Thoughts of the Day: May 2, 2026

A few thoughts to jump start your Saturday morning:

It is being reported that the NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, will enact the 5-for-5 rule effective the 2026-27 season, in all probability prior to Memorial Day weekend. Furthermore, it is being reported that it will affect all sports and none of the seniors from the 2025-26 season who have already played four years, will be grandfathered in. The new rule will set a timeline – the 5-year clock starts ticking on high school graduation day or when the athlete turns 19, whichever comes first.

Expect the court dockets to be filled immediately with athletes who want to play another year as well as those who will challenge the timeline. Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss will be the poster child for those seeking another year. Denied a waiver by the NCAA, Chambliss took his case to the state courts in Mississippi where he won. By the time the NCAA can appeal this decision and get it before a federal magistrate, the 2026 football season will be under way, so rather than fight on, the NCAA added the Chambliss case to its long list of nuclear winters suffered in court rooms across the country. Trinidad Chambliss began his college football career at Ferris State in Michigan in 2021. He spent four years at Ferris, and spent last year at Ole Miss, where he quarterbacked the Rebels into the semifinals of the College Football Playoff. This will be his sixth year since high school graduation. He will be 24 years old in August.

If implemented the new rule, which also eliminates waivers, has a direct effect on Denzel Aberdeen, who is petitioning for a fifth season of eligibility. As a freshman at the University of Florida in 2022, Aberdeen played 40 minutes, nine of which were against UCF in an NIT game. It is in Aberdeen’s favor that the NCAA doesn’t have set guidelines for all sports when it comes to redshirting. For basketball, playing one game eliminates the redshirt, but a football player can play in four games as a freshman and earn a redshirt season. For example, Austin Barber, who was drafted last week by the Cleveland Browns, played in three games as a freshman in 2021. That was a redshirt year. He played another four, the last three as a starter.

If the NCAA doesn’t grant Aberdeen’s appeal, then he can certainly take his case to the state courts where he is likely to win based on precedent of others getting waivers and the unequal application of redshirt rules. Whether or not the NCAA grandfathers in seniors, figure Denzel Aberdeen will win in court and will be playing for Todd Golden and the Gators next year.

Figure also that the NCAA will be dispatching lawyers to courts across the country where it is likely to do what it always does: Lose!

THE RICH KEEP GETTING RICHER

The gap between the haves of college sports – the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference – and the have nots continues to grow. Big Ten schools took home $76.1 million per school last year while the SEC schools pulled in $72.4 million. The Atlantic Coast Conference distributed around $45 million, while the Big 12 distributed $40 per school. The dropoff to the Group of Six is significant as Memphis (American) got $11 million from the conference’s media agreements.

Significant growth is expected in Big Ten and SEC revenues, which expect to exceed $100 million a year within the next couple of years. Meanwhile, the ACC, Big 12 and bottom feeders in the Group of Six have no way to keep up. In the ACC, Florida State is seeking a private equity deal that can help it deal with its massive $475 million athletic department debt. Duke just signed a deal with Amazon Prime Video to broadcast three basketball games. It is a multi-year deal, but under the ACC media rights agreement with ESPN will Duke have to share the money with the other schools? SMU doesn’t take ACC money. As part of its agreement to join the ACC, SMU oil gozillionaires ponied up big bucks so the school doesn’t need the media money. Does that free SMU to join another conference? Is there another conference that even wants SMU?

The Big 12 just signed an equity agreement with Red Bird Capital that will infuse $12.5 million into the league and give each of its 16 member schools access to a $30 million line of credit. The catch to the line of credit is borrowing requires pay back with double digit interest. Cody Campbell, who made billions pumping for West Texas oil, is spending like crazy up and down the Texas Tech athletic program. He bankrolled softball pitcher Nijaree Canady to the tune of $1.05 million. How many Big 12 schools have a booster willing to spend the big bucks to keep up with the Big Ten and SEC Joneses?

Making matters worse is the lack of guardrails for the transfer portal and nothing in the way of restrictions on NIL spending, which make the Group of Six schools the equivalent of baseball’s minor leagues. Unless changes are made – and quickly – their sole purpose will be to take high school kids and prepare them for the portal.

There are suggestions to go to an NFL model which would essentially pare down Division I to around 80 or so schools with all media money pooled so that there is equal distribution. This would involve leaving the NCAA – not a bad idea when you think about it – and hiring an all-powerful commissioner. It would involve business people taking over college sports rather than college presidents. This is a move that would take time and probably would involve fierce resistance from the academics in charge of schools. Would they be willing to cede power for the money it takes to sustain the athletic program?

And what about the Group of Six? Some might be absorbed into the power conferences if they’re lucky, but what about the others? The solution could be to create a new division, give it its own championship and to avoid anti-trust lawsuits, of which there would be many, give them enough television exposure that they could keep the lights on without serious cutbacks.

What we have is a problem that threatens the existence of college sports as we know them. While it is great that fans of Big Ten and SEC schools have these gigantic revenue deals, at some point the issues that affect the little guys will have to be addressed. When they start dropping athletic programs, the ripple effect will be a shrinking talent pool for their big brothers and that is a problem that needs to be addressed sooner and not later.

A SIGN OF THE TIMES

Arkansas was among four NCAA Division I schools to announce it will discontinue its men’s and women’s tennis programs earlier in the week. Fiscally, it doesn’t make a lot of sense because the programs cost Arkansas a fraction more than $2.5 million combined and the school had athletic department revenues in excess of $195 million.

Some folks want to claim it’s all because of football and NIL. Correct when it comes to the non-power conference schools, but among the power conferences, which have far more money, the move is fueled by fewer and fewer Americans are into tennis these days. A look at the men’s and women’s tennis rosters at the University of Florida is a good example.

Of the ten listed on Florida’s men’s roster, only three are Americans. The other six are from Venezuela, Sweden, England, Australia, Thailand, Spain and Cyprus. On the women’s roster, the only American is India Houghton, a graduate transfer who played at Iowa State and Miami before landing in Gainesville. The other seven are from England (2), Slovakia, Russia, Canada, China and France.

Only two of the top ten ranked Division I collegiate men are American, three women.

The last time an American man won the US Open tennis title was 2003 when Andy Roddick took the title. An American man hasn’t won Wimbledon since Pete Sampras did it in 1999. On the women’s side, Serena Williams is the last American to win the US Open (2014) and Wimbledon (2016).

Former Gator Ben Shelton (6) and Taylor Fritz (7) are the only Americans in the top ten on the men’s pro tour. On the women’s pro tour, CoCo Grauf (3), Jessica Pegula (5) and Amanda Anisimova (6) are the only Americans in the top ten.   

The sport is in decline in the US and until more Americans excel in tennis, more and more schools are going to choose to expend their resources in other sports.  

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: No one seems to know who coined the phrase “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” but someone needs to remind the NCAA, which, in its infinite wisdom is going to expand the NCAA Tournament to 76 teams. Just what we need, an infusion of mediocrity into a tournament that basically rules the sports world during the month of March.

Instead of four play-in games involving eight teams on two nights in Dayton, another eight games and 16 teams will be added, perhaps at two other sites. Ya-hoo. The 12 winners of these games will complete the NCAA Tournament field of 64 teams.

Supposedly, this will open things up so typical one-bid leagues can get a second team in if their regular season champion gets ambushed in the conference tournament. That happens all the time but how many of those teams are actual threats to win the national championship? And, doesn’t this open the door for more mediocre teams at the power conference level to sneak in?

If the tournament had been expanded last season, Auburn, which was 17-16 after the SEC Tournament, would have gotten in. Yes, Auburn won the NIT, but does anyone with a functioning brain believe the Tigers would have been a threat to win it all?

Of course, expansion almost surely means the death of the NIT, which has become known as the Nobody’s Interested Tournament. Expanding the NCAA Tournament seriously deletes the pool of so-so teams that get a chance to play on after they take a powder in their conference tournament.

The increase in television revenue from adding eight more play-in games won’t be significant so why add more games? The tournament is far from broken and doesn’t need fixing.

But, lest we forget, this is the NCAA we are talking about, the same organization that Brian Bosworth once called the “National Communists Against Athletes.” Lots of folks laughed when he wore the T-shirt with that slogan emblazoned on it. Nobody should be laughing now.