When Elon Athletics released its new program initiative Phoenix Rising, it was with the intention of establishing a refreshed vision of the athletic program through a five-year strategic course plan. 

With elements such as name, image, and likeness, the transfer portal, and the House v. NCAA settlement ruling in favor of colleges to pay athletes, Phoenix Rising is an opportunity for Elon Athletics to become more innovative in their approach toward navigating the college athletics. 

One of the core principles is growing a more competitive mindset. Athletic Director Jennifer Strawley said that while there has always been a competitive approach, she believes there is more room to go about it differently based on some of the feedback she received. 

“I think we always valued it, but maybe we talk about it differently than before,” Strawley said. 

Since 2021, Elon has won at least 12 CAA championships with men’s and women’s tennis, along with golf winning at least once. Track and field has won three outdoor championships while men’s and women’s cross country have won a combined six times. 

As far as making progress, Strawley said she wants to set certain standards that would allow Elon Athletics to work its way up toward reaching their goals such as the amount of money they fundraise. Strawley believes it will be more realistic if the athletic department can succeed gradually with different expectations each year. 

“It won’t be just going from point A to Z, you’re going to incrementally increase along the way,” Strawley said. “The way I thought about it is how do we each year set the goals that allow us to drive the plan forward in that five year period.”

The initiative will also measure the amount of money Elon can fundraise going forward. Strawley said she hopes that Elon Athletics can eventually double their current amount to compete against other colleges who have previously spent more money. 

“We had to lay the foundation and the framework of a fundraising model that hopefully allows us to grow in that area and double what we’re raising annually to enhance the student athlete experience,” Strawley said. 

Going forward, Strawley noted the importance of actually applying the Phoenix Rising initiative. She said the athletic department must carry out its vision to create engagement while driving up revenue to be successful. Strawley hopes that will be the final part of the plan.

“We have to bring it to life through the student athletes, coaches, and the people in our department, and engagement with the campus,” Strawley said. “A vision and a plan is great. Now we just have to live it.” 

Strawley also listed engagement as one of the athletic program’s biggest priorities. She emphasized the need for the athletic program to interact with multiple student groups, Burlington residents and Elon alumni among others. Strawley believes that reaching out to more people would allow Elon Athletics to expand some of their strategies.

Some of the people Strawley mentioned included university offices and groups such as Student Life, Student Government Association and greek life organizations. Strawley said that partnerships between those organizations along with athletics groups such as Phoenix Fanatics could significantly boost student engagement. 

“Engagement is a prong of this plan that I think is really important,” Strawley said. “We can really focus on being intentional in those spaces and creating engagement with our constituents.”

For Strawley, this plan was in the making for a while. 

Strawley said that after she took the job in July 2023, she wanted to incorporate as much feedback as possible from people working in athletics. In doing so, Strawley hoped to gain a better perspective of Elon’s athletic program, along with letting people know their ideas were valuable. 

“I took almost an entire year to listen and understand Elon, and be sure that different voices were all a part of this process,” Strawley said. “Then we started to get ideas together and create a plan that is about all of athletics.”

Strawley said that she used this process to create a program that is suitable for the changing landscape of college sports. 

“What Phoenix Rising does is that it gives us a values-based proposition to be innovative,” Strawley said. “We have to change. We can’t stay static to a changing world.” 

The 2025 Esports World Cup officially opened this week with more than 2,000 players from 200 clubs around the world slated to compete in 25 tournaments across 24 titles in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The event runs through Aug. 24 and is billed as the world’s largest esports and gaming festival. It features a total prize pool topping $70 million, which includes the cross-title format for the Club Championship, the winner of which will become the EWC Club Champion and claim the $7 million grand prize.

The competition also includes more than $38 million for individual game championships, $5 million in global qualifier rewards and $450,000 in MVP bonuses.

“EWC 2025 is about bringing the gaming world together — iconic games, elite players, and millions of fans around a shared celebration,” Esports World Cup Foundation CEO Ralf Reichert said. “Through new ways of global broadcasts, original shows, and documentary storytelling, we’re opening doors, creating opportunities, and sharing esports in new and exciting ways.

“With record-breaking competition, this summer is special — not just for gamers, but for everyone who joins us.”

The EWC announced earlier this week that it will produce more than 7,000 hours of live programming across the event, delivered in 35 languages across 140 countries. It will also be streamed live on Twitch, YouTube and TikTok.

The 25 tournaments include: Apex Legends, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Call of Duty: Warzone, Chess, Counter-Strike 2, Crossfire, Dota 2, EA FC 25, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, Free Fire, Honor of Kings, League of Legends, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, Overwatch 2, PUBG MOBILE, PUBG: Battlegrounds, Rainbow Six Siege X, RENNSPORT, Rocket League, Starcraft 2, Street Fighter 6, Teamfight Tactics, Tekken 8 and Valorant.

“The Esports World Cup is redefining success in global sport, unlocking long-term opportunities across the entire ecosystem for players, organizations and communities,” EWC Foundation chief product officer Faisal bin Homran said. “At its core is the pioneering EWC Club Championship, a cross-game format that rewards all-around excellence, reshapes how performance is measured, and sets a new benchmark for what it means to be a champion in the digital age.

“As EWC 2025 begins, we look forward to seeing new champions rise and new legacies take shape.”

–Field Level Media

Last summer, one of the most sought-after recruits in college football wasn’t a quarterback or a defensive lineman. It was a 21-year-old YouTuber in Kentucky.

James Bordeaux had put out a series of videos and Twitter posts to narrow down which school he would play as in his first Dynasty Mode rebuild video after the release of the EA Sports College Football 25 video game. His self-started campaign got so much attention that football programs reached out, sending gear and graphics as if he were a prospect. The winner: Nebraska. The resulting video got 1.1 million views.

Many see YouTube as the future of sports consumption. The NFL will broadcast its Chiefs vs. Chargers Week 1 game on YouTube in September. But for younger fans, YouTube is the present. Polling indicates Gen Z spends more time watching highlights than it does live games. Golf has developed a huge presence on the platform.

Before NCAA athletes were allowed to monetize their name, image and likeness, former UCF kicker Donald de la Haye was forced to choose between his YouTube channel and continuing to play college football in 2017. He chose YouTube and now has more than 6.2 million subscribers.

College sports fandom has long been led by old-fashioned booster clubs and message boards that popped up 20 years ago. But YouTube is becoming a new ground for college fandom, especially with the return of EA Sports College Football, and dozens of people like Bordeaux have turned creating videos about the video game into a full-time job, gaining enough influence to impact the game itself.

“It shows how deep people’s love for their team is that they were so interested in what a random guy on the internet was going to do, because it could be their team,” he said.

Bordeaux started his YouTube channel four years ago as a high schooler who just wanted to talk about his favorite video game, which he’d been playing since he was 6.

He took viewers on hours-long journeys in previous editions of the NCAA Football video game, like rebuilding Kansas football or creating North Dakota State as an FBS program. His first goal was to make $100 a day from YouTube’s creator ad-revenue program.

The channel hit that mark quickly and kept growing, so Bordeaux dropped out of college at Northern Kentucky, moved to Florida and made it his full-time job. He now has more than 476,000 subscribers, and he says he spends 80 hours a week on it during football season alongside a team of three editors, making videos with titles like “5 Years to Rebuild the WORST CFB 25 Team” or “Can I Win a Title with ONLY Players from Hawaii?”

“It took off so fast that I had no choice but to keep pouring hours into it,” he said. “I dropped out a few months after starting it, which was risky, looking back on it. Kind of dumb. But it paid off.”

Gaming is massive on YouTube. A recent report from the company stated that 60 percent of the top 1,000 channels on YouTube had uploaded at least one gaming video. The rise of “Let’s Play” videos, where creators film themselves playing and reacting to games, changed the way developers produce games that are customizable and, theoretically, never end.

That applies to sports games, especially the College Football franchise. There’s no speed-run to “beat” the game. With 136 FBS teams and various game modes, YouTube creators have an abundance of quest options.

“You can play Madden and win the Super Bowl, but where do you go after that?” said College Football principal game designer Ben Haumiller, who has spent more than 20 years at EA Sports. “We have constant roster turnover. You can start at South Alabama and work your way up to Alabama. You can bring the option to Michigan or go rebuild the Pac-12. Things like that, no other game gets to tell.”

There’s no one way to go about being a college football video game YouTuber. Former college and NFL quarterback Kurt Benkert (351,000 followers) mixes real and video game football strategy. Another creator, Eric Rayweather (637,000 subscribers), turned football game tutorials into a full-time job.

Rayweather, 37, was a successful Madden player more than a decade ago, winning tournaments and climbing online rankings. As he got older, got married and didn’t have as much time to play, he’d look for tips online and didn’t find much. So he drew on his skills and began making Madden tutorial videos, such as the best way to beat a Cover 4 defense or how to use glitch plays discovered in the game.

A year into it, he was making more money through YouTube than from his jobs at a paint store and Best Buy, so he made YouTube his full-time job in 2018.

“I had a good bit of money saved up and thought, I’ve got a year, I could try this out,” said Rayweather, who lives in Louisiana. “It was scary, because it could’ve gone the other way. But it grew even more, and I haven’t looked back since then.”

Rayweather expanded his tutorials to college football when the game returned and began to lean into news updates. Any leak or announcement that comes out about the next game, he jumps on and makes a new video about it.

Rayweather estimated he spends 12 hours a day on the job at this time of year. That schedule slows a bit after a game comes out, then shrinks to as low as four hours a day when football season ends. Unlike some other creators, he’s a one-man operation.

“Right now, it’s pedal to the metal,” he said.

For a long time, EA Sports developers were not allowed to engage with the gaming community, typically only speaking with video game journalists. But as the industry changed, YouTubers became influential and trusted voices.

“Back in the day, every reviewing outlet had a dedicated sports person,” Haumiller said. “Now, they’re more freelancers who don’t know as much about your game. It’s these (YouTubers) pointing things out that we need to do better and know the game just as well as we do.

“The perception of your game these days has a lot to do with the perception from the community.”

EA Sports has leaned in to earn the favor of that community. For years, the company has invited gaming journalists and YouTubers to Orlando to get an early look at Madden and now College Football.

When EA Sports held the secret College Football 26 cover photo shoot at the Rose Bowl, Bordeaux was there to document it for his channel. A week before CFB26 was released, EA Sports enlisted Bordeaux and Rayweather to produce public reveal videos of Dynasty and Gameplay features. Some creators have also created sponsored social media posts for the game, marking them as ads.

As you wait for WWL, get an exclusive look at #CFB26 tonight with your favorite creators.

@PapaMeagzz at 6pm ET
@EricRayweather at 7pm ET
@bordeauxyoutube at 8pm ET

Available 7/10. Pre-Order Today.
: https://t.co/RPX7WFuP8g pic.twitter.com/TtwyH683zz

— EASPORTSCollege (@EASPORTSCollege) July 2, 2025

“They’re advocates, good or bad,” Haumiller said. “They’re also a tutorial for us. You can go on and see these guys doing different ways to recruit in CFB 25 or show great plays to use. They really help us teach the game in a way we aren’t able to.”

Some fans have questioned the legitimacy of a review from a creator if EA Sports played a role in facilitating it or paid that creator for previous sponsored posts. Bordeaux recently had a small online feud with another creator, Ryan Moody, whose content is largely negative toward EA Sports. Bordeaux has tried to disclose when EA Sports was involved with a post.

“I do feel bad for these guys, because they do kind of sign up for this additional punishment they get when all they get in return is maybe a code a couple days early,” Haumiller said. “They’re not on the payroll or getting all kinds of insider access.”

Surveys show more kids aspire to be YouTubers or streamers than scientists or astronauts. The rise of entertainers like Logan and Jake Paul or Mr. Beast has shown a new path for younger people that didn’t exist even a few years ago.

Bordeaux never imagined how quickly this could become a career.

“Maybe something I did on the side for fun to make a little extra cash,” he said, “but I didn’t think I could ever personally reach the sub or view count I’ve been blessed to have.”

Rayweather’s advice to aspiring YouTubers is to have a plan and stick to it, be knowledgeable and focus on good audio. Bordeaux joined him in emphasizing the importance of consistent posting.

“Anybody can make at least a side living doing any type of creation,” Rayweather said. “Be informational. Help people. Give them value for something.”

Days before the CFB 26 release, Bordeaux was once again narrowing down finalists for his first dynasty rebuild. Marshall coach Tony Gibson tweeted at him and got the Herd into Bordeaux’s top five. Central Michigan coach Matt Drinkall tweeted a photo of Bordeaux on the stadium video board.

I just love the idea of random people that have no idea who I am seeing posts like this from their colleges head football coach and being so confused https://t.co/HT4oNbcaoS

— Bordeaux (@bordeauxyoutube) July 3, 2025

Recruiting never stops in college football, and courting a YouTuber is now as valuable as any other kind of celebrity. The media industry is far from the days when coaches welcomed an airplane full of sportswriters for a promotional tour half a century ago.

The return of the college football video game has put the sport back in front of a generation of new and old fans. But the cascade effect has also created a new collection of influencers — and a lucrative business — on the new frontier of fandom.

(Photo courtesy of Bordeaux)

Centennial Beach in suburban Naperville will be closed Friday after a man Thursday night was found unconscious in the water, with authorities later pronouncing him dead.

About 6 p.m. Thursday, a 27-year-old man was found unconscious in the water at the beach, the Naperville Park District said in a statement. The man was transported to a nearby hospital and later pronounced dead.

The park district said the beach will be closed Friday, but declined to provide additional information “out of respect for the individual’s family and pending further investigation.”

The popular suburban beach, often referred to by locals as a “swimming hole” is a historic stone quarry located at 500 W. Jackson Ave. It includes diving boards, floating rafts, slides, sand volleyball and more.

JD Sports-owned apparel giant Hibbett, Inc. is continuing to invest in deepening its digital offerings.

Less than a month after unveiling its new ecommerce site for kids’ products, Hibbett announced July 8 that it has renewed its contract for Digital Wave’s Product Experience Management (PXM) solution. The renewal, according to Hibbett, reflects its commitment to achieving a measurable impact on scaling product content, streamlining internal processes and enhancing its digital shopping experience.

UK-based sportswear giant JD Sports ranks No. 22 in Digital Commerce 360’s Europe Database ranking the largest online retailers in the region. Meanwhile, Hibbett is No. 294 in the Top 2000. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers. There, it falls under the Sporting Goods category. Digital Commerce 360 projects Hibbett’s total online sales in 2025 will reach $314.04 million.

Hibbett’s digital plans for its sports apparel business

Bill Quinn, chief information officer for Hibbett, praised the role that Digital Wave has played so far.

“Digital Wave’s PXM has been instrumental in improving content accuracy, team alignment and time to market,” Quinn stated. “We’re excited to continue our partnership and keep building on that success.”

The announcement also mentioned that — as part of the renewal — Hibbett will work with Digital Wave on a variety of goals. Those include bolstering areas such as operational efficiency, expanded merchandise assortment, inventory management and customer experience.

A message to Hibbett about the partnership was not immediately returned.

“At a time when customer expectations are higher than ever, Hibbett is meeting the moment with clarity, agility, and ambition,” said Lori Schafer, CEO at Digital Wave Technology. “We’re proud to extend our partnership and continue supporting their growth with a product experience solution that delivers speed, scale, and real business outcomes.”

Why Hibbett is investing in its digital experience

Jeffrey Derman is a partner in the retail group at Solomon Partners. He closely tracks Hibbett and said the Digital Wave partnership makes sense.

“Retailers are increasingly coming to grips with the massive volumes of data their businesses generate or otherwise come into contact with,” Derman said.

He added that this includes data about their customers, vendors, inventory, merchandise velocity and much more.

“Being able to tie that all together to be better able to put the right product on the right shelf (physical or virtual) in front of the right customer at the right time has been a sought-after, but largely elusive goal,” Derman assessed.

He explained that a significant part of the challenge has been that data has historically been siloed. That has meant various systems do not communicate with each other with common reference points.

“There is a hope that increasingly sophisticated AI-driven tools will be able to do better the hard work of that data integration and interpretation to help retailers get closer to achieving that goal, thereby improving conversion, optimizing inventory levels, and bolstering margins,” Derman said.

The role of PMX solutions in online retail

Wanda Cadigan is the senior vice president of marketing at Cloudinary, a media optimization and visual experience platform used by retailers. She said Hibbett is leveraging its partnership with Digital Wave to make the customer experience as seamless as possible.

“For a brand like Hibbett, PMX platforms powered by AI converts scattered data and digital assets into consistent, engaging, and shoppable experiences across every channel,” Cadigan stated.

She noted that consistency is critical. It plays roles in customer trust and enabling partners — from manufacturers to digital marketplaces — to stay aligned in real-time.

“The retail sector’s pace is consistently evolving and accelerating, and AI is helping teams scale what used to take days or weeks into something nearly instantaneous,” Cadigan said.

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