🔥 Mo Money Mo Problems

The college sports transfer portal just turned into Tinder with signing bonuses. 

This week, the NCAA agreed to a $2.8 billion settlement to pay thousands of former athletes for lost Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) compensation. More importantly, the settlement also gave schools the green light to legally start paying players. 

• Starting this fall, schools can hand out up to $20.5 million a year to their athletes. That’s on top of whatever players are already raking in from their NIL endorsement deals and peddling questionable supplements on Instagram.
  

• Most schools are expected to funnel 90% of that cash to football and men’s basketball, which makes sense since they’re the only ones bringing in serious money. Sorry, fencing team.

So what’s gonna change? The big schools are only going to become more dominant. 

Powerhouse schools like Texas, Alabama and Ohio State were already cleaning up in the recruiting game thanks to the value of their brand, fancy facilities, and let’s be honest, some under the table gifts from boosters. 

• Now that they can also pay players full salaries, recruiting visits are about to feel a lot more like Shark Tank pitches. Just swap Kevin O’Leary with a 17-year-old quarterback. 

Bottom line: About 50 Division I schools pulled in over $100 million last year, so between those teams, the fight to lure star players will be on. For the rest of the schools, they may as well just get relegated to intramurals.

⚾️ The Roman Empire begins in Boston. Baseball’s top prospect Roman Anthony was finally called up to the big leagues, a week after hitting a 497-foot home run in the minor leagues. I guess the Red Sox thought that kind of thing might be useful. Roman collected his first hit on Tuesday night in front of his (catastrophically Italian) family who were at Fenway for the game. The best part? Roman’s brother and dad are both named Anthony Anthony. You just can’t make this stuff up. 

🏈 Aaron Rodgers 🤝 Pittsburgh Steelers. The 41-year-old ayahuasca demon has found his new (and likely) last home in the NFL, signing a one-year deal with the Steelers. Rodgers can still spin it, but his numbers last year with the Jets would suggest he’s lost more than a step. Who knows, maybe he’ll be the guy to end Pittsburgh’s nine-year playoff win drought. I wouldn’t bet on it, but you never know. 

🏋️ Skinny Luka is coming for his revenge. After getting traded from Dallas, in part, because of his poor conditioning (in other words, being too fat), Luka Doncic looks like he’s become a gym rat this offseason. He posted a video squatting 720 pounds and fans have snapped pics of him in the wild looking a hell of a lot trimmer than he did last season. Maybe LeBron got him on LeDiet.

🧢 Baseball might have a new greatest catch of all time. Athletics’ rookie centerfielder Denzel Clarke climbed the wall in Anaheim, jumped about four feet over the fence and brought back a home run ball in what could very well be the greatest catch ever made on a baseball field. Seriously, if you haven’t seen this already, watch it right now and send it to anyone who doesn’t think baseball players are athletes. 

🏀 The Pacers are two wins away from their first NBA title. After taking games one and three from OKC, the Indiana Pacers are on the verge of snapping a nearly 50-year championship drought. Tyrese Haliburton leading his team to a chip after being voted the most overrated player in the NBA would be some kind of poetic justice.

Every MLB team leads the league in at least one category… and some of them are hilarious. Our personal favourites:

• The Chicago White Sox have the fewest sacrifice bunts allowed. Nothing sexier than bunt defence. 

• The Pittsburgh Pirates have the most wins on Wednesdays.

• And last but not least, the Baltimore Orioles are the heaviest team in the league by average player weight. 

If you want to know just how hard this year’s U.S. Open golf course is, only 2% of professional players have finished a major tournament at the course with a score under par. 

• The winner in 2007, Ángel Cabrera, beat out Tiger Woods at Oakmont with a score of plus-5.

• World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler called it the “hardest golf course…maybe ever.”

Paul Skenes makes history for being the best pitcher to never win games. Skenes is the only pitcher in MLB history to have a sub-2.10 ERA and 80-plus strikeouts through the first 13 starts and have a losing record. 

• The Pirates starter has now allowed one run or fewer in six straight starts, but he’s only gotten a win in one of those outings.

Skenes now has a 1.88 ERA and 92 strikeouts, but holds a 4-6 record. I don’t think the Pirates hitters will be getting Christmas gifts from the Skenes household this year.

On this day in 2019, the Toronto Raptors won their first and only championship, taking down the Golden State Warriors in game six.

Crazy fact: only one member of this team — Chris Boucher — is still in Toronto. Imagine what could’ve been if Kawhi stayed.

This is just way more interesting than fouling out of the game, and personally, I’d love to see what an NBA game looks like 5-on-4. 

Alright, that’s enough yelling for one Friday.

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