Countless stadiums, arenas, golf tournaments and bowl games have sponsors in their titles. The world’s most prestigious soccer league was named the Barclays Premier League until 2016. Private equity firms currently hold ownership stakes in more than 60 North American sports franchises, according to Pitchbook, as well as many of the top soccer clubs in Europe.

But when news broke Thursday that the Big 12 is entertaining both a potential title sponsorship deal with insurance giant Allstate and a $1 billion private equity partnership, you could almost hear the collective reaction: “How dare they?!”

GO DEEPER

Big 12 discussing PE investment, sale of naming rights to Allstate

Kirk Wakefield, a Baylor University marketing professor, had a much different reaction to the possible title sponsorship.

“You wonder why people haven’t done that already,” said Wakefield, who runs a research firm that studies sponsorship impacts for sports leagues and brands. “It’s such an obvious opportunity.”

USC sports business professor David Carter looks at the plight of the Big 12, which lags hundreds of millions a year in revenue behind the Big Ten and SEC, and sees private equity as a matter of Darwinian survival. To win national championships, Big 12 schools need to be able to spend like…

On Jan. 19, two days after he became the most coveted football player in the NCAA’s transfer portal, and mere hours after he welcomed Ohio State coaches for a recruiting visit, Caleb Downs announced his change-of-address plans. The freshman safety who’d earned second-team All-America honors at Alabama committed to the Buckeyes. Not long after, Downs and his father began relocating to Columbus.

Getting there was simple enough. Getting around was another matter.

Some wheels needed to be put in motion.

“I get a call from someone on the coaching staff and they said, ‘Hey, I’m here with Caleb and his dad now. Are you looking to add somebody else to your team?’” says Rick Ricart, the CEO and owner of Ricart Automotive Group in Columbus. “Would you be willing to do a car deal for him?’”

For decades, these were shifty conversations. Local car dealerships had long been conduits for the whispered inducements coaches or boosters promised talented players. When discovered, scandal erupted. Repercussions were often stark. Then came the seismic summer of 2021, when changes to Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) rules allowed college athletes to earn money without fear of NCAA sanctions.

Car dealers nationwide quickly exchanged leases and keys for players boasting about their new…

Congrats to South Carolina, which was the No. 1 team in all but one edition of this season’s rankings. The Gamecocks proved they were the best team in college basketball for all of 2023-24, just like last year, only this time they were able to cap their remarkable regular season with a national championship. South Carolina’s success was the primary validation of these power rankings, though the last poll did feature 15 of the Sweet 16 teams in the top 18 (apologies to Duke).

In case you’re interested in how well my first power rankings of 2023-24 held up, take a gander! Oregon State really came out of nowhere.

As we look ahead to 2024-25, a reminder that this is an indicator of how teams stand right now, though WNBA Draft decisions and transfers — keep an eye on Oregon State and Washington State following the dissolution of the Pac-12 — could substantially change the makeup of rosters. I’ve priced in some player improvement, particularly for younger players with high pedigree, but otherwise tried to assess these squads based on how the players finished this season. Let me know in the comments if you think I’m overlooking anyone.

Almost famous: Kentucky, Michigan State, Vanderbilt

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Why South Carolina over UConn?

South Carolina is losing Kamilla Cardoso, but otherwise…

LSU coach Kim Mulkey has won four national championships and is enshrined in the Naismith Hall of Fame. Despite her on-court success, she’s been a polarizing force in women’s college basketball, frequently stirring controversy.

The Washington Post published a story on Mulkey on Saturday, hours before LSU’s Sweet 16 victory over UCLA, detailing the coach’s demeanor, playing days at Louisiana Tech and relationships with past players and family members. Lawyers for Mulkey criticized the newspaper for talking to her estranged father and her sister. Mulkey declined to speak with The Post directly, but said through her lawyers that her family members did not “relate in any way to her career,” the newspaper said in its story.

Mulkey and her father, Les, have not spoken in 37 years, the Post said, after Les’ infidelity and eventual divorce from Mulkey’s mother. Mulkey herself wrote about the subjects in her 2007 autobiography, “Won’t Back Down.” Mulkey walked alone down the aisle at her wedding, and returned notes from Les unread as he pleaded for reconciliation, according to The Post.

“His unfaithfulness to my mother devastated our entire family,” Mulkey wrote in her autobiography.

Last week, before The Post’s story was published, Mulkey threatened to sue the…

The Sweet 16 field is set — mostly as we expected it but with some twists.

The left side of the bracket (Albany 1 and Portland 4 regions) includes every No. 1 through No. 4 seed, while the right side (Albany 2 and Portland 3 regions) low seeds include a No. 5 and a No. 7 seed.

Will more chaos ensue in the regionals? Will top seeds keep thriving? We’re here to break down the matchups and provide predictions.

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(All times Eastern)

Friday

Albany 1 | 2:30 p.m. | ESPN

The matchup between the Fighting Irish and Beavers is one of contrasting styles. Fueled by star freshman guard Hannah Hidalgo and an aggressive zone defense, Notre Dame likes to push the tempo and score in transition. The Irish are in the 90th percentile in pace and second nationally in fastbreak points percentage, per CBB Analytics. Hidalgo alone averaged 7.5 fastbreak points per game this season. That all is starkly different from how Oregon State has thrived this year. The Beavers, by comparison, are in the 19th percentile of pace and score only 5.4 fastbreak points a game. On offense, they are efficient from around the rim and from 3-point range. The tandem of junior guard Talia von Oelhoffen and sophomore forward Raegan Beers is especially tough to stop.

How the Beavers contain Hidalgo and guard Sonia Citron will…

(Editor’s note: This is part of the Bracket Central Series, an inside look at the run-up to the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments, along with analysis and picks during the tournaments.)

Four days, 48 games (well, technically 52 when including the First Four), and a weekend devoid of sleep and full of basketball. Now we’re down to the final two weekends of play. The Sweet 16 is set, and the matchups are exquisite.

So many varying and contrasting styles face one another. Some games present clashes of rosters with similar ethos and questions alike.

There’s a beautiful yet gut-wrenching duality of the NCAA Tournament, which is largely what makes it one of the most compelling phenomena in sports. The tournament is about testing mettle, seeing what a team can do on the fly with limited time in heightened scenarios in front of huge crowds. The stakes elevate and much of what is known and practiced can go out the window because of a random heater by a backup two guard from an unheard-of town in Minnesota.

Great teams with years of legacy and expectation can fall because of an off night. A team that struggled with injury and inconsistency all year might just hit the right groove at the right time, find confidence and ride that high to a Final Four.

Watching that team make a run…

The Sweet 16 in the women’s NCAA Tournament is almost entirely built of the top four seeds in each region. Only three teams (No. 5 Colorado, No. 5 Baylor and No. 7 Duke) won on the road in the second round to advance to the Sweet 16. My model projects the likelihood of upsets now that we’re in the tournament’s second week.

South Carolina is, of course, the overwhelming favorite. The Gamecocks won the national title in 42.4 percent of my simulations. They made the Final Four more than 70 percent of the time.

My projected favorite in the other regions are Texas, UConn and UCLA. UConn is only the No. 3 seed in Regional 3 in Portland, but No. 2 Ohio State lost in the second round and my model does not rate USC as highly as its No. 1 seed.

UCLA is the favorite in Regional 2 in Albany ahead of No. 1 seed Iowa. The Hawkeyes are a strong favorite against Colorado in the Sweet 16, but would be an underdog in my model against either UCLA or LSU in the Elite Eight. That region is balanced among the top three teams with Iowa, UCLA and LSU all making the Final Four in more than 25 percent of my simulations.

Before getting into the numbers, it’s worth explaining what you’re looking at. I created a college basketball model to project the outcomes of games. I take several metrics into…

As college basketball players head to NCAA Tournament arenas on their team buses, many will slip on headphones, zone out to a song and absorb the vibes. Coaches also sometimes take a small moment from poring over last-minute scouting reports to escape to a melody filtering through their airpods.

These soundtracks, perhaps subconsciously, serve an objective, too. Music can settle our nerves — or pump us up. A specific banger can provide a dose of confidence. A sentimental song might remind us of our grand purpose. “Music is the shorthand of emotion,” Leo Tolstoy once wrote.

So as March Madness gets underway, The Athletic wondered what these tournament-bound stars will be listening to before they compete in some of the most important games in their lives. We asked women’s and men’s tournament players and coaches to share their pre-game playlists. Players’ tastes ranged from Nicki Minaj to Veeze to even Elvis Presley. Coaches ranged from Gospel to AC/DC.

You won’t achieve the same jump shot as these athletes by listening to their hype music, but these playlists will get you ready (from your couch) for tip-off.

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Women’s NCAA Tournament players’ mixtapes

JuJu Watkins

Guard | No. 1 USC

The brightest freshman in women’s basketball, Watkins has taken the Trojans to new…

Welcome back to Bracket Breakers, where we are excited to keep extending our search for upsets in the NCAA women’s tournament. This year, the potential Cinderellas on the women’s side are more interesting than ever, with more bracket-breaking weapons in their arsenals. Today we’re breaking down which of those teams has the highest chance to beat an overdog in Friday’s first-round games.

As on the men’s side, our statistical model Slingshot, developed with help from the Furman University Mathematics Department, begins by estimating the strength of all D-I teams according to their scoring margin per 100 possessions, adjusted for strength of schedule. We then adjust those basic power ratings for how strongly teams carry traits associated with successful tournament teams of the past.

For underdogs, these characteristics generally include factors that widen the variability of a team’s play, such as shooting lots of threes and working to force turnovers. For favorites, it’s just the opposite: higher seeds cruise to wins when they cut risks and avoid chaos. Then we estimate matchup results.

Before we continue, two observations and one caveat. First, as we’ve mentioned, while parity is increasing in the women’s game, and there are more viable contenders for the…

The full NCAA Tournament bracket has been released with UConn leading the way as No. 1 overall.

(Editor’s note: This is part of the Bracket Central Series, an inside look at the run-up to the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments, along with analysis and picks during the tournaments.)

March Madness is upon us.

Well, technically it began during a wild conference tournament season ahead of the NCAA Tournament. But now, we get the really good stuff. The Cinderellas. The players you hadn’t heard of before this week who are now household names. The buzzer-beaters. Ultimately, though, we all want to know who will be cutting down the nets in April. And so we present: the top 16 national title contenders in our NCAA Tournament Power Rankings.

We will update this ranking after every round and until the Final Four begins. If top-seeded teams fall, others will take their place. If some lower-seeded teams look stronger than expected, they’ll move up the list.

Who’s on top to start? Of course it’s Connecticut. Here’s a look at where things stand as we enter Thursday’s first round: