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Hoops 🏀 Alabama among teams in discussion for in-season tournament featuring NIL deals as payouts

Pretty interesting. The tournament would give $1 million to each participating team which would be distributed evenly to the players via an NIL entity. An additional $1 million would go to the winner.

Alabama is reportedly one of the teams in discussion.

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Baseball ⚾️ Scholarship count help coming for Baseball and generally all partial scholarship sports?

This makes it sound like one of the many NIL court decisions might have at least one good outcome with the NCAA conceding that 11.7 was always stupid. This would be a bigger help for college baseball in our state than expecting the politicians to not screw the pooch with a lottery. Somehow most of that would never get to help college athletes. This would flatten the playing field for scholarships for schools that want to compete at the highest level. NIL is another story though.



Further, according to a report from Yahoo Sports, the settlement would include a plan to implement roster limits for all sports and the expansion of scholarships to those limits. So, in baseball, there would no longer be a limit of 11.7 scholarships per team. Every team would have as many scholarships as there are roster positions. Today, baseball teams are allowed to have 32 players receiving scholarship money and 40 players total on the roster. A roster size of 32 feels more likely in this potential new reality, but it would undoubtably be subject to major debate before it was set. The new rules would not go into effect for more than a year, according to the report.

For baseball, the change in scholarship limits would be massively impactful. Since 1991, when the NCAA cut scholarships for every sport across the board, baseball has operated with 11.7 scholarships. Increasing the number of scholarships has long been the sport’s white whale. Now, it appears within reach.

While the House lawsuit is about revenue sharing, the writing has been on the wall for scholarship limits since the Supreme Court’s 2021 decision in Alston v. NCAA. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion in that case, in which he attacked the existing NCAA model. Among the flaws he outlined was the equivalency sport model—the NCAA’s term for partial-scholarship sports—and he strongly suggested it would not stand up to a challenge in court, using similar arguments that led to the Alston decision. Kavanaugh’s opinion was not the court’s official decision but given that the justices rendered a unanimous decision in the Alston case, defending the equivalency sports model seemed like a losing proposition for the NCAA.

The settlement of the House lawsuit still has several hurdles to clear, and nothing is close to being finalized. But if the case does get settled, which is the expectation, and that settlement includes the plan to end equivalency sports, college baseball will be forever changed.

Schools would not be required to offer whatever the new scholarship limit would be, just as some schools today do not offer the full 11.7 scholarships for baseball. But the major powers would have potentially nearly tripled the number of scholarships they could offer. That would likely lead to a further concentration of power in the sport and make competition in those leagues even fiercer. That would probably lead to a push to separate baseball into subdivisions, like football. The downstream effects would be massive.

But it would also mean that hundreds, if not thousands, of college baseball players would receive full scholarships instead of graduating with a mountain of student loan debt. It would also be significant for the growth of the sport. Today, baseball is at a disadvantage with multi-sport athletes, who must choose between a full scholarship in basketball or football or a partial scholarship in baseball.
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BAMA Softball

First let me say! The ONLY way that Coach Murphy does not come back is that he CHOOSES not to come back!
Coach Murphy IS BAMA softball! He
maybe the longest tenured male coach in BAMA history! He single handed has put BAMA on the softball map!
But lately our softball program has deteriorated.
You could trace this by some of his hires. The only coach that Coach Murphy has hired with NO previous BAMA ties is our pitching coach! Pitching is the strength of our softball team so he’s not the problem!
Our hitting coach has NO previous hitting experience! We have seven returning starters and we ar 11th in the SEC in hitting! Probably worse if you take out the non conference stats!
Our other new coach was an All-American player at BAMA and an All-Time great player and person! But with No coaching experience and 11 years removed from the game! There is a big difference between broadcasting and coaching!
In short all but one of our coaches love respect and owe Coach Murphy everything! They had zero college coaching before their hiring.
I don’t know who our defensive coach is but we are 12th in defense!
Coach Murphy (imo) needs to sit down by himself and if he decides to come back as Head Coach make drastic changes in our coaching staff!
Coach is a Hall of Fame Softball Coach knows the game inside and out and has all the softball connections in the world.
Hopefully he loves the program that he single handed built over his ego!
ROLL TIDE ROLL!

Hoops 🏀 Thoughts on Cliff Omoruyi

Well… that was well worth the wait!

Cliff is not only a guy that is an upgrade at the 5 spot, he makes this roster a national title front runner with Kansas and Houston.

He is a top 5 rim protector averaging 3 blocks per game and alters way more. He allows Alabama to truly play the type of drop coverage that they want to. Below are stats to back that up for Cliff. All in the 97-99% of the country.
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In terms of offense, he’s an elite athlete with tremendous size at 6’11 245 lb. All he will be asked to do is rim run in transition and dunk from the dunkers spot. Nothing complex. It does help he is a solid back to the basket scorer, but he will be asked to protect the rim and rebound primarily.

Overall, this addition turned Alabama from a fringe top 10 team to a bonafide top 5 team. Assuming Sears and Stevenson return, this will be a top 3-4 national title contender going into the year.

Here’s some highlights of Cliff:
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Does this new age of college sports ensure that Nate Oats is at Bama for a long time???

Obviously, if Duke, UK, Kansas, or UNC call then you typically will answer the phone, but outside of that what does one second tier team have over the other? Assuming that he has a tremendous amount of support from Byrne, boosters, etc. then there is never any reason to listen to Louisville, Michigan St., Gonzaga. This isn’t 10 years ago where only 7 teams had a legit shot.

Alabama Softball… Lose 3-0 to Barn

Just got shutout on 4 hits by Auburn’s #3 pitcher 3-0 to lose another series. Worse series loss of the year. Auburn is not very good with a lame duck coach who has essentially been fired already.

10-14 SEC record- 9th or 10th place finish. First losing record ever in conference.
Lost 7 of 8 SEC series this year. Only won the one against last place Ole Miss.

Nearly last or bottom 3 in EVERY offensive category during conference games. Watching this team hit is like a root canal. First pitch swinging, going after bad pitches, etc. It is coaching or lack of player development or the kids were never that good.

And all of that falls on Patrick Murphy. Every bit of it.

Again I say all of this with due respect to the accomplishments and history of Alabama softball. It has been phenomenal. But this series loss should knock Alabama out of even hosting a regional for the first time ever. If they sneak in as a 15-16 seed it is laughable.


But Patrick Murphy needs to answer some questions. And no one EVER seems to ask the obvious ones that need to be asked. Never seen him do a press conference after a loss and take any responsibility for failure.

It seems he is protected by the Alabama softball cult due to his past success. It is very strange to see. And ridiculous.

Something needs to change now. AD Byrnes please step up.

@jtr4dad

Football 🏈 Indiana CB to visit Alabama next weekend

According to Matt Zenitz, Indiana cornerback Kobee Minor is set to visit Alabama next weekend.

Minor was an honorable All-Big Ten selection last season.

Kobee Minor | Sr. | CB | Indiana

H/W:
6-foot, 185 pounds

Stats: 11 games (9 starts), 29 tackles, four pass breakups, allowed 18 receptions on 35 targets (51.4 completion rate against). Opposing quarterbacks had a 96.2 NFL passer rating on balls thrown his way, per Pro Football Focus.
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