MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – That unforgettable image of Stedman Bailey, Geno Smith and Tavon Austin wearing aviator glasses and bomber jackets popped up again on my X timeline the other day and I figured it was high time to tell the story of how it came to be.

That’s because what was posted – and what has been circulating since the summer of 2012 – was never supposed to have seen the light of day!

Then-West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen shot it down before it ever got off the ground.

Back in his Phil Steele days, our Jed Drenning used to produce a preseason college football magazine focusing on West Virginia and the teams associated with the Mountaineers.

When he started it in 2010, West Virginia was still a member of the Big East Conference, so naturally it centered on WVU and the teams in the Big East.

The writing, reporting and research were outstanding, and it really gave Mountaineer fans some great insight leading into the season.

One year, Jed and his collaborator, Will Gregory, came up with the idea of having defensive end Bruce Irvin on the cover holding burlap sacks over each shoulder as West Virginia’s Sack Man.

In 2012, when WVU switched conferences to the Big 12, Jed wanted to make a big splash with his magazine while maintaining the consistency of a cover theme. Holgorsen operated an Air Raid offense, the Mountaineers had three terrific returning players, and it only seemed natural to have them on the cover representing Holgorsen’s exciting Air Raid attack.

Jed takes it from here.

“I had a sense of, ‘Okay, what are we going to do for the first cover for the start of the Big 12?’ We had all those guys coming back and once I figured out the theme with the Air Raid, the bomber jackets and all that, then I had to go out and get the props,” he recalled.

So, Jed being Jed, he just happened to know the owner of the Illusive Skull Costume Castle in nearby Fairmont. One phone call was all it took for him to get three bomber jackets and some aviator glasses for the photo shoot.

Football communications director Mike Montoro got the jerseys from football equipment manager Danny Nehlen, Jed hired local photographer Dale Sparks, and they arranged to do the picture of the players inside the stadium. From there, the plan was for Jed to have his graphic designer, Kayla Kurczak, come up with the Air Raid concept for the cover of the magazine.

“We had to figure out which color combinations would jump out,” Drenning explained. “Geno, Stedman and Tavon loved it. They were having a blast. I had a really good graphic artist, and we were going to run with it. She was going to window dress the image with a bunch of bomber-themed World War II stuff.”

That is until Holgorsen saw the picture of his three best players in bomber jackets and sunglasses and nearly spit out his Starbucks coffee.

“He didn’t like football players dressed up in costumes, and I remember Monty calling me and saying, ‘Ehem, Jed, we can’t do that,'” Drenning laughed.

“It was sort of like the Chandler Bing thing on Friends when Chandler always got spooked out whenever animals were dressed up like humans,” he continued. “That’s what I immediately thought when Monty told me what Dana had said to him about the picture.”

Consequently, Jed and Will had to quickly come up with a plan B, which they didn’t have.

In the meantime, one of the raw images from the photo shoot had gotten out on the Internet and somebody proficient in photoshop recreated the players standing in front of a World War II-era bomber with a Flying WV logo on its side.

To this day, Drenning remains puzzled how that happened.

“I don’t remember what we did with the picture or how it got out, but it ended up getting out and before our graphic people even had a chance to do anything with it, somebody else did that with them standing in front of the bomber,” he said.

“They did the same types of things that we were going to do on the cover, and they just posted it on the Internet. The original photo was just those three guys dressed up and standing inside the stadium. Whoever did that, they did a helluva job!”

What Drenning and Gregory eventually settled on for the cover was a much tamer “Wild West” concept consisting of a collage of action photos. It was a nice cover, for sure, but it paled in comparison to the original idea.

Who knows how many copies of that magazine Jed would have sold with those three guys dressed in aviator glasses and bomber jackets on its cover? It might have been enough to sustain the enterprise longer than its eight-year existence. By the time Drenning shut things down in 2017, it was just becoming too costly.

“It was costing me a small SUV to print these things,” he sighed. “Now I was still making money, but it was like a full-time job doing the advertising sales and creating all the content. 

“It was just becoming too much.”

Too much – just like that photo of Stedman, Geno and Tavon decked out in bomber gear, at least in the eyes of their football coach.

How ever it made its way to the Internet, I’m glad that it did. The Internet, the IRS and the FBI are still undefeated in my book!

 

The NCAA has come down on the Memphis Tigers, reportedly levying multiple penalties on the men’s basketball program. That includes putting the program on a two-year probation.

Along with the probation, Memphis is facing a one percent budget fine. This comes after two softball players were paid $550 to do what is described as “complete coursework” for a former Memphis basketball player. It was an academic counselor, Leslie Brooks, who paid the softball players. Brooks has also received a 10-year show-cause penalty.

Memphis was hit with a $30,000 fine in total, plus 1% of the combined budgets of the basketball and softball programs. The NCAA also called for a vacation of all records for contests when athletes played, despite now being deemed ineligible.

In total, Memphis had three athletes, two softball players and the one basketball player, who competed in games while ineligible. Together, they combined for 20 games competed in, which now need to be vacated.

The $550 was divided into $150 for the first softball player. That athlete completed three assignments for the basketball player. The second softball player was paid the remaining $400. That second softball player would provide answers to five tests and four quizzes.

Memphis Tigers basketball coach Penny Hardaway has not publicly commented on the NCAA penalties at the time. Current Memphis softball coach Trena Prater, who took that job in the summer of 2024, has also not publicly commented. In the NCAA’s announcement of the penalties against Memphis, the year the violations occurred and all the names of players involved were not mentioned directly.

However, The Commercial Appeal reported the violations were related to basketball player Malcolm Dandridge, and that they occurred before Prater became the school’s softball coach. On top of that, multiple anonymous sources have reportedly told The Commercial Appeal that Ally Callahan and Aaliyah Dixon were the softball players.

Malcolm Dandridge spent five seasons with Memphis and played in a total of 128 games. During that time, he averaged 5.0 points, 3.4 rebounds, and 0.6 assists per game.

Memphis fired Brooks on February 23rd, 2024. The next day, it was announced that Dandridge would be withheld from competition. That would effectively end his college career.

Under Penny Hardaway, the Memphis program has had issues with the NCAA in the past. In 2023, Hardaway was hit with a three-game suspension for two impermissible in-home visits in 2021 with a recruit.

Then, in 2022, an infraction investigation charged the program with committing four Level II violations and five Level III violations during its handling of James Wiseman‘s eligibility. That came back in 2019. That came after the NCAA initially identified at least four Level I violations. Still, at the time, the program avoided serious penalties and instead was put on probation for three seasons. Now, the Tigers find themselves on probation again.

Image credit:
Henry Ford (Mike Janes/Four Seam Images)

By all accounts, Henry Ford was supposed to sign. 

A top 75 prospect on Baseball America’s draft board for 2025, Ford had the tools, the performance and high-major pedigree. It’s why the draft-eligible sophomore from Virginia was widely expected to begin his professional career this summer. 

Instead, he went undrafted and will be in Knoxville this fall as one of the crown jewels of Tennessee’s portal class.

In doing so, Ford has become this year’s face of a small but significant trend: high-profile players turning down pro ball after their draft-eligible sophomore seasons to return to school, often with the goal of boosting their stock in the following year’s draft. 

He wasn’t alone. Jack Arcamone, a catcher from Richmond, passed on a pro deal to transfer to Georgia. Matthew Dallas, a lefthanded pitcher from Wake Forest, chose to return for his junior season rather than sign. So did Tre Phelps, a draft-eligible sophomore from Georgia who will head back to Athens for his junior year.

But the decision to go back to school—especially for hitters—is a perilous one.

The data, while somewhat anecdotal given the small annual sample, paints a cautionary picture. Hitters ranked in the top 200 who returned to school in either 2023 or 2024 saw their stock crater.

Jalin Flores, ranked No. 114 out of Texas in 2024, returned for his junior season and slipped to the 11th round in 2025. Zack Stewart, ranked No. 131 in 2024 from Missouri State, went undrafted and unranked in 2025. Harrison Didawick, Jonathan Vastine and others suffered similar fates.

Hitters who return to the collegiate ranks often do so with the belief that another year of production, strength gains and batted-ball data will vault them into earlier rounds. But the harsh reality is that year-over-year draft movement is unforgiving for that demographic. 

Teams often view returning hitters with more skepticism than enthusiasm. There’s a prevailing belief among evaluators that most college bats are largely “formed” by the end of their sophomore year, meaning the ceiling is already visible. Unless a player drastically transforms his swing, shows newfound power or proves he can handle a premium defensive position, the narrative shifts from projection to stagnation. And in a draft pool flooded with younger upside bets and high school bats, standing still often means falling behind.

Pitchers, on the other hand, tend to fare better.

Will Frisch didn’t pitch an inning in 2022 after opting to return to Oregon State following a strong draft-eligible sophomore campaign in 2021 and was still taken in the sixth round that July. Brandon Sproat returned after a top 100 season and went on to sign for seven figures. In 2022, Jonathan Cannon inked a deal for $925,000 despite returning for his junior year.

The difference, in many cases, comes down to perceived ceiling and supply. Projectable college arms with durability or velocity stand out in thin pitching classes. Hitters have a harder time moving the needle. In a class with hundreds of statistical success stories, simply repeating what one did as a sophomore hitter is rarely enough to compel a team to pay more the second time around.

“You’re asking teams to pay more for the same player—or sometimes a worse version of the same player,” one agent said. “The bar is just way higher.”

So why did Ford and Arcamone—both well-liked, analytically-friendly bats—walk away from the table?

Among other things, the answer, increasingly, is NIL.

College baseball has entered a new era. Returning to school no longer means forgoing six-figure earnings. In fact, for many top players outside the top 100 picks, the opposite is true.

According to multiple agents who spoke with Baseball America on the condition of anonymity, NIL collectives are offering “substantial” paydays to players with eligibility remaining, particularly those who hold draft leverage. Quarter-million-dollar deals are no longer rare, and those numbers often eclipse what a sixth- or seventh-round selection might command in slot money.

“An eighth-rounder who earned big in NIL can make more than a sixth-rounder without it,” one agent said. “That’s a real factor in our conversations now.”

For players like Ford, the calculus shifts. 

Tennessee just sent eight players to the top three rounds of the draft—five of them transfers. The program has a well-documented history of developing hitters and arms alike and has a robust NIL infrastructure to match. Ford doesn’t need to prove he can play. But if he can hit 15 home runs for a national title contender, raise his exit velocity and show improved defense, there’s a clear path to the first two rounds in 2026, and he’ll get paid handsomely in the meantime.

That math doesn’t work for everyone. Draft-eligible sophomores with leverage often only get it once. Returning can turn that leverage into a liability. There’s performance risk, injury risk and potentially the awkward stigma that comes with being passed over once before.

For every Sproat, there are two or three players who slipped, never regained value or plateaued entirely. The risk-reward scale tips fast.

Still, the landscape is changing. 

The combination of performance science, NIL and player agency is empowering more players to weigh their options, not rush them. For players with the right situation—a legitimate plan, a top-tier program and real money on the table—returning can be the smart play.

But it’s not the safe one. The same agents who praise the new NIL economy also caution against seeing it as a cure-all. 

“You can get paid now,” one again said. “But it doesn’t guarantee you’ll get paid later.”

Ford and others are betting on both.

What transpired last season at St. John’s was the latest in a career of incredible coaching performances from Rick Pitino. He took over the Red Storm in 2023 and wasted little time turning them into a Big East contender for the first time in decades. St. John’s won 31 games, notching both regular season and conference tournament titles last year, though their postseason experience ended earlier than expected in the round of 32.

There’s a certain buzz in Queens again this season, though this year’s team is going to look largely different from last year’s success. Reigning Big East Player of the Year RJ Luis Jr. is gone after a brilliant junior season while starters like Kadary Richmond, Aaron Scott, and Simeon Wilcher also departed in the offseason. It’s not a completely new roster, as star forward Zuby Ejiofor becomes even more of a focal point for Pitino’s squad, but there have been plenty of reinforcements.

Simply put, the Red Storm assembled the nation’s best transfer class and have a roster loaded with talent for 2026. The frontcourt gets a major boost with Bryce Hopkins from Providence and Dillon Mitchell, fresh from his time at Cincinnati. Joson Sanon is a highly-touted shooting guard coming off an underwhelming freshman season with Arizona State. Oziyah Sellers is another brilliant guard from Stanford while Dylan Darling should see decent run after his time at Idaho State.

There almost isn’t a wrong answer when identifying the best new player of this class, but former North Carolina guard Ian Jackson sure might be the most important. A 6-4 guard from the Bronx, Jackson was the #6 freshman prospect in the nation last season and now returns much closer to home after his time with the Tar Heels. A mixed review of a freshman year saw him put up 11.9 points and 2.7 rebounds while knocking down 39% of his 3-pointers, but Pitino and company are excited about his potential.

The expectation is that Jackson doesn’t just step into a major role but likely takes up point guard duties. He’s clearly a very talented prospect coming off a decent freshman season where he didn’t exactly live up to that top billing. He wasn’t the only player who struggled in Chapel Hill last year, but closer to home the hope is that he blossoms and becomes a major leader for St. John’s.

After all he’s stepping into a major role, replacing impressive names like Luis and Richmond from last year’s successful campaign. This transfer class is full of veteran experience and incredible raw talent and St. John’s is hoping they got the combination right for a truly memorable season. If that does come to pass, and the Red Storm get deeper into the Big Dance, then Jackson will have certainly taken a step forward as a sophomore and become a real leader for this squad.