It’s late July, we’re two months away from games that matter, and NHL GMs have apparently taken the rest of the summer off. Let’s get Contrarian.

This is the feature where you send in your most obvious takes, and I tell you that you’re wrong, whether I believe it or not. In the past, we’ve made the case that Mark Messier was a great Canuck, Ray Bourque’s Cup win was bad, but Brett Hull’s crease goal was good and Bobby Orr’s flying goal photo is overrated. Last time, we made the case for Alex Ovechkin being an overrated bum, and also for Alex Ovechkin being an underrated legend, because we’re flexible like that.

This time, we’ve got a new CBA, an old legend and everything in between. Let’s dive in.

Note: Submissions have been edited for clarity and style.

The NHL and NHLPA agreeing on a new CBA quickly and without any work-stoppage drama is a good thing. — Kevin S.

On the contrary, Kevin S., you twit. Unless, of course, you’re an owner.

Are you an owner, Kevin? Are you?

Because if not, you should be concerned about what we just saw play out. We had the two sides of this multibillion-dollar industry come together, and the result was a one-sided victory for the owners, one that appeared to come with next to no resistance from the players. Sure, they got a few minor concessions in the form of payroll taxes and an increased playoff fund. But in today’s NHL, those “wins” represent pennies on the dollar. Meanwhile, the owners got more games, shorter contracts and smaller bonuses. And they’ll keep all the coming expansion money, a multibillion-dollar windfall that the players didn’t even seem to try to get a piece of.

And sure, you can see why it played out that way. After all, this is Gary Bettman’s NHL, where history shows us how these things usually go. If the players try to stand up for themselves, even a little, Bettman shuts everything down. Sometimes the players win, sometimes they lose, and sometimes nobody’s even sure, but it always comes with a cost in a league where careers are short. When it comes to work stoppages, Bettman isn’t bluffing. He’s proven that over the years. So why even try?

The position was summed up perfectly by a player quoted in this excellent piece. “What can we do? There can’t be another lockout,” the player said. “Those don’t go our way. It’s better to get it done.”

“What can we do?” indeed. That’s rational, on some level. But it’s not healthy. And it’s not fair to the players, who are the reason we watch this league. Nobody thinks that Marty Walsh should have come in with guns blazing, trying to recreate the animosity of the Bob Goodenow era. But if this were a hockey fight, it sure looks like the owners wiggled their gloves and the players immediately turtled.

After three decades of Bettman’s “shut it down” approach, we now have labor peace. But that peace apparently just means the players roll over without any sign of a fight, while the owners tilt the ice even further at every opportunity. That’s good news for fans who just wanted to watch hockey without hearing from the accountants and mediators. But it’s not a good thing for the game.

The 4 Nations Face-Off was an overwhelming success for the NHL. — James

On the contrary, James, you clodpoll.

Was it fun? Of course. Did it blow away expectations? I’d say so. Did the best team win? Indisputably.

But that last bit is the problem. You’re talking about what’s best for the NHL. And when it comes to best-on-best tournaments, here’s what’s best for the NHL: Team USA finally winning one of these things.

That’s it. That’s what needs to happen. If you could hook Bettman and friends and up to lie detectors, they’d tell you that’s the whole point. From the league’s perspective, shutting down a season for a best-on-best showdown is ultimately a marketing exercise. And when it comes to marketing this sport in the USA, only one result moves the needle. And Team Canada winning — again, like they always do — isn’t it.

Short of a Team USA win, this year’s tournament delivered everything you could ask for, including a signature moment: The infamous Nine Seconds from the round robin, the rare hockey game that seemed to take over the sports discourse for days. Fans of other sports were hooked because what they were watching didn’t look anything like the leagues they were used to.

Unfortunately, it didn’t look much like the modern NHL either, meaning that wild night in Montreal couldn’t draw in new fans on its own. The tournament needed the right outcome, and it didn’t get it.

American sports fans will dip in to sample best-on-best hockey, as the record ratings for the 4 Nations final show. But they want to see a happy ending. They didn’t get it this year, just like they didn’t in 2002 or 2010 or any other year beyond 1996, which is too long ago to matter. And that’s why they don’t stick around. Less than four months later, we got a Stanley Cup Final featuring a rematch between Connor McDavid, who scored the OT winner, and Matthew Tkachuk, who worked hard to make himself the face of Team USA. Nobody watched.

(Well, they watched in Canada, as they always do. But the NHL has been clear over the years: When it comes to Canada, the only priority is to cash as big a check as possible from Sportsnet every decade or so. Beyond that, they couldn’t care less.)

The bottom line: There’s a reason that the typical American sports fan still thinks a round-robin upset from 1980 is the most important hockey game ever played. Until a Team USA can deliver that sort of moment again, nothing is going to be a “success” for the NHL, in any way that matters to league leadership. American players can keep kicking the can down the road, always telling us that the next tournament is the one that matters. But eventually, they’re going to need to do more than talk a good game.

The decentralized draft was awful, and the GMs of this league proved their incompetence by voting for its return. — Jackson S.

On the contrary, Jackson, you dumbbell.

I mean, you’re right about the first part — the decentralized draft that we all watched a few weeks ago was, indeed, awful. I wrote that at the time, and not many of you disagreed.

But was it awful because it was a decentralized draft? Or was it awful because it was the first decentralized draft (of the modern era, that wasn’t forced on us by a pandemic)? Or did the NHL just try a few things that didn’t work, in a way they can learn from and fix for next year’s edition?

The answer is we don’t know. But we’ll find out, because they’re doing it again next year.

That’s upset some fans, especially the kind of whiny babies who never like anything. But the reality is that we had decades of centralized drafts and one year of the alternative. We can’t know if the new way can work. All we know is that it didn’t, once.

The league deserves a chance to ditch the cringey Zoom interviews, figure out a way to speed things along and try again. If that one stinks, then fine, attack the GMs if they insist on sticking with it. Just not yet.

Comment sections are trash. — Paul W.

On the contrary, Paul, you (tries to think of the most insulting label possible), commenter.

Comment sections can be great … sometimes. If I had to guess, I’d bet that 90 percent of the commenters on a typical post of mine are pretty cool, even if they don’t agree with what they’ve just read.

Of course, that number can get a lot higher depending on whose post it is and what the subject matter might be. I generally get to play on easy mode, because how fired up can you really get over stuff like this? I’ve seen some really interesting discussions break out in my comment sections, not to mention having some really neat suggestions for future posts.

But it doesn’t take much to ruin the vibe, even if 90 percent of people are cool — nobody’s fine with 10 percent turd content in their punchbowl. And yeah, some of you are just weird. That includes the garden variety trolls and those who’ve made a permanent state of grievance into their whole personality. It also includes some sports- and hockey-specific types, like the super-homers, or the “slow news day?” slugs, or the Leaf-pilled anti-fans who make everything about one team and then complain about it, or the single-issue obsessives, or the stick-to-sports losers, or Bruins fans. It is what it is.

So what can you do? Not much, unfortunately. You can ignore the troll, upvote the first guy telling them they’re an idiot, and then move on. (Piling on in the same thread just makes it look like that comment is the most important one on the piece.) Other than that, just be cool, remind yourself that we’re talking about a game here, and remember that sometimes it’s OK to just not post anything.

That story about the Oilers learning how to win from the Islanders in 1983 is one of hockey’s best. — Sean M.

On the contrary, Sean, you … wait, this is me. I’m submitting my own questions. That’s kind of pathetic, but in my defense, I basically asked you guys to send this one in a few weeks ago and nobody took the bait.

So yeah, on the contrary, Sean, you absolute beauty. The Oilers/Islanders story is bad, and we need to stop bringing it up every year at playoff time.

If you’ve somehow missed it, the story goes like this: It’s 1983 and the upstart young Oilers are facing the Islanders in the Stanley Cup Final. They’re the better team, in terms of regular-season record, and have all the pieces in place. But the Islanders are a dynasty, having won three straight Cups. Sure enough, the Isles sweep the series. After the deciding game, various Oilers players (including Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier in most tellings) walk by New York’s dressing room, expecting to see a raucous celebration. Instead, they see a bunch of beaten-up players with ice packs, barely celebrating at all because of how much they’ve left on the ice. At that moment, the Oilers finally understand what it takes to be a winner, and they go on to beat those same Islanders one year later for the first of five Cups in seven years.

Here’s Gretzky himself spinning the tale:

It’s an awesome story. You can see why fans love it. It’s also completely fake.

I mean, come on. Let’s use some common sense. We’re supposed to believe that the Islanders have just won the Stanley Cup, and they’re all sitting in their locker room with the door open for some reason. Nobody’s celebrating. Nobody’s happy. They’re just all strapping ice packs to their broken limbs or whatever, not even so much as cracking a beer, even though just a few minutes earlier they looked like this.

You’re buying that? Really? Because if so, I’m inviting you over to play the new Super Mario that I got from my uncle, who works at Nintendo.

Now, does this mean I’m calling Gretzky a liar? Not necessarily. He’s not a historian, he’s a storyteller, and he’s going back 40-plus years for this one. He’s not making things up out of nothing. I don’t doubt that he may have walked past that room, and maybe things weren’t as boisterous as he expected. He’s just exaggerating, being dramatic and shaping a story over the decades in a way that plays best. But what he’s describing didn’t happen that way.

And if you don’t believe me, why not ask somebody who was there: Islanders’ legend Bryan Trottier. He was on a podcast a few months ago and mentioned the legend of the quiet dressing room. He says it’s not true, or at least not accurate, the way Gretzky tells it. “That’s not the way we remember it,” he says. Instead, he says that somebody told the Islanders players when the Oilers were on their way past the room, so they quieted down the ongoing celebration out of respect for their opponent, not wanting to seem like they were rubbing it in. But they were celebrating. Of course they were. They’d just won the Stanley Cup!

That version makes sense, and squares with where Gretzky (and others) got this idea in the first place. But over the years, it’s morphed into the Islanders’ post-Cup room being a morgue. That’s not true, it was never true, and it’s not a good lesson about how to win. When you achieve a lifelong dream, you absolutely should celebrate. And the Islanders did.

You know who else did? The Oilers! If the story had really played out the way the modern version does, and was so instrumental to Edmonton learning how to win, shouldn’t their celebrations have been muted? Instead, this is the team that invented the Cup handoffs and team photos and maybe did some other things.

Does that sound like a team that had learned that the key to winning was being too beat up to be happy about it? No, because that never happened. Let’s stop pretending it did.

If you’d like to submit a take for future editions of The Contrarian, you can do that here.

(Photo of Islanders’ Bryan Trottier hoisting the Stanley Cup in 1983: Bruce Bennett Studios via Getty Images Studios / Getty Images)

COLLEGE Football star Nico Iamaleava has spoken for the first time since transferring from Tennessee to UCLA.

Iamaleava made a controversial exit from Tennessee due to reported NIL reasons, but he says those reports are untrue.

3

3

“My driving factor to come back home was my family, and I hope every Tennessee fan understands that,” Iamaleava said at Big Ten media days.

“It was just a lot of drama, but man, I’m excited to be at UCLA.”

He pointed at “false reports” about him wanting more compensation in his NIL deals.

Iamaleava is taking a firm stance that his only reason for moving was his family, as he is a native of Long Beach, California.

He said the reports about him at Tennessee made him “not comfortable in the position I was in.”

“I think just the outside world, in general, thinks that it was something that it wasn’t,” Iamaleava told ESPN.

“Going back home was always in the back of my head.

“Just being back closer to my family; [it] took a toll on getting my family to Tennessee. It was just a lot of traveling.”

Reports indicated earlier this year that Iamaleava wanted to increase his yearly compensation to $4 million for 2025.

He was previously paid $2.4 million per year on a deal that would pay him over $8 million in his time at Tennessee.

That reportedly wasn’t enough, and ESPN reported that Iamaleava’s cap reached out to Miami, Ole Miss, Oregon, and other schools about a transfer.

“I don’t speak on money matters,” Iamaleava said.

“I’m just here for ball and school.”

During his NIL negotiations, Iamaleava failed to show up for a spring practice, causing coach Johsh Heupel to officially “move on” from the quarterback.

“I want to thank him for everything he’s done since he’s gotten here, as a recruit and who he was as a player and how he competed inside the building,” Heupel said at the time.

3

“There’s no one that’s bigger than the Power T. That includes me.”

Iamaleava will now look to bring a UCLA team that went 5-7 last season back into contention.

Head coach DeShaun Foster thinks he can do so.

“We’re just excited to have a playoff quarterback,” Foster said.

“Just being able to come back home and be comfortable and being in a familiar environment, I think the sky is the limit.”

“President Donald J. Trump Saves College Sports.” If only it were that simple.

The 176th executive order President Donald Trump signed in the past seven months was announced Thursday with an audaciously headlined statement from the White House. 

We don’t know how this will play out long term. But these are the key facts surrounding the executive order and the questions that need to be answered.  

What’s happened in college sports that brought it to the federal government? 

The NCAA has been under attack on numerous legal fronts for more than a decade, particularly when it comes to paying athletes. Its policy for decades was strict amateurism — any compensation athletes received beyond their scholarships would render them ineligible. 

The model began cracking through a series of antitrust cases brought by former athletes, most notably Alston vs. NCAA in 2021. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that schools must be allowed to provide additional academic awards. By then, states began passing legislation allowing athletes to earn money from their name, image and likeness — i.e., endorsement deals — in direct opposition to the NCAA’s longstanding ban.

On July 1, 2021, the NCAA relented and began allowing NIL payments, which touched off another antitrust case, House v. NCAA. A class of former athletes sued for back pay for missing out on NIL opportunities. The defendants agreed to a $2.8 billion settlement, part of which allows schools to pay athletes directly for the first time, up to $20.5 million. A judge approved the settlement on June 6, 2025.

But the lack of an organized NIL system has led to chaos, with boosters exploiting the lack of enforcement. And with other legal challenges forcing the NCAA to eliminate its longstanding rules about transfers, athletes now routinely hop from one school to another in search of their next payday.

Desperate for regulation, college sports leaders have been lobbying Congress for help in the form of a federal law for years, but not until recently has there been any significant movement on a bill.

What are the key takeaways of the executive order?

The order essentially makes recommendations for how college athletic departments should operate and directs several government agencies to weigh in on issues that will shape the future of college sports. It also delivers the NCAA and conferences much of what it has been lobbying for on Capitol Hill.

However, the order’s ability to turn ideas into action is questionable.

The order:

• Gives a nod to protecting women’s and Olympic sports by setting benchmarks for scholarships and opportunities based on the amount of money an athletic department makes.
• Bans “pay-for-play” to athletes by schools, a bedrock principle of the NCAA and college sports that leaders are still clinging to. The order does try to carve out exceptions for endorsement and sponsorship deals with third-party businesses.
• Calls on the Secretary of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board to clarify the employment status of student-athletes. Under a Republican administration, that likely decreases the chances athletes would have the right to organize.   
• Directs the Attorney General and the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission to find ways to hand rule-making power back to the NCAA, conferences and other college sports governing bodies and away from courts and state legislatures.

Who benefits from this?

Considering how much it falls in line with what college sports leaders have been asking for, it would be difficult to call it athlete-friendly.

Yes, it tries to protect non-revenue programs and force schools to fund a wide range of teams for athletes to participate in college sports, but limiting compensation by regulating NIL compensation and banning pay-for-play has been at the root of problems for decades.

“Looks like an NCAA press release,” said Marc Edelman, professor of sports law at Baruch College and antitrust expert who has been a critic of NCAA policies.

Several ideas for student-athlete compensation have emerged over the years to help regulate the market, from collective bargaining agreements to defining student-athletes as university employees. Though how much athletes actually want those things is hard to say; with more than 190,000 athletes competing in Division I sports, gauging consensus is tricky.

Will this actually change anything? 

In the short term: no. 

In the long term: maybe.

The biggest possible downside of the executive order is that it could create more uncertainty for college sports through policies that may or may not hold.

“It very much depends on how this gets enforced moving forward, and whether it gets enforced moving forward,” said Sam Ehrlich, assistant professor at Boise State’s College of Business and Economics. “Maybe this could just end up being just a statement that goes absolutely nowhere.”

What can the executive order do? 

It’s not so much what an executive order can do as what it can’t. It can’t make a law, it can’t provide an antitrust exemption and it can’t override state laws. Congress can do that. And that’s what college sports need.

Any policies that come from an executive order can be challenged in court and reversed by the next administration, which means college sports continues to operate under a blanket of uncertainty when it comes to defining the relationship between schools and athletes.

That’s exactly what college sports leaders are trying to stop.

What power does the government have in these situations?

The executive branch does not have the authority to provide straightforward solutions to college sports’ problems, most importantly some form of antitrust exemption. That has to come from Congress, and will require bipartisan support. 

The president’s involvement could prioritize the issues in a way that motivates lawmakers to build on recent momentum in the Republican-controlled House, where a college sports bill made it out of committee for the first time earlier this week. Or maybe pervasive political divisiveness makes Democrats recoil from the idea of giving the president a symbolic victory.

While the complicated problems facing college sports now are not quite a matter of life and death, it remains to be seen if presidential involvement makes finding solutions easier or harder.

What is The SCORE Act?

The SCORE Act is a House bill that would provide the NCAA and conferences some antitrust protection, preempt state laws related to NIL compensation and bolster the terms of the House settlement.

The SCORE Act made it through two Republican-led House committees on partisan lines earlier this week. No college sports bill has ever gotten so far. When Congress returns for the fall session, the bill could go to the House floor for a vote and it will probably pass. That’s meaningful and a positive sign for many in college sports after years of inaction by lawmakers.

The bill has little support from Democrats in the House and stands very little chance of making it through the Senate, where seven Democrats would have to vote with Republicans to get the 60 votes necessary to pass.

What divides Republicans and Democrats?

The debate over college sports legislation on Capitol Hill is akin to a labor dispute.

Republicans, who currently control both chambers and the White House, are focused on ways to shield the NCAA and college sports conferences from litigation and state laws that make it impossible for them to effectively govern national competition.

Democrats are demanding greater protections for the workers (the athletes) and are hesitant to provide the antitrust protections college sports leaders have been lobbying for.

The NCAA and conferences want a law that would prevent college athletes from being deemed employees. Democrats want that option left open, along with athletes’ rights to organize and maybe even join unions.

Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) released a statement Friday that read: “The many challenges facing college sports are important and complex. The Executive Order recognizes the importance of preserving Olympic sports, women’s sports, and maintaining competitiveness for big and small schools alike.  I’m disappointed that the President abandoned his earlier plan for a commission to examine all the issues facing college sports. We need a sustainable future for college sports, not a future dominated by the biggest and wealthiest schools who can write their own rules without accountability.”

What precedents are there involving federal legislation and higher education in sports?

The president’s EO is the most significant and direct entry by the executive branch into college athletics since President Theodore Roosevelt’s calls for safety reforms in football led to the creation of the NCAA in 1906. 

President Lyndon B. Johnson’s executive order, signed in 1967, led to the passage of the federal Title IX gender discrimination law, which has been credited with paving the way for an explosion of opportunities for women in college sports.

What does this mean for the NCAA?

The NCAA as a governing body is ceding power to conferences and the newly formed College Sports Commission. However, it played a pivotal role in lobbying for federal legislation and has been much better received by lawmakers since former Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker took over as NCAA president two years ago. 

The NCAA’s future will ultimately be determined by college sports stakeholders, not politicians.

Why is the president getting involved?

The White House’s announcement hailed Trump’s long-held interest in college athletics, including preserving Olympic and women’s sports amid the changing landscape. Until now, Trump’s engagement with higher education has been adversarial, threatening federal funding and litigation against schools for Title IX violations or allegations of antisemitism and discrimination through the promotion of diversity at universities. 

Trump came away from a meeting with former Alabama football coach Nick Saban in May motivated to get involved. The formation of a presidential commission led by Saban and billionaire oil businessman Cody Campbell, a former Texas Tech football player and current board chair, was considered then put on hold as lawmakers worked on legislative solutions. 

— Stewart Mandel and Justin Williams contributed reporting.

(Photo: Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images)

The Hamilton College men’s swimming and diving team were recognized as a College Swimming & Diving Coaches Association of America (CSCAA) Scholar All-America Team for the 2025 spring semester on Wednesday, July 2 when the organization released its list.

Teams were required to achieve a grade point average of 3.00 or better during the semester in order to earn the prestigious honor. The Continentals posted a 3.50 GPA and picked up the award for the eighth straight semester under Head Coach John Geissinger.

A dozen members of the men’s team made the 2025 New England Small College Athletic Conference Winter All-Academic Team, which honors sophomores, juniors, and seniors in good academic standing in their sport maintaining a cumulative grade point average of 3.50 or higher.