Yea Alabama, the Crimson Tide’s NIL collective, announced on Monday that the Alabama men’s basketball team has officially signed its four transfer portal players that committed over the last month. Joining Alabama for the 2025-26 men’s basketball season are: 7-foot, 250-pound center Noah Williamson (transferred from Bucknell). 6-foot-10, 195-pound forward Taylor Bol Bowen (transferred from […]
Yea Alabama, the Crimson Tide’s NIL collective, announced on Monday that the Alabama men’s basketball team has officially signed its four transfer portal players that committed over the last month.
Joining Alabama for the 2025-26 men’s basketball season are:
7-foot, 250-pound center Noah Williamson (transferred from Bucknell).
6-foot-10, 195-pound forward Taylor Bol Bowen (transferred from Florida State).
6-foot-8, 190-pound forward Keitenn Bristow (Transferred from Tarleton State).
And 6-foot-5, 190-pound guard Jalil Bethea (Transferred from Miami).
The four transfers join three true freshmen, London Jemison, Davion Hannah, and Amari Allen, as new members of Alabama men’s basketball for the 2025-26 men’s basketball season.
Alabama also returns four contributors from the team last season:
6-foot-5, 200-pound guard Houston Mallette.
Crimson Tide Photos / UA Athletics
Crimson Tide Photos / UA Athletics
6-foot-10, 240-pound center Aiden Sherrell.
MBB
Crimson Tide Photos / UA Athletics
6-foot-3, 190-pound guard Latrell Wrightsell Jr.
MBB
Crimson Tide Photos / UA Athletics
And 6-foot-1, 180-pound guard Aden Holloway.
Crimson Tide Photos / UA Athletics
Crimson Tide Photos / UA Athletics
Here are a few things to know about the four new additions to the Crimson Tide via the transfer portal.
Noah Williamson averaged 17.6 points, 7.6 rebounds, and 1.6 assists per game while shooting 53.8 percent from the floor and 31.8 percent from three-point range as a junior last season.
Taylor Bol Bowen averaged eight points, 5.2 rebounds, and 0.8 assists per game while shooting 47.7 percent from the floor and 41.4 percent from three-point range as a sophomore last season.
Keitenn Bristow averaged 11.3 points, 4.3 rebounds, and 1.4 assists while shooting 46.1 percent from the floor and 32.8 percent from three-point range as a freshman last season.
Jalil Bethea averaged 7.1 points, 2.1 rebounds, and 1.2 assists while shooting 36.8 percent from the floor and 32.6 percent from three-point range as a freshman last season.
Wyatt Fulton is the Tide 100.9 DME and Brand Manager, primarily covering Alabama Crimson Tide football and men’s basketball. For more Crimson Tide coverage, follow Wyatt on X (Formerly known as Twitter) at @FultonW_.
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The House v. NCAA settlement has implications we’re still figuring out
The world of college sports changed as we know it last Friday night, again. The House Settlement was finally approved by Judge Claudia Wilken and with it came several significant amendments to how college sports will operate. Under Steve Sarkisian and across nearly the entire Longhorn athletic department, Texas has shown its ability to adapt and improvise […]
The world of college sports changed as we know it last Friday night, again. The House Settlement was finally approved by Judge Claudia Wilken and with it came several significant amendments to how college sports will operate. Under Steve Sarkisian and across nearly the entire Longhorn athletic department, Texas has shown its ability to adapt and improvise in an ever-changing college sports landscape. As another monumental change arrives, Texas will strive to uphold their recruiting and developmental prowess.
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The Objectively Good:
As part of the settlement, the NCAA will be sending over $2.8 billion in back payments to athletes that played from 2016 to 2024 to compensate for lost NIL opportunities. The most significant part about these back payments is obviously that Tyrone Swoopes will finally be compensated for his 18-wheeler package senior season for the Longhorns.
The Money:
Under the newly approved settlement, schools can now directly pay athletes up to $20.5 million per year. For SEC schools, that pool drops to $18.5 million as the league now requires $2 million to go to Alston payments.
Most schools are expected to follow something similar to a model of 70-85% to football, 10-15% to men’s basketball, 5% to women’s basketball and 5% to all other sports. Texas has said it will go 75-15-5-5.
Players can still seek third-party NIL deals as a form of revenue, but all NIL deals over $600 will go through a Deloitte-run clearinghouse website called NIL GO. Players will go to the website and submit any NIL deals they land for approval. The purpose of the clearinghouse is to ensure fair market value and valid business purpose solely between the athlete and the third-party company. All of this is to attempt to limit unregulated pay-for-play through over-the-table NIL.
Schools do have the opportunity to opt-out of the settlement and operate as they did before. While they don’t have to comply with roster limits and other new policies outlined in the settlement, they cannot participate in revenue-sharing and still are under the new NIL oversight and must report all deals over $600.
Texas is opting in.
One of the key pieces about the revenue-sharing model is the advantage given to one-sport schools. Big East schools and schools such as Gonzaga can pour 75% of their funds into basketball, giving them a distinct advantage within the sport.
It should be very interesting to see how non-football schools use this to their advantage, though they may not be able to offer the as much in total cash considering their media rights deals look very different than the ones Power Four conferences have.
Impact on College Football
While new NIL oversight may help curtail the Wild West era of NIL spending, the new revenue-sharing model still allows for dominance at the top. However, although the resource advantage gap may have diminished, the new model will strain most schools financially.
Finding NIL money from, let’s face it, fans to pay players is significantly easier than using school generated revenue. Schools are now scrambling to find ways to generate extra cash in order to pay up to that $20.5 million dollar cap. Expect to see a lot more schools implementing a “talent tax” as they have in Knoxville for the Tennessee Volunteers, or increase ticket prices as the Longhorns plan to do. If schools such as Tennessee and Texas need to do this, one can only imagine the challenges smaller schools are facing. We’ve already seen a few Division I schools make the move to D-III after realizing they wouldn’t be able to compete.
Texas is expected to see a $30 million increase in expenses because of House. $20.5 million is for the revenue-sharing salary cap, and an estimated $9.5 million will be due for the additional scholarships. As part of the settlement, scholarship limits have been replaced by roster limits.
Far From Flawless:
While the settlement is a great first step in fixing many of the grievances plaguing college sports, it also brings along its own new issues. While replacing scholarship limits with roster limits allows more flexible spending for schools, it takes away spots from many athletes. This was a big point of contention as Judge Wilken required an amendment that would protect current walk-ons before she approved the settlement.
Any athlete who was cut or had their offer pulled as a result of the new roster limits will now be labeled as a “Designated Student Athlete.” All DSA’s will not count toward the roster at their original school where they lost their spot, or if they transfer to a different school. While this does protect active and prospective athletes with current offers, the effects will be seen in a few years.
In 2024, Texas’s football roster consisted of 119 athletes, 14 over the NCAA limit. In addition, the SEC mandated a scholarship limit of 85 going forward, meaning there is room for 20 walk-ons in the Longhorn football program.
We may start to see the death of the walk-on in the House era. Nebraska had 180 players on their roster last year and now needs to cut that down by 75. With only 105 spots, coaches will severely limit walk-on spots if not cut them all together depending on what their league allows. The first place coaches look to replace talent after high school recruiting is the transfer portal. With an influx of talent in the portal and fewer walk-on spots, schools that champion the walk-on process might cease to place a similar emphasis on non-scholarship players.
For Texas, 119 to 105 isn’t a massive cut, especially compared to schools like A&M who had 143. It’s still a change Texas will have to deal with.
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Many issues that surrounded the implementation of the new settlement were outside the domain of Judge Wilken. She only needed to find the deal to be fair, reasonable and adequate to the settlement classes and find that it adequately addressed the federal antitrust issues raised in the three cases that originally triggered the settlement.
The settlement is extremely vulnerable to future lawsuits concerning Title IX, employment and labor claims, state NIL policies and more. In fact, a Title IX related suit has already been filed.
Now that players are directly paid by schools it opens up the discussion to their employment status. Can the players form a union? Negotiate a CBA? Does Title IX apply to NIL payments? All of these questions still have yet to be answered as schools will still have to navigate the college sports landscape under an uncertain future.
Athletes Unlimited Softball cards launch after MLB partnership
The cards feature Bri Ellis, Sam Landry and Sierra Sacco as the rookie headliners for the first official set. Sport collectors can now collect Athletes Unlimited Softball League trading cards. The cards feature rookies Bri Ellis, Sam Landry and Sierra Sacco as the headliners for the first ever official set. Each card costs $8.99 and has rare variations, […]
The cards feature Bri Ellis, Sam Landry and Sierra Sacco as the rookie headliners for the first official set.
Sport collectors can now collect Athletes Unlimited Softball League trading cards.
The cards feature rookies Bri Ellis, Sam Landry and Sierra Sacco as the headliners for the first ever official set. Each card costs $8.99 and has rare variations, including some with the players’ autographs.
They’re only available for purchase until Saturday, June 14 at 4:30 p.m. ET.
It comes after the Major League Baseball announced it’s investing in Athletes Unlimited to support its softball league that debuted last week. It’s the first comprehensive partnership with a professional women’s sports circuit.
Support includes marketing the AUSL and its athletes during MLB’s All-Star Game and throughout the postseason along with broadcasts on the MLB Network and streams on MLB.TV.
Why were these three picked? Well, Ellis has been coined the “Barry Bonds of Softball,” Sacco belted the first home run in league history, and Landry was the No. 1 overall pick in the AUSL inaugural draft, according to the MLB.
The set also includes special parallel cards, autographs and a card with Jessica Mendoza, Jennie Finch and Natasha Watley with former Miami Marlins general manager and MLB senior vice president Kim Ng.
The AUSL started a four-team league June 7 with the Bandits and Talons opening with a three-game series in Rosemont, Illinois, and the Blaze and Volts a three-game set at Wichita, Kansas. The four teams will play 24 games each, touring to 12 cities, and the top two teams will compete in the best-of-three AUSL Championship from July 26-28 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. A 21-game AUSL All-Star Cup will follow in August.
A traditional city-based league will start in 2026, when the AUSL plans to expand to six teams, according to AU co-founder Jon Patricof.
MLB already supports several women’s softball and baseball initiatives, including a partnership with USA Softball and operation of the MLB Develops girls baseball pipeline. It is not involved with the Women’s Professional Baseball League, which plans to launch in 2026 as the first pro baseball league for women since the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League — of “A League of Their Own” fame — folded in 1954.
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House v. NCAA settlement reached, revenue sharing arrives in college athletics
Five years after former Arizona State University swimmer Grant House filed a class-action antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA, a settlement has been agreed to, opening up the door for revenue sharing in college sports as they continue to stray further and further away from amateurism. The NCAA and Power Five conferences will also have to […]
Five years after former Arizona State University swimmer Grant House filed a class-action antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA, a settlement has been agreed to, opening up the door for revenue sharing in college sports as they continue to stray further and further away from amateurism.
The NCAA and Power Five conferences will also have to pay close to $2.8 billion in damages to athletes who were unable to receive Name, Image and Likeness deals dating back to 2016. The NCAA is expected to pay this amount over the next 10 years to those who opted into the settlement, with the majority of the funds expected to be distributed to former football and men’s basketball players.
Since NIL became a part of college athletics, athletes needed to go through donors and companies to get paid, but now, schools can pay athletes directly as they see fit.
Of course, schools can’t go around paying every athlete as much as they want. Similar to a salary cap in professional sports, schools can spend approximately $20.5 million across their athletic department, with approximately 90% of it expected to go to football (75%) and men’s basketball (15%), limiting a number of other sports.
The $20.5 million cap shouldn’t affect a lot of schools, as they don’t expect to reach those heights. But, for the power conference schools, more specifically the Big 10 and Southeastern Conference, they will have to divvy up their money a little more carefully.
Overseeing all of this will be the newly founded College Sports Commission. Their goal is to facilitate revenue sharing in college athletics and to make sure all NIL deals made between athletes and third parties align with the current rules, according to their website.
The CSC will be operated by the conferences instead of the NCAA, reducing much of the NCAA’s hold on college sports and shifting it over to the power conferences.
“This is an exciting moment for everyone involved in college sports,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said in a statement. “As the defendant conferences now own several facets of rulemaking and enforcement related to specific settlement areas, the NCAA will be able to move away from certain enforcement activity that, despite the best efforts of many, wasn’t working well. Rather, we will focus on further enhancing what is working: elevating the student-athlete experience and maintaining fair playing rules and eligibility and academic standards.”
Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark was excited about this next step in college athletics.
“We’ve been waiting. It’s been a waiting game for us for a long time ,” Yormark said on The Triple Option podcast. “We’re in a better place today as an industry than we’ve been in a long time, and there are guardrails, there are rules of engagement, there’s a new model, and as I often say to my board, my (athletic directors) and anyone that’ll listen, it’s progress over perfection.”
Yormark understands that this new era will come with hiccups along the road, but believes that college sports will be in a better spot than it was before this settlement was reached.
For the Sun Devils, Athletic Director Graham Rossini also seemed prepared and excited for the new athletic environment.
“The Sun Devils are fully ready for the new NCAA landscape,” Rossini said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “There’s never been a better time to be a part of ASU – a proud member of the (Big 12 Conference) – in the heart of America’s (fastest) growing and dynamic metro area – at one of the most innovative universities in the world.”
Edited by Henry Smardo, Leah Mesquita and Ellis Preston.
Reach the reporter at jkmccar2@asu.edu and follow @jackmccarthyasu on X.
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Jack McCarthySports Editor
Jack McCarthy is a senior studying sports journalism with a minor in business. This is his third semester with The State Press. He has also worked as a sports reporter.
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Minnesota women’s coach Dawn Plitzuweit gets 2-year contract extension with raise
Associated Press MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minnesota women’s basketball coach Dawn Plitzuweit has received a two-year contract extension that was approved Thursday by the university’s board of regents. Plitzuweit is 47-29 over two seasons at Minnesota, including 13-23 in Big Ten play, with leading scorer Mara Braun missing much of them with foot injuries. The Gophers […]
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minnesota women’s basketball coach Dawn Plitzuweit has received a two-year contract extension that was approved Thursday by the university’s board of regents.
Plitzuweit is 47-29 over two seasons at Minnesota, including 13-23 in Big Ten play, with leading scorer Mara Braun missing much of them with foot injuries. The Gophers capped Plitzuweit’s second year by winning the WBIT championship. They have not appeared in the NCAA Tournament since 2018.
The new deal, which covers the next six seasons through 2031, gives Plitzuweit a raise of roughly 7% to bring her base salary to $900,000 for 2025-26, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune, with annual increases of $30,000. That’s in the middle of the pack in the 18-team Big Ten, which sent 12 of them to the NCAA Tournament this year.
Plitzuweit was hired away from West Virginia, where she spent one season, to replace Lindsay Whalen. Plitzuweit is the 13th head coach in the program’s history.
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