Marc Kendrick is here, a new softball assistant coach at Montana, because after three seasons working at Tennessee Tech, the lure of moving to and coaching in a true college town was too good of an opportunity to pass up.
 
That’s the trouble with coaching in Cookeville, with the Volunteers 100 miles to the east, the Commodores 80 miles to the west. The shadows loom large from both directions.
 
“We’re the only thing in town, but since it’s Tennessee, people are either a University of Tennessee fan or a Vanderbilt fan,” Kendrick said. “We never had that true atmosphere. That’s something I’m excited about, being where there is only one team that matters, where the expectation is to win.
 
“Stef said, once you get out here and visit, you’ll understand. When I got out there, I was like, okay, I understand.”
 
He’s also here because of head coach Stef Ewing, who has a reputation as a program builder, who told Kendrick during the interview process: The defense? It would be yours, all yours. Make us great.
 
“I’m a defense-oriented person. Stef giving me the reins of the defense, that’s my strong suit. Let me go at it,” he said. “I’m constantly thinking, how do I defend this or how do I defend that? I’m always looking for that little edge.”
 
He’s been in this position before as an assistant coach, Tennessee Tech going 6-44 in his first season with the program in 2023, nearly mirroring Montana’s record of 8-42 this past spring.
 
The Golden Eagles bettered their record to 23-24 in Kendrick’s second year at the school, making Tennessee Tech the nation’s most-improved program in 2024, going in the right direction by 18.5 additional wins, topping D1Softball.com’s list of “Quick-Change Artists.”
 
“I know a little bit about Stef’s history, how she took (Cal State) San Marcos, which wasn’t very good, and got them to the World Series and winning 40 games in a season,” he said. “I know her track record is to take programs and turn them around in a short period of time.
 
“Overall, the environment, the vibe, the way Stef and (pitching coach Megan Casper) and I got together, it was, how do I not say yes to this?”
 
He’s here, in the world of softball, this coach who was once a baseball-loving kid in Southern California, who dreamed of one day breaking Cal Ripken Jr.’s consecutive-games-played record, who played at Long Beach Polytechnic High, who spent weekends at his grandma’s side, going to Angels games before settling into a 9-to-5 job in Orange County, because how could he say no to family?
 
“I got talked into it by my cousin, who asked me to come out and help coach softball. Um, no,” he told her. But it was his god-daughter’s team, she told him. You’re really going to say no to that face? “She pulled that card on me.”
 
That led to a rec championship, which led to a high school job – wait, I can get paid for this? – which led to getting his foot in the door of travel ball, with Batbusters. “Okay, this is something I’m passionate about and love doing. At first it was something I did, then it was God saying, go be a coach.”
 
If the brass ring was the college game, he knew he needed to go back to school and get his degree to become marketable, an AA coming from Santiago Canyon College in 2018, a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology from Cal State Fullerton in 2020, a master’s degree from Cal Baptist in 2022, where he was a graduate assistant for the softball team.
 
Was it too much to pack into a single day, all he was trying to do? Not for this son of the military, born in San Diego, then coming of age in Long Beach, then San Pedro, the Navy keeping the family moving but never out of Southern California.
 
“I didn’t move around a lot, but I definitely have those military aspects in my blood, if you will, that mentality of how to go about things a certain way,” he said.
 
All that time in and around softball in Southern California, and he never did cross paths with Ewing, who was at San Marcos from 2019 to ’24.
 
“We were probably three levels of separation,” Ewing says. “When I saw the people on his list of references, I said, I know all these people. It was hard for me to believe we’d never met.”
 
She read through his resume, his list of references, then started reading through his letters of recommendation, starting with the usual voices, the coaches with whom he’d worked, then getting into the unusual, written testaments from former players.
 
“It was one of the most impressive things I’ve seen from an assistant coach, these letters from previous players stating why they liked him so much, not just letters from professionals,” Ewing said.
 
Done as a GA at Cal Baptist, he got on with first-year coach Danielle Penner at Tennessee Tech prior to the 2023 season, rode out the 6-44 first year before being part of the nation’s best turnaround in 2024, doing the less-visible work of solidifying the team’s defense, all aspects of the sport right in his wheelhouse.
 
“You can tell when someone has the softball sickness if it’s all they talk about,” Ewing said. “He has it. It’s exciting for me to bring someone in to bounce ideas off of, not hire a yes-man. I want him to push me as a head coach and bring me his ideas.
 
“Let’s brainstorm, let’s get to the drawing board. Let’s figure out what’s best for the team, how we are going to make it better. He was looking for that in his next role, to have his voice heard and to be able to bring ideas.”
 
Was he ever. “The fact she’s very open-minded, okay, let’s figure this out, I love that,” Kendrick said. “One day when I’m a head coach, that’s how I want to be. I want to have a bunch of coaches around me who go back and forth and figure out the best way. That’s something that drew me to Stef.”
 
Kendrick replaces Tyler Jeske on Ewing’s staff, Jeske departing his position at season’s end, right when Kendrick was beginning his own search in earnest. He never would have guessed Montana but he’ll be in Missoula next month, coaching his new team shortly after the fall semester commences.
 
“When Stef brought me up for my interview, with everything the University of Montana has to offer, it was, how do I not say yes to this offer?” Kendrick said.
 
Ewing will move to the offensive side of the ball full-time come the fall, with Kendrick taking over a defense that ranked 232nd nationally last season with a fielding percentage of .952. Casper will have an improved pitching staff to work with, and Makena Strong goes from player to graduate assistant coach.
 
“On the field, he’ll be another source of energy for us,” said Ewing of Kendrick. “With Makena, all of a sudden we’re four people strong and will be able to do a lot more at practices.
 
“I loved a lot of the things he had to say. He’s a worker. He can throw batting practice, he loves to do camps, he comes from a military family, so he’s on top of things and very organized. He checks a lot of boxes. I think he’s going to bring a lot to the program.”
 
And he opens up a new recruiting area, with Montana looking to expand its reach beyond the West. “More and more young women reach out to us from the Midwest, Texas, the South,” says Ewing. “He brings knowledge of a different region of the country. It allows us to cast a wider net.
 
“He’s passionate about recruiting, which will be huge for us. That’s the name of the game. It doesn’t matter how good of a coach you are if you can’t find good kids.” Or good assistant coaches.

ATLANTA – Saint Joseph’s lefthander Colton Book was drafted by the Chicago Cubs in the ninth round of the 2025 Major League Baseball Draft on Monday.  Book was chosen with the 271st overall selection.
 
“We are very excited for Colton on being selected by the Cubs,” head coach Fritz Hamburg said.  “I know he has been looking forward to this day for some time, but it happened because of his commitment, focus, and hard work toward furthering his game each and every day.  He lived true to being consistent and he dedicated himself to being the very best; what he accomplished this season was truly outstanding.”
 
Book was named the Atlantic 10 Pitcher of the Year and earned a spot on the ABCA All-East Region First Team after turning in one of the most outstanding seasons by a hurler in SJU history.  The native of Manheim, Pennsylvania, was a four-time Atlantic 10 Pitcher of the Week on the way to First Team All-Conference accolades; he was also named the College Baseball Foundation’s National Pitcher of the Week on February 25.
 
The southpaw is the first pitcher in Saint Joseph’s history to strike out 100 batters in a season, setting a new program record with 122 punchouts for the year, and fanned 13 or more on four different occasions.  He spent the season ranked among the top three in Division I in strikeouts before finishing the regular season fifth in the nation.  Also ranking in the top 12 in the country in both WHIP and strikeouts-per-nine-innings at the end of the regular season, Book showed his durability by throwing at least six innings in 10 of his starts, with five starts of seven frames or more. 
 
“On behalf of our program here on Hawk Hill, we thank him for all that he did to help our program, but most importantly, we congratulate him on a job well done,” Hamburg said.  “We look forward to following his journey in professional baseball!”
 
Book is the 14th Hawk to hear his name called in the draft during Hamburg’s tenure and the 34th overall in program history.
 

“This process is undermined when the CSC goes off the reservation and issues directions to the schools that are not consistent with the Settlement Agreement terms,” attorney Jeffrey Kessler wrote to NCAA outside counsel Rakesh Kilaru in a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

Yahoo Sports first reported details of the letter, in which Kessler threatens to take the issue to a judge assigned with resolving disputes involved in the settlement.

Kessler told AP his firm was not commenting on the contents of the letter, and Kilaru did not immediately respond to AP’s request for a comment.

Yahoo quoted a CSC spokesman as saying the parties are working to resolve differences and that “the guidance issued by the College Sports Commission … is entirely consistent with the House settlement and the rules that have been agreed upon with class counsel.”

When NIL payments became allowed in 2021, boosters formed so-called “collectives” that were closely tied to universities to work out contracts with the players, who still weren’t allowed to be paid directly by the schools.

Terms of the House settlement allow schools to make the payments now, but keep the idea of outside payments from collectives, which have to be approved by the CSC if they are worth $600 or more.

The CSC, in its letter last week, explained that if a collective reaches a deal, for instance, for an athlete to appear on behalf of the collective, which charges an admission fee, that collective does not have a “valid business purpose” because the purpose of the event is to raise money to pay athletes, not to provide goods or services available to the general public for profit.

Another example of a disallowed deal was one an athlete makes to sell merchandise to raise money to pay that player because, the CSC guidance said, the purpose of “selling merchandise is to raise money to pay that student-athlete and potentially other student-athletes at a particular school or schools, which is not a valid business purpose.”

Kessler’s letter notes that the “valid business purpose” rule was designed to ensure athletes were not simply being paid to play, and did not prohibit NIL collectives from paying athletes for the type of deals described above.

To prevent those payments “would be to create a new prohibition on payments by a NIL collective that is not provided for or contemplated by the Settlement Agreement, causing injury to the class members who should be free to receive those payments,” Kessler wrote.

___

AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports

ATLANTA, Ga. – Diamond Heels starting pitchers Aidan Haugh and Jake Knapp were both selected on the second day of the 2025 Major League Baseball Draft.
 
Haugh, a sixth round pick by the Tampa Bay Rays, and Knapp, an eight round pick by the Chicago Cubs, round out the draft for North Carolina with four total selections. UNC has now had 21 players drafted under head coach Scott Forbes, including 10 pitchers. It is the most Tar Heels taken in the first eight rounds of a draft since 2015.
 
Haugh had been in this spot before. He was chosen by the Minnesota Twins in the 16^th round of the 2024 draft, but chose to come back to Carolina and bet on himself to improve his stock. He can now say mission accomplished, as he jumped 10 rounds up to the sixth with the Rays this year.
 
One the regular starters for a Carolina arm barn that had the third best ERA in the country, Haugh made 17 appearances with 14 starts for the Tar Heels in 2025. He logged a 5-4 record with a 3.72 ERA in 75.0 innings. His was the 9^th best ERA in the ACC.
 
The Cubs drafted the National Pitcher of the Year Knapp in the eighth round, pairing him with fellow Tar Heel Kane Kepley whom they selected in the second round. Knapp, who is a consensus first team All-American and 2025 ACC Pitcher of the Year, finished the season with a 2.02 ERA in 102.1 innings with 88 strikeouts on just 16 walks.
 
The Greensboro, N.C., native racked up the best record of any pitcher in the country at 14-0. It is the most wins in a single-season without defeat and tied for the most victories overall in program history.
 
MLB teams have until July 28 to sign their new draftees.

For several years now, the world of NIL in college sports has essentially been the Wild West. Under the current system, every player is essentially a free agent after each season, and there is no salary cap for how much money schools can spend on players.

However, that is reportedly about to change. With the dawn of the revenue sharing era, a new agency is reportedly going to enforce whether or not deals done outside of the revenue sharing system are legitimate endorsement contracts.

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A report last week from Stewart Mandel of The Athletic detailed plans for the new enforcement agency.

“The recently approved House settlement, which took effect on July 1, established a clearinghouse, called NIL Go, that must approve all third-party deals for more than $600,” Mandel wrote. “The two main requirements for those deals are that they’re for a ‘valid business purpose’ and within a fair-market ‘range of compensation.’

“The goal is to prevent schools from utilizing booster-driven entities to funnel payments to recruits and transfers as a workaround to the $20.5 million revenue-sharing cap.

“Guidance issued Thursday by the College Sports Commission said that ‘an entity with a business purpose of providing payments or benefits to student-athletes or institutions, rather than providing goods or services to the general public for profit, does not satisfy the valid business purpose requirement set forth in NCAA Rule 22.1.3.’

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“It then cited as an example a collective that ‘reach(es) a deal with a student-athlete to make an appearance on behalf of the collective at an event, even if that event is open to the general public, and the collective charges an admission fee (e.g., a golf tournament).’ And, ‘The same collective’s deal with a student-athlete to promote the collective’s sale of merchandise to the public would not satisfy the valid business purpose requirement for the same reason.’”

If the new system works as intended, programs will not be able to simply pay as much as they want for players. The goal is to put all schools on more of an equal playing field, rather than giving a massive advantage to the ones with the biggest collectives. It will be interesting to see if this effort is successful, or if schools continue to find new ways to get around the rules.

This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: New college sports agency to enforce legitimacy of NIL deals