The Louisville Cardinals’ 5-star commitment will lead Louisville basketball from the 2025 cycle. Mikel Brown Jr has been practicing at Louisville this summer and is currently in Colorado Springs, Colo., for the Team USA Basketball U19 tryouts.

The 5-star commit is a historic one for Louisville, as he is the second-highest-rated commit in program history, according to 247Sports ratings. Brown is ranked as high as No. 6 in the nation and the best point guard in the cycle.

He has tremendous upside, and while he is determined to lead Louisville to their first National Title since 2013, it appears that he will only have one season to do it.

Related: The next big thing in College Basketball is heading to Louisville basketball

One-and-done rumors skyrocket for Louisville basketball’s 5-star phenom

The Cardinals are going to be one of the best teams in the nation, and Brown’s tryout performance is proving why. Pat Kelsey is emerging as one of the best recruiters in the nation, but his prized jewel was landing this elite 5-star point guard.

This commitment will position Louisville as a top-tier recruiting team, as he was the first domino to fall their way. Brown has already received NBA Draft buzz, with Jonathan Givony predicting the Cardinal to go at No. 10 overall.

Since that report, Louisville fans have been closely watching whether the Cardinals must acquire a replacement in the 2026 cycle or if there is a chance Brown stays for a couple of years to build his NBA Draft stock.

According to 247Sports’ Adam Finkelstein, it was just reported that he believes Brown’s tenure with Louisville will be short. The 5-star point guard is putting on one of the best performances at these tryouts, as many experts are nearly speechless with how well Brown is playing.

Related: Louisville basketball wastes no time offering potential Mikel Brown Jr. replacement

So, after Brown went on to become a finalist for the U19 team and had multiple jaw-dropping highlights, Louisville fans are beginning to assume he will be a one-and-done. One fan page even put out a poll, and out of 110 votes, 94.5 percent of the fans think he will be a one-and-done.

The Cardinals fans are excited for Brown and will support him better than any other program. That said, many experts are now reporting Brown as an NBA Lottery Draft pick, making it clear that Kelsey must land another 5-star point guard in the 2026 cycle after Brown declares for the NBA Draft.

Many assumed he would be a one-and-done, but after his thrilling performance, it is crystal clear he has his eyes set on the 2026 NBA Draft.

For all the latest on Louisville basketball’s offseason and recruiting, stay tuned.

Associated Press

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — Duke has hired Corey Muscara as its baseball coach.

The school announced the move Thursday, a little more than a week after Chris Pollard left following 13 seasons to take over at Virginia. The Blue Devils reached four NCAA super regionals and won two Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament titles under Pollard.

Muscara had spent the past four seasons as an assistant at Wake Forest, which included the Demon Deacons’ trip to the College World Series in 2023. He worked with the pitching staff.

His previous coaching stops included Maryland and St. John’s.

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

Part of the reason the unregulated, Wild West era of NIL in college athletics had to go, we were told, was because that system was unsustainable. It seemed to be sustaining just fine at Missouri though.

Via the Freedom of Information Act, the Columbia Missourian uncovered a treasure trove of documents related to Missouri’s NIL program, giving perhaps the most unvarnished look at how college athletes were paid in the NIL era. Those documents were available because Missouri paid its athletes straight from the athletics department to the Tigers’ collective — Every True Tiger Brands, LLC — and the newspaper got ahold of invoices ETT sent to the university.

The headline figure was that Missouri spent $31.7 million on NIL within the past year — the vast majority going to football — but even that hardly tells the true story. In fact, Mizzou spent just shy of $25 million from January 2025 to June, including a whopping $10.279 million in June alone. This practice came to be known as “front-loading,” as Mizzou offloaded payments that likely would be denied by the new Deloitte-run NIL Go clearinghouse (whose legality has yet to be challenged). Mizzou also spent $4.647 million in January, a period that coincided with the football transfer portal, and $3.592 million in May, a period that coincided with the basketball portal.

To the original point above, the Missourian uncovered invoices dating back to September 2023, and the numbers generally rose over time, even before the House settlement and its consequences became a reality. 

Broken into roughly 7-month periods, here’s how the money rose over time:

September 2023-April 2024: $794,171 average (High: $881K | Low: $662K)
May 2024-November 2024: $1.64 million average (High: $1.872M | Low: $902K)
December 2024-June 2025: $3.738 million average (High: $10.279M | Low: $1.211M)

Even removing the outlier of June 2025, Mizzou was still spending an average of $2.5 million per month on NIL during the last six months of the “unregulated” system.

As for how that money was spent, the Missourian found ETT paid nearly two-thirds of every dollar it was supplied on football ($8 million of the $12.4 million in total), with men’s basketball getting 23.5 percent, baseball just below 4 percent, women’s basketball just below 3 percent ($348,100 in real dollars) and on down to the tennis team, which received $100,000. 

Like all SEC schools, Missouri will spend the full $20.5 million “salary cap” as allowed under the House settlement, with $18 million coming in actual dollars and $2.5 million in new scholarships counting toward the cap. Most observers anticipate football eating up 75 percent of the cap, but Georgia announced in February it will spend roughly 66 percent of its $20.5 million on football, in line with how Missouri distributed its NIL money. 

The fight for the money football and men’s basketball does not consume will be real and vicious. At Mizzou, that likely manifests between baseball, women’s basketball and the rest of the Olympic sports. The Tigers endured a historically bad season on the diamond, complete with a last-place 3-27 record in conference play. Afterward, AD Laird Veatch, in announcing that he would not fire head coach Kerrick Jackson, said a “lack of support” explained the club’s performance.

“We have not invested at the level that we need to really be competitive in this league, and that sport in particular, it’s an incredibly competitive sport,” Veatch said. That support will likely come at the expense of Missouri’s other sports — but not football or men’s basketball. 

To make up the gap, Mizzou — like every other school — will increase its efforts to generate outside sponsorships for its athletes. 

“We’re going to need our businesses, our sponsors to really embrace that as part of the new era,” Veatch said. “It’s going to be on us as athletic departments (and) Learfield as our partner to continue to integrate those types of opportunities in meaningful ways for sponsors.”

As the numbers proved, the money to pay athletes simply for being Missouri Tigers was there. Will Mizzou find a way to get that money to its athletes in our new, guardrail-ed era? 

College Quarterback Reveals Why He Rejected $8 Million NIL Deal originally appeared on The Spun.

Money isn’t everything for at least one of the SEC’s top quarterbacks.

Following an impressive freshman season at South Carolina, Gamecocks QB LaNorris Sellers reportedly received several multi-million dollar NIL offers to enter the transfer portal — including a two-year, $8 million contract. However, he turned it down.

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In a conversation with The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman, Sellers’ dad Norris revealed the lengths schools were willing to go to in an effort to poach his son out of Columbia. But he and his son wanted to keep the main thing the main thing.

“He was offered all kinds of crazy numbers,” Norris said. “I told him he could say, I’m gonna stay or I’m gonna go. By my two cents: It was to get into college on a scholarship, play ball, get our degree and go on about our business. This NIL deal came later. We didn’t come here to make money. We came here to get our education, play ball, and with schools calling, we’re not gonna jump ship because they’re offering more than what we’re getting. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Sellers threw for 2,534 yards with 25 total touchdowns and another 674 rushing yards on the ground in his first season as a full-time starter on the way to SEC Freshman of the Year honors.

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But as hard as it is for someone so young to turn down that kind of money, Sellers’ father says LaNorris never really entertained leaving SC.

“You’re 19,” he told his son. “You don’t need [$8 million]. You’re in a great spot. There were several talks, but it never really crossed his mind [to leave]. It’s a challenge with colleges offering younger guys that kind of money. Who’s gonna say no to $8 million for two years? They’re gonna be swayed if you don’t have the right people in your corner.”

Some have Sellers projected to be the top pick in the 2026 NFL Draft with how high expectations are for him in Year 2. And this kind of mindset could serve him well in the future when it comes to finding the right fit in the pros.

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Related: WNBA Player Levels Caitlin Clark With Blatant Cheap Shot

College Quarterback Reveals Why He Rejected $8 Million NIL Deal first appeared on The Spun on Jun 18, 2025

This story was originally reported by The Spun on Jun 18, 2025, where it first appeared.

The House vs NCAA settlement is sending shockwaves across college sports and one of its biggest conclusions was that athletes get a share of the University’s revenue. But one prominent voice in the industry isn’t buying the spin from college leaders that, from now on, revenue-sharing arrangements will be the new way.

In his latest Mailbag for The Athletic, college football analyst Stewart Mandel isn’t buying the idea that the NCAA and the newly minted College Sports Commission from the historic settlement could successfully implement a process limiting how much schools and athletes can spend or earn, all while staying on the right side of federal law.

“Do they truly believe the words coming out of their mouths?” Mandel wrote. “Pro athletes’ salaries only ever go up and up and up. College coaches’ salaries only ever go up and up and up. But we are to believe that the new College Sports Commission has devised a foolproof system to decrease college athletes’ compensation that is — how do you say it — legal?”

Mandel further explained his viewpoint, citing the attempts to cap college athletes’ compensation constitute illegal restraints of trade.

“Over the last dozen years, judges from across the political spectrum, including the nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, have found it to be an illegal restraint of trade for the NCAA’s membership to enforce policies that restrict athletes’ earnings,” Mandel added.

The House settlement levies a cap on how much a institution can spend ($20.5 million) to pay athletes along with a limit on third party NIL deals as well.

Stewart Mandel cites Texas Tech’s current NIL situation to further his point on NIL deals

Stewart Mandel cited the example of Texas Tech and how are they going to get under the cap of $20.5 million after already committing to $55 million NIL deals for the upcoming school year. Mandel is not just brewing up random numbers. He confirmed the same through mega-booster Cody Campbell, telling his colleague Sam Khan.

Only two things can happen from here, as Mandel said:

“Either their payroll is going down by more than 60 percent a year from now, or, as I strongly suspect, a judge will have long since issued an injunction that ties the enforcers’ hands.”

It remains to be seen what further comes out of the situation as voices like Mandel are making sure no one buys into what he calls “a foolproof system” without asking.

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