Texas Tech is tied for 3rd heading into day 3 of the Norman Regional with the final 18 to go today.
Everything Lubbock reports that the Matador Club announced that the entire Texas Tech baseball team will sign 5-figure NIL deals.
Fort Worth Star Telegram’s Steven Johnson is ranking the receiver groups in the Big 12 and has Texas Tech as the 2nd best group.
The Red Raiders may have the deepest receiver room in the league and return their five leading receivers from last year. Everything starts with Bradley, who was just the sixth freshmen in program history to led the Red Raiders in receiving. White and Price had over 500 yards each while Fouonji and Martinez had nearly 400 each with a combined five touchdowns.
SI’s Ross Dellinger writes about the next conference realignment summer and wonders what’s next for the Power 5.
Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark is aggressively pursuing expansion targets in an attempt to reach 14 or 16 members. Top priority are the Arizona schools, Colorado and Utah, but there are plenty of other potential replacements if the Pac-12 programs choose to stay.
Though San Diego State seems bound for the Pac-12—it is their preference—Yormark has held conversations with the school’s leadership about being the Big 12’s only program in the Pacific Time zone. UConn, the reigning men’s basketball champions, is a play for a foothold in the northeast as well as adding another basketball powerhouse to what currently is the best hoops league in the country. And of Memphis, the Tigers finished as a finalist the last time the Big 12 expanded.
Yormark’s interest in UNLV seems like a calculated maneuver. Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff, a former casino executive who resides in Las Vegas, is slowly shifting the conference’s hub to Sin City. In an interesting wrinkle, could Kliavkoff’s targeting of SMU be a similar play? SMU is located in the Big 12’s own hub city of Dallas.
CBS Sports reports (as do other outlets) that there are 7 ACC schools who are allegedly requesting that the grant of rights be reviewed at the ACC spring meetings. The 7 schools are Florida State, Clemson, Miami, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Virginia, and Virginia Tech.
More “frank” discussions surrounding the revenue gap are expected to be held during ACC spring meetings, according to Sports Illustrated. But for any speculation — and it’s merely that at this point — of movement from ACC schools, there are several hurdles potential defectors would have to clear. The exit fee for ACC schools is a reported $120 million, and when it comes to breaking the grant of rights, Sports Illustrated reports most attorneys describe the agreement as “airtight.”
Those roadblocks could be avoided entirely should a situation prevail where the grant of rights is dissolved, but the feasibility of that is not clear. No ACC schools are known to have challenged the grant of rights at this time.
As for Alford and his comments that set off the latest wave of calls for change to the ACC revenue sharing model, it’s not only a matter of keeping pace with the SEC and Big Ten for the FSU athletic director. Alford more recently expressed fear that even UCF, which joins the Big 12 Conference in the coming months, could soon have a “better agreement” than FSU after the Big 12 negotiated an extension of its existing media rights deal with Fox Sports and ESPN.
14 teams and not a single one power-rated below the FBS average. Quality and depth!
Texas and Oklahoma belong in the Big 12. I’m going to cherish this season https://t.co/3Noc6xZiTD pic.twitter.com/GRWQKESKk6
— Kelley Ford (@KFordRatings) May 14, 2023