The smoke rose, pyrotechnics flared and cowbells tolled. In a scene largely reserved for Saturdays in the fall, Mississippi State welcomed new head baseball coach Brian O’Connor in a way few programs can.

The rigs and grills that facilitate the smoky haze that hangs over the outfield at Dudy Noble Field during the spring were opened to owners for tailgating. Concession stands poured $5 domestics and offered $3 hot dogs and nachos.

Those who donated to MSU’s “State Excellence Fund” in levels that ranged from $100 to $5,000, too, were rewarded with everything from commemorative baseballs and cowbells to Bulldogs jerseys.

O’Connor glanced out at the crowd, a smile cresting on his face, and summed up the scene at one of the sport’s cathedrals succinctly.

“Wow,” he mustered. “The Mecca of college baseball [is] right here in Starkville.”

The optics of O’Connor’s ballyhooed arrival from Virginia to Mississippi State were unique, sure. Few, if any, places can mimic the pageantry and fervor for baseball on display at Dudy Noble Field — albeit a similar scene will play out in the tailgate-like atmosphere at the College World Series in Omaha this week.

And while baseball isn’t the moneymaker its gridiron or hardwood counterparts might be, the sport enters a new-look college sports ecosystem as a winner in the passage of the House settlement earlier this month.

“Baseball is really the biggest example of a sport that’s kind of double dipping in this post-settlement world, because you’re having to solve for [three things],” South Carolina Athletic Director Jeremiah Donati explained. “Where football [and basketball] is strictly the rev-share component of NIL, baseball is kind of all three — it’s traditional NIL, it’s rev share and it’s ‘How fast can you add scholarships?’ and ‘How many?’”

Donati’s point, that baseball might be better off in a post-House settlement world, is layered.

The sport was long hamstrung by the 11.7 scholarships it was limited to under previous NCAA rules. In the new environment, where scholarship limits are a thing of the past, that’s opening a door for those willing to back extra scholarships up to the new roster limit of 34 players (down from 40).

South Carolina, winner of back-to-back CWS titles in 2010 and 2011, is slated to fund scholarships at or near the 34-man limit. Cross-state rival Clemson, too, is expected to be in the same ballpark.

Florida State, which turned in a more than $300,000 surplus on baseball in FY 2024, per its latest NCAA financial filings, meanwhile, is expected to jump to around 25 scholarships.

Reigning national title winner Tennessee, too, is likely to boost its scholarship number greatly, though a final number is still being ironed out, AD Danny White said.

How good is the influx of scholarships for the sport? That’s up for debate.

“A simple answer is, you’d think there’d be less parity [with Power Four schools funding more scholarships],” said Craig Keilitz, executive director of the American Baseball Coaches Association. “Then you look at this year’s NCAA Tournament, it’s probably as much parity as I’ve ever seen it.

”But with more scholarships means the better programs that have more money can offer more of the superstars. You look up and down — if it’s the SEC, the ACC, the Big 12 — they can gobble up more of those guys.”

Beyond scholarships, the financial commitment to baseball coaching contracts and facility improvements has continued to balloon in recent years.

Tennessee’s Tony Vitello became the highest-paid coach in America last year, receiving a new deal worth $3 million annually. O’Connor’s deal with Mississippi State puts him in the same stratosphere at $2.9 million per year.

Eleven of 15 SEC head coaches made north of $1 million in 2025, and every coach in the league made $700,000 or more, per The Tennessean. Four ACC coaches also made more than $1 million this year, including North Carolina’s Scott Forbes at $1.7 million.

On the facilities side, Tennessee is in the midst of a $105 million overhaul of its ballpark. That comes just six years after Mississippi State completed a $68 million renovation of Dudy Noble Field. Florida State, too, is in the process of considering revamps at Dick Howser Stadium. And Vanderbilt, which was the top national seed in this year’s CWS, is renovating and expanding Hawkins Field.

“Baseball is a revenue-generating sport for us,” Florida State AD Michael Alford said. “So how do we grow that revenue? What can we do to enhance that situation to continue to grow that revenue even more?

“We’re looking at facility renovations. We’re looking at premium seating. We’re looking at what we can do to put baseball at the forefront and to continue to grow that sport at Florida State.”

The NIL market for college baseball players, too, has continued to climb.

Learfield’s 2024 NIL Impact report indicated that baseball players received the fourth-most NIL deals of athletes it tracked, behind football and men’s and women’s basketball.

Opendorse’s 2024 NIL industry report also suggested the highest earners in college baseball were making in the neighborhood of $50,000 — again behind football and basketball, but nearly six times more than the next closest sport, softball.

“If NIL and rev share wasn’t a thing, yeah, [baseball coaches] would be like, ‘Holy cow, we’re going from 11.7 to 34,” said Ole Miss AD Keith Carter. “But now they’re like, ‘OK, that’s awesome, but essentially everybody is doing that because everybody’s going to, one way or another, have full-ride scholarships. Now, what’s the rev share look like? What’s the next step?”

How much revenue will be allocated to baseball programs will vary widely. Football is expected to command 75% or more of the $20.5 million cap schools are funding up to the maximum, while men’s basketball is likely to eat another 15% depending on the place.

That leaves a sliver of the cap to be directed toward baseball. But in a world where coaching contracts are skyrocketing and scholarship investments are booming, the sport is well on its way to a cash infusion.

During Friday’s edition of TexAgs Live, ESPN play-by-play voice Roy Philpott provided his thoughts on Texas A&M’s first season under Mike Elko. Philpott also spoke on Year 2 of Collin Klein’s offense, Aggie baseball and the NCAA antitrust settlement.

Key notes from Roy Philpott interview

• It’s been good just wrapping up college baseball in Auburn. I’m curious to see what will happen in Omaha, and in the fall, it can’t get here soon enough. 
   
• I saw Arkansas this year and talked to coaches around the SEC. Most of the league mentioned its Dave Van Horn’s most talented team. They could have won a national championship a couple of years ago if it weren’t for the foul-territory error. The “Bash Brothers” have been phenomenal, and health is critical for Arkansas in Omaha. This could be their year, and they could punch through. Both LSU and Arkansas have a shot, but Arkansas has the best chance. I like Coastal Carolina the way they can sweep through the regional. I’m excited to see how it folds up there in Omaha.
   
• It’s a season of what-ifs. I haven’t paid close attention to the portal, and Michael Earley will be avid there. The last time I was at Blue Bell was the regional with Texas in town, and it was unbelievable. It’s only a matter of time until they get back there. It’s up to the portal and how to bounce back. The turnaround can happen instantaneously. The preseason rankings and injuries, I was surprised. It’s hard to put on your finger what went wrong. Baseball is a finicky sport, and I hear that from coaches. There are some years when you get unlucky. If you win in Omaha, you have to have breaks. We talked to a guy yesterday on Sirius XM, and he focused on, “You have to be lucky.” You can bounce back next year. That’s my expectations for the Aggies, and it’s hard to pinpoint what went wrong and the Missouri series. You have to get it fixed.
   
• The nuts and bolts in the heart of the offseason are important for all of us to discuss. With $2.5 million, 85 percent goes to the football programs, 10 percent for men’s basketball and five percent to women’s basketball. The question is how it is sorted with NIL and collectives, that’s where it’s unclear. The new commission is led by Deloitte, which will approve or not have deals in terms of NIL, and it’s all about fair value. It’s another catch phrase that you can’t pay a backup quarterback $4 million because it doesn’t add up and pass common sense. There are a lot of deals that are disapproved by the new commission, and we need to figure out how the dust settles.
   
• I’d rather talk about Marcel Reed and Mike Elko, and what DJ Lagway will do. Here on June 13, we are forced to examine how this will impact sports. What’s happening now will impact college athletics for the next century. I’d rather talk about hyping up teams who are under the radar.
   
• The way I frame it is that we needed to take a step in this direction. We need guardrails. We established the basic parameters. We have to start somewhere. We are remodeling my house, and I told my wife we have to start somewhere in that room, strip the wall and find a paint color. We stripped the wallpaper for NIL and guardrails, and we are now on step two of 50. It’s progress. Is this new commission the sole answer? Probably not. Maybe in the next couple of years, we will figure out the definitive parameters, and the dust will settle. We aren’t there yet, but at least we started. In the last couple of years, we haven’t even done that. There are still loopholes, and we have to figure that out along the way.
   
• I know the start for Elko had everyone’s expectations out of whack and took it by storm. Another year of Reed and Collin Klien… Like in my conversations with Klein, he will build an offense around the quarterback and the skill set that he has. He’s got interesting wide receiver weapons with KC Concepcion coming in. The development of Reed and Klein intertwines and gets a head start, knowing he’s going to be the guy.
   
• I can’t speak enough about Klein and his approach and his nature to the game. I was blown away by his approach at Kansas State. That will win in Aggieland and take the next step. What that looks like with the schedule and the College Football Playoff, you have to win close and tough games. Some years, it’ll happen and some, it won’t. You have to be very optimistic and in a reasonable way with what Elko does and the approach and pieces, Klein and transfers. You can see the groundwork, and I know Aggie fans are impatient, but this is the right approach with Elko. Those who spoke with him understood that and were very optimistic there, and a break or two along the way.
   
• If you have multiple quarterbacks playing for an extended period of time, I don’t think it goes well for you. It goes without saying that we love college football. Now more than ever, if you go to different guys, your chances of making the College Football Playoff are not good. I am high on Reed, what he brings, his skill set and Klein. That’s what makes them fascinating. Klein is settling in now that he’s there. He’s got his guy and has to stay healthy. I’m excited to see what that’s like.
   
• For Georgia in particular, I’m curious what their offense is with Gunner Stockton and some of the bumps we saw last year. I’m higher on Florida and DJ Lagway. He is taking steps. Billy Napier has survived and could take a giant step. Oklahoma is another one, with Washington State’s offense with John Mateer. Do we understand their offense? No, but they could be in the position to win a handful of more games. We’ll be clearer about the teams at SEC Media Days.
   
• With Florida and Oklahoma, what I see are teams that are poised. LSU vs. Clemson is one game people are talking about this offseason, in addition to Texas and Ohio State. Garrett Nussmeier is advancing. You mention Texas and Arch Manning. I don’t think that starts out and starts clicking, that’s a high level of expectations, and Texas will play favorites. Surprise teams, Oklahoma and Florida. Oklahoma will be vastly different, and I’m interested to see this year.
   
• Yeah, for Brent Venables, I think the seat is a little bit warmer, and he had to make some changes this offseason. Offensively, with Jackson Arnold, it didn’t work. He ended up at Auburn and with Hugh Freeze. I was interested in Payton Thorne and never loved how all of that was crafted last year. Napier has bought some time, and Venables needs to win right now. He brings in an offensive coordinator who brings big numbers. You mention the schedule and the mistakes we all make, for teams that will surprise, the schedule has to help out. And when you look at it, this looks like the most difficult schedule in the SEC. But if you look at that and see it, you can be an improved team, sitting at 7-5 or 8-4. What good does that do you? It’s what matters the most to Oklahoma. Two years ago, their schedule was built to win 10 games, and it was constructed. In the SEC, which has the most difficulty, we get 12 teams in, and a surprise or two will be made and found out. I’ll need a deeper dive.
   
• I hate saying this. I’m not as high on Alabama, and I love Kalen DeBoer and had a great time with him in Washington. He’s a brilliant coach, and you look at Alabama, it’s not what it once was. They are at 9-3, and Georgia is looking at the same number. Alabama and Georgia have taken a step back, and you mention a team like South Carolina with LaNorris Sellers as a Heisman Trophy favorite. Dylan Stewart is back with the top EDGE guys in college football. They were a playoff team at the end of last year. That team was poised to win a College Football Playoff game. You don’t want to see that team at that point in time.
   
• Nussmeier and Brian Kelly in that revamped offense… He said in the bowl game when they beat Baylor, beating them leads to the season opener to beat Clemson. The door is open, and a big year for Kelly. I said yesterday on Sirius XM, I get excited the Monday after July 4, to me feels like college football season.
   
• Look at what happened at Florida State and go undefeated to 13-0 and just miss the playoffs, and go to two wins next year. They received the benefit of the doubt at ACC Media Day and finished dead last in the conference. The benefit is greater than others. I don’t trust Florida State. I trust teams like Texas and what Steve Sarkisian has done and the quarterbacks they bring in, and will probably be one of the favorites in the SEC, and I don’t trust Georgia. Kirby Smart hasn’t leaned on the portal often.

Grant Frerking, the former Tennessee football player who rose to fame as a teenage CEO of his own company, is accused of being involved in multiple financial scams, according to a report Thursday by KnoxNews.com.

The 26-year-old Frerking, a walk-on wide receiver for the Volunteers from 2017-22, has been evicted from two Nashville apartments after failing to pay more than $16,000 he owed for rent. He is also reportedly accused of pretending to work for Metro Straw, the Atlanta area lawn supply company he founded when he was still a teenager but has not formally been associated with for nearly four years, while still collecting payments but not delivering products as promised.

In addition, Frerking has allegedly begun to borrow money from former Tennessee teammates without paying it back. One former customer of Frerking’s described him as a “phony” who “needs to be exposed.”

“Grant Frerking is a lying unscrupulous SOB,” Georgia resident Doug Proctor told KnoxNews. “All the time he bills himself as a star football player at Tennessee as well as a gifted businessman. What a phony! He needs to be exposed.”

Frerking’s alleged financial misdealings have cost him his job at On3, where he worked in the media company’s NIL space as Director of Athlete Network Development. On3 CEO Shannon Terry announced Wednesday (without mentioning Frerking’s name) that Frerking no longer worked there due to “blatant violations of [On3’s] internal standards and values.”

Frerking played in a total of 13 games in six years with the Volunteers, catching three passes for 12 yards. He joined the team under coach Butch Jones in 2017, and also played for Jeremy Pruitt and Josh Heupel.

After the NCAA allowed players to cash in on their Name, Image and Likeness beginning in 2021, Frerking became a frequent talk show guest due to his burgeoning business career. He made numerous appearances on the SEC Network’s Paul Finebaum Show to discuss Tennessee football and/or the impact of NIL on college athletics.

Frerking has also been frequently spotted on the sideline at Tennessee home games and has been photographed celebrating major Volunteers victories alongside players and coaches (such as the 2024 College World Series and the 2024 victory over Alabama) since his playing career ended in 2022, though he is not employed by the school. KnoxNews reported that he is regarded as a Tennessee booster who has made undisclosed financial donations to the athletic department and also served on the board of one of the school’s early NIL organizations.

All the while, Frerking allegedly continued to solicit payments for Metro Straw, though he apparently left the company in 2021. Various online reviews of Frerking label him as “the most unscrupulous liar” and accuse him of “theft.”

You can read the full KnoxNews report HERE.

Todd Krinsky’s life’s work has been to make Reebok a preeminent shoe company. It’s no exaggeration. He has spent almost 33 years at the company, working his way up from the bottom to the top, where he now sits as the CEO of Reebok.

Last year, the company announced that it was relaunching its basketball division, marking a return to an industry it had once been a vital part of. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Reebok was a significant player in the basketball sneaker market, buoyed by its relationships with Allen Iverson and Shaquille O’Neal. Then it went dormant for nearly two decades after it was sold to Adidas and went through a retrenchment.

Now, Shaq is back as president of the basketball unit, and Reebok is trying to become a force again, starting with a high-profile endorsement deal with Angel Reese. Krinsky spoke with The Athletic about how it’s trying to do that, why it’s trying to take a different approach to gaining customers and where NIL and Reese fit into that picture.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Basketball is a crowded sneaker and apparel ecosystem right now. Do you think you can be successful here? What does success look like?

The brand has always been a little more irreverent. We take a little bit more of a not-so-serious approach to the games. We embrace the culture of the game more. We embrace the lifestyle of the games. It’s what we (are) historically known for. And I think this is something we want to get back to.

I think we’ve also really been good at building icons. We’re not going to have half the league wear Reebok. That’s not our goal. Our goal is to really sign some unique personalities and build an icon business with a few athletes.

So I think it’s crowded. I think we’ve got great innovations. I think we’ve got a really strong institutional knowledge on building great product for athletes. And then I think we’re going to really break through with our kind of tone and the way we tell stories around the culture and the game. So we wouldn’t be getting back into it if we didn’t see a sharp line of sight.

But what success looks like for us is to be a major player again. We just launched the Netflix show, and one of the things Shaq says is, we were never No. 1, but we weren’t three either. We were right up there. And I think that’s our goal, to get back to being a major, major player again.

When you’re talking about tone and the players that you want to sign that have personality, how does that translate into selling shoes? 

Intuitively, the brands that sell the most shoes are the ones that have the strongest connection with the consumer. And I think with today’s consumer, storytelling is so important. Cultural currency is so important. It’s not just about signing a player and hawking a shoe. That worked in, like, the ’90s.

I think it’s more now you have to be creative with what you’re saying, about why you signed the player and how the shoe came about, and what’s the story behind the product, and why these brands and the player got together. Storytelling is the most important currency in our industry today.

Angel Reese is the first basketball player you signed after relaunching the basketball brand. And she’s getting her signature shoe. Has that been announced when that’s coming out?

It’s going to be later in the season, this season.

Why is she the basketball player that you’re building around, and how does that fit into the larger storytelling and business arc?

If you think about when we’ve really been successful, it’s been having these bigger-than-life personalities that are embracing on- and off-the-court culture. Shaq was like that. He was larger than life. He wasn’t just a center. He transformed the game. And he had this bigger-than-life personality. Allen Iverson, we signed him in ’96. Obviously, he changed the way players look and dress. He changed the culture of the game. And I think that’s what Angel is.

Angel is a provocative disruptor. But she doesn’t do it just for clicks or whatever. She does it because she really has this very, kind of unique, rebellious attitude. And those are the type of athletes that — athletes have something to say. Athletes are more than just athletes, away from the court. That’s the formula of what’s really worked for us in the past, so we can build these icons, and she’s definitely one of them. She fits the Shaq/AI mentality.

She dominates the paint. Now she’s redefining style. Introducing the Angel Reese x Reebok collection—a bold mix of performance and unapologetic personality. Hoops meets high fashion. Game on. https://t.co/WvlsneAoxG pic.twitter.com/cBQojoRt1b

— Reebok (@Reebok) May 1, 2025

How much is the WNBA and women’s basketball a part of your core strategy? 

I think back when we were in basketball before, it was like: You do the NBA, and WNBA may be a little bit of an afterthought. You have a player or two. I think the WNBA now is right in the center of everything we’re doing. It’s not like one or the other. WNBA, NBA, male, female athletes — we’re looking at the whole landscape of basketball. What’s going to move culture the most?

I would say the WNBA is right at the core of what we’re doing. We’ve got Angel, we’ve got the other athletes, like Dijonai (Carrington), we’ve signed. We’re going to sign more WNBA players as we go. I just think it’s an interesting time where the people are really, finally, respecting the play more than ever. And I think the players are embracing it with their own tunnel looks, and their own stories, and their own shoes now. That there’s so many signature shoes now in the women’s game, it’s awesome.

When my daughter played, it was like, there’s one or two choices or you were wearing a men’s shoe. And now it’s a totally new game now, which is great for the next generation of young girls as well.

With Shaq in particular, he is the president of your basketball division. And as you said, he is a TNT analyst, and he’s also the GM of basketball at Sacramento State. I see him in a commercial for I don’t even know how many things on TV. What’s the realistic commitment that he’s able to make to Reebok?

To be honest with you, it’s been unreal. I don’t know how he has enough time in the day, but I know he’s really passionate about this. And his name’s on it. We do FaceTime calls almost every week. He’s talking to a young player every two to three weeks. He’s calling me and saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to FaceTime this kid’s parents.’ And he’s in meetings. I mean, he really, really is committing time to this. And you’ll see it in the show, in the Netflix show, you see that he’s really engaged in meetings with the team.

Sometimes I say to him, I don’t know where he gets the time because he’s like, 24/7. I think it’s because he’s passionate about Reebok. I think it’s because his name is attached to this publicly that he’s really putting a lot of time into it.

I think your only NBA endorser right now is Matas Buzelis, right?

Yeah. We also have Tre Mann, who wears Iverson’s product. He’s a big Iverson fan, so we decided for him to wear Iverson’s product. But, yeah, that’s who we have right now. We’ve got a couple of young kids that are going to play in college this upcoming year, like Nate (Ament) and Darius (Acuff), and then we’re still looking for some other players, too.

With all due respect to Matas and Tre Mann, they don’t scream like great endorsers. Or I doubt someone you throw into a commercial, right? What’s your roadmap for adding more NBA players?

I think it’s a fair statement. Listen, the first thing we were trying to do was to emotionally connect again and to get young. So the players that we’ve signed, like Nate Ament and Matas, these are young kids that we really feel speak to who we want to be as a brand.

We didn’t want to go out right away first day and sign some big NBA player. We wanted to connect a little more emotionally with some of the work you’re seeing, have younger players wear the product first and then start to build the roster. We’re hoping that a lot of the young players we’re signing: Grow with us and become big NBA players. But we’re in year one of a pretty long journey, and the goal was to be young.

You’re saying you want to be associated with the young players. You want to build these almost grassroots relationships and position yourself a little bit differently. How do you go about doing that in terms of marketing Reebok? 

We’re going to have marquee players wearing our shoes, but we may not have the traditional 30-second TV ad with the shoe. We believe that young basketball players today are consuming content a lot differently, and so we want to bring them along (on) the journey with us. Even when we launch signature products, it’s going to be a little bit different. It’s going to be more through the TikTok angle and more through these young players that we’re signing helping us tell the story.

So our first move was to sign Angel, who we feel is a great story, who has a backstory with Shaq, and to start with her as the first player. And now we’re signing more players, but the content is just going to be a little bit different. We’re going to be doing 10-second, 15-second, 20-second stories, versus a typical 30- or 60- (second) ad. And we’re going to build up to something.

We just feel like when you re-enter something like basketball, the idea of going out and spending $7 million on a player and then doing the shoes is so, I think, predictable, and I don’t think that’s where the young kid is today. We want to take it slow. We have some time to build this. We want to create the cultural currency with the athlete again.

What do you actually get out of the NIL deals with high school and college basketball players? 

I think you definitely see results when they’re in high school and college. I think that the community of basketball today, through social media, is so small that all the young players that we’re trying to connect with — meaning the ones who will buy our shoes — they all look at Nate (Ament), they all follow Nate. They follow Darius (Acuff). They follow their stories.

We know this when we talk to kids. When you sit around about 10 (or so) 16-year-old kids, you say, “Who are you really following right now?” They’re going to mention a bunch of high school kids or freshmen in college, maybe before an NBA player at the time, or with NBA players.

So I think the business is getting younger and younger. And if you’re a great high school player or a great freshman or sophomore in college, you are influencing a culture maybe as much, or in some cases, close to some of the best NBA players.

When you’re signing Nate Ament or Darius Acuff or you’re getting into this NIL space, how does the cost of signing a high school or college player compare to the cost of signing an NBA player? Are they earning the same in a shoe deal? Or are they earning half as much? How do those numbers compare?

If you are a big-time signature NBA guy with a Nike or Adidas or a Puma, you’re definitely making a lot more money. That’s definitely a different stratosphere. But if you are a kind of good NBA player that has a shoe deal, and you are a really good NIL player, the numbers can be very similar.

Then a lot of times what happens is you sign an NIL player, and then you can sign him while he’s in school, but you can also sign when he gets to the league. You can have one deal, and you have all types of stipulations about what will happen when he gets to the NBA. So you lock him up when he’s in high school or college, and then when he turns pro you have an agreement with him. It becomes like a new agreement with different stipulations, but you have like a long-term contract you can do. You don’t just have one from college. … If New Balance signs Cooper Flagg, who went to Duke, they’ve already figured out when he becomes a pro. We’re doing those deals as well.

But the NIL deals are very lucrative deals now. Again, it gets back to what I said earlier: Why would it be? Because a young, top-10 high school player that has highlights every week and is being recruited by the best schools in the country can be as influential as a starting-five player in a major market in the NBA.

(Photo: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)