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Before he suits up in Cougar blue, BYU’s prized basketball commit AJ Dybantsa took a quiet moment to honor the person who’s been there from day one—his mom.

In a world of NIL deals and national rankings, it’s easy to forget the personal side of a prospect. But on Saturday, Dybantsa reminded fans that behind every rising star is a family. Sharing a heartfelt photo on Instagram with his mother, Chelsea, he wrote, “Happy glo mommaa, words can’t rlly describe.” The caption was short, but it resonated with thousands. For BYU fans, it was a glimpse of the young man beyond the highlight reels.

A Family Foundation Behind the Hype

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Dybantsa, whose NIL valuation currently sits at an astounding $3.8 million per On3, is the most coveted high school player in the Class of 2025. While programs like Kansas, Alabama, and North Carolina pursued him, he chose BYU—a decision his family was heavily involved in. Chelsea and his father, Ace, even toured the Provo campus before AJ himself made an official visit. Their belief in BYU’s vision paved the way for his commitment.

Mom in the Stands, Always in His Corner

Throughout his rise, Chelsea has been a constant presence. Whether in crowded gyms or national showcases, she’s been seen cheering loudly and proudly. Last year, during the Nike Hoop Summit, AJ represented her native Jamaica on Team World. This year, playing for Team USA, he noted a shift: “I’m playing for myself.” But those who’ve followed his journey know—his mom is always part of the “why.”

Related: BYU adds sharpshooting forward to impressive roster

A Moment That Speaks Volumes

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Even though Dybantsa has already arrived in Provo to begin his collegiate career, this simple post with his mother hit home for many. It wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t staged. It was a young man showing love to the person who helped him get here—a reminder that no matter how big the stage gets, the roots matter most.

BYU fans, get ready. You’re not just gaining a generational talent—you’re getting someone who carries family with him every step of the way.

Related: BYU’s AJ Dybantsa soars as college basketball’s top NIL earner

Related: BYU four-star center Xavion Staton arrives in Provo

What a weekend we just got on the diamond. With just two weeks now remaining until the regular season ends, every game feels like it’s worth even more this time of the year. That was on display this past week, and there are notable changes throughout D1Baseball’s top 25 rankings because of it.

There were five series between ranked teams over the weekend. They were No. 1 Texas at No. 11 Arkansas, No. 3 Clemson at No. 5 Florida State, No. 10 Auburn at No. 12 Tennessee, No. 18 Alabama at No. 15 Vanderbilt, and No. 23 Ole Miss at No. 21 Oklahoma.

While No. 1 Texas being swept by No. 11 Arkansas is the story of the weekend, they weren’t the only top team to go down. No. 2 LSU and No. 3 Clemson both lost their weekend series, too. 12 teams entered their series finale in a rubber game, needing a win to avoid the series loss.

Once again, the top five looks very different and that’s far from the only change in this week’s D1Baseball top 25 rankings. Here’s how the full rankings look.

Previous Ranking: No. 1
Weekly Record: 1-3
Overall Record: 38-8 (19-5 in SEC)

Texas kicked off its week with an 11-2 victory over Prairie View on Tuesday, and then hit the road for a pivotal SEC series at No. 11 Arkansas. There, the Longhorns struggled immensely, especially in Thursday’s opener, losing 9-0. Texas went on to lose 6-1 on Friday and 13-8 on Saturday, suffering a sweep. Still, the Longhorns hold firm at No. 1 in D1Baseball’s top 25.

Previous Ranking: No. 5 (+3)
Weekly Record: 2-1
Overall Record: 33-10 (14-7 in ACC)

Florida State hosted No. 3 Clemson over the weekend, a massive series with big implications on both the ACC standings and the D1Baseball top 25. The Seminoles came away with a 6-5, extra-innings win on Friday to start the series, but fell 6-3 in the first game on Sunday. That set up a rubber game in the finale, where FSU erupted with a 20-9 victory.

Previous Ranking: No. 2 (-1)
Weekly Record: 2-2
Overall Record: 38-11 (15-9 in SEC)

LSU’s week started with a 15-2 midweek win over Southeastern Louisiana, entering the weekend at Texas A&M with momentum. While the Aggies won 3-1 in the first game on Saturday, the Tigers bounced back in the second game of the doubleheader with a 2-1 win to set up a decisive rubber game on Sunday. There, LSU fell again, 6-4, to drop the series.

Previous Ranking: No. 4
Weekly Record: 2-0
Overall Record: 35-10 (15-9 in ACC)

While North Carolina did not have a series over the weekend, they did have a pair of midweek games on Tuesday and Wednesday. Against George Mason on Tuesday, the Tar Heels won 13-4. They then dominated again on Wednesday, defeating Queens 14-3 to end a short week.

Previous Ranking: No. 6 (+1)
Weekly Record: 3-1
Overall Record: 33-13 (16-8 in Big Ten)

Oregon’s week started at No. 7 Oregon State, the fourth consecutive game between the two rivals. The Ducks again had the last laugh, winning 8-4 to take all four games. They then traveled to Michigan State over the weekend, falling 2-0 in Friday’s opener. Oregon won 13-5 on Saturday to even the series, forcing a rubber game on Sunday. There, Oregon prevailed with a 3-1 win to take the series and enter the top five in this week’s D1Baseball top 25.

Previous Ranking: No. 9 (+3)
Weekly Record: 4-0
Overall Record: 39-11 (15-9 in SEC)

Georgia’s week got underway on Tuesday, earning a 9-2 midweek victory against Kennesaw State. The Bulldogs then traveled to Missouri over the weekend, winning 9-2 on Friday and 5-2 on Saturday to clinch the series. Georgia wanted the sweep on Sunday, and got it with a 4-2 victory.

Previous Ranking: No. 11 (+4)
Weekly Record: 3-0
Overall Record: 40-9 (17-7 in SEC)

Arkansas entered the week with three consecutive series losses, but that didn’t stop them from playing exceptionally well against No. 1 Texas. The Razorbacks won 9-0 on Thursday, 6-1 on Friday and 13-8 on Saturday to finish off the sweep, and have soared back up in D1Baseball’s top 25 rankings.

Previous Ranking: No. 10 (+2)
Weekly Record: 3-1
Overall Record: 33-15 (13-11 in SEC)

Auburn kicked off its week against Samford, earning a strong 3-0 victory. The Tigers then traveled to No. 12 Tennessee, winning Friday’s opener 6-1. Tennessee responded with a 5-4 win in the second game, one that was suspended and completed on Sunday. In the finale with the series on the line, Auburn prevailed with a 8-1 win to take the series.

Previous Ranking: No. 3 (-6)
Weekly Record: 1-2
Overall Record: 37-12 (14-10 in ACC)

Clemson did not get in a game during the midweek slate, but had a massive series over the weekend at No. 5 Florida State. FSU won the opener 6-5 in 11 innings on Friday night, but Clemson won 6-3 on Sunday in the front end of a doubleheader, evening the series. That set up a rubber game later on Sunday, where Clemson fell 20-9 to lose the series and drop in D1Baseball’s top 25.

Previous Ranking: No. 7 (-3)
Weekly Record: 2-2
Overall Record: 34-12

Oregon State fell 8-4 against Oregon on Tuesday, and then traveled out to Hawaii. The four-game series began on Friday, where the Beavers won 11-4. They then won 3-2 on Saturday to secure at least a series split. The third game of the series will be played Sunday night, with the finale set for Monday evening.

D1Baseball Top 25 Rankings: 11-25

11. Vanderbilt (+4)
12. West Virginia (+4)
13. UC Irvine (-5)
14. Coastal Carolina (+5)
15. Tennessee (-3)
16. NC State (-3)
17. Oklahoma (+4)
18. UCLA (-4)
19. Troy (+1)
20. Louisville (-3)
21. Southern Miss (+1)
22. Arizona (+2)
23. Alabama (+5)
24. Ole Miss (-1)
25. USC (NR)

USC is the only entrant into this week’s D1Baseball top 25. They replace Kansas, who was No. 25 last week.

The 2025 NBA Draft early entry list has been released. While the Charlotte Hornets will be hoping to luck out for Duke’s Cooper Flagg, the initial mock draft by The Athletic believes the to pick will go to the Washington Wizards. 

“This year’s early entry list is much less substantial than what we’ve seen in the past,” according to The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie. “Mainly because of the proliferation of the name, image and likeness (NIL) marketplace in college basketball, there are only 106 early entrants to the NBA Draft, a drastically lower number than the 195 who entered last year and the 242 who entered the year before. This peaked in 2021, when 353 early entrants declared for the draft.”

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Charlotte is projected to land Rutgers Forward Ace Bailey with the No. 5 pick. Most believe this is a stretch with the 6-foot-10 big man being a top three talent.

“He remains quite polarizing and has seemed to have borne the brunt of the blame from NBA personnel for Rutgers’ poor season,” according to Vecenie.  “Yes, he averaged 17.6 points and seven rebounds while shooting 46 percent from the field and 34 percent from 3. But his style of play did not seem wildly conducive to winning basketball. He settles for a lot of long jumpers because he struggles to get all the way to the rim (he has a high handle and high center of gravity that gets knocked off its line a bit too easily). Defensively, he wasn’t always particularly engaged in help situations unless he saw an opportunity to go get the basketball.

Related: Former Charlotte Hornets star Alonzo Mourning says routine check-ups saved his life—twice

“And yet, it’s worth noting that Rutgers was a catastrophe when he wasn’t on the court. Even in Big Ten play, they lost Bailey’s minutes by only three points per 100 possessions. When he was off the court, they lost those minutes by 23 points per 100, per CBB Analytics. His presence was clearly helpful, and I think that’s what tracks most for me. Bailey is enormous, he’s long, he is a real shooter and he showed some defensive moments that were very positive in switch situations. I can’t really get him outside of the top five, and I think it would be very reasonable to take him at No. 3. It’s just that both Portland and New Orleans in this exercise at No. 3 and No. 4 are loaded with big wings right now.”

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Related: Hornets’ Mark Williams turns heads by trolling Lakers following playoff exit

The Hornets have back-to-back picks in the second round at No. 33 & 34. Vecenie believes UAB forward Yaxel Lendeborg and Marquette guard Kam Jones will complete the draft for Charlotte.

The 2025 NBA Draft is on Wednesday, June 25 at 8 p.m. ET.

Casey Schwab’s background doesn’t exactly scream “gamer.”

A Wisconsin graduate with a law degree from Southern Cal, Schwab’s career has included stops at NFL Network, Fox and, eventually, the NFLPA, running business and legal affairs for NFL Players Inc. He followed all that by founding Altius Sports Partners in 2020 amid the advent of NIL.

So, how and why, with a CV like that, is Schwab’s latest venture centered on, of all things, video games?

“There’s a lot of uncertainty [in the college space] around revenue sharing, the [House] settlement, employment status — or not employment status — collective bargaining,” he said. “But there’s not a lot of uncertainty around the commercial opportunities for college football players when it comes to video games.”

That clarity is why Schwab has moved on to a new venture — Pathway Sports and Entertainment.

Pathway’s business model is simple: The company aims to develop a video game group license for college football players by offering individual upfront payments of $1,500.

The real potential comes as those players signed on with Pathway could earn further compensation, should the group license subsequently be sold to a developer such as Electronic Arts, at which time players would receive no less than 70% of the net royalties.

So far, that pitch has been heard loud and clear.

Pathway has signed more than 2,700 players across the Power Four, just under half the total scholarship athletes at that level. That includes inking deals with at least 75% of the rosters at Alabama, Baylor, Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, Oregon, Nebraska, Wisconsin, SMU, Washington, Texas Tech and South Carolina, among others.

“It’s incumbent on us to perform,” said Eric Winston, president of Winners Alliance, the firm backing Pathway financially. “We’re not telling college players, ‘Hey, trust us,’ or ‘There’s a hope and a prayer and we’ll see what we can do.’ We’re out laying capital to these players so that they’re no worse off than the baseline — and we still believe that we can do multiples of that baseline better over time.”

The college football video game ecosystem exists in a relatively monopolistic state — opening the door for a disrupter such as Pathway.

EA, which declined to comment for this story when reached by Sports Business Journal, signed more than 11,000 athletes in relaunching its college football franchise last year via EA Sports College Football 25.

Those deals are technically individual and nonexclusive, though the majority of those athletes are also part of a group licensing agreement with OneTeam, which handles player payments and other responsibilities related to the game.

Pathway’s approach, albeit more aggressive, is essentially betting if it can sign enough players, developers would have to buy its group license in order to maintain a certain level of user experience.

After all, would the lone major college football video game sell to its maximum potential without half the players in the Power Four?

“There have been some headwinds,” Schwab conceded. “There’ve been some people who are confused by what we’re doing. There are some people who are challenged by what we’re doing. All of those are to be expected and, frankly, welcomed when you’re trying to disrupt and innovate and do something new.”

The announcement dropped like a hopeful hammer.

“For those who never stopped believing…” the post from EA Sports College’s X account read on Feb. 2, 2021, confirming the return of a college football video game.

While it was three more years before users had a downloadable game in front of them, EA Sports College Football 25 has since become the bestselling sports video game of all time, according to Circana (EA has not disclosed its exact sales figures).

“I was expecting it to debut as the biggest college football game in a launch month,” Mat Piscatella, Circana executive director, video games, told SBJ last year. “But I did not expect it to more than triple the lifetime dollar sales of the previous bestselling game [NCAA Football 07].”

For what massive success the revamped franchise has enjoyed after a decade-long hiatus, there has been ample consternation over athletes’ compensation related to their inclusion in the game.

The initial wave of onboarding real players into EA Sports College Football 25 — a significant shift from past iterations, given restrictions around NIL at the time — was done via a joint effort by EA, Learfield and OneTeam Partners.

Players were offered a flat payment of $600, regardless of position or school, along with a copy of the game for either PlayStation or Xbox. Cover athlete and “Ambassador” deals also were struck with a select number of athletes (terms of those deals have not been made public).

The issue Pathway intends to rectify: The upfront cash paid to players reflected neither their value to the game nor offered them a stake in how well it sold.

“Whether it‘s EA, whether it‘s whomever, we really think that we can bring value into a place that, quite frankly, players have not received it yet,” Winston said. “That just comes back to that core premise of why we’re doing this.”

Pathway’s efforts aren’t entirely novel, considering the machinations entailed in launching EA Sports College Football 25. But the backing behind Pathway, its key players and the group’s early returns are significant enough to merit notice.

The company’s three-person leadership team includes Schwab, former Georgia NIL collective frontman Matt Hibbs and Bob Philp, a longtime sports marketing executive most recently at CAA and Roc Nation. It also added Sami Robbins, who’d been managing college NIL partnerships at OneTeam, as its new director of college.

“Between myself, our investors and our operational team, we have quite literally decades of experience of structuring those deals, monetizing those deals, maximizing those deals for the athletes,” Schwab said.

In all, signing every scholarship player at the FBS level (134 schools) using Pathway’s $1,500 baseline could cost more than $17 million, or around $127,000 per school.

The company also is creating an activation program slated to feature up to 200 athletes for varying opportunities beyond the base payment.

Winners Alliance — an agency that has handled group licensing efforts in professional tennis and cricket and is headed up by OneTeam founding CEO Ahmad Nassar — is fronting the money to get Pathway off the ground. Winston declined to disclose how much is being invested, but it‘s understood enough capital has been poured in to pay players for multiple years.

Eventually, though, there will need to be a return on that investment.

Schwab told SBJ that Pathway’s profit plan centers on taking a cut of any deal that might be struck with potential game developers.

For example, Pathway and EA could hypothetically agree to a deal granting Pathway 10% of game sales in exchange for EA incorporating those players captured under the group license. If that game recorded $340 million in sales, Pathway would net $34 million, or double the rough investment it would take to sign all 11,000-plus FBS players.

Schwab noted at least 70% of the profit Pathway generates from a group license sale will go toward players. In this case, around $24 million of the theoretical $34 million agreement would be earmarked for athletes (about $2,100 per person) — $17 million toward the initial investments the company made in player signings, and roughly $7 million in new money. Pathway would then pocket the remaining $10 million.

“They have a value proposition for college players that is unique to anything else I‘ve seen in this space,” Arizona Cardinals tackle and Pathway adviser Kelvin Beachum said in a statement provided to SBJ. “They have a dedicated team and long-term vision that puts the players first, which is something I wish I had as a college player.”

Pathway has roared out of the gates since its first set of meetings with teams in February, but forecasting its long-term feasibility and potential isn’t as simple as back-of-the-napkin math.

For one, Pathway and EA have no current business relationship in place, and the latter is certainly under no obligation to create one.

There’s also competition on the market.

OneTeam — which handled NIL agreements for EA ahead of last year’s launch of College Football 25, and has played a major role with the NFLPA and EA’s Madden arrangement since 2020 — upped its one-time payments to athletes from $600 to $1,500 in March.

Still, the swath of agreements Pathway has struck should have a consequential impact in the not-too-distant future.

The deals the company inked in recent months are nonexclusive in 2025, but become exclusive in 2026 and extend through a player’s eligibility (exclusivity would end at that point).

More significant, Pathway also has included a right of first refusal in its deals for players who make a pro roster, giving the company a 90-day window to negotiate video game rights for those athletes.

That could theoretically create an impasse (or, on the flip side, incentivize partnership) between Pathway, the NFLPA, OneTeam and EA related to group licensing and the Madden franchise.

The NFLPA and OneTeam declined to comment for this story when reached by SBJ.

Schwab, however, insisted the ROFR included in Pathway’s deals is unlikely to be exercised.

“The only way it would make sense for us, or anybody, to exercise that right is if we had a deal with a video game developer to go pay more for those rights,” he said. “The analogy is if somebody has a right of first refusal on my house, and I’m trying to sell my house, I‘m going to be able to drive the rest of the market up for the value of my house.”

Pathway may also serve purposes beyond college football video games — though Schwab is adamant it‘s not a precursor to a union.

The company’s advisory board includes co-head of WME Sports Karen Brodkin and National Association of Basketball Coaches Executive Director Craig Robinson, suggesting a potential foray into college basketball.

More immediately, college sports leaders are determined to avoid classifying athletes as employees, despite seeking a way to collectively bargain (federal law requires one be deemed an employee in order to do so). Group licensing, thus, might provide a way to pseudo-organize without needing employee status or an antitrust exemption from Congress.

The approach is also one schools may look toward in a post-House settlement world, where NIL deals are likely to face more scrutiny from a Deloitte-run clearinghouse designed to judge fair market value on agreements worth $600 or more.

“I‘m a firm believer that the path forward [for college sports] is a situation where the student athletes can act collectively and we can reach an agreement with them in some form,” said former Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick, who‘s serving as an adviser for Pathway. “There are a lot of different ways to skin that cat, and so I‘m super supportive of anybody who‘s laying the groundwork for that. Casey certainly is.”