NIL being taken seriously. I've heard this was supposed to happen a year ago, but better late than never:

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- NFL Players Association (NFLPA) executive Terése Whitehead, an expert in brand building and athlete marketing, has been appointed as University of Michigan Athletics' first in-house NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) Executive GM in collaboration with Altius Sports Partners (ASP) on Wednesday (May 8). Returning to her alma mater, Whitehead brings extensive experience as Vice President of Consumer Products & Strategy at NFL Players Inc., the for-profit business arm of the NFLPA. Whitehead will spearhead Michigan's NIL program in her new role, leading the department's strategy to provide athletes with comprehensive support and resources to capitalize on their NIL opportunities.

I wonder how much the sudden movement on this after a couple of years of dithering has to do with Sherrone Moore and Dusty May replacing Jim Harbaugh and Juwan Howard. No offense to the prior coaches meant; it's just that Harbaugh and Howard were both very famous athletes who could reasonably believe their star power made NIL relatively unimportant. Moore and May are not, and neither has the kind of bulletproof track record Harbaugh had. Both will seek every advantage they can get.

[After the JUMP: Brian Kelly said what]

Dusty May on his roster. Yesterday May met with the media for the first time since his hire. I'd recommend reading the entire interview as transcribed by Alejandro Zuniga, because it filled me with warm, fuzzy feeling about the future of the basketball program. May speaks a lot like Nick Saban and Urban Meyer do when they get TV jobs: clear, meaningful answers that teach you something about the game and reveal how much the coach in question puts into it. So you get a clear vision for what May wants to do:

Vlad I think last year played 25 minutes a game. In a perfect world, we get him a few more minutes, but we play up-tempo with a lot of possessions, so it's difficult for our players to play 32 to 35 minutes a game if we're playing the style that we like to play.

And so Vlad will probably hover around that mid-20s if he's playing at his best, and hopefully we're able to take care of some games before the last five minutes so you can get those guys some rest or whatever.

That left us probably playing Danny at 14 minutes a game at the 5 when Vlad's not in, is how we probably envision it.

And we'll play stylistically a different brand of basketball where Danny would be more of a 5-out facilitator. Vlad's still more of a traditional center, but also he's expanding his game. So we definitely envision those guys playing together significant minutes and also complementing each other.

Other items of note:

• They have one spot left, which should resolve your Jace Howard questions.
• They'll have two point guards on the court at all times.
• The vibe I got from the interview is that Lorenzo Cason is likely to be the guard who gets into the rotation since he's the most "lead guard" guy of the freshman right now, and see previous bullet.
• Rubin Jones played the back half of last season with a torn hamstring—that must have been the injury that kept him out 11 games.
• Connections with Tre Donaldson and Sam Walters came from watching a lot of Florida AAU basketball. Walters in particular had a lot of connections: his high school coach is both from Michigan and bros with May, and May says he's pretty close with the Alabama staff as well.

As far as the last spot goes, it has been radio silence for a couple weeks. Khani Rooths was also running silent after his "I'm open" tweet, but yesterday 247 reported that he's visiting Lousiville this weekend. That seems like a bad combination. Attention may now turn to Zion Sensley, a St. Mary's signee who decommitted in the immediate aftermath of Justin Joyner leaving for Michigan. The hold up is that apparently St Mary's is not letting Sensley out of his letter of intent. This is a bizarre situation in the year of our Lord 2024: anyone actually in college can transfer and the NCAA can't do anything except glare meaningfully, but a guy who's signed a LOI can still be restricted despite not having enrolled at a college and taken classes.

The tweet that asserts that Sensley is not being let out of his LOI also mentions that he can appeal to the NCAA. I assume that the NCAA will gingerly handle the documents, sign them whilst muttering about lawyers, and Sensley will be free to attend whatever college he wants. The shape of Michigan's activity makes me believe there's a pretty good chance that will be M.

Oh and, yes, still a thing. The portal had some guys Michigan couldn't touch:

"There were a few guys we had to stay away from," May said, referring to recruiting transfers after Michigan previously got players out of the portal only to have them unable to enroll.

— Larry Lage (@LarryLage) May 7, 2024

Instead of attempting to bring them in anyway and then not having any guards or wings on the roster, May recruited players that would get in. This seems like a better approach.
 

You're not in the what of what? Extremely wild that Michigan's basketball coach is saying things like "I want these guys to buy a house when they're done," and LSU's football coach is… I mean…

.@JacquesDoucet : Where are you right now w/the defensive line recruiting?

Brian Kelly: "It's hasn't fared very well quite frankly because we are selling something a little bit differently...

We are not in the market of buying players."

LSU HC sends a STRONG message via @WAFB pic.twitter.com/HO8zfwdRsZ

— Carter Bryant (@PowerHourLSU) May 7, 2024

LSU IS NOT IN THE MARKET OF BUYING PLAYERS?!?!

…

All right. What. Okay. All right. Here's Honest Brian Kelly: "Too much of our salary cap is tied up in Bryce Underwood."

The new frontier. CBS reports that a "one-of-a-kind revolutionary regular-season men's basketball event" is in the final stages of being put together. In the main this is just another college basketball tournament ("MTE" in NCAA lingo) and this phrasing probably comes from some private equity guy, but there are some interesting bits:

• teams participating in the tournament will get a million dollars for their NIL collectives, plus another million for the winner,
• players on those teams will have NIL opportunities in Vegas,
• the teams participating may not vary that much as the event tries to structure itself to avoid the NCAA's restriction on playing the same MTE in back-to-back years,
• a giant investment firm backed by the UAE is trying to put it together, so it can lose money for a while before anyone would pull the plug, and
• there's some talk about adopting a 16 team format with World Cup-style group play, which would need some NCAA finagling.

Michigan is not one of the seven teams confirmed for participation this fall but is mentioned among schools that are in discussions to join next year, when the event intends to expand from 8 to 16 teams.

If I had a dollar I'd bet that Michigan is indeed in this event this year, as Dusty May has made no bones about the importance of NIL to his program and Michigan is the kind of TV draw this tournament will want.

Also the new frontier. The NCAA is going to settle the House vs NCAA case that threatens to bankrupt it several times over, and in doing so they hope to concede enough that the never-ending flow of Jeffrey Kessler lawsuits stops. The problem is that any framework that's not collectively bargained will run afoul of antitrust law, only employees can collectively bargain, and the NCAA doesn't want athletes to be employees. (This does make sense on some level because a large majority of NCAA athletes are not being exploited; there is nothing morally questionable about the operations of the Colorado School of Mines athletic department.)

So the NCAA is going to need Congress to help:

News of the possibility of legislation comes as the College Football Players Association (CFBPA) called for a new model for college sports on Monday morning. Jason Stahl, the founder of the association, outlined in his newsletter a hybrid model enacted by Congress that would not classify athletes as employees but set the framework for collective bargaining.

The idea is not novel. Outgoing Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick discussed something similar to Yahoo Sports after a legislative hearing in October. The veteran athletic leader called for the model so universities could recognize athletes’ rights to negotiate into a binding agreement.

Athletes.Org (AO) founder and chairman Jim Cavale talked about the same outline in July 2023 at SEC Media Days when he was on the Paul Finebaum Show. The membership organization is not a union but has signed up roughly 3,000 athletes since its inception in August. UAB became the first D-I football team to sign with AO last week.

“To get this type of ‘special status’ for college athletes, one which stops short of employee status but gives extensive protections and collective bargaining rights, you would need Congress to enact new legislation,” Stahl wrote Monday morning. “We at the CFBPA now believe that such legislation is worth exploring – particularly after current ongoing antitrust cases against the NCAA, the conferences and the schools are settled in a way that is fair for athletes.”

It seems like everyone is tired and just wants a workable framework, from the athlete advocates to the athletic departments. If that results in a 20 million dollar "revenue sharing" cap that's going to be a bit odd. Athletes in American professional sports generally collectively bargain salaries that are a bit north of 50% of league-wide revenues. If the cap is, hypothetically, 20 million, that would be under 10% of revenue for Michigan. Even a team much farther down the pecking order like NC State would be forking over maybe a quarter of its actual revenue. (As a side note, I really wish the USA Today NCAA finances database gave you an option to filter out student fees and direct institutional support so that you could actually order teams by how much money they're bringing in.)

I guess you can argue that athletic departments are going to be carrying a lot of teams that are going to bleed millions of dollars annually and pro sports aren't doing that.

Filling holes. Seamus Casey signed with the Devils, thus torpedoing any hope that Michigan Hockey Summer wouldn't raid the roster as hard as it usually does. Michigan did get back first rounder Rutger McGroarty for his junior year, an unusual stick, but lost fourth-rounder Dylan Duke. They did hold onto free agent TJ Hughes and Devils mid-rounder Ethan Edwards, so things could have gone worse.

But! The portal has filled a lot of holes. Michigan picked off Wisconsin's William Whitelaw, Colorado College's Evan Werner, and Arizona State's Tim Lovell. Whitelaw is a speedy forward who was a third-rounder a year ago but is fleeing Wisconsin as their new head coach, formerly of MSU-Mankato, transforms them into Mankato. Werner was CC's third-leading scorer as a freshman despite having just 19 points. Both are forwards who will slot into the lineup. Lovell was the closest thing to Casey on the market—he's less dynamic but he's also grading out very well in his own zone.

As a result the program looks like it will survive the hits fairly well. They're going to end up deferring some recruits. Kristian Epperson was just drafted ninth overall in the USHL phase II draft and will obviously be spending a year in juniors. Aidan Park is also probably going to spend a year in the USHL—guys generally do not go direct from Shattuck to college—despite being projected as a mid-round pick in this year's draft.

The main remaining thing to watch out for is the CHL import draft, which is in early July. F Matvei Gridin and D Gennady Chaly are both Russians who were banned from the CHL due to their nationality, so there's some chance one or both prefer major junior.

Big guy, mean. Hockey picked up a commitment from hulking Swedish defenseman Gabriel Eliasson, a 6'6" gent who was on Sweden's U18 Worlds team. Eliasson is unusual for a Michigan defender in that he is not a 5'9" puck wizard; instead his scouting report is basically "this guy is large but has a box of rocks in his head":

Gabriel Eliasson (2024) spends more time in the penalty box than on the ice for Sweden. 

Someone teach this guy how to keep his hands down when he hits. #U18Worlds

— Cam Robinson (@Hockey_Robinson) April 30, 2024

Between 36 games with HV71's U20 team and 22 games with Sweden U18 our dude had 182 penalty minutes. My man has to start meditating. Someone get him JJ McCarthy's phone number.

Despite this, he's projected to go in the third or fourth round in the upcoming draft because he's 6'6" and he can skate.

Etc.: Michigan has the most OL on NFL rosters. Guys being dudes at M graduation. Drake, you gotta move to Tajikistan. 17 year old uninformed about real estate websites. When realignment leaves you behind. College hockey has a a near-monopoly on high-scoring rookie D in the NHL. Ohio State's commencement did not go well.