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.

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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

Less than two weeks after terms of a multibillion-dollar college sports settlement went into effect, friction erupted over the definition of a “valid business purpose” that collectives making name, image likeness payments to players are supposed to have.

The new College Sports Commission sent a letter to athletic directors last week saying it was rejecting deals in which players were receiving money from collectives that were created solely to pay them and don’t provide goods or services to the general public for profit.

A lead attorney for the players responded by saying those instructions went against settlement terms and asking the CSC to rescind the guidance.

“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

Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

ATLANTA – Just a few years after NIL and instant eligibility for transfers upended the college football world, programs must adjust again.

The recent House settlement implemented revenue sharing, where schools pay players directly rather than them signing contracts with a collective. There’s a cap on how much revenue sharing money schools can give out, split across all sports. NIL deals can still exist, but they must go through a clearinghouse run by Deloitte called NIL Go.

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On top of that, football teams can give out scholarships to anyone on their roster, but rosters will be capped at 105. Some players, called Designated Student Athletes, can be grandfathered in during the first few years of the roster limits if they were previously on the team.

Vanderbilt football coach Clark Lea was slow to adapt to the original NIL and transfer rules, but he believes he’s better prepared this time around. If anything, he said, the new rules make roster-building more straightforward.

“I don’t want to say it’s a seamless transition, because it’s a transition,” Lea said in a session with local media at SEC media days on July 14. “We’re going from contracts written through a collective to now having those as part of the revenue share salary cap. And so we have to transition to those contracts in a way that keeps up moving without skipping a beat.

” … There is no room for a team in our league that’s not fully participating. From there, it becomes, how do we engage the Nashville community to go beyond the revenue share? And I’m excited to explore all those things to better position us for where the game is headed.”

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To engage the Nashville community, Lea said he saw opportunities for partnerships with local businesses that could sign Vanderbilt players to NIL deals above the revenue-sharing cap. Lea said he was not directly involved with those conversations, as he was better off focusing on football, but that other parts of the department were focused on taking advantage of those opportunities.

The Commodores have a higher profile going into 2025 than they’ve had in a while with returning quarterback Diego Pavia and tight end Eli Stowers, plus several other good players. Martel Hight could play offense, defense and special teams.

Storylines Five storylines for Vanderbilt football at SEC media days include Diego Pavia, revenue sharing

But there are still questions abounding. NIL Go has rejected several NIL deals, leaving teams uncertain about the level of enforcement that will take place.

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Lea and Vanderbilt, like everyone else, will have to figure out those things as they go.

Aria Gerson covers Vanderbilt athletics for The Tennessean. Contact her at agerson@gannett.com or on X @aria_gerson.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Clark Lea: Vanderbilt football coach on revenue sharing vs NIL