The SEC, despite its famously secretive football coaches, has adopted an NFL-style comprehensive system for player availability reports.

The system goes much further than the Big Ten, the only other power conference with an availability report system. But the Big Ten only requires teams to announce who is and is not available two hours before kickoff of every game.

The SEC plan, which has been in the works for awhile, was announced Thursday afternoon. It will only cover conference games, of which there are none this week, but beginning next week here are the rules:

• • Each team will be required to submit an availability report on each player three days before a conference game. If a team is playing on Saturday, it would need to submit the report on Wednesday.
  • Daily updates are required afterwards, including two days before the game, the day before the game and then 90 minutes before kickoff.
  • For the three days leading up to the game, each player on the roster will be categorized as available, probable, questionable, doubtful or out.
  • For the game day report, players will be categorized as available, out or a game-time decision.

The availability reports will be posted on the SEC’s website, so the public and media can see them, a big change from years of secrecy over injuries….

PARIS — The week was almost over, the Olympics nearly wrapped, when Erin Matson walked into the lobby of a botanical-themed boutique hotel. A sort of gilded garden pulled from a Parisian dream. This place is how the other side lives, and the name fit. La Fantaisie.

Nike booked a block of rooms during the Olympic Games. Its guests were part of an annual Athlete Think Tank, a consortium to survey influential women in sports. The list included Dawn Staley, Megan Rapinoe, Sue Bird and so on. They sat for group discussions, Master Class presentations from Serena Williams and Stacey Abrams, and for product sessions, giving feedback on Nike goods coming out soon and others still years from release.

The youngest member of the group was USC basketball star Juju Watkins. The second-youngest was Matson — a 24-year-old entering her second season as head field hockey coach at the University of North Carolina.

Matson arrived in the lobby wearing an oversized designer Nike sweatsuit. The chauffeur waiting outside was scheduled to leave for the airport in 45 minutes. Jess Sims, the Peloton instructor-turned-ESPN personality, walked past, asking if she and Matson were sharing a ride to Charles de Gaulle.

This is not the typical life of an American college field hockey coach. Matson is…

North Carolina women’s soccer coach Anson Dorrance — the all-time Division I leader for NCAA championships by a coach in any sport (21) — is retiring after 45 seasons leading the program, the school announced Sunday.

Dorrance, 73, led UNC’s women’s program to a record 22 national championships — the first of which came in 1981 before the NCAA oversaw women’s soccer  — and ended his career with a 934-88-53 record. He was also the United States women’s national team’s coach from 1986 to 1994, including in 1991 when the U.S. won the first women’s World Cup.

“As many of you know I modeled our program after Dean Smith’s basketball program, and retiring at this time is a credit to his thinking, as well,” Dorrance said in a statement. “He would re-evaluate his tenure, not after the season, but after he had time to re-charge his batteries prior to the next season. When he didn’t, he retired. After last season I initially was excited about the chance to bolster our roster, which we most certainly have done, but as preseason training camp went on, I realized I didn’t have the same energy it takes to give 100% to this year’s team.

“The players and staff, the university, Carolina athletics and our great fans deserve more, and the respect I have for the…

SAINT-DENIS, France — Like just about everyone who has spent even the slightest bit of time at Stade de France during the Olympic track meet, Sebastian Coe has basically been blown away by the power, depth and white-hot speed of the American track and field team.

Men and women, distance and sprints, jumps, throws, combined events, doesn’t matter. The Americans are picking up medals just about everywhere. They are arguably the greatest national track team ever assembled, and among the biggest stars of the show for a Team USA contingent that does not lack for star power with the likes of Stephen Curry and LeBron James on it.

Coe, a two-time Olympic champion from Great Britain in the 1980s who now leads World Athletics, the sport’s international governing body, knows how this came about, beyond the advantages of wealth and population that the U.S. has.

“That is really a testament to the college system, good college coaching,” said Coe, speaking just before American runners and jumpers won eight medals, three of them gold, in about 90 mad minutes Thursday night.

Coe knows track and field inside and out. He is also close with countless top athletes in his sport and others. He knows the global sports landscape as well as anyone. “The quality of coaching now coming out of…

John and Tracy Sellers arrived in Lubbock, Texas, the evening of Monday, July 22, with dinner reservations and an intention: to woo the best college softball player in the world to play for Texas Tech.

The dinner was at Las Brisas, a white-tablecloth steakhouse just south of Texas Tech’s campus that serves up lobster guacamole and a 25-ounce bone-in ribeye. The player was NiJaree Canady, USA Softball’s Collegiate Player of the Year.

There were six seats at the table: the Sellers, Marc McDougal (a board member of the Matador Club, a Texas Tech-affiliated name, image and likeness collective), Canady and her parents. No coaches or university administrators. Just a few well-connected Tech supporters and a family with a menu full of options. The group made fast friends over a nearly three-hour meal.

Canady, a 6-foot pitching phenom from Topeka, Kan., was visiting Lubbock for the first time. She was less than two months removed from leading Stanford to the Women’s College World Series semifinals as a sophomore, garnering mainstream headlines in the process. A few weeks later, she entered the transfer portal, the biggest star of a burgeoning sport hitting the open market.

The youngest person at the table that night, Canady held all the power. But she also had a tough decision…

New documents were filed in the historic House v. NCAA case on Friday, the next step in formalizing the settlement agreement that will reshape college sports. They provide additional details on the previously announced $2.8 billion in back-pay damages to be paid out over 10 years to former Division-I athletes dating back to 2016, as well as a 10-year revenue-sharing model that could distribute money directly from athletic departments to college athletes starting in 2025. The documents also detail other aspects of the settlement agreement, including the institution of roster limits and potential establishment of an oversight program for future NIL deals.

Judge Claudia Wilken still needs to approve the settlement.

The terms were agreed to in principle in May. Filed in the Northern District Court of California, the settlement is an effort to resolve multiple class-action antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA and Power 5 conferences: House v. NCAA, Hubbard v. NCAA and Carter v. NCAA.

“This is another important step in the ongoing effort to provide increased benefits to student athletes while creating a stable and sustainable model for the future of college sports,” NCAA president Charlie Baker and the P5 commissioners said in a joint statement. “While there is still much work to…

The effective scholarship limits for football and other college sports are about to go way up. And that’s about to lead to more questions for schools and how many hard financial decisions have to be made.

The power conference commissioners have decided on roster limits that will be filed this week as part of the settlement in the House vs. NCAA case, which has to be approved by the court. Scholarship limits are being eliminated as part of the settlement, replaced by a roster limit system in which each team can choose to scholarship as many or as few athletes as it wants.

The football roster limit, as reported last week, will be 105, two sources briefed on the numbers confirmed. That’s an increase from the 85-player scholarship limit that has existed for decades but below the previous roster limit, which was 120 as of the start of the season.

The limit will be effective for the 2025-26 season, along with other aspects of the settlement, including revenue sharing, expected to be around $20 million per school to each school’s athletes.

Baseball, meanwhile, is seeing its number essentially triple: 34 will be the roster/scholarship limit, up from the 11.7 scholarship limit that has existed for decades. But the roster limit had been 40 during the season, so with the freedom to…

Former Harvard women’s ice hockey coach Katey Stone sued the university for sex discrimination on Tuesday, alleging Harvard forced her to resign after reports of misconduct she said were false and that the university undervalues and underpays female coaches.

Stone, who retired in June 2023, announced the lawsuit in a news conference Tuesday afternoon alongside her legal team and former Harvard hockey players.

Stone coached at Harvard for 27 seasons but left her post amid an investigation into allegations of mistreatment of players, including insensitivity to mental health issues, downplaying injuries, leading derogatory chants directed at players and creating a climate where players were pitted against each other to curry favor with her. Multiple articles, including a March 2023 report in The Athletic, also reported hazing within her program. The Athletic detailed hazing and initiation rituals that involved forced alcohol consumption and sexualized skits and traditions, including an annual event that dates back decades called “naked skate.”

The lawsuit alleges that Harvard forced Stone out because of these misconduct allegations, which she called false, and described the school’s actions as “part and parcel of a larger culture at the University wherein female coaches…

Andy Coats loves telling his classes about it. It’s one thing to teach antitrust law. It’s quite another to tell his Oklahoma students there once was a case, one that went all the way to the Supreme Court, that involved the school they attend — and it was about football.

Then Coats, almost 90 years old and still sounding as sharp as he was half his life ago, looks at his students and makes the big reveal.

“I’m the guy who screwed up college football,” he says.

Oklahoma, where the law school building is named after Coats, officially joined the SEC with Texas on Monday. When announced three years ago, SEC expansion set off a wave of realignment that changed the complexion of college athletics.

It was about the chase for television money. And it happened because nobody is in charge: The NCAA is powerless to tell conferences what to do. The conferences and schools are free to chase all the TV dollars, and in turn the courts and lawyers are free to demand the players get their fair share, their name, image and likeness money, their unlimited transferring.

It all stems from one lawsuit, 40 years ago, when Oklahoma — joined by Georgia, long before they became conference mates — teamed up against the NCAA to challenge its stranglehold on television rights. When it ended,…

Oregon women’s volleyball coach Matt Ulmer admits he was nervous but hopeful when the Big Ten announced the upcoming volleyball schedule.

“I had no idea what it was going to look like for the four West schools,” Ulmer said. “But at least at the end of the day, I think they did a really good job of keeping in mind not missing class.”

With Oregon, Washington, USC and UCLA entering the Big Ten in August, the 18-team Big Ten stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans and across four time zones. Strategic scheduling and travel were more imperative this year than ever before for the Big Ten staff, especially for Olympic sports like women’s volleyball, of which each school has 20 conference matches.

To ensure the West Coast members avoid hardships beyond on-floor competition, the Big Ten office solicited feedback from its coaches on double-play opponents. In collaboration across the athletic departments, there was a goal to bunch together as many trips as possible and limit missed class time.

2024 #B1G Conference Volleyball Schedule Announced https://t.co/2hgUQ9gdq2

— Big Ten Volleyball (@B1GVolleyball) June 12, 2024

The West Coast schools all face one another home-and-home and split matches with the other 14 schools home or away. Those seven road trips east are…