with the names of the 1896 golfers who played in the respective group.In one group, William Sung, 18, a Columbia freshman, was paired against Yale’s Darren Lin, 21, a senior.Their counterparts 125 years ago were Yale’s Roderick Terry Jr. and Columbia’s G.C. Pier. Terry beat his opponent 7-0 and carded an 88, the day’s lowest score. It was also an impressive feat, given that Terry and his teammates were hitting rubberlike gutta percha balls with handmade wooden-shafted clubs that, instead of numbers, bore names like brassie, niblick, spoon and cleek.As for Lin and Sung, both grew up in California competing in junior golf tournaments and honing their swings with the help of top teaching pros, video aids and various learning tools. On the course, they use range finders that give exact yardage to a target.Yale’s 1907 varsity golf team.Yale University Library“It’s cool to see how far golf has come. It’s really surreal how important the technology has become,” said Sung, whose driver had a head made of aerospace titanium.In 1896, golf was just beginning to take root in the United States and had only recently “found its way among the colleges,” as a preview of the match in The Times noted.A second Times article, recapping the match, detailed how Yale blanked the fledgling Columbia squad 35-0. The victorious Yale players each received a “First Intercollegiate Golf Meet” medal.The Yale and Columbia University golf teams posed for a group photo.Misha Friedman for The New York TimesColumbia’s defeat was no shock. Located in Manhattan, Columbia had no home course and had only pulled a team together weeks before the match. Its star player, mentioned in an 1896 Columbia Spectator article as L. Tappin, was “off his game” and lost by four holes as his team was “beaten by a large score but still did not disgrace themselves.”“They were basically bringing a knife to a gunfight,” Mueller said. “You can imagine how quiet that stagecoach ride back was for Columbia.”So this time, the Columbia men were playing “with the weight of history on their shoulders,” he said.“We got such a big butt-kicking the first time around,” he said. “Some of my guys said they were never more nervous than on that first tee.”The superior Yale team grew out of an explosion in golf popularity in New Haven coupled with the 1895 opening of the New Haven Golf Club near campus.Yale had dozens of golfers on its team, and the starting six was stocked with skilled players from prominent golf families, including John Reid Jr. and F.C. Havemeyer, whose fathers helped found the U.S.G.A.A yearbook photograph of Columbia’s golf club in 1905.Columbia University ArchivesReid Jr. won his match against Columbia by 10 holes and would win the first Yale individual national title in 1898. He was the son of John Reid, a Scottish immigrant who helped found Saint Andrew’s in 1888 as a three-hole track in a cow pasture in Yonkers.The elder Reid’s old golf clubs are displayed in the John Reid Room at Saint Andrew’s in the original clubhouse where members like Andrew Carnegie and Stanford White relaxed, said Rick Powers, a member of the club’s historical committee.Ivy League athletic dominance, including golf, eventually faded as big state colleges outside of the Northeast grew in stature and the Ivies prioritized academics over athletics.“I joke that everyone on the team is here because Conrad Ray didn’t make them an offer,” Sheehan said of the men’s golf coach at Stanford, the golf powerhouse where Tiger Woods played.Golfers from Yale and Columbia at the Saint Andrew’s Golf Club.Misha Friedman for The New York TimesYale is still a dominant force in the Ivies, and despite its unfamiliarity with Saint Andrew’s, it had its moments in the recent match. There was Ben Carpenter’s tricky up-and-down from just off the green to win the 16th hole and Lin’s back nine comeback that included a chip-in on 18 to edge out Sung, 1-0.But in the end, the day belonged to Columbia, whose 15-2 victory rubbed some balm on that 125-year-old spanking.Seeing his team rise to the historic moment, Mueller said later, was “by far the proudest moment in my 22 years of coaching.”That night, he said, he texted his players that the Columbia chaps from 1896 would be proud.“Despite the fact that they’re dead now,” he wrote, “I’m also certain that tonight they’re smiling down upon you all basking in the redemption.” More

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

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      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

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

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      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

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      What Is March Madness Without the Bands?

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      Neither the men’s nor women’s N.C.A.A. basketball tournaments will allow bands this year — and canned music just can’t compare.INDIANAPOLIS — In a normal year, when a player sinks a buzzer-beating shot in a N.C.A.A. tournament game, tens of thousands of fans erupt in celebration.This year will prove to be a bit quieter, even if the venue is larger.The men’s Final Four tournament will take place at Lucas Oil Stadium, a 70,000-seat arena home to the N.F.L.’s Indianapolis Colts. The crowd will be capped at 25 percent of capacity, with fans masked and seated in socially distanced pods of two, four or six. And the area reserved for each 29-member band will be empty.“I understand the N.C.A.A.’s decision,” Jake Tedeschi, 22, a senior tenor saxophone player in the No. 1 seed University of Illinois’s basketball pep band, said in an interview on Thursday. “But man, I wish I could be there. I’m hoping they’ll reconsider for the Final Four.”But now, that dream is dashed, too.After previously excluding bands only through the Elite Eight, an N.C.A.A. associate director of communications, Christopher Radford, said in an email on Friday that no bands would be allowed at any of the games in either the men’s or women’s N.C.A.A. basketball tournaments this year.The decision, he said, was based on health and safety protocols developed with local health authorities, which “led to reductions in the size of official travel parties and limits on overall capacity in venues.”The six Indiana venues that will host this year’s games, he said, will still play school fight songs and anthems. They will screen cheer video performances, and other band music will be in rotation.But the honking tubas and energy-building improvisation of pep bands are what attracts many fans to the college game — they are the antithesis of the N.B.A.’s reliance on canned noise to punctuate big blocks and thunderous dunks. And bands have an even more crucial role in the N.C.A.A. tournament, Barry L. Houser, the director of the University of Illinois’s marching and athletic bands for the past 10 years, said.“There’s nothing like live music to bring a stadium or arena alive,” he said in an interview on Thursday. “The playing of a fight song after a great play or going into a hot timeout after an amazing play for the team can really get the crowd riled up.”Tedeschi, the University of Illinois band member, believes a band can “absolutely” change a game.“We scream a lot,” he said. “And, especially late in the game, we do our best to distract the other team’s players.”There will be no band for players to interact with at this year’s tournaments.Richard Shiro/Associated PressBut pep band players aren’t just passionate about school fight songs or “Sweet Caroline” — they’re some of the biggest basketball fans in the arena and the spark that ignites most student sections.“The chance to travel with the team and be their number-one supporter is a big reason I do athletic bands,” Tedeschi said. “It takes time away from my other coursework, especially when we’re traveling more, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. It’s near and dear to my heart.”But seniors like Tedeschi will never get the chance to play at an N.C.A.A. tournament game — a big part of why he joined the pep band his freshman year, he said. (The Illini did not make the men’s or women’s N.C.A.A. tournament his first two years, and the pandemic derailed last year’s games.)He understands the N.C.A.A.’s decision to prohibit bands in the first two rounds, but thinks they could have been allowed for games later in the tournament. “The bracket is smaller, and fewer teams’ bands would show up,” he said. “It would mean less other fans, but for seniors, it’s the only chance we have. Mid-major teams don’t make it every year.”Michael Martin, a 21-year-old senior at Ohio State who plays snare and bass drum in the pep band, has never been to any of the N.C.A.A. tournaments. And he’s now missed his chance.“I prepared myself for it,” he said. “But I’m still really disappointed. I was looking forward to playing ‘Buckeye Swag’ for everyone.”Houser, the University of Illinois band director, feels terrible for his seniors — especially in a year that the men’s team is a No. 1 seed.“The teams went through a lot of challenges, and now they’re doing so well,” he said. “I just wish our students had the opportunity to cheer them on in this situation.”But having steeled themselves to the reality of a tournament without live music, band directors are looking forward to the coming year with optimism.Christopher Hoch, who is in his fourth year as director of the Ohio State University marching and athletic bands, has been persevering with his athletic bands class, even absent opportunities to play at games.“I felt it was important for students to continue to have the opportunity to play, even though they weren’t necessarily performing at events,” he said.Now, Hoch is preparing his students for the halftime show they typically do at the spring football game. “We love being there to support the team and university,” he said. “And I’m hopeful we’ll be able to get back to doing that soon.” More

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      When the Coronavirus Shut Down Sports

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      This article is by Alan Blinder and Joe Drape. Additional reporting by Gillian R. Brassil, Karen Crouse, Kevin Draper, Andrew Keh, Jeré Longman, Juliet Macur, Carol Schram, Ben Shpigel, Marc Stein and David Waldstein. Illustrations by Madison Ketcham. Produced by Michael Beswetherick and Jonathan Ellis.

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      Alan Blinder

      Joe Drape

      Gillian R. Brassil

      Karen Crouse

      Kevin Draper

      Andrew Keh

      Jeré Longman

      Juliet Macur

      Carol Schram

      Ben Shpigel

      Marc Stein

      David Waldstein

      Madison Ketcham

      Michael Beswetherick

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      A New League’s Shot at the N.C.A.A.: $100,000 Salaries for High School Players

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA New League’s Shot at the N.C.A.A.: $100,000 Salaries for High School PlayersThe Overtime Elite league proposes that providing a salary and a focus toward a pro career might be more appealing than college basketball’s biggest programs.Aaron Ryan, Zack Weiner, Dan Porter and Brandon Williams, executives of the sports media company Overtime and its new basketball league, aim to change the career pathway for young stars.Credit…OvertimeMarch 4, 2021Updated 9:49 a.m. ETA new basketball league backed by a sports media company is entering the intensifying debate over whether student athletes should be paid, by starting a new venture offering high school basketball players $100,000 salaries to skip college.The league, Overtime Elite, formed under the auspices of the sports media company Overtime, would compete directly with the N.C.A.A. for the nation’s top high school boys by employing about 30 of them, who would circumvent the behemoth of college sports.Overtime will offer each athlete, some as young as 16, a minimum of $100,000 annually, as well as a signing bonus and a small number of shares in Overtime’s larger business. The company will also provide health and disability insurance, and set aside $100,000 in college scholarship money for each player — in case any decide not to pursue basketball professionally.The trade-off is major: The players who accept the deal will forfeit their ability to play high school or college basketball.“People have been saying things need to change, and we are the ones changing it,” said Dan Porter, the chief executive of Overtime.Overtime is diving into an argument that has roiled American sports for generations — whether it’s appropriate for pro sports leagues to lure young athletes out of high school and college with big checks, or for colleges to exploit the talents of athletes for big money without compensating them beyond attendance costs.Since the 2006 draft, players have not been able to go directly to the N.B.A. after high school — they do not become eligible to be drafted until the year they turn 19 or at least one N.B.A. season after their high school graduation year.For decades, the N.C.A.A.’s rules on amateurism, now under challenge in courts and in state legislatures, have held back a swell of money from flooding toward young elite athletes. The system has always had fissures, and they have grown in recent years as federal and state lawmakers and the N.C.A.A. have considered some changes to let athletes earn some more money.You may not have ever heard of Overtime — especially if you are, say, over 30 — but if you are a sports fan you have almost certainly seen its videos.If a crazy highlight or moment from a high school game floated across one of your social media feeds, it was probably filmed by Overtime. If you saw any dunks from Zion Williamson before he played for Duke, they were probably filmed by Overtime. The company says its videos are viewed almost two billion times each month.Overtime, which was founded in 2016 and got an early investment from David Stern, the former N.B.A. commissioner, has made connections with young prospects by building its presence in high school gyms across the country, where filming rights are essentially free and the competition not nearly the same as the ever-shifting battle among media behemoths to televise college and professional sports.Overtime’s videographers are recognized by the players. Laurence Marsach, more commonly known as Overtime Larry and the host of many Overtime videos, is highly popular among fans of youth basketball. The Overtime “O” logo is a stamp of approval online, with teens and tweens even throwing it up in the background of their videos.The new league, Overtime Elite, most resembles soccer academies in Europe and elsewhere. The players, and possibly their families, will move to one city — Overtime says it is selecting between two choices — to live and train together. Overtime will hire education staffers to teach the athletes and help them get high school diplomas. A basketball operations division will include coaches and trainers and will be led by Brandon Williams, the former N.B.A. player who was also previously a front office executive for the Philadelphia 76ers and Sacramento Kings. The commissioner is Aaron Ryan, a former longtime N.B.A. league office executive.No players have been signed yet — so as not to ruin their eligibility during the current high school basketball season. But Porter and Zack Weiner, Overtime’s president, are confident that many of the top players ages 16-18 will join.“We think our system will be amazing for their basketball development,” Weiner said. “Will every single player make the N.B.A.? Maybe not every single one of them, but the large majority will become professionals.”But there are almost as many risks as there are benefits for the young athletes. Most start-up professional sports leagues, no matter how innovative, fail. Overtime Elite will require tens of millions of dollars to operate on the scale its founders envision, but if it does not succeed, its athletes could be left with nowhere to play.“We are genuine in really investing in hiring really serious and legitimate people to run every aspect of the company,” Porter said. “I don’t want to mess around with kids’ lives. I don’t want people to mess around with my kids’ lives. There is a moral obligation that goes with that.”Weiner said the company is “extremely well capitalized” to launch the league. Overtime, Porter added, raised a “meaningful” amount of cash in a previously undisclosed funding round last fall, and planned to use it to pay players, hire employees and lease housing, office, gym and education spaces.Some details on what the league will actually look like or how fans can watch are still unsettled. There will be no permanent teams, but instead dynamic rosters within the league, and Porter and Weiner envision some sort of barnstorming tour of Europe. Games will no doubt be viewable online, but Overtime promises the games themselves and content around them won’t look too similar to typical basketball telecasts.Overtime Elite isn’t the only basketball league that spies opportunity in the shifting rules around amateurism and a desire by players to get paid immediately. David West, a former N.B.A. player, has started the Professional Collegiate League, and the N.B.A.’s development league has recently begun courting top 18-year-olds who want to skip college altogether on their way to the N.B.A.But Overtime Elite is the first serious league aimed at paying high school players, LaVar Ball’s failed Junior Basketball Association notwithstanding.Porter and Weiner talk down the idea that they are challenging high school state athletic associations, the N.C.A.A., high school coaches and the many other entities invested in the current system.“We are not against the N.C.A.A.” Carmelo Anthony, an Overtime investor and member of its board of directors, said in an interview. “We are not against the N.B.A. We are not trying to hurt those guys or come at them. We want the support of the N.B.A. and N.C.A.A. Eventually we are going to need those guys anyway.”Carmelo Anthony during his championship run at Syracuse in the 2002-3 season.Credit…Kevin Rivoli/Associated PressAnthony has an interesting perspective on Overtime Elite in part because, for all of the trade-offs of college sports, he is one its most visible success stories. He played college basketball for one season with Syracuse, won the N.C.A.A. tournament for the university’s first championship, improved his draft stock and got a huge boost in name recognition.“Going to college and playing college basketball is what it is,” he said. “It never will change. The concept of Overtime Elite is not to disrupt that, but to give these kids opportunities because they are taking control of their own brands and what they do, and social media becoming so powerful. Why not embrace that?”Perhaps the biggest challenge for Overtime, besides convincing enough elite players to join its league and enough consumers to watch high school basketball, is the floodgates opening to alternative ways for players to make money while also playing for high school and college teams.Under rising pressure from Washington and the nation’s statehouses, some of which have already approved legislation to require defiance of existing N.C.A.A. rules, the association spent months crafting new policies only to postpone votes that were planned for January.The turmoil within the N.C.A.A. is unfolding as the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments this month about whether the association may limit education-related benefits for top football and basketball players. And on Capitol Hill, lawmakers have been circulating a range of proposals that could set a national standard for name, image and likeness rules, including some particularly aggressive ideas to give athletes a bigger slice of the industry’s profits (Congress is not expected to act imminently and no proposal has advanced beyond a committee).The political forces were already complicating the long-term strategy of the N.C.A.A., which makes most of its money from its signature men’s basketball tournament. Overtime Elite, if it can succeed, would make the N.C.A.A.’s chase for players even more difficult.Alan Blinder More

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      Jordan McNair's Family Reaches $3.5 Million Settlement With University of Maryland

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFamily Reaches $3.5 Million Settlement in Death of Maryland Football PlayerJordan McNair, a University of Maryland offensive lineman, collapsed from heatstroke during a practice in 2018 and died two weeks later.Jordan McNair in 2016, when he was in high school. He died in 2018 after sustaining heatstroke during a University of Maryland football practice.Credit…Barbara Haddock Taylor/The Baltimore Sun, via Associated PressJan. 17, 2021Updated 8:30 p.m. ETThe University of Maryland has reached a $3.5 million settlement agreement with the family of a football player who collapsed from heatstroke during a practice in May 2018 and died two weeks later.The details of the settlement were reported by ESPN and appeared in an agenda item for a meeting of the Maryland Board of Public Works, which will vote on it on Jan. 27. The settlement was reached more than two years after the death of the football player, Jordan McNair, a 19-year-old offensive lineman.Mr. McNair’s parents, Marty McNair and Tonya Wilson, could not immediately be reached for comment. “This has been a long and painful fight, but we will attempt to find closure even though this is a wound that will never, ever fully heal,” they said in a statement to ESPN.Their son’s death spurred two investigations and an ESPN report that described a “toxic culture” of bullying and humiliation in the university’s football program. The team’s head coach and two trainers were fired, and the team’s conditioning coach resigned.Mr. McNair collapsed in the heat during a practice on May 29, 2018, when he ran a 106-degree fever. An independent report commissioned by the university found that Mr. McNair was not properly cared for after he showed symptoms of heatstroke. Cold-water immersion, a standard treatment, was not performed, the report said, and it was more than an hour before anyone dialed 911.The head football coach, D.J. Durkin, and the athletic director, Damon Evans, were placed on administrative leave while the university investigated the claims that were raised in the ESPN report. The investigation found that the program did not have a “toxic culture,” but acknowledged that “too many players feared speaking out.” It suggested that Mr. Durkin had made errors but was not to blame for many of the program’s issues.One day after the university’s Board of Regents said Mr. Durkin would be reinstated, citing the investigation, Wallace D. Loh, the university’s president at the time, overruled the board and fired him.Soon after, the two athletic trainers who had attended to Mr. McNair were also fired, and Rick Court, the strength and conditioning coach who supervised the practice where Mr. McNair collapsed, resigned.The University of Maryland on Sunday declined to comment about the settlement agreement. It said an independent review panel made 41 recommendations in the aftermath of Mr. McNair’s death, all of which have been implemented.“The most notable was the transition to an autonomous healthcare model, where all team physicians are employees of our university health center,” it said. The law firm representing Mr. McNair’s parents said the McNairs were “relieved that this fight is over and to put this behind them as they continue to mourn Jordan’s death.”Mr. McNair’s death prompted criticism of universities and the National Collegiate Athletic Association for not adequately monitoring conditioning workouts, especially in the off-season.From 2000 to 2018, 31 N.C.A.A. football players died during off-season or preseason workouts from heatstroke, cardiac issues, asthma and other causes, according to Scott Anderson, the head athletic trainer at the University of Oklahoma, who keeps a database of athletic fatalities.Mr. Anderson said in an email that he was aware of eight severe cases of heatstroke involving N.C.A.A. football players, three of whom died.Mr. McNair’s parents founded the Jordan McNair Foundation shortly after their son’s death to educate student athletes and parents about how to recognize the symptoms of heatstroke. In their statement to ESPN, they said they wanted to honor “Jordan’s legacy so that his death was not in vain.”“No parent,” they said, “should have to wait this long for closure where their child has been treated unfairly or unjustly.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Dee Rowe, UConn Basketball Coach and Fund-Raiser, Dies at 91

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesA Future With CoronavirusVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storythose we’ve lostDee Rowe, UConn Basketball Coach and Fund-Raiser, Dies at 91He coached the Huskies for eight seasons, taking them to the N.C.A.A. tournament, before spending decades raising money for campus athletic facilities.Dee Rowe being honored in 2019 at the Gampel Pavilion on the University of Connecticut campus. He raised $7 million in donations to build the arena.Credit…Hartford CourantJan. 12, 2021, 4:58 p.m. ETDee Rowe, a revered figure at the University of Connecticut for a half-century as the men’s basketball coach and athletics department fund-raiser, died on Sunday at his home in Storrs, Conn. He was 91.His son, Donald, said that the cause was Covid-19, but that he had also received a diagnosis of Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia, a type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.Rowe (his given name was Donald, but he got the nickname Dee in childhood, and it stuck) coached the Huskies for eight seasons, compiling a 120-88 record as he guided the team twice to the National Invitational Tournament and once to the N.C.A.A. men’s tournament, in 1976.After defeating Hofstra in the first round of that tournament, Connecticut lost, 93-79, to Rutgers. “We lost because of the way Rutgers makes you play,” he said after the game. “ We just let them play too fast for us. A team like that, that plays that fast, they ultimately wear you down.”Following the 1976-77 season, when he led the Huskies to a 17-10 record, he retired because of pancreatitis. “I got to the point in coaching where I felt I was the lone matador,” he told The Hartford Courant in 2004. “I suffered too much. I got out at 48. I was burned out.”Rowe embraced Coach Dave Gavitt of Providence College in 1976 after Connecticut defeated the Friars in a New England conference championship game that sent the Huskies to the N.C.A.A. tournament. Credit…Hartford CourantWithin a year, he started as the athletics department’s fund-raiser. “He had been offered the athletics director job at Middlebury, and along the way he pursued others, but he was committed to UConn,” his son said in a phone interview. “He wanted to be around it. He was very passionate and was a great salesman. At UConn, he sold from the heart.”In his 13 years as fund-raiser, an official role, Rowe was best known for collecting about $7 million in private donations to build the Harry A. Gampel Pavilion, the Storrs campus arena. Named after the lead donor, a real estate developer and alumnus, the pavilion is home to the men’s and women’s basketball team and the women’s volleyball team.After retiring in 1991 he remained a special adviser and helped raise money to build the Werth Family UConn Basketball Champions Center, where the basketball teams practice.The Coronavirus Outbreak More