On a picturesque morning for golf, the 8:50 a.m. tee-time for the 2025 Regions Tradition Pro-am had as much star power and buzz as a final round at Augusta National.

 Paired with 2009 PGA Championship winner, and Huntsville native, Stewart Cink, two of the state’s most recognizable sports figures began their morning at Greystone Golf and Country Club.

Former Alabama football head coach and ESPN analyst Nick Saban was joined by Auburn basketball legend and TNT’s Charles Barkley.

In recent weeks, each of them has sounded off on some of the biggest topics in sports, from NIL, the state of college sports, to whether transgender athletes have a place in sports.

While Saban is quickly finding his voice, and complaints on hot topics under a new type of national spotlight, Barkley remains a firebrand in both a sporting and political realm.

However, Wednesday (for a couple of hours at least), the two hall-of-famers weren’t on studio sets, with sitting presidents, or having to pontificate (too deeply) the state on the state of their sports. They were just part of a paring of five playing golf, but that doesn’t mean the hot topics came up over the course of Wednesday afternoon.

Barkley flew into Birmingham straight from working NBA on TNT covering the NBA playoffs in Atlanta, Georgia.

Following the Pro-Am, Barkley is headed back to the Turner Sports studios, but didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to golf alongside arguably, the greatest football coach in college football history.

“This will be my first time golfing with coach Saban,” Barkley said before his tee time. “It’s always an honor to be around him because he’s the greatest college football coach ever. I have a lot of admiration and respect for him. It’s going to be fun today.”

For Saban, the feelings were mutual.

“I’m looking forward to playing with Charles today,” Saban said. “I have always looked up to Charles and thought he was a great player. He does a great job professionally in terms of media.”

“I certainly respect the fact that he comes home and supports the community the way he does. It’s something I’m looking forward to today,” Saban added.

Cink, their pro for the event shot four under par through the first six holes.

Barkley and Saban had some great strokes from the tee box. However, each had trouble on the fairways and greens at times.

“This is the only game I play where the more you play the worse you get,” Saban said. “It’s unbelievable but we have fun doing it.”

Barkley kept Saban’s spirits high throughout the day saying ‘great hit coach’ every chance he got following a swing.

The basketball legend had some nice shots of his own throughout the day, even getting a round of applause after making par on the first hole.

“I’m playing great right now,” Barkley said. “I’m excited for the summer so I can play golf every day. I have about three more weeks until I’m off for the next 12 months.”

With more golf awaiting Barkley this summer, a full day on the course with Saban made for one of the greatest sports crossovers of all-time.

As two worlds collided at Greystone Golf & Country Club, the Regions Tradition celebrity Pro-Am owes the state of Alabama nothing for this legendary pairing.

Jerry Humphrey III covers Auburn sports forAL.com. You can follow him on X at @Jerryhump3or email him at JHumphreyIII@al.com.

U.S. and UCLA gymnast Jordan Chiles is a two-time Olympian and three-time NCAA individual champion.

She looks completely comfortable in her own skin as she’s performing a floor routine to music by empowering artists like Beyoncé and proudly displaying the more than 20 “amazing art pieces” she has tattooed on her body.

For much of Chiles’ life, however, the body that helped propel her to athletic greatness made her feel “ugly” and self-conscious. But when she first saw photos of herself as a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model, “I literally started bawling my eyes out,” Chiles recently told People magazine.

U.S. and UCLA gymnast Jordan Chiles appears on the cover of the 2025 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, on newsstands beginning May 17. The portrait was shot in Boca Raton, Fla., on Nov. 4.

(Ben Horton /Sports Illustrated / Contour by Getty Images)

Chiles said her mother, Gina, reacted similarly.

“My mom actually cried a few times from some of the photos because she’s been there literally every single moment of my life,” Chiles said, “so I think it was more of her realizing how beautiful her daughter is and what I’ve gone through.

“She was there when I would cry and be like, ‘Mom, they’re saying this. They’re saying that.’ Or I would look at myself in the mirror and call myself ugly almost every day. I think it was just really cool for her to know that I get this opportunity and that I get the ability to embrace who Jordan is.”

Chiles was a member of the U.S. Olympic squads that won team silver at the Tokyo Games in 2021 and team gold at the Paris Games last summer. Chiles was also awarded her first individual Olympic medal, a bronze in the floor exercise, in Paris but it was taken away because of a technicality.

At UCLA, Chiles won two national titles in the uneven bars (2023, 2025) and one on the floor (2023). She also finished second in the all-around competition in 2023 and helped the Bruins to a second-place overall finish this year. Chiles has already announced she will return to Westwood next year for her senior season.

When the 2025 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue hits newsstands on Saturday, Chiles will be one of four models appearing on her own cover (Olivia Dunne, Salma Hayek Pinault and Lauren Chan are the others). As opposed to how she felt looking at her own reflection years ago, Chiles said she is “in awe” after seeing herself on the front of the iconic magazine.

“I’ve embraced every single aspect of who I am and I’ve embraced the amazing body that I have,” Chiles said.

Former Alabama coach Nick Saban on Wednesday questioned the need for a national commission on college sports that he is expected to co-chair.

Last week, CBS Sports confirmed Saban and Texas Tech’s NIL collective founder Cody Campbell were jointly expected to lead the commission that would be created by President Donald Trump to influence the future structure of college athletics.

“I don’t know a lot about the commission, first of all,” Saban told The Paul Finebaum Show. “Secondly, I’m not sure we need a commission. I think a lot of people know exactly what the issues are in college football and exactly what we need to do to fix them. I think the key to the drill is getting people together to move it forward.”

But Saban later told Finebaum that, “I don’t think I should be at the tip [of the spear]. I think I’m someone that has lots of experience and certainly would like to help anyone who would seek our help to try to help fix it. Because I spent my whole life — 50 years — trying to help players be more successful in life. I want to see us continue to be able to do that, not just in football but in all sports across the board.”

Saban met with Trump after the President visited Tuscaloosa on May 1 to give a commencement speech for Alabama graduates. The meeting also involved Alabama Senator and former SEC coach Tommy Tuberville, who told Tide 100.9 radio last month that “Trump wants to help on this NIL,” but added, “I don’t know how he can do it through an executive order.”

Saban told Finebaum that Trump told him, “all my friends are saying college football is really messed up. Let’s get together so we can figure out how to fix it.”

After the meeting, the Wall Street Journal reported Trump was considering an executive order involving NIL in college sports.

As for the commission, which was also reported in the days following the meeting, Saban told reporters Wednesday morning, “To be honest with you, I don’t really know much about this commission. I don’t really know what this commission would do. I think we know what needs to be done, I just think we’ve got to figure out who’s got the will to do it. I learned one thing about coaching for all these years that when you get into a subject like this that’s very complex, it’s probably good not to talk about it off the cuff.

“I’ll find out more about it, and if there’s something I can do to help college football be better, I’m always going to be committed to do that. I was committed to do that as a coach, to help players be more successful in life and I would continue to do the same thing now.”

Saban told Finebaum the meeting with Trump was “how this all started,” but, “I really don’t want to get into the whole implementation of what I would do.”

He then provided a few ideas of what he would propose.

“The first thing is everybody’s got a different state law, which creates advantages and disadvantages,” Saban said. “Everybody is trying to create advantages. Probably need an interstate commerce type something that gets it all there.

“I don’t think it’s in the best interest of the players to necessarily be employees. And I think authentic name, image and likeness is good for players, but I don’t think pay-for-play is necessarily what we want. What is college? We all went to college to create value for our future. I think we want to keep some semblance of that in terms of guys becoming and developing as people and students, and developing a career off the field, as well as having an ability to play at the next level. We’ve got to have a system that enhances all three of those.”

Saban, Tuberville and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey were among the golfers at Wednesday’s Regions Tradition Pro-Am in Hoover, Alabama.

Said Sankey to Finebaum on the commission: “I think what’s important to remember is that’s a lot of ‘sources say.’ I deal with reality. There’s plenty of commentary about this possible commission. I’ll go back to the work we’ve been doing educate House and Senate members. I know the President of the United States is an enormous sports fan. He’s been at our games. Last year the Georgia game in Tuscaloosa for the University of Alabama. He’s been at national championship games in January 2018 and January 2020 involving our teams. He’s been back then at a regular-season game.

“So I know he’s aware. I’m not gonna overreact or react to what’s reported about commissions. I think there are a lot of wise people who can provide input. Hopefully people come to me for counsel from time to time. But what I do focus on is our realities, which is we’ll continue to work through Congress because that’s an opportunity to set national standards. We need Democrats and Republicans to do the really hard work they do every day, but also to come together around college sports — our Olympic movement, our non-revenue sports, around supporting a structure of regulatory common sense for college athletics that provides economic opportunities for young people. We also don’t have any real consumer protection around what young people may be signing, who’s representing — their agents or NIL negotiators or NIL entities.”

Sankey, Saban and other coaches and athletics directors have spent time on Capitol Hill in recent years lobbying for legislation around college athletics. Saban has cited issues such as protecting the NCAA from litigation about antitrust violations that have underpinned recent court victories against the organization, as well as future structure concerns such as employment status, unionization and Title IX that are not specifically addressed in the ongoing House vs. NCAA class-action settlement.

“There’s a lot of good work that can be done,” Sankey told Finebaum. “We’ll continue to focus on that and we’ll adapt to more than just ‘sources say’ and respect that there’s a lot of people in Washington that have an interest. What we need is a focus on participating in collaboration and problem solving.”

The House settlement, which could be approved by a federal judge within days, would create a system of revenue sharing that allows schools to directly pay athletes. That alone has led to concern about non-revenue sports being cut by schools to divert financial resources to paying players in revenue-generating sports led by football and men’s basketball.

“We got to protect Olympic sports, whether they produce revenue or not because it’s opportunities for young people to get an education,” Saban told Finebaum. “It trains a lot of people for the Olympics. There’s a lot of things about college football that I think is worth trying to make sure we can keep intact so that people can continue to have opportunities and be successful.”

Saban, who visited Tuberville in Washington earlier this year, told Finebaum he felt college sports’ perceived problems were fixable.

“I’m not opposed to players making money,” Saban said. “I don’t want anybody to think that. I just think the system — the way it’s going right now, it’s not sustainable and probably not in the best interest of the student-athletes across the board, or the game itself.

“I think we need to protect the brand and the competitive advantages and disadvantages that are being created right now, and I think we can fix all that. But I think we know how to do it, and I think — not just me but a lot of people — but we just got to get everybody together to do it.”

Repeated Saban: “I just think we got to have some people get together and push it forward. I think there’s a lot of people out there that know how to fix it. I just think we’ve got to push it forward and get everybody together. Some of it may need to be done on the federal level, and that’s where we’re gonna have to get people together.”

Saban also reiterated his assertion that his retirement last year was unrelated to the state of college sports.

“I didn’t get out of coaching because the system in college football right now,” he told Finebaum. “I got out because of my age. I thought it was affecting the program. I didn’t want to ride the program down. I think the people at Alabama now will do a great job there.”

May 13—NEWTON, Kan. — The Odessa College men’s golf team sits in fifth place at the end of the first day of the NJCAA National Championships Tuesday at Sand Creek Station.

The Wranglers finished the first of four rounds with a team score of 285.

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Midland College is in first at 284 while Hutchinson Community College and McLennan Community College are tied for second at 285.

Indian Hills is fourth at 287.

Odessa College was led by Adam Bresnu, who is tied for third as an individual after finishing with 69.

North Idaho’s Eli McNelly is first with 66.

The Wranglers will be back on the course Wednesday for the second round.

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Students from West Hartford’s Conard High School made public their commitments to college athletics on May 14, 2025.

With family, friends, teammates, and coaches in attendance, 14 members of Conard High School’s Class of 2025 participated in a College Commitment Day on Wednesday, May 14, 2025, officially indicating their plans to continue their sports at the collegiate level.

In October 2024, the NCAA eliminated the National Letter of Intent, which in the past students would sign at this time of year accepting scholarships as their commitment to Division I or Division II sports. Students now accept offers of athletic aid, which are a combination of scholarship and financial aid monies. Students at Division I, II, and III are now permitted to earn money from through the NIL (name, image, and likeness) program.

The following students attended Conard’s ceremony on May 14:

• Matthew Russo – Lacrosse – Wentworth Institute of Technology
• Alice Araya – Soccer – Concordia University Irvine
• Nina Ostafin – Softball – Dean College
• Avery Wolfe – Ice Hockey – Framingham State University
• Brayden Sohn – Football and Wrestling – New England College
• Nicholas Katsaros – Lacrosse – Roger Williams University
• Keyera Craig – Track and Field – University of New Haven
• Liam Walsh – Track and Field – Bates College
• JulesCapone – Lacrosse – Tufts University
• Nolan Wusterbarth – Baseball – Framingham State University
• Tess Sherry – Track and Field – Georgetown University
• Liv Sherry – Track and Field – Georgetown University
• Luke Shaffer – Lacrosse – Stevens Institute of Technology
• Brayden Mangini – Lacrosse – Western New England

The following eight seniors participated in College Commitment Day at Conard High School on Nov. 13, 2024:

• Maddie Dupont – Soccer – Springfield College
• Nathan Lowney – Swimming – Union College
• Sadira Forcucci – Softball – Fordham University
• Nicole Gorman – Lacrosse –Lindenwood University
• Gwen Arnold – Volleyball – Regis College
• Liv Sherry – XC & Track – Georgetown University
• Tess Sherry – XC & Track – Georgetown University
• Rachel Mathews – Swimming – Eastern Connecticut State University

College Commitment Day at Conard High School. Nov. 13, 2024. Courtesy photo (we-ha.com file photo)

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