MERCER ISLAND, Wash. — Charlotte Softball third baseman, Jenna Lord, named to Softball America Postseason Top 100 Player Rankings list at No. 70 after historic 2025 season. 

Lord, who was named American Conference Player of the Year, clocked in at number 70 in the nation on Softball America’s postseason top 100 players list after one of the greatest single seasons in Charlotte Softball history. 

Lord’s 2025 season included batting .410 in 178 at-bats, a slugging percentage of .865%, 21 home runs, and 65 RBI. Lord is now the single-season record holder in Charlotte Softball history for both RBI and Slugging Percentage. Her 2025 season also ranks in the top three in Charlotte history in homers, batting average, total bases, hits, and runs. 

Not only did Lord make a splash in the Charlotte record books, but she also led the American Conference in nearly every batting stat, including slugging, home runs, hits, OPS, runs scored, and RBI, earning her title of 2025 American Conference Player of the Year. 

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The House v. NCAA settlement was approved Friday, but SEC commissioner Greg Sankey believes there is still plenty more that needs to be done. He joined The Paul Finebaum Show on Monday to speak about the need for congress to continue to aid in helping to create a “national standard” for college athletics.

Although the newly approved settlement is certainly a step in the right direction, it didn’t address everything when it comes to NIL. Currently, the laws are different in every state, creating a massively uneven playing field, and Sankey wants congress to help create federal legislation.

“College sports doesn’t work well with 50 different standards,” he said. “If we’re left with just states legislating, then the nation of College World Series, and we just saw the highlights, for one. The NCAA’s Division I track and field championships are this weekend. Then the College World Series in baseball. Those don’t work very well if everybody’s playing by their own rules. So that’s one reason for national standards. I could go on as to other reasons.

“I think the interest has always been there. I think the attention has increased, the understanding of the changes we’ve made. I think even in the last fews days there’s been a number of members of the House and Senate quoted in a positive way about this new economic relationship. But to continue forward, I think this kind of congressional help and engagement and introduction of a meaningful bill to support college athletics remains a real priority for us.”

The recently approved settlement will now allow universities to pay players directly, as well as introducing roster limits. Additionally, a third-party NIL clearinghouse will now have to approve deals greater than $600.

The changes are set to take place on July 1 as Power Four programs will have between roughly $13 million-$16 million to spend on their rosters. These changes are definitely a step in the right direction, but Greg Sankey urged congressional leaders not to stop here.

“From my perspective there is a sense of urgency,” Greg Sankey explained. “I can’t speak for 435 members of the House of Representatives and 100 senators. …I’ll go back to last year’s media days where I painted a picture of how sports brings people together. In a time where there are plenty of divisions, we reconvene for volleyball and soccer and football in the fall. You’ll have every demographic, every ethnicity, every political party, different wordlviews come together to rally around their team. My hope, my representation to members of congress, is that’s a really healthy model to explore.

“Not that you don’t have to negotiate differences, but the reality is we should be able to come together in a nonpartisan way to look at some of the new problems we’re facing and pursue meaningful solutions across the aisle and together. I do think that one of the realities that we have that has certainly been a learning experience for me is the election cycle does alter the pace of consideration. I don’t know that there’s any panic button here. We have to control that which we can control. I think from a philsophical standpoint, that’s reality. So we have a settlement. We have a level of control over that decision making. The judge had to make a final decision.”

Maryland basketball’s former NIL director disagrees with claims by a former player’s parents that he wasn’t paid what he was owed by the school’s NIL management company, Blueprint Sports. Turtle NIL founder Harry Geller, who negotiated Ja’Kobi Gillespie’s contract on Maryland’s behalf, said Gillespie isn’t owed the roughly $100,000 his father claims he’s owed.

The Gillespies are pursuing legal action to recoup the money.

“Here are the facts as I remember them. I was actively involved in the whole process. Foreseeing that the NIL money would reach a peak this offseason due to the House Settlement, I put a clause in every player’s contract that said, to paraphrase, ‘If you enter the transfer portal and transfer, all payments will cease.’ This was done mainly because the players were compensated to do charitable works, and a lot of the events took place in the offseason. So it was a year-round commitment,” Geller told InsideMDSports.

 “It was always explained to the Gillispie family that if they transferred, the payments would stop, as it’s a year-round commitment.”

“When BluePrint (BPS) took over, all contracts were transferred to them and rewritten. The clause about transferring was not in Jakobi’s contract, but was in all the other 12 contracts. It has not been explained to me why one was omitted. Regardless, there is strong language in the BPS contract referring to the consequences of transferring that Ja’Kobi agreed to.”

What I’m Hearing: Early reviews of new-look Maryland basketball and the deal with Zion Elee

Earlier Monday, Gillespie’s father was quoted in a Baltimore Sun article saying Maryland still owed his son for two months’ worth of payments, framing it s proof Maryland was NIL-poor like former coach Kevin Willard said.

“When Willard left, they pretty much quit paying all the players … We’re fighting that right now. There were players that did get their money and players that didn’t and are still fighting for it. It kinda makes it look like Willard was right. Maybe they don’t have the money,” Byron Gillespie said.

Gillespie’s one season at Maryland was a valuable springboard for his career. He was one of Maryland’s best players, earning second-team all-Big Ten honors after averaging 14.7 points and 4.8 assists per game on 45.3 percent shooting overall and 40.7 percent from three. Along with raising his profile nationally and earning about $500,000, he played it into a return trip to his native Tennessee to play for the Volunteers for what’s been said to be in the $2 million range.

“Why he is even pursuing this is beyond me. He was given a great opportunity to shine by Kevin, made the most of it with his talent and hard work, and leveraged that into what has been reported as a four-to-five-times payday from the previous year,” Geller said.

“Ja’Kobi signed the Turtle NIL contract with this clause in it … We executed scores of contracts during the Turtle NIL era with no complaints from anyone.”

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In preparation for the July 1 implementation of the House v. NCAA settlement, Texas Tech Athletics integrated its official NIL Collective, The Matador Club, to its booster organization, the Red Raider Club, Monday.

Beginning in the 2025-26 academic year, the Red Raider Club will be responsible for contributing $14 million annually of the $20.5 million departmental-generated revenue collegiate programs are allowed to put forth toward student athletes.

“As we transition to a new model, know that we are ready,” stated Kirby Hocutt, Tech director of athletics, in a news release Monday. “Over the past year, we have studied various impacts of the House settlement on our department and have been ready for this new era in college athletics. Texas Tech will continue to be a leader nationally in this era.”

The move will provide donors one spot to assist Tech Athletics in the new revenue-sharing landscape. Since 1953, the Red Raider Club has been Tech’s primary booster organization for Athletics, while the Matador Club, which was established by donors Cody Campbell, Terry Fuller, John Sellers, Gary Petersen, Tim Culp and Marc McDougal, has served as an NIL collective since 2022.

As both the university and student-athletes transition into a new era of college football, Tech also created a dedicated Revenue Share Administration unit within the Internal Affairs and Compliance area of the athletics department.

This team, spearheaded by former Tech Associate Athletics Director for Compliance Justin Opperman, will be responsible for university NIL agreements with student-athletes, monitoring the annual revenue share cap and third-party NIL reporting.

Furthermore, Tech pledged to enhance its financial literacy efforts for student-athletes through additional courses under the J.T. and Margaret Talkington Department for Student-Athlete Development.

Higher-earning student-athletes will be provided advanced financial strategies in addition to the fundamental curriculum all Tech student-athletes are required.

“Our donors and supporters will have the ability to impact our success like never before,” Hocutt stated in the release, “but it will take all of us.”