MEDIA REPORTS ON NCAA AND LEGAL MATTERS   

• Total operating expenses for Cal topped $165M in FY25, up from $149M in FY24 and $127M in FY23. Revenues also increased, rising to roughly $153M last year, a $33M jump YOY. Much of that came from the payment from UCLA ($10M) and the UC System President’s office ($15M), both of which will occur annually through 2026-27. The Golden Bears raised $82M in FY25, though most of it went to endowments. Team travel jumped $4M to $14.3M, while coaching salaries increased from $28.8M to $30.8M in the past year. Similarly, support staff/administrative compensation went from $32M to $35.8M. Media rights dipped from $25M to $11M in the school’s first year in the ACC. Football spending went from $45.6M to $46.8M. Lots more.  (link) 
• Utah Fourth District Judge Denise M. Porter has granted Utah Valley a 14-day temporary restraining order in its legal battle with the WAC, according to Utah ESPN Radio’s Brice Larson, who notes UVU will now look for a longer term preliminary injunction ruling this Friday in Utah’s 4th district court. (link) 
• Despite the college basketball transfer portal not officially opening until April 7th, early communication from coaches is already underway, per On3’s Joe Tipton, who notes many coaches are worried about falling behind their peers despite existing rules against tampering. Most notably… 
  • An anonymous ACC coach: “If we play by the rules and wait until April 7th, by that time half the kids we like might already have deep discussions with another school. They already know what type of money, what type of role, what type of situation, and now we’re behind. You’re not going to wait until the portal opens because if you want the kid, other schools are already recruiting him.”  
  • The evaluation of potential portal targets doesn’t actually begin in March; it starts months earlier with one SEC coach remarking: “Portal talk starts in November when games start. First five games of the year you start hearing kids are unhappy, or an agent calls saying, ‘This guy’s averaging 20 a game already, he’s gonna hit the portal.’ And by Christmas, some of them are pretty locked into what’s gonna be happening.”  
  • Coaches are also directly contacting agents about their clients with much of the backchanneling and early portal discussions running through the player’s representation. It’s a sort of college basketball version of free agency with the anonymous ACC coach observing: “We are similar to the NBA. This is how NBA free agency works. Agents are going to do what’s best for their clients, clients do what’s best for themselves, and schools fall in line so they don’t fall behind.” More. (link) 
• Big West Commissioner/Men's Basketball Oversight Committee Chair Dan Butterly joined College.town’s Daniel Gillman to discuss recent legislative movements and the evolving dynamics between the Power 4 and the rest of Division I. Butterly also detailed his work alongside a coalition of 10 non-power conference commissioners lobbying Congress for antitrust protections, noting that without legal cover, the NCAA is paralyzed by the constant threat of lawsuits. Looking regionally, Butterly praised the recent ASUN and WAC alliance as an innovative model that other leagues may need to replicate to survive ongoing realignment in the West. More from Butterly… 
  • On the necessity of antitrust protections to govern college sports: "If we cannot draft rules that protect and help our student-athletes or help the sports specifically because we're so worried about potential lawsuits, the NCAA is never going to be able to move forward again. ... People ask why we need congressional help. It's because we can't propose, we can't provide legislation, and we can't enforce current rules … without the threat of continued lawsuits." 
  • More on the ASUN-WAC alliance serving as a potential model for other leagues: "I think what they're doing could be the potential future of college athletics in many ways as you've seen conference realignment in the West. ... I think you're going to start seeing some more of those type of alliances form. ... I think what they're doing is innovative and something that other conferences are going to start considering." (link) 
• Evansville President & DI Board of Directors member Chris Pietruszkiewicz visited with College.town's Daniel Gillman at last month’s NCAA Convention. Key notes from Pietruszkiewicz… 
  • Discussing front of mind topics for the DI Board of Directors: “I think one of the things that's right off the top is the [College Sports Commission] Participation Agreement. The House Settlement happened a year ago and we said we were going to do some more work to be able to govern ourselves, and this is one big way to do that. We've been asking Congress for help, completely 100% supportive of the SCORE Act. We need areas in which Congress can only help us, but we have to do some more ourselves. And a part of that is that we have to agree that we're going to be willing to have enforcement actions and we're going to have to be able to accept what the College Sports Commission or the NCAA says is the penalties for violating the rules. And the first step is we've got to agree to that ourselves.” 
  • Why are some presidents hesitant to sign the CSC Participation Agreement? “I think those that are not on board are largely coming from the penalty provisions. ‘How is this going to affect me in the future?’ It's easy to say, ‘Now, okay, so I'm going to be willing to sign the agreement, but what happens if I violate a rule in the future and I don't have the ability to appeal?’ I think we've got to think about college sports bigger than the institution in which you represent. And I recognize as a university president that my first and foremost area of responsibility is protecting my institution and helping my institution advance. But at another level, you've got to think, if we're a member of Division I for the NCAA, we have a bigger responsibility. And a bigger responsibility is thinking how do we eliminate some of the chaos that's happening in college sports? And this is one of the ways to do it.” 
• On the collective bargaining conversation: “My four years on the board, all of the student-athletes have said the same thing, and that is we don't want to be employees of a university. It's one thing for a university president, it's another thing for the NCAA to say, ‘we ought to think about this a little bit differently.’ But when you have 500K student-athletes and they're all collectively saying, ‘we don't want this,’ I think we all ought to listen, including our representatives in Congress that hopefully will help us out with the SCORE Act.” (link) 
• The SEC and Big Ten have co-authored a white paper titled, “Preserving Autonomy and Stability in College Sports: Why Media Rights Pooling and SBA Reform Are Misguided.” The duo criticizes the consolidation of media rights, believing it would not generate a significant increase in revenue, citing no empirical evidence to support the claim, and “erode local decision-making and reduce the flexibility that conferences use to generate value for their teams and media partners.” Further: “While the goals of these proposals are laudatory, the proposal misunderstands and misstates the dynamics and operations of modern media markets, fails to take into account the market forces surrounding sports media rights, creates a bureaucracy that will unilaterally seize and administer private contract rights and strip colleges and universities of their autonomy in offering athletic opportunities for student-athletes. ... Centralizing college sports media rights will also introduce significant operational and legal risk into the system.” The paper argues media rights values will achieve major increases, surpassing Saving College Sports’ proposal by 2033, based on an average annual value increase of 2.8x in the latest round of media rights deals. More from Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger, who reports the white paper will be distributed to Congressional lawmakers this week. (link, link - full text) 
• Texas Tech Board of Regents Chair/Saving College Sports Founder Cody Campbell released a statement on X, which reads in part: “College sports are broken, and those who first made the mess and profit handsomely from the status quo do not want to fix it. … A disjointed and disorganized revenue generation system is the root cause, and everybody in college sports knows it - including many members of the Big 10 and SEC, who have recently reported staggering and unsustainable athletic deficits and debts.  Ironically, at least one of these two commissioners, who argue that the status quo is ‘just fine,’ has simultaneously pursued onerous private equity and debt deals to paper over the overwhelming deficits many of their member institutions face. The situation is even more dire in the lower-revenue conferences, as is well known.  … The posture of these two commissioners indicates that they do not care about the fate of the other conferences or smaller schools, nor do they care about the life-changing opportunity provided to women and to athletes in our Olympic sports.” (link) 

As we move toward Henderson, the games will take center stage — but the work off the court remains just as important. 

From national visibility on ESPN, to legislative engagement in Washington, to protecting competitive integrity through tampering education, The Big West continues to operate with purpose. 

Championships are earned on the floor. 

Stability is built in the margins. 

Two weeks. 
  

Let’s finish strong. Be Bold! 

Dan