Good morning!
There are certain weeks on the collegiate athletics calendar that remind you exactly why this work matters — and this is one of them.
Across The Big West, championships are being contested, NCAA opportunities are being earned, and student-athletes are delivering performances on national stages that continue to elevate the reputation of The Big West.
This week alone, The Big West will claim a national championship, compete in women’s golf and softball NCAA regionals and The Big West Track & Field Championships continue, a softball champion will be crowned, and an incredible THREE Big West programs remain standing in the NCAA Men’s Volleyball National Championship “Final Four.”
At the same time, our governance work continues as Council meetings begin, and critical conversations surrounding the future of Division I athletics and The Big West move forward.
It is a busy week throughout The Big West — but the best kind of busy. Championships. Opportunity. Leadership. Momentum.
And once again, The Big West is right in the middle of it.
Song of the week, based on all of the accomplishments to follow, is “Remember the Name” by Fort Minor.
To our golf, softball and men’s volleyball programs in the NCAA Championship this week, “You make sure they remember, forever, the night they played The Big West! Leave no doubt!"
Let’s get to The Bold Type.
MEN'S VOLLEYBALL NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP - HERE COMES THE BIG WEST!
The Big West has flexed its national muscles once again.
In the first season of the expanded 12-team championship format, The Big West earned a historic THREE bids, with all three advancing to the national semifinals, and now an all-Big West finale is on tap for tonight at Pauley Pavilion at 4 p.m. on ESPN2. This is the eighth consecutive season with a national championship appearance from the league.
This will be the third guaranteed title matchup since 2018 with a soon to be sixth national crown since sport sponsorship. The Big West’s performance on the national stage can only be described in one word – DOMINANT.
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
- To our three teams who secured their spots in the upcoming 2026 Big West Baseball Championship yesterday: UC Santa Barbara, Cal Poly and UC San Diego! Championship Central >>>
- To No. 1 seed and host Cal State Fullerton who raced through the brackets unscathed to claim the 2026 Big West Softball Championship trophy! Read more >>>
- To Cal State Fullerton softball who squares off against South Carolina in the opening round of the 2026 NCAA Division I Softball Championship on Friday, May 15 at 4:30 p.m. in the Los Angeles Regional at Easton Stadium in Westwood, Calif. Read more >>>
- To the 2026 Big West softball award winners and all-conference teams! Read more >>>
- To Long Beach State’s Ryan Gregory and UC Irvine’s Joy Anderson, winners of the decathlon and heptathlon to open up the 2026 Big West Track & Field Championships! Read more >>> This weekend all 11 member-institutions will converge on the campus of Long Beach State to compete for team and individual titles. Championships Central >>>
- To Long Beach State men’s golf for their historic win at the 2026 Big West Men's Golf Championship! Read more >>>
- To Long Beach State men’s golf who earned the No. 4 seed in the upcoming NCAA Regional field! Read more >>>
- To Hawai’i men’s volleyball student-athlete Ofeck Hazan, named the NCAA’s Elite Scholar Athlete Award winner! Read more >>>
- To all six powerhouse Big West men’s volleyball programs, which claimed half of the first and second team All-Americans and another 10 honorable mention student-athletes join the AVCA’s 36th National Collegiate Men's Volleyball All-America Team! Read more >>>
- And to our amazing Players of the Week!
- Baseball
- Field Player - Ethan Felix, UC Davis
- Pitcher - Isaiah Magdaleno, Hawai‘i
- Softball
- Field Player - Jamie McGaughey, Hawai‘i
- Pitcher - Ashley Sawai, UC Davis
- Freshman - Bella Settembro, UC San Diego
- Track & Field
- Men’s Track - Luke Hitchcock, Cal State Fullerton
- Men’s Field - Kyriaun Davis, CSUN
- Women’s Track - Arionn Livingston, Cal State Fullerton
- Women’s Field - Chelsea Aninyei, UC Riverside
COLLEGE SPORTS COMMISSION RELEASES NIL DEAL FLOW REPORT
The College Sports Commission released its NIL Deal Flow Report, highlighting third-party NIL activity across Division I athletics from March and April 2026, as well as cumulative figures since NIL Go’s launch.
Highlights
Between March 1 and April 30:
- The CSC cleared over 5,500 deals worth a total value of $75.85 million — nearly double the $39.29 million cleared in the previous two-month period.
- 442 deals worth a total value of $26.87 million were not cleared.
?Since the NIL Go platform launched on June 11, 2025, and through April 30, 2026:
- 26,556 deals worth a total value of $242.35 million have been cleared.
- 1,153 deals worth a total value of $56.17 million have not been cleared since the launch of NIL Go.
- 45% of deals submitted to NIL Go were resolved within 24 hours. The significant increase in Associated deal volume since January has led to a decrease in the percentage of deals resolved within 24 hours of submission, since Associated deals require additional review.
- 66% of deals reached resolution within seven days following completion of all information fields in NIL Go. In many of the remaining 34% of deals, the CSC must seek additional information from the student-athlete, deal sponsor, or institution via communication outside of the software platform to make a determination on the deal. The CSC is often able to make determinations on these deals within seven days of receiving such additional information, but NIL Go currently does not allow us to calculate this percentage. The CSC is working to update the platform in the coming months so that all or most communication occurs within NIL Go and those percentages can be calculated precisely.
As of April 30, 21 deals in arbitration have been consolidated into three arbitrations.
Read the full report
here.
NCAA BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPS EXPAND TO 76 (LINK)
NCAA Tournament Expansion Creates Opportunity — and Important Questions
The NCAA’s announcement last week that the Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships will expand from 68 to 76 teams beginning in 2027 represents one of the most significant structural changes to March Madness in more than a decade.
At first glance, expansion appears positive for Division I basketball. I have been on record for years supporting expansion, and supported it during the joint Men’s and Women’s Basketball Oversight Committee meeting on Thursday. More teams participating means additional opportunities for student-athletes, increased national exposure, enhanced television inventory and potentially greater financial distribution opportunities across the membership.
For conferences outside the autonomy and Big East structure, there are legitimate areas where expansion could create opportunity.
In certain years, strong programs from leagues such as The Big West Conference, Missouri Valley Conference or West Coast Conference may now find themselves positioned closer to the at-large conversation. A program that builds a top-tier NET profile, schedules aggressively and performs well in nonconference play could potentially benefit from expanded access. Think UC Irvine and UC San Diego during the 2024-25 season.
Additional tournament participation also creates meaningful financial implications. NCAA Tournament units remain one of the most important revenue-distribution mechanisms in Division I athletics, and even occasional multi-bid opportunities can significantly impact conferences operating outside the financial scale of the autonomy conferences.
History has also shown that Opening Round participation can create momentum opportunities for teams capable of making deep postseason runs.
However, expansion also raises important structural questions that deserve thoughtful discussion.
The reality is that the expansion from 68 to 76 primarily increases at-large access, not automatic qualifier access. Every conference still receives one automatic bid, while the additional positions are overwhelmingly expected to benefit institutions from the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC and Big East.
That reality creates a broader governance question: Does expansion meaningfully increase access across Division I basketball, or does it primarily expand opportunity for the conferences already best positioned financially and structurally?
That distinction matters.
As college athletics simultaneously navigates NIL expansion, unrestricted transfer movement, revenue-sharing models and widening financial disparities, postseason structure becomes increasingly important in shaping long-term competitive balance.
For conferences like The Big West, this environment reinforces the importance of:
• Protecting the value of automatic qualification access,
• Maximizing NET and predictive metrics,
• Investing in national visibility and media exposure,
• Scheduling aggressively in November and December,
• And continuing to strengthen institutional alignment and competitive depth.
Expansion also raises another interesting policy conversation surrounding NCAA Tournament unit distribution.
As discussions continue nationally regarding the NCAA Basketball Championships, another conversation quietly emerging involves whether the current NCAA unit distribution model appropriately reflects competitive achievement across Division I basketball.
Under the current structure, Opening Round victories involving teams seeded on the 15 and 16 lines generate the same advancement-unit opportunities as teams from significantly higher-rated conferences that are often required to immediately face nationally-seeded opponents in the Round of 64.
That dynamic creates an important policy question for the future: Should advancement incentives be structured solely around bracket advancement, or should the system also recognize relative competitive positioning and path difficulty?
Put another way, a No. 16 seed participating in an Opening Round matchup against another No. 16 seed currently has a more realistic path to generating a second NCAA Tournament performance unit than a No. 13 seed required to immediately defeat a nationally-seeded No. 4 seed in the Round of 64. While every NCAA Tournament victory should be celebrated, it is reasonable to ask whether the current financial structure appropriately reflects comparative competitive achievement and degree of difficulty.
For conferences like the Mountain West, Missouri Valley Conference, West Coast Conference and recently The Big West — leagues that have positioned themselves among the nation’s strongest basketball conferences outside the autonomy and Big East structure — champions are frequently seeded above the traditional “play-in” lines and immediately matched against nationally elite opponents. While that reflects the strength of those leagues, it can also create fewer realistic opportunities to generate NCAA units compared to institutions advancing through Opening Round matchups against similarly-seeded teams.
As championship expansion discussions continue, the broader issue may not simply be how many teams participate, but whether the financial and competitive structures surrounding the tournament continue to appropriately reward season-long performance and conference strength across all of Division I basketball.
These are not easy questions, nor are they criticisms of championship access. Rather, they are important governance conversations as Division I basketball continues to evaluate how competitive opportunity, financial distribution and postseason structure intersect in a rapidly evolving national landscape.
NCAA BOARD OF GOVERNOR'S REPORT
In its April 30 meeting, the NCAA Board of Governors covered the following topics.
Membership spending survey
The board reviewed the results of the Association-wide spending prioritization survey completed by the membership in February to help the NCAA with financial planning. The survey provided input about how the membership prioritizes Association-wide programs and services.
NCAA Awards
The board also heard an update on awards programming. Following the update, the board directed all three divisions to use their legislative processes to sunset the Awards Committee. Additionally, the board was notified that the in-person awards production and the awards presented at the annual NCAA Convention will also sunset due to budget considerations and member feedback.
However, the Elite Scholar-Athlete program is being modernized into a nationally visible, values-driven storytelling platform that celebrates excellence in academics, athletics, leadership, and impact. The program honors student-athletes with the highest GPA competing at NCAA championships. More details are coming later this summer, but the new platform for the Elite Scholar-Athlete awards program is expected to feature student-athlete storytelling year round and recognize those who shine brightest on the field and in the classroom.
NCAA Exploratory Committee for Championship Growth
The board approved the creation of an Exploratory Committee for Championship Growth to start preparing for a potential NCAA championship in flag football, which is currently an NCAA Emerging Sport for Women. The committee will be charged with advising on the sport’s growth and championship strategies, such as optimal format and dates, site selection parameters and budget estimates. This approach provides the Association a jump start on the best ideas to maximize participant experience, fan interest and opportunities in the media market while allowing the budget, legislative and committee nominations processes to work through the traditional timelines. Following votes by the three divisions to establish flag football as a national collegiate championship, the National Collegiate Women's Flag Football Committee would take up the work initiated by the Association-wide exploratory committee.
Other items:
The board’s next quarterly meeting is scheduled for Aug. 6.
MEDIA REPORTS ON BIG WEST, NCAA AND LEGAL MATTERS
- Take a look at Cal Poly’s new John Madden Football Center. The $45M, 33K square foot building sits at the south end of Alex G. Spanos Stadium and has a team locker room, coaches offices, meeting rooms, weight room, training and medical support spaces, a player lounge and nutrition area. (link)
- The Committee on Infractions has found former CSUN men’s basketball staffers falsified a transfer student-athlete’s application materials, assisted a student-athlete with a final exam and falsified award letters to six student-athletes to grant them Alston payments, which had not been approved by CSUN. (link)
- NCAA President Charlie Baker pens an op-ed for The Hill on the need for Congress to get involved in helping to regulate college athletics. Baker: “But no internal reform — no matter how fast it moves — can on its own provide the permanent legal foundation required to stabilize the student-athlete experience. The urgency of this moment cannot be overstated; we are currently facing a fragmented patchwork of state laws and a litigation-driven environment that threatens to dismantle our progress by making playing fields less fair and erasing opportunities. This is why the SCORE Act is so vital. It is the only bipartisan bill that would address the most pressing legal challenges in a narrow manner, while also securing essential student-athlete protections into federal law. … Because of this balanced, holistic approach, the SCORE Act has earned the support of student-athlete leaders and nearly every conference — including all four HBCU conferences — across all three divisions. We are at a critical juncture where the rapid modernization we have achieved internally requires a stable, nationwide foundation to truly endure for all student-athletes. By locking in the progress we’ve made, Congress can ensure that the best days of college sports remain ahead for the millions of young athletes yet to come.” (link)
- Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger reports the NCAA and power conferences have filed a joint response to House plaintiffs attorneys’ challenge that the College Sports Commission is violating the settlement by rejecting certain NIL deals, especially those tied to MMR partners. Full declaration. (link)
- Wichita State is discontinuing its men's and women's golf programs, effective immediately. Shockers AD Kevin Saal: "Today marks a difficult moment for our department. This decision was not made lightly and reflects deep and deliberate consideration. I have the utmost respect for Head Coaches Judd Easterling and Tom McCurdy and our student-athletes. Our men's and women's golf teams have a proud tradition and history and have represented Wichita State with integrity and distinction." A release from the school states the decision “followed a careful and comprehensive evaluation of Wichita State's athletics portfolio and resource allocation, as the university balances rising operational costs with the need to preserve the long-term financial stability and competitive strength of Shockers Athletics.” (link)
- With four Division I athletics departments cutting tennis from their sports portfolios in the past few weeks, Intercollegiate Tennis Association CEO David Mullins commented to Front Office Sports regarding the Arkansas decision: “The whole college tennis community is in shock. When you see an SEC program of such great wealth, great tradition, amazing facilities—and that team can be eliminated—then it strikes fear in every coach across the country.” More key notes…
- Mullins points to the House settlement, lack of facilities, the rise of pickleball, the fact that many of the top U.S. tennis players choose not to play college tennis and the large segment of international athletics who comprise the college tennis population as reasons for the sport landing on the chopping block.
- On that last point, ESPN tennis analyst Patrick McEnroe suggested a cap on international players in college programs: “If American college tennis doesn’t serve, at least in part, American tennis, then don’t be shocked that more of the athletic directors decide we don’t need this.”
- Interim co-CEO of the United States Tennis Association Brian Vahaly: “Now more than ever, as the landscape of collegiate athletics is ever shifting and evolving, and institutions face even more difficult decisions, we need to take a more active role in supporting college tennis. That starts with elevating the visibility of the college game, strengthening the pathway for players to continue competing beyond junior tennis, and working more directly with programs as they navigate a period of significant change.” More. (link)
- The Intercollegiate Tennis Association releases a statement on the recent cuts of collegiate programs in light of the major changes in college athletics and higher education. In conversations with leaders, the consistent challenges with maintaining tennis include: “Limited or non-existent on-campus tennis facilities, particularly indoor courts; Costs associated with maintaining or upgrading tennis facilities; Restricted access to courts, leading to suboptimal student-athlete experiences; Difficulty meeting roster expectations; Inconsistent alumni and community engagement; and Coaching turnover.” Here are the most notable takeaways from the ITA…
- “We believe that college tennis remains an under activated revenue platform, with facilities and courts often sitting idle rather than being leveraged as productive assets. Too frequently, program elimination reflects unrealized value rather than minimal or an absence of value, as many decisions are made without a full evaluation of the sport’s potential upside. Cutting programs should be a last resort—not the default response—particularly given that college tennis serves not just as a varsity sport, but as a broader community asset with meaningful institutional and local impact.”
- On international student-athletes: “There are presently approximately 20K college tennis student-athletes. It should be noted that without international student-athletes, many programs would struggle to field full rosters. Efforts to limit their participation risk undermining competitiveness, reducing institutional revenue, and ultimately threatening the viability of programs themselves.”
- “The ITA remains committed to working collaboratively with institutions across the country to preserve and strengthen the future of college tennis. The ITA calls on the University of Arkansas and all other schools which recently dropped programs to reconsider their decision and re-institute their tennis teams.” (link)
- From the NCAA: "Expanding the basketball tournaments would require approval from multiple NCAA committees, including the men's and women's basketball committees, and no final recommendation or decisions have been made at this time.” (link)
- Tulane Sports Law Director Gabe Feldman hosted North Carolina AD Bubba Cunningham and Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger on the SportsWise podcast to evaluate potential legislative solutions to college sports’ problems. Key commentary…
- Cunningham on the educational disruption caused by unlimited transfer portal movement: "This past year, almost 50% of the Division I basketball players entered the portal. That just doesn't seem to be something that is good for the academy. That might need kids transferring generally to either play more or to receive more money. It's not educationally based."
- Cunningham on the inevitable restructuring of non-revenue collegiate athletics: "I do think reconfiguring, refinancing, I do think we'll get to a bifurcated system … that will have two pay-per-play models. One is you will be paid to play your game and others you'll have to pay if you're going to play your game. And so that's where we're going to end up, I think, at some point."
- Dellenger on the potential for power conferences to abandon the NCAA: "I think one of the things being contemplated … is breaking away and creating their own rules and enforcement at the conference level and being able to manage a small group instead of this large group under the NCAA umbrella and potentially avoiding some antitrust scrutiny that is being explored for sure and I’m sure will continue to be explored if there’s not national enforcement and if the CSC fails.” (link)
- The NCAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments will officially expand to 76 teams after approval from all required committees today. Over the remaining six years of the NCAA’s deal with Warner Bros. Discovery and CBS, the NCAA will “be able to award more than $131M in new revenue distributions to member schools participating in the basketball tournaments over the remaining six years.” More key details…
- “As part of the agreements the NCAA will open up new, previously restricted product categories for the NCAA Corporate Champions and Partners Program, including beer, wine, spirits, and hard seltzer, and allows for expanded in-game advertising opportunities during the linear and streaming coverage of the tournaments. The value of the rights agreement will increase $50 million each year on average over the course of the six years.”
- “The agreement was minimally modified beginning with the 2026-27 championship year to expand the territory in which the NCAA may sell local sponsorships that are materially differentiated from the NCAA Corporate Champions and Partners Program and limited to the designated market area where a championship is held. It also permits the NCAA to pursue limited, sport-specific sponsorships with select equipment companies whose products are used in the applicable championship. Both opportunities would apply to all NCAA Championships other than the Division I Men's Basketball Championship.”
- Sun Belt Commissioner/MBB Committee Chair Keith Gill: “The expanded Opening Round for the NCAA tournaments will now feature 12 automatic qualifiers and 12 total at-large teams, resulting in highly competitive matchups and greater access to the opportunity to compete for the championship for the eight new at-large bids. During the last two years of the tournaments, men's and women's teams seeded 15 or 16 are winless in 32 first-round games. Moving forward nearly half of the 28 men's and women's teams seeded on the 15 and 16 lines will win at least one tournament game.” (link)
- Here’s the new bracket. (link)
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.” — Pat Riley
As postseason play intensifies and national conversations surrounding the future of college athletics continue to evolve, The Big West continues to demonstrate exactly what modern conference leadership can look like.
Our institutions are competing for championships. Our student-athletes are succeeding on the national stage. Our administrators and campus leaders are helping shape Division I governance conversations in real time. And through it all, this conference continues to move forward with alignment, purpose, and momentum.
There is still much work ahead — but weeks like this serve as an important reminder:
The Big West is not simply reacting to the future of college athletics.
We are helping build it.
Dan