Heupel’s Moral Compass in the Age of NIL

In an era where name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals dominate the landscape of college football, Josh Heupel stands out as a beacon of integrity. While other coaches scramble to secure top talent through lucrative financial incentives, Heupel has chosen to prioritize fundamental values over extravagant offers, embodying a commitment to the principles of the game and his program.

A Divergent Path in Recruitment

The college football recruiting scene has seen dramatic shifts, with coaches like Sherrone Moore offering staggering sums—such as a $12 million NIL deal—to entice top prospects like Bryce Underwood. This trend raises questions about the future of college athletics, where financial incentives can overshadow traditional recruitment strategies. Yet, Heupel’s approach diverges sharply from this norm. He has made it clear that while financial support is important, the core values of teamwork, discipline, and character remain paramount in his vision for the Tennessee Volunteers.

Heupel’s decision to halt recruitment efforts that compromise these values speaks volumes about his leadership philosophy. He understands that success in college football is not merely a matter of assembling a roster filled with high-profile names; it is about fostering a culture that cultivates growth, resilience, and mutual respect among players.

The Turning Point for Tennessee

As Tennessee navigates a critical juncture in its football program, Heupel’s steadfastness in maintaining a principled stance could prove transformative. The emergence of pressing roster concerns underscores the importance of building a cohesive unit rather than merely attracting talent for talent’s sake. In a sport that often prioritizes immediate gratification through financial incentives, Heupel’s vision represents a longer-term strategy that could yield sustainable success.

The challenges ahead for Tennessee are significant, yet they also present an opportunity for Heupel to reinforce his commitment to a values-driven program. By focusing on character and cohesion, he aims to cultivate a team that can not only compete on the field but also thrive as a community off of it.

Looking Ahead: The Broader Implications

Heupel’s approach raises essential questions about the future of college football. As the NIL landscape continues to evolve, will more coaches follow suit, prioritizing values over financial gain? The implications of Heupel’s choices extend beyond Tennessee, potentially influencing how programs across the nation approach recruitment and team culture.

In a world where the allure of wealth can overshadow the essence of sport, Josh Heupel’s commitment to integrity serves as a reminder of what truly matters in athletics. His journey with the Volunteers is not just about winning games; it is about shaping young men into responsible athletes and citizens. As the season unfolds, the impact of his values-driven approach will likely resonate beyond the field, setting a precedent for future generations in college football.

DENVER – Two incoming freshmen on the University of Denver hockey team were selected by the host Los Angeles Kings on Saturday at the 2025 NHL Draft. Kristian Epperson was chosen at No. 88 overall in the third round by the Kings before Brendan McMorrow was picked later by the franchise at No. 196 overall in round 7 at L.A. Live’s Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, California.
 
This is the 24th straight season that Denver has had a player chosen in the NHL’s annual entry selection, and the Pioneers have now had multiple picks in each of the last 10 drafts. Overall, 138 Denver hockey players that have been chosen by NHL clubs.
 
Epperson, 19, spent the 2024-25 season with the Saginaw Spirit of the Ontario Hockey League after playing the previous two years with the U.S. National Team Development Program. He scored 27 goals and 53 assists for 80 points in 58 regular-season games with Saginaw and contributed three goals and one assist in five playoff matchups. At the NTDP, the forward registered 64 points (27g/37a) in 115 total games across two seasons from 2022-2024.
 
The Mequon, Wisconsin, native won a gold medal with Team USA at 2022 World Under-17 Hockey Challenge, contributing three goals and two assists in six contests. He is also a product of Shattuck-St. Mary’s prep school in Minnesota where he combined for 187 points (76g/111a) with the Sabres from 2020-2022.
 
McMorrow, 19, is joining the Pioneers this year after playing with the Waterloo Black Hawks of the United States Hockey League last season. The forward scored 24 goals and added 18 assists for 42 points with Waterloo in 58 regular-season games, earning team MVP honors. He tied for fifth in the league in postseason scoring in 2025 with 14 points (7g/7a) in 15 playoff contests and helped Black Hawks reach the Clark Cup Finals.
 
The Lakeville, Minnesota, native skated for two years with the U.S. National Team Development Program from 2022-2024, compiling 74 points (38g/36a) in 121 career games with Team USA. McMorrow won a silver medal with the Americans at the 2024 IIHF U18 World Championships and won a gold for the country at the 2024 World Junior-A Challenge.
 
This is the second-straight season that Denver has had two players selected by the same NHL franchise in the draft, as Jake Fisher (No. 121) and Tory Pitner (No. 185) were each picked by the Colorado Avalanche in 2024.
 

Colorado College incoming freshman Wilson Björck was selected by the Vancouver Canucks in the fifth round of the 2025 National Hockey League (NHL) Draft Saturday in Los Angeles, Calif. 
 
Björck, a forward from Stockholm, Sweden, had 91 points (37g,54a) in 84 games with Djurgardens IF in Sweden the last two seasons and played for his home country in the 2023 Hlinka Cup.
 
“Congratulations to Wilson on his selection in the NHL Draft by the Vancouver Canucks,” Colorado College head coach Kris Mayotte said. “He had a tremendous year is Sweden and we are excited to help further his development over the next few seasons. Wilson is a highly skilled and competitive forward who is comfortable playing any of the three forward positions. Our staff is excited to help him achieve his goal of playing in the NHL.” 

He is the highest draft pick from Colorado College since then-incoming freshman Noah Laba was a fourth-round selection by the New York Rangers in 2022.

 

Björck, the 143^rd overall selection, is the 91^st player in CC history to be drafted by the NHL since 1969.

With the 8th overall pick in the 2025 NHL Entry Draft, the Seattle Kraken added another talented center to their growing pipeline, selecting Jake O’Brien of the Brantford Bulldogs. The Toronto native turned heads this season with his elite vision and playmaking ability, racking up 32 goals and 66 assists for 98 points in just 68 OHL regular-season games.

O’Brien was the engine behind Brantford’s power play, quarterbacking the top unit and piling up 41 power-play assists—a testament to both his patience and precision. His ability to manipulate defenders and carve through coverage is already drawing praise from scouts. Cam Robinson of Elite Prospects described O’Brien as a player whose “head is always up, scanning, adjusting routes, and inviting defenders to make the first move before slicing them apart with a feed.” In short: he sees plays develop before they even happen.

At 6-foot-1.5 and 172 pounds, O’Brien isn’t the biggest player on the ice, but he rarely needs to be. His game is built on feel, finesse, and hockey sense. While many analysts have noted that he still has room to grow in terms of shooting and skating, his offensive instincts are already NHL-caliber.

Brantford opens the scoring #NHLDraft prospect Jake O’Brien scores a late first period goal for the @BulldogsOHL to put them up 1-0 heading into the first intermission!#OHLPlayoffs | @CHLHockey pic.twitter.com/p1EaqcmBTA

— Ontario Hockey League (@OHLHockey) April 19, 2025

The Kraken are banking on that upside. O’Brien’s pedigree also speaks volumes, his mom played high-level hockey and now runs her own hockey school, which Jake frequented growing up to fine-tune his craft. His dad also played Division I college hockey and logged a year in the ECHL. The hockey DNA runs deep in the O’Brien family.

This selection marks the fourth time in five drafts that Seattle has used a first-round pick on a center, following Matty Beniers (2021), Shane Wright (2022), and Berkly Catton (2024). And while not all centers stay at that position as pros, the organizational philosophy is clear: keep stacking the middle of the ice. The old saying goes, “You can never have too many centers,” and Seattle seems happy to live by that rule.

Whether O’Brien eventually lands at center or shifts to the wing, his ability to create offense and tilt the ice is what earned him OHL Rookie of the Year honors in 2023-24, when he posted 64 points in 61 games as a 16-year-old. That was just the beginning. The Kraken hope he’s only getting started.

DICKINSON — For people that have viewed a Badlands Big Sticks boxscore, there’s roughly an 80-90% chance that Chayton Fischer’s name is on it. Rarely does his stat line feature zeros. In his first year with the Big Sticks, the 21-year-old is fourth on the team with a .333 average and leads the team with a 1.217 OPS.

While he is currently playing baseball at the Division II level, it wasn’t the only sport he played growing up. His first love, as he says, was hockey. His family never played the sport and he didn’t envision himself putting on a baseball uniform.

“My mom was the one that taught me how to skate when I was two and I started playing games when I was three,” Fischer said. “When it came to winter, I was ice fishing and I even brought my skates out to go to the ice fishing spots when there was no snow on the ice.”

One of Minnesota’s most iconic annual events is the state tournament at the Xcel Energy Center, the home of the Minnesota Wild. In the 2021-22 season, Maple Grove advanced to the Class AA championship game, but lost 6-5 in double overtime to Andover. Despite losing, competing in one of the biggest high school hockey tournaments in the country was unforgettable.

“You grow up in Minnesota dreaming of being in the Minnesota State hockey tournament. I happened to go to the championship. No one would ever take that away from me,” Fischer said.

Courtesy of Chayton Fischer

While his offensive prowess is evident on the baseball, that wasn’t his role on the ice. During his high school years at Maple Grove High, he’d play a polarizing game, using his big 6-foot, 220-pound frame to deliver big hits.

“When I got to high school, [the coaches] were always like, ‘All right we need the big hit.’ and I was like, ‘I’ll do whatever I can to get our team to win,” Fischer said. “My main goal was to protect my teammates, have fun and win games.”

The physicality of his game on the ice translated to his role as catcher on the baseball diamond. He decided on catcher because of his older brother, who played behind the plate growing up.

“I just like the competition. I didn’t like sitting in the outfield, and I didn’t like sitting in the infield just doing nothing. So anything I could do that was doing a lot, it was just fun,” Fischer said. “I think that’s why I kept playing. If I would have been playing outfield or another position, there’s no way I would keep playing baseball.”

Fischer played his first two seasons of collegiate baseball at Minnesota State Mankato before transferring to Iowa Central Community College last summer. He led the team batting .404 and a .554 on base percentage while ranking second with 14 home runs. This spring he’ll be playing for the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UT-RGV) for his redshirt junior season.

“He’s a competitor. I think above all that’s definitely the big piece for him that allows us to be successful. He’s mature in the box, he’s not going to get cheated. And I think that’s been a big piece for guys to see because no matter what the result of the last AB was, he’s going to go up there and try and do the exact same thing,” Big Sticks manager Kelby Coburn said. “I had high expectations coming into the season knowing what kind of hitter he was, but you never know if you’ll actually get that when they arrive. And it’s been really cool to see him just go out there and do his thing.”

Jacob Cheris / The Dickinson Press

Though he has only been in Dickinson for one month, he’s formed relationships and has learned lessons that he’ll take with him heading into next spring — and for the rest of his life.

“Everyone’s not given their position. When I was at school, I wasn’t given it,” Fischer said. “When you come here, you have to prove yourself again. So every time you go to a summer ball, go to a new team, it always just proves that you have to work hard to earn your spot every single time.”

Jacob Cheris covers a variety of high school and college sports. A graduate of Penn State University’s class of 2023, with a degree in broadcast journalism, he covered Penn State Men’s Hockey for three years. Jacob also covers Big Ten Hockey for College Hockey News.

ENOLA — Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania isn’t even up for reelection until 2028, but already a one-time primary foe, former U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, is crisscrossing Pennsylvania and social media, looking and sounding like he’s preparing to challenge Fetterman again.

At town hall after town hall across Pennsylvania, Democrats and allied progressive groups aren’t hearing from Fetterman in person — or Republicans who control Washington, for that matter.

But they are hearing from Lamb, a living reminder of the Democrat they could have elected instead of Fetterman. The former congressman has emerged as an in-demand town hall headliner, sometimes as a stand-in for Fetterman — who just might bash Fetterman.

“I thought I was going to play Senator Fetterman,” Lamb joked as he sat down in front of a central Pennsylvania crowd last Sunday.

Democrats are frustrated with Fetterman

Lamb’s reemergence comes at an in-between moment, roughly halfway through Fetterman’s six-year term, and is helping define the struggle facing Democrats in swing-state Pennsylvania.

There, Democrats figure prominently in their national effort to push back on President Donald Trump, but also in their struggle to figure out what to do about Fetterman, who is under fire from rank-and-file Democrats for being willing to cooperate with Trump.

Frustration with Fetterman has been on display on social media, at the massive “ No Kings ” rally in Philadelphia and among the Democratic Party’s faithful. The steering committee of the progressive organization Indivisible PA last month asked Fetterman to resign.

It’s quite a turnabout for the hoodies-and-shorts-wearing Fetterman, elected in 2022 with an everyman persona and irreverent wit, who was unafraid to challenge convention.

For some progressives, frustration with Fetterman began with his staunch support for Israel’s punishing war against Hamas in Gaza, an issue that divides Democrats.

It’s moved beyond that since Trump took office. Now, some are wondering why he’s — as they see it — kissing up to Trump, why he’s chastising fellow Democrats for their anti-Trump resistance and whether he’s even committed to their causes at all.

Most recently, they question his support for Trump’s bombing of Iran.

“It hurts,” said John Abbott, who attended Sunday’s event in suburban Harrisburg.

Speaking at the flagship “No Kings” rally in Philadelphia, Indivisible co-founder Leah Greenberg name-checked Fetterman.

“We’re looking to the leaders who will fight for us, because even today there are folks among the Democratic Party who think we should roll over and play dead,” Greenberg said. “Anyone seen John Fetterman here today?”

The crowd booed.

Why is Conor Lamb crisscrossing Pennsylvania again?

In Pittsburgh, progressives trying to land an in-person town hall with Fetterman or first-term Republican Sen. David McCormick noticed when the two senators advertised an event together at a downtown restaurant to celebrate the release of McCormick’s new book.

Progressive groups organized to protest it and — after it got moved to a private location with a private invite list — went ahead with their own town hall. They invited Lamb and a local Democratic state representative instead.

More invitations for Lamb started rolling in.

By his count, he’s now attended at least a dozen town halls and party events, easily clocking more than 2,000 miles to appear in small towns, small cities and suburbs, often in conservative areas.

“Showing up matters and it really does make a difference,” said Dana Kellerman, a Pittsburgh-based progressive organizer. “Is that going to matter to John Fetterman? I really don’t know. I don’t know what he’s thinking. I don’t know if he’s always been this person or if he’s changed in the last two years.”

Fetterman has brushed off criticism, saying he’s a committed Democrat, insisting he was elected to engage with Republicans and — perhaps hypocritically — questioning why Democrats would criticize fellow Democrats.

At times, Fetterman has criticized Trump, questioning the move to “punch our allies in the mouth” with tariffs or the need for cuts to social-safety net programs in the GOP’s legislation to extend 2017’s tax cuts. Fetterman’s office didn’t respond to an inquiry about Lamb.

Is Conor Lamb running for Senate?

For his part, Lamb — a former U.S. Marine and federal prosecutor — says he isn’t running for anything right now, but he’ll do whatever he can to “stop this slide that we’re on toward a less democratic country and try to create one in which there’s more opportunity for people.”

To some Democrats, he sounds like a candidate.

“That he’s doing these town halls is a good indication that he’ll be running for something, so it’s a good thing,” said Janet Bargh, who attended the event in suburban Harrisburg.

Aside from the town halls, he spoke at the Unite for Veterans event on the National Mall. He has also been active on social media, doing local radio appearances and appearing on MSNBC, where he recently criticized the June 14 military parade ordered up by Trump.

Not long ago, it was hard to envision Lamb losing a race, ever.

In 2018, he won a heavily Trump-friendly congressional district in southwestern Pennsylvania in a special election. It was the center of the political universe that spring, drawing campaign visits by Trump and then-presidential hopeful Joe Biden.

Suddenly, Lamb was ascendant. Then he ran for Senate and lost handily — by more than two-to-one — to Fetterman in 2022’s primary.

People often ask Lamb if he’s going to challenge Fetterman again. Lamb said he reminds them that Fetterman has three years left in his term and pivots the conversation to what Democrats need to do to win elections in 2025 and 2026.

Still, Lamb is unafraid to criticize Fetterman publicly. And, he said, he’s a magnet for Democrats to air their unhappiness with Fetterman. What he hears, over and over, is frustration that Fetterman spends too much time attacking fellow Democrats and not enough time challenging Trump.

“And that is, I think, what’s driving the frustration more than any one particular issue,” Lamb said.

At the town hall, Lamb wasn’t afraid to admit he’d lost to Fetterman. But he turned it into an attack line.

“When I watch the person who beat me give up on every important issue that he campaigned on … the more I reasoned that the point of all of this in the first place is advocacy for what’s right and wrong,” Lamb told the crowd. “And advocacy for not just a particular party to win, but for the type of country where it matters if, when you stand up, you tell the truth.”

The crowd cheered.