Summertime has long been thought of as a long, grueling period in the college basketball offseason. Arkansas head coach John Calipari has a proposal to spice it up a little.

Calipari has always been one to adapt to change in the college space. He believes a bit of extra competition, and maybe a bit of travel could go a long way in preparing his Razorbacks for the long season ahead.

“I think that college basketball has got to compete in the July area. There’s got to be games even the first weeks of August, there has got to be exhibition games in the summer,” Calipari told reporters. “We’re getting swallowed by everything else, and it can’t just be the tournament. In the summer, in July, it’s a space where we could take over. Right now, you have the NBA Summer League. Why don’t we have something?”

In January, the NCAA took a step forward in loosening its preseason exhibition restrictions. The Division I Men’s Basketball Oversight Committee voted to allow teams to play up to two exhibition games during their preseason against any four-year school.

That includes Division I teams. Previously, teams had to be approved through a waiver process. The proceeds from the games would have to be donated to a charity.

Arkansas played in two such preseason charity games before the 2025-25 season, infamously hosting and then beating Kansas, the preseason No. 1 team, before dropping the other to TCU on the road. It’s clear that Calipari is interested

“I’ve been saying that for a number of years. I also said there shouldn’t be a one every four years go on a foreign trip. If you want to go every year, go and then let those games be televised,” Calipari proposed. “If you don’t want to go, don’t go. Everybody should have 10 practice days in the summer, as though you’re making a foreign trip.

“And if you don’t want to, play some games against people you want to play against. They can be scrimmages or they can be open, but why wouldn’t we do that? Do you think our kids just like to do (practices in the summer), or would they like to play against somebody?”

With changes seemingly coming to the college athletics landscape on an annual basis, perhaps Calipari’s plea may finally be heard. Fans can get to see a preview of what their teams can do with the stakes as low as possible. January’s lightened restrictions on preseason exhibitions could be the first step in making this a reality.

Based on the standards in Athens, Georgia had a down year in 2024. Paul Finebaum now thinks the Bulldogs could have a hard time correcting that in 2025 with Gunner Stockton being the Bulldogs’ QB1.

Finebaum, in an appearance on Friday morning on ‘First Take,’ named how Georgia and Alabama each follow up last season in this upcoming season as one of his top storylines going into kickoff this fall. However, that came with his doubts about the ‘Dawgs with Stockton set to be their starting quarterback.

“It was a disappointing year and, as I say that, I’m like checking myself. Georgia won the SEC Championship but it still fell flat because they looked so bad against Notre Dame, completely blowing up in the final seconds of the first half and the opening stanza of the second half,” Finebaum said. “Kirby Smart needs to bounce back but I’m not sure it’s going to be easy because Gunner Stockton is not an elite quarterback. He’s serviceable and that is about it.”

Stockton, having made seven appearances in his collegiate career to that point, was forced into action due to the elbow injury to Carson Beck in the biggest games of the season in the second half against Texas in the SEC Championship and versus Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl as their quarterfinal in the College Football Playoff. In that game and a half, Stockton was 32-48 (66.7%) for 305 yards, a touchdown, and an interception while showing some mobility as well.

Considering all things about the spot he found himself in, that’s fine play from Stockton, especially leading an offense that struggled throughout last season at times, regardless of who was taking snaps at quarterback. Still, taking the place of your injured starter as the backup isn’t the same as being the full-time starting quarterback.

That said, even if no one else is confident in what Stockton can do, Georgia at least seems to be. The Bulldogs eventually didn’t add anyone from the transfer portal this offseason to compete with him, while all indications are that Stockton will be the starter over the other two options on the roster in Ryan Puglisi or Ryan Montgomery. They’ll need that belief in him now if they’re going to make up for — despite winning the conference and being the second overall seed in the playoff — what was technically their worst season in six years.

Stockton is as big of a question mark at quarterback as Georgia has had in its tenure under Smart. It’s now on him to have the answers, starting next week at SEC Media Days and come kickoff to the season in seven weeks’ time on August 30th.

The House Settlement is set to change a lot of things in the world of college athletics.

With that will come the rise of revenue sharing allowing college programs to distribute money to student athletes, but the world of NIL isn’t necessarily going away either.

But with the settlement will come some guardrails and will allow for a certain amount of matchmaking for those real NIL opportunities.

“You know, the old system of donors just throwing money into one big collective bundle, thus the name collectives. And then making up some reason to pay for play is very much the target of the settlement implementation. They want to eliminate that,” Athletic Director Wren Baker told 3 Guys Before the Game.

But would be permitted are any kind of forward-facing business that has goods and services for sale that want to do deals with student-athletes according to Baker.

Those deals have to pass the Deloitte Clearinghouse if they’re greater than $600 according to Baker.

“You just put the deal in and it’ll kick you out a range of compensation,” Baker said. “So you have really three options. If you kick in a deal and the range of compensation is $100,000 and you had signed this deal for $200,000 you can either go back and make the deal $100,000. You could change the amount of activity that you were going to do for the $100,000 potentially to make more value creation there. Or you could shift some of that deal.”

Auburn head football coach Hugh Freeze doesn’t think Paul Finebaum, and similar talking heads, understand the nuances of NIL in the modern recruiting landscape.

Freeze called out Finebaum by name for criticizing him for not signing every in-state receiver, given that he has already committed to time and salary for players already on the program’s payroll. He also took issue with criticism of his golfing habits.

To Freeze, Finebaum and his ilk are assuming things are still like the old days, when in reality, college football functions more like pro sports. Freeze hammered home the point by using Jackson Arnold and Deuce Knight as an example of why he wouldn’t get another quarterback.

“The other thing that nobody talks about–and y’all may, I don’t listen to much–I’m not on social media, my daughter does it… ‘Well, Freeze is not getting this receiver in-state.’ Do y’all realize, on paper, I am not losing a single receiver? This is not like the old days where you sign 25 guys and then figure out who the 85 are. This is actually a salary cap world and I like our receiver room. How do I go and make offers to receivers at numbers that these other schools are when, come January, I kind of want to keep the one I have. I don’t think the Finebaum’s of the world or any of them think about all of that. They just say he’s playing golf and not recruiting,” Freeze told David Pollack on the “See Ball Get Ball” podcast, per On3.

“There are just a lot of dynamics into it right now. I’m confident that our staff–we have not changed a single approach with our recruiting, people love it when they come to Auburn. But, there are just a lot of dynamics that go into their decisions currently. Come August 1, everybody has to put this in writing now and we will see where everything shakes out after that. How in the world are you going to convince a third 5-star quarterback to come to you when you have Jackson Arnold and Deuce Knight? If we’re really operating under a true salary cap where we have no idea what an NIL value is until they decide that, which is our interpretation of the new rules, how do you do that?”

Freeze’s recruiting may be over-scrutinized right now, but given the number of high-level recruits he brought on that ended up elsewhere in short order, perhaps he was being overrated before.

His results on the field don’t speak for themselves. Not in a good way, anyway.

He doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt from people like Finebaum. That’s earned by not making him look like a fool for having faith in the Tigers the last two years.