TEMPE – Sun Devil Softball pitcher Kenzie Brown was named to the 2025 NFCA Division I All-America First Team the Association announced on Wednesday afternoon during its annual press conference at the Women’s College World Series (WCWS). She is one of fifty-four student-athletes from 33 different institutions to be voted to one of three 2025 NFCA Division I All-America teams.

Brown’s first All-America selection marks the 45th time a Sun Devil has been recognized and its the 26th first team honor. She is the first ASU pitcher named All-American since 2018 (G Juarez) and the first to make the first team since 2022 (Cydney Sanders).

Through play in the Super Regionals, Brown ranks second in the country with 289 strikeouts and by averaging 11.6 strikeouts per seven innings. She leads all Power 4 pitchers in both categories. Her strikeout total ranks 10th for a season in program history with the per seven average a new program record.

Brown ended the season at 19-8 with four saves and a 1.28 ERA. She recorded double-digit strikeouts in a game 12 times and had 12-plus on nine occasions. Brown tied the ASU record for strikeouts in a seven-inning game when she recorded 18 in a 1-0 win over BYU in the program’s first-ever Big 12 game on March 6.

In addition to being named to the NFCA All-America First Team, Brown was named Second Team All-America by D1 Softball and Softball America.

 

Cortez Braham Jr., who spent last season on the Nevada football team, is suing the NCAA for a seventh year of college eligibility.

A 6-foot-2, 201-pound wide receiver, Braham was among a wave of former junior-college players who starred for the Wolf Pack last season and were seemingly out of eligibility but entered the transfer portal this offseason. But Braham has not committed to a new school as he seeks an additional year of eligibility, which he claims could net him up to $500,000 in name, image and likeness money.

The NCAA has faced a number of lawsuits from athletes with antitrust claims who argue they should not be limited by the NCAA’s eligibility clock, which includes four years of active playing time over a five-season period. The NCAA’s rules have held seasons played at the junior-college level count against four years of NCAA eligibility, although Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia, who at one time was committed to Nevada, received an injunction last December after he argued his JuCo years should not count against his NCAA clock. The NCAA has appealed the court ruling favoring Pavia but granted junior-college athletes a temporary additional year of eligibility in 2025-26.

Many Nevada Wolf Pack athletes have or plan to take advantage of that ruling, which apparently does not apply to Braham because his five-year clock has expired. Braham spent three seasons at Hutchinson (Kan.) Community College from 2019-21 and two at West Virginia from 2022-23 before arriving at Nevada last season. Braham redshirted at West Virginia in 2023 after playing in three games and 2020 did not count against eligibility due to COVID-19’s impact, the latter making him eligible for the Wolf Pack last season as his NCAA clock was extended to six years. Braham also was committed to Buffalo at one point but did not play for the Bulls.

Braham played three seasons at Hutchinson, two at West Virginia and one at Nevada, so he is seeking a seventh active season over a seven-year period. The Baltimore, Md., native initially intended to transfer to West Virginia for the 2021 season but had a GPA of 2.47, below the minimum requirement of 2.5 for a JuCo-to-FBS transfer. The lawsuit argues that is an unfair standard given given the academic requirement to transfer from one four-year school to another within the NCAA is a 2.00 GPA. Braham raised his GPA enough before the 2022 season to transfer to West Virginia where he played sparingly that season before having a career year at Nevada in 2024.

Braham started all 13 games for Nevada last season and was named All-Mountain West honorable mention after finishing second on the team in receptions (56), receiving yards (724) and touchdown catches (four). He took part in Nevada’s senior day ceremonies and believed his career to be over prior to Pavia’s lawsuit.

Braham’s lawsuit alleges Nevada, through its compliance staff, has repeatedly refused to file a “a waiver request so that the NCAA can exercise its discretion to waive the Five-Year rule and the JUCO transfer GPA requirement as it applies to Braham.” The lawsuit says the university told Braham he should “find a lawyer and file a lawsuit against the NCAA instead of looking to the school for help” and that litigation was the only path available for Braham’s quest for an additional year of eligibility in 2025. NCAA rule states any school Braham could transfer to would be eligible to file a waiver on his behalf.

The lawsuit argues Braham not being granted an additional year of eligibility would “permanently deprive him of a once-in-a-lifetime NIL contract opportunity worth nearly $500,000 and the opportunity to enhance his career and reputation by playing another year of Division I football. Additionally, this will harm Braham’s lifetime of hard work in the classroom and on the football field that he has pursued to even be considered for these opportunities. The NCAA’s anti-competitive conduct, coupled with his former university affiliation’s unreasonable denial of Braham’s ability to request a specific NCAA waiver, is resulting in irreversible damage.”

At least two Nevada transfers who were seniors last season got an additional year of eligibility due to Pavia’s injunction and have signed with power-conference schools this offseason, those being cornerbacks Michael Coats Jr. (West Virginia) and Chad Brown (Purdue). It is unknown if they received NCAA waiver requests from Nevada as Coats is entering his sixth college season and Brown his seventh, meaning they have seemingly navigated around the NCAA’s five-year eligibility window to play in 2025.

If Braham was granted an additional year of college eligibility, that would not come at Nevada as Braham entered the transfer portal and has reportedly taken recruiting visits or planned visits with Kentucky, Kansas, Memphis and Arkansas. He remains unsigned and did not participate in any school’s spring camp.

The NCAA and junior-college system are governed by separate entities with athletes arguing their time in the National Junior College Athletic Association should not count against their eligibility in the NCAA. The lawsuit argues NCAA rules do not prohibit former pro athletes from profiting from NIL in Division I football, citing Chris Weinke’s time as a Heisman Trophy-winning Florida State quarterback after a six-year professional baseball career, saying holding junior-college players to a higher standard in eligibility considerations is unfair.

The lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday and first reported by Boise State assistant professor Sam C. Ehrlich, was drafted by Reno-based attorney Brandon D. Wright as well as Gregg E. Clifton, from Phoenix. Braham is seeking a court declaration and an injunction. Presiding over Cortez vs. NCAA is U.S. District Judge Miranda M. Du and U.S. Magistrate Judge Craig S. Denney of the Nevada federal district court.

You can read the entire lawsuit below.

SEC Spring Meetings were always important but this year’s edition held more significance with all of the changes coming to college athletics. Transfer portal, NIL’s future, the College Football Playoff (CFP), and finding additional revenue streams have all come into the focus. The league has some big decisions to make in a short amount of time. There will be some bumps along the way.

Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart wants his school and colleagues in the conference to keep their eye on the prize.

“It’s so easy to look at decisions in silos or one-offs,” Mitch Barnhart told Paul Finebaum on Wednesday evening in Destin.” I think that one of the things that will be important — at least from our lens at Kentucky and I hope our lens as a conference — is we look at these things in the total.”

“Is the decision-making around the CFP? Is the decision-making around football scheduling? Those things are all very inner-related, in my mind. For us at Kentucky, they’re very inner-related. I want to make sure that we know what’s most important. Our finances are part of that conversation. Our fan base is a part of that conversation. Keeping hope alive for our programs is really, really important. Opportunity is important for our kids. I think those things are all inner-related. I think as a group of leaders, we’ve gotta make sure that we’re thinking about them together.”

There are important decisions to be made. Coaches and administrators might not agree on every topic. What works for one school might not work for the other. We are seeing that play out on a conference level as the ACC and Big 12 have proposed a 5+11 expanded playoff format with one automatic bid for each conference plus highest-ranked Group of Five conference champion as opposed to the 4+4+2+2+1 model that would give the Big Ten and SEC eight total automatic bids.

Everyone is having to work together to find some sort of consensus. That is no different for the leaders of the SEC.

Each decision has an impact on the other. Mitch Barnhart wants the conference, behind Greg Sankey’s leadership, to consider everything at play when making individual decisions. There is likely a reason why we won’t hear about anything final being determined this week.

From a Kentucky point of view, staying at an eight-game conference schedule in football and having playoff access if a 9-3 year with a winning record in conference play occurs again seems most important. That’s where the opportunity comes into play. However, the financial issues loom large. UK must have enough revenue to pay athletes and keep their entire athletic department operating. That means not cutting sports or jobs. That could mean becoming more willing to do certain things that you haven’t in the past. Some things like playing a nine-game schedule and being open to the revenue streams that play-in games for the CFP that the auto bid structure could bring. Flexibility from everyone is needed.

“If you think them in pieces, I think that’s when you begin to maybe make some bad decisions,” Barnhart said. “So I’m hopeful that we look at them in the aggregate.”

MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. (KBTX) – Well after sunlight ceased permeating the windows of the Texas Senate chamber Tuesday, Senator Brandon Creighton stood to, again, present a bill he had sponsored for debate.

His message to fellow senators was as complicated as the issue the bill addresses, but there was a simple point distributed throughout — if House Bill 126 doesn’t pass in the final week of this legislative session, college football in the state of Texas would, in essence, die.

Ultimately, a 30-1 vote sent the new name, image and likeness (NIL) compensation legislation through the Senate and to the desk of Gov. Greg Abbott to sign into law. To Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, president of the Senate, it was his colleges that performed CPR on college athletics in the state.

“The Senate saved college sports in Texas,” Patrick boasted from the dais before moving on to other business.

However, an 11th-hour conference call between senators, coaches and athletic directors provided the necessary last push to get the important bill over the finish line in the Senate chambers after two evenings of confusion and debate.

“It seems that a lot of the members wanted to vent their frustration with their concerns about college football and where this is going and paying the athletes and the change in the NCAA… A lot of members have concerns about the rich getting richer and the small guy doesn’t have a chance and it’s not going to be competitive,” Rep. Carl Tepper (R-District 84), the bill’s original author, told KBTX. “And so, we’re still not really sure where this is headed, but this is certainly the right direction to keep Texas on par with the rest of the country.”

The current NIL bill on Texas’s books does not allow universities to enter into direct contracts with athletes and prohibits athletes from earning NIL money while participating in team activities. The pending settlement for the House v. NCAA antitrust case opens the door for athletic departments to share revenue up to $20.5 million per year for the use of athletes’ names, images and likenesses during game broadcasts and in promotion of the department. A clause in HB 126 also allows for flexibility in the state law should the NCAA or a court ruling change the landscape or rules regarding NIL compensation in the future. The state needed an update to its law to allow Texas universities to participate in these portions of the settlement.

Sen. Brandon Creighton, who sponsored the bill in the Senate, first presented HB 126 on Sunday evening. However, the legislation faced immediate pushback from Sen. Royce West (D-District 23) and Sen. Lois Kolkhorst (R-District 18), questioning whether loosening NIL restrictions would allow college programs to offer NIL deals to students as young as middle school.

“Colleges can go and start talking about NIL money to, like, children,” Kolkhorst said on the Senate floor. “What is going to happen is the agents, now, are going to be working through children. I’m not mad at [Creighton] and I’m not mad at Rep. Tepper. I think I’m mad at the United States of America for truly having a collapse of amateur athleticism and we’re going to have agents going and talking to 12 year olds.”

Patrick, noting the late hour, called Creighton forward for a side conversation, the result of which was tabling the bill for a later debate.

In the interim, the concerned senators held a conference call with administrators, coaches and legal council from athletic departments across the state to help clarify the purpose of the new NIL bill. To ease concerns about financially predatory actors preying on talented younger athletes, the Senate drafted an amendment to the legislation that said universities or third-party entities could not enter into an NIL contract with athletes younger than 17.

“I think it allayed some concern, but the bill already doesn’t allow any payment to any student that’s not enrolled at the school,” Tepper said. “So, you can do 100 contracts, but you actually have to show up until the contract is executed and commenced.”

Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte, who was part of the conference call, said he understood the senators’ concerns and had no problem with the amendment.

“I think they’re very thoughtful in the state of Texas that publicity rights are a collegiate opportunity,” he said Wednesday at SEC Spring Meetings. “It’s protecting high school, middle school and junior high. They wanted to do that and I understood that.”

Texas A&M athletic director Trev Alberts was unavailable for comment due to his commitments presenting at SEC Spring Meetings, according to a spokesperson. Requests for comment from many of the senators involved in the debate were not returned.

Two days and a conference call later, Creighton presented the bill once again on the Senate floor to a mostly united chamber. Sen. Kelly Hancock (R-District 9) took the floor in support of the bill.

“I have had constituents with young men and women that, because they live in our state and we have not done this, have contacted my office and said, ‘Hey, y’all need to pass something. My child wants to go to school in the state of Texas, but y’all are going to have to compete with the other people talking to my child,’” Hancock said.

Eventually, with the flick of the gavel, Patrick called for a vote to suspend the three-day rule resulting in an immediate vote on the bill. The count tallied 30 in favor and one “non sports fan,” he announced.

“Here’s to winning in Texas,” Patrick said, putting finality on the issue.

Now, the amended bill must be approved by the House before it finds its way to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk to sign into law. Coaches across the state desire a two-thirds majority vote in the House that will put the law into effect as soon as it is signed. If it gets less, the bill will become law on Sept. 1, losing valuable months of signing contracts and recruiting, should the House settlement be approved.

Tepper said he is hopeful his colleges will understand the importance of the two-thirds vote.

“I hate to predict things, because you just own’t want to muck it up somehow, but I’m confident that my colleges see the importance of this. I’m confident that they realize this has been hashed out as much as it can be hashed out as much as it can be hashed out. The situation is the situation and also, this is an opportunity for these high school and college athletes. I”m hoping and pleading and praying that they concur.”

But, Tepper sees the light at the end of a long tunnel that provided new life to college athletics in Texas.

“It’s more like satisfying that you know that you might have had a small hand in saving college football in Texas,” he said.

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