⚡️Tyler Phillips⚡️

@BBakerHogs @KayserHoops Good report and chart, but shouldn’t the players have an additional year with the new rules?

🚨 ROSTER SET 🚨 Davion Thompson intends to reclassify and join next year's Razorback squad, per @KayserHoops. Given Ourigou's intent to also reclassify, it appears the Razorback roster is officially set. A legit 11-12 playable guys (not counting Sealy who could theoretically come back at some point). 8 freshmen 6 players 6'10 or taller 2 transfers 2 reclass freshmen 1 Billy Richmond Here's where things stand! #WPS

@EdLawDude @elonmusk This is really good stuff!

My practice sits at the odd intersection of higher ed and tech clients. So here's a thought exercise: How would a high-end tech operator - someone with a first-principles, @elonmusk-style operating mindset - actually restructure a college athletic department? Here are my thoughts in no particular order... First, zero-base everything. Every sport, administrative function, facility, donor event, compliance workflow, licensing deal, travel practice, and outside consultant has to justify itself from scratch. Not "we've always done it this way." The question is whether it produces wins, athlete development, revenue, brand value, community engagement, or legally required compliance. Second, stop treating athletics as one business. Football and men's basketball - and at some schools women's basketball, baseball, volleyball, or hockey - are entertainment and media businesses. Most Olympic sports are mission, enrollment, alumni-value, and institutional-brand businesses. Lumping all of that into one P&L makes no sense. Split the model and each side becomes more legible. Third, treat facilities like reusable rockets. A stadium used seven Saturdays a year is an idle asset for most of the calendar. The SpaceX lesson is not "be flashy." It is that expensive infrastructure changes the economics only when it is reused relentlessly. That same logic applies to stadiums, arenas, practice facilities, performance centers, and staff expertise: concerts, camps, clinics, youth tournaments, corporate retreats, premium donor events, and content production. Fourth, delete before you automate. Revenue sharing, NIL monitoring, Title IX compliance, roster limits, and transfer churn all add complexity. The reflexive response will be to hire more administrators to manage that complexity. But the first-principles move is different: delete duplicative committees, dead policies, needless approvals, bespoke sport-by-sport processes, and consultant dependency first. Then automate what remains. Fifth, follow the fan through, don't lose them at each handoff. Today a fan who buys a jersey isn't automatically offered season tickets. A season-ticket holder who'd gladly donate is never asked at the right moment. A donor who'd sponsor a player's NIL deal has no easy way to do it. Each of those is run by a different office with a different list, so the school keeps re-introducing itself to the same person. The fix is simple in concept: track each fan as they move from watching, to buying a ticket, to buying merch, to donating, to sponsoring a player - and prompt the next step instead of starting over. The caveat is real: sports fans are driven by loyalty and live moments, not algorithmic engagement, so this isn't a straight copy of a tech subscription funnel. But most schools aren't even connecting the dots between someone who's already paying for one thing and the obvious next ask. Sixth, be ruthless about talent allocation. In a capped revenue-sharing world, a school needs an actual compensation thesis. Is it buying stars? Retaining depth? Rewarding market value? Protecting Olympic sports? Building local heroes? Supporting gender-equity objectives? The failure mode is spreading money thinly to avoid the harder conversation about which of those strategies the school is actually pursuing. Seventh, fix the coaching contract itself. This may be the most overlooked piece. Guaranteed money and buyout structures were built for a market that assumed multi-year continuity and allowed schools to amortize a bad hire over time. That world is disappearing. In a transfer-portal, revenue-sharing environment, a five-year guarantee with a soft buyout can become a balance-sheet liability the day it is signed. Shorter guarantees, performance-linked escalators, meaningful offset language, roster-management expectations, and revenue-era accountability should be part of the same first-principles review as everything else. Eighth, and perhaps most importantly, obsess over the experience of the people actually in the building. For fans: parking, wifi, concessions, mobile ticketing, seat comfort - the unglamorous stuff that actually drives repeat attendance, and that gets ignored while everyone argues about the roster. For athletes and staff: does a player get a real answer in a day, or does everything route through six offices? Can a position coach get a facility problem fixed without three approvals? Is the training staff burned out because nobody owns headcount for it? The schools optimizing only for revenue architecture while ignoring these will build a platform nobody enjoys using.

@documentaryprof That’s fun! Awesome quality with the phone. Hope y’all had a great time

Here’s a link for a new 4-min film I shot on my IPhone, as told by Susan McLemore Foley. She researched her family history back to a small village south of Glasgow, Scotland, where she literally walked in the footsteps of her ancestors. vimeo.com/1202566425?sha…

The Establishment Clause is literally the first protection in the Bill of Rights, and Thomas Jefferson famously described it as creating a “wall of separation between church and state.”

I’m proud of my brother (and 2x Academic All-American and 2016 SEC scholar athlete of the year while studying pre-med) for discussing the violence and head injuries arising from football. Special place in hell for those who work to withhold from the gladiators who provide so much for their fans, schools, and fellow athletes

backyard football - official poem video #americanfootball #poetry #poem #love #wakeup

The American people know what’s up.

NEW: West Virginia's Rich Rodriguez tells @PeteNakos the Mountaineers are "due to take it up another notch" in year two📈 "I’ve had people say, ‘How do you coach them hard now that you’re paying them?' I’m like, hell, you can coach them harder because you’re paying them. They’ve got more to lose." Exclusive: on3.com/news/inside-we…

Coach, I know you seek the Word, so I’m just gonna remind you that the Bible makes it clear that economic justice is the most critical worldly issue. “And again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.” It’d be great for you to lead on this front in college football in a time where they are trying to pass laws to withhold rightful wages from players and use private equity to drain fans for every cent they’d provide for the teams they love. James 5:4 — "Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty."

If there were no different colors or race what then would there be to divide us? Money, States, Stature or Education? Just Curious because I really want us to truly Love thy Neighbor! #CoachPrime

The war with Iran is UNCONSTITUTIONAL. It’s also ILLEGAL under the 1973 WPA. Here’s how much of the $300 billion will come from American taxpayers: The U.S. will give foreign aid, military assistance, tariff exemptions, etc to countries that will in turn provide money to Iran.

dont speak to be liked. speak to be true.

How the NCAA proves the importance of Juneteenth (Part 2)

How the NCAA proves the importance of Juneteenth (Part 1)

Well done by @jimcavale and athletes.org. The @NCAA vehemently fought Title IX for a decade upon its passage. The NCAA also infamously cited the 13th Amendment's Slave Labor Exception, comparing athletes to prisoners who don't deserve rights. PSCA uses a bit of voodoo economics in asserting Olympic sports will all be magically funded. Anything in tomorrow's mark-up that restricts athlete rights will make PSCA passage more unlikely. Bottom line: Cruz/Cantwell still needs those five Senate Dems.

This👇

No you cannot. Wrote about this with @samcehrlich and @tylerrphillips earlier this year. It’s blatant wage fixing, and I’m thrilled to see this high caliber team from Berger Montague taking it on. nacua.org/resource/poten…

To be clear, the real issue re: the “paying college athletes” debate is about control. Old-school college coaches thrived on having total control over their broke players. Petrino (a great college coach, btw) made a big show every offseason of calling each player into his office to “re-sign” his scholarship. Even if you were one of his best players, he’d say something like “we need more from you this year, or we might have to give away your scholarship.” It was a motivational tactic, but he had leverage. Once NIL arrived, that control/leverage was greatly diminished. It’s why Petrino, Saban, Lou Holtz, and many more couldn’t stand coaching rich locker rooms in the NFL. It takes more nuance to motivate & unify wealthy players who have leverage. That’s what the entire bad-faith “save women’s sports” argument is all about. Coaches and AD’s want to regain their leverage over football and basketball players by reducing or eliminating their compensation.

I think college sports needs reform. But the new Senate college sports bill is not the way to fix it. It creates two different systems - one for athletes that limits and micromanages their compensation; and another with no limits for coaches, ADS and sports industry execs.