Tensions are beginning to rise in the recruitment for five-star offensive tackle Jackson Cantwell. Cantwell is the No. 1 overall player in the country with a commitment date of May 13 quickly approaching.

Cantwell has cut his recruitment down to Georgia, Miami (FL), Oregon and Ohio State, and those will be the four schools he decides between on Tuesday. He does have one more visit lined up with Georgia before he announces his commitment which will take place on May 10, but another major development just unfolded surrounding NIL.

A report from On3 was released earlier this week stating that Miami is offering Cantwell upwards of $2 million for his freshman season alone if he chooses the Hurricanes. That number is very realistic for a prospect as good as Cantwell, but it’s strange that this report came out a few days before his commitment.

This report upset a lot of people at Miami, so much so that the Hurricanes are claiming Kirby Smart and Georgia leaked this information on purpose.

“On3 put out an article that Miami was the leading NIL bidder for Jackson Cantwell. Make no mistake, this is an intentional leak designed to make it look like if Cantwell choose Miami, he’s just chasing the bag,” he said. “This is all strategy, the truth is, Georgia is a great program, they have a lot of momentum with Cantwell, they have done good things, offensive line development is not the best.”

Georgia blamed for Jackson Cantwell’s NIL offer being leaked

Who knows if Georgia leaked Cantwell’s NIL offer from Miami or not. There is a very real chance they did, but the reasoning behind Georgia doing so, according to the above post, makes no sense.

This video is claiming Georgia did this because they don’t have as much success in recent history at developing offensive lineman like Miami does. However, one quick look at recent NFL Drafts will prove this wrong.

Since 2014, Miami has had just two offensive tackles taken in the NFL Draft. Georgia on the other hand has had seven. So how has Miami developed the position better than Georgia?

In just a few more days the college football world will finally learn where Cantwell will play his college ball. But this little NIL wrinkle, whether Georgia was involved or not, will create a lot more hype as Cantwell’s commitment approaches.

Basketball is a game of four quarters. In every level of the sport, all across the globe, if you’re watching a basketball game, they’re playing four quarters. Men’s college basketball is the one exception. That may soon be changing.

Ahead of the 2015 college basketball season, the women switched from halves to quarters. The men’s sport is finally inching closer to that logical next step, but it won’t happen next year.

The NCAA Men’s Basketball Rules Committee is convening this week in Indianapolis. “Enhancing the flow of the game” is at the top of the agenda. One of those potential changes is switching to quarters. However, they can’t just make a decision. There needs to be more red tape.

They are recommending the creation of a joint working group to provide feedback on the change. Once they receive the feedback, next year the Rules Committee will consider making the move.

The wheels of change move slowly in the NCAA. This is a small step in the right direction.

Potential Coach’s Challenge in College Basketball

Trips to the monitor plague the sport, particularly in end-of-game situations. If Buzz Williams isn’t calling a timeout, Pat Adams is hovering over a monitor. The Rules Committee believes they’ve found a fix.

“Coach’s challenges were deemed to be the most efficient way to accomplish this goal,” said committee chair Karl Hicks. “Data from the NCAA tournament and membership conferences showed a substantial number of reviews were on out-of-bounds plays. The committee looked at other basketball leagues around the world to see what the best solution would be for the NCAA.” 

Each team would receive one coach’s challenge per game. It can only be used if a team still has a timeout. If it’s successful, they get another. If you lose it, sorry. You’re out. The challenge can be used to review out-of-bounds calls, basket interference/goaltending, and whether a secondary defender was in the restricted-area arc.

Adding the coach’s challenge would eliminate an official’s ability to review out-of-bounds plays in the final two minutes of the game. They could still take a trip to the monitor to review goaltending or restricted arc plays, but the out-of-bounds calls are the ones that slow everything down. Putting the onus on the coach is the key to ending needless trips to the monitor.

A New Continuation Rule?

There is one line from the press release that is probably going to be overlooked by some, but could play a big deal.

“Committee members also recommended modifications to the rule on continuous motion on field goal attempts.”

Late in the season, there were a couple of continuation plays that drove Kentucky fans irate. Any time it was borderline, it felt like the call went against Kentucky. In modern college basketball, extending the continuation rule makes sense. Hopefully, the rules committee takes action.

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What do Devin Booker, Karl-Anthony Towns, Julius Randle, Donovan Mitchell, Tyrese Haliburton, Chris Paul, Jalen Brunson, Reed Sheppard, Cooper Flagg and Jasper Johnson all have in common? As of today, they’re all clients of Creative Artists Agency (CAA) Basketball.

That’s just on the basketball side of things, a group that includes 61 first-round picks and 19 max contracts. CAA also represents some of the biggest names in football (Josh Allen, AJ Brown, Derrick Henry, Saquon Barkley and CeeDee Lamb), baseball (Shohei Ohtani, Marcell Ozuna, Garrett Crochet, Trea Turner and Max Fried) and entertainment (Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Brad Pitt and Zendaya).

Now, Lexington’s own Jasper Johnson joins one of the deepest rosters of talent in the world, announcing his decision to join the CAA Sports family for NIL representation on Friday.

“Excited to join the CAA family! Let’s work!” Johnson wrote on social media.

Johnson has been represented by Nate Conley of Court XIV, who also worked with Oscar Tshiebwe and Rob Dillingham during their Kentucky careers while also signing five-star recruit Anthony Thompson — a major target for the Wildcats in 2026.

The future Kentucky guard committed to Mark Pope and the Cats back in September and signed with the program during the early period in November. He closed as the No. 25 overall recruit in the 2025 On3 Industry Ranking.

What is the program getting in the 6-4 guard out of Lexington? A dangerous scorer with serious superstar upside.

“Jasper Johnson is just danger, danger, danger, danger, right? He just is a dangerous gravity guy,” Pope said following his addition. “He just demands that if you’re not going to pay attention to him with more than one body, anywhere he is on the court probably, he’s gonna hurt you, and he can really, really, really score the ball. And he’s got a kindness about him that’s really special. And he knows Kentucky, right?

“(He has an) emotional reaction when (he puts) on a t-shirt that has Kentucky across the chest, right? (He has an) emotional response. Jasper Johnson has a chance to be a really, really special player here in Kentucky, for sure.”

Don’t believe Pope? Doesn’t matter, because arguably the top agency in the world does. If they can recognize elite talent across every avenue imaginable and hand-pick Jasper Johnson as a client, that tells you everything you need to know.

ESPN’s Pete Thamel joined The Pat McAfee Show on Friday to dish the latest on where the expansion of the College Football Playoff stands. Earlier this week, Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger reported a potential 16-team bracket has “growing” Big Ten and SEC support after an in-person meeting on Thursday in New York.

While he’s expecting the bracket to grow to 16, there’s numerous reasons why the ESPN analyst believes it won’t go beyond that number: “If we get to 16 here, which I would say is a high probability at this point, I have a hard time seeing it jump up from there,” Thamel proclaimed. “I would think 16, you’d have to stay static there for a relatively short period of time.

“Now, 20 years from now. I don’t know how it all works. There’s already resistance from going 14 to 16 in a lot of ways. A lot of this comes down to TV windows. We saw the overlap last year, with the College Football Playoff and the NFL. There’s not a lot of places to put these games right now. The appetite for fierce growth, TV-wise, is likely not to be that high, just because the windows to showcase and maximize them financially aren’t there.”

While some will argue 16 is a larger number than necessary for the Playoff, it seems that’s the format we’re destined to see implemented. Many have joked that 64 or 68 would be fascinating, similar to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament; those fears won’t be realized, at least Thamel doesn’t think they will for a long, long time, if ever.

Continuing, the ESPN analyst provided some more context as to why this expansion will likely be taking place, shedding some light on the stances of Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti and SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey. It’s easy to see why both men would want this to come true, as the reported 16-team bracket would include four automatic bids for each of the SEC and Big Ten, according to Dellenger.

“This is the final season we’re going to be at 12. They kind of soft agreed to go to 14 for the next iteration of the playoff. I believe it’s a six-year run, from ‘26 to ‘31. As the discussions have been honed in on that, there’s been recent momentum for the 14-team playoff to go to 16. A lot of this comes down to automatic qualifiers. Automatic qualifiers are controversial, in some sense, because the Big Ten and the SEC are likely to have double what the Big 12 and the ACC have. So, there’s been some pushback on that,” Thamel added.

“As it has gone forward and the conversations have continued, Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti has been very bullish on automatic qualifiers. Greg Sankey, the SEC Commissioner, has been a little more guarded in revealing what his hand is, but the notion that I’ve gotten, especially in the last week, is Sankey has started to align himself more with Petitti on the potential of four. The compromise of all this is to create more spots for the College Football Playoff, which is why 16 has really come into focus.

“… In the SEC especially, and in the Big Ten too, the coaches are pushing for it, they want automatic bids. If the SEC is going to go to nine games, which is appearing more likely, they want that extra protection. They don’t want a conference loss to cross them out. This would essentially keep the top half of each league in the playoff conversation for the entire year.

“Petitti has a background in the NFL, it’s always been his thing to have a Minnesota–Rutgers game, where they’re hovering around .500 have Playoff stakes. It’s like having the 7-8 Jets play the 8-8 Patriots or whatever, Week 15 and there’s a Wild Card bid seemingly on the table.”

All told, the 12-team bracket was widely considered a success, but more seems to be the way of college football over the past few seasons. It looks like 16 teams is inevitable, as Pete Thamel reported, and beyond that is anyone’s guess. 

SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Chattanooga softball will take on Mercer in the Southern Conference Championship game Saturday at 1:00 p.m. at Wofford’s Hope Field in Spartanburg, S.C.
 
The Mocs and Bears fought in a marathon match Thursday morning with UTC getting the win in the bottom of the ninth. Chattanooga put up seven runs in the first five innings and Mercer returned the favor in the next two, tying the game in the top of the seventh and forcing extra innings.
 
GAME DAY INFORMATION
Mocs vs. Bears
Saturday, May 10, 2025
1:00 p.m.
Links for live stats and video streaming on ESPN+ can be found online on the softball schedule page on GoMocs.com.
 
MOCS vs. BEARS in the Southern Conference
Chattanooga’s win Thursday against the Bears gave the Mocs a 4-3 advantage in SoCon Tournament games. The two first met in 2015 and played twice with UTC winning both games. UTC was the No. 1 seed and Mercer the No. 3. The Mocs beat Mercer 7-6 in the championship bracket and then again by a 3-1 margin in the championship game. In 2016, Mercer, the No. 7 seed, beat six-seeded UTC 7-4. The Bears would get wins in 2021 and again in 2023 but Chattanooga won in five inning in 2024 in Greensboro.
 

 
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