JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — With a 17 1/2-sack season, a second Pro Bowl appearance and a new contract that made him football’s highest-paid outside linebacker, Josh Allen indisputably had become a big name in the NFL. But not exactly like he wanted.

He often was referred to as “the other Josh Allen,” with the more famous one quarterbacking the Buffalo Bills.

The Jacksonville Jaguars pass rusher and his wife, Kaitlyn, watched highlights of this year’s Pro Bowl Games and listened to a commentator refer to “Aidan Hutchinson and Josh … Allen?”

“It was almost like she was confused about who I was,” he says.

She wasn’t the only one. Kaitlyn wanted to know where her husband’s jerseys were being sold and learned they were as difficult to find as disinfecting wipes during the pandemic. The 27-year-old, five-year NFL veteran and father of three had considered changing his name for a couple of years. Now his wife started pushing for it.

His four older sisters have a different last name, Hines-Allen, incorporating their mother Kim’s maiden name. When Josh and twin brother Isaiah were born, their father, Robert, wanted the boys to be Allens. Kim and Robert divorced when Josh was a baby, and his dad wasn’t around much, so the boys were raised and shaped by Hineses. In his…

Kentucky will vacate football games and serve two years of probation because of rules violations committed in 2021 and ’22, the NCAA announced Friday.

The school reached an agreement with the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions on a case involving impermissible benefits for at least 11 football players who received payment for work not performed between spring 2021 and March 2022. Eight of the players went on to compete while ineligible, but Kentucky and the NCAA enforcement staff agreed that no Kentucky athletics staff member knew or reasonably should have known about the payments, so the program will not be hit with a failure-to-monitor violation.

The NCAA also sanctioned Kentucky for rules violations in its men’s and women’s swimming programs, which exceeded countable athletically related activities limits. The agreement states that athletes weren’t provided with required days off and exceeded practice hours for nearly three years. Kentucky agreed that it failed to monitor its swimming and diving program and the head coach was deemed responsible.

One former coach did not participate in the agreement. That part of the case will be considered separately by the committee. The process is ongoing and the committee’s final decision, including possible penalties for the…

For those first few weeks at Kentucky, coach Kenny Brooks was a bit lost.

Not in building a basketball program or a roster; he had done that before. But quite literally, Brooks was lost. He needed his GPS to drive to and from work, and more than once he found himself turned around when making his way from his office to the practice facility in Memorial Coliseum.

During campus visits with recruits, he made it very clear he wasn’t so much giving the tour as he was on the tour with the players he hoped to sign with the Wildcats. If he was asked about a certain building or directions on campus, he’d defer to his assistants.

“I felt like I was one of the student-athletes,” Brooks said. “I was getting on the back of the golf cart, acting like a student-athlete, because I had no idea what was what.”

Life had moved pretty quickly in March. Brooks’ season with Virginia Tech, where he had coached for eight seasons, ended March 22. He accepted the Kentucky head coaching job March 26 and was in Lexington two days later for his introductory media conference. In addition to getting his bearings, he also needed to hire assistants, meet players, recruit players, get to know his new colleagues and boosters — the general rigmarole for every new coach.

More than two months have…

DESTIN, Fla. — There are two Greg Sankeys. The first one sometimes will say something that reminds you he was one of the people supporting the old ways and makes you wonder if someone who supported the old system can be trusted to build the new one.

The other Sankey, however, leaves hints that he does get it.

In his first public appearance since the historic NCAA vs. House settlement, on the eve of the SEC’s spring meetings, both sides of the SEC commissioner were on display. Which side wins out, and how quickly, will mean a lot.

The necessary background for those who need it: The NCAA has agreed to revenue sharing, directly paying its athletes, as part of last week’s settlement agreement. But it was merely one part of the larger whack-a-mole approach in dealing with college sports issues. The chaos of the transfer portal and NIL is left unresolved. And some stakeholders — media members, lawyers, advocates, coaches and administrators speaking privately — believe having a collective bargaining agreement with the athletes is the only way to do that.

But the first side of Sankey still sounded skeptical on Monday.

“To be in collective…

DESTIN, Fla. — The SEC convenes Tuesday for its annual spring meetings, and the good news for those involved is the future football schedule is not the main topic.

The bad news is the future football schedule is not the main topic.

Whether to go to nine conference games or stay at eight seems quaint now compared with the heavy reality that SEC presidents, athletic directors, coaches and commissioner Greg Sankey must confront this week: revenue sharing, roster limits and other results of the settlement in the House v. NCAA case.

SEC presidents voted unanimously — at least in the final vote it was unanimous — to approve the settlement terms, which if approved will result in around 22 percent of annual revenue being paid to athletes, starting next year. It’s a landmark agreement, and the timing is good for SEC administrators, who can start to hash out what comes next in Destin.

There are, of course, other things going in the conference: A quarterback at Georgia is suing Florida. Oklahoma and Texas officially join the league in July, and their coaches will be present in Destin for the first time. Nick Saban is no longer coaching football….

Now that Caitlin Clark is a member of the Indiana Fever, it’s time to turn the page on the 2024 WNBA Draft and look ahead to what could be an even more talented class in 2025. This is the last group of players to be eligible for a pandemic bonus year, so the WNBA will have a true double draft of fourth- and fifth-year seniors, which will simplify the process for general managers who no longer have to wonder who will declare.

The relevant exception to that is the medical redshirt. Players still have an additional year of eligibility if they sit out for a season due to injury, as is the case with the top prospect on the board. However, the number of players who fall into that category is relatively small.

Given that the draft order isn’t set until after the 2024 WNBA season, which has yet to commence, this isn’t a mock draft. Instead, it’s a list of the top players without regard to team fit. This exercise also only considers domestic prospects, though we should expect internationals to factor heavily on draft day in 2025. After all, three non-NCAA players were taken in the first round of Monday’s draft.

GO DEEPER

WNBA Draft grades: Fever earn A for picking Clark, Sky receive C+ even with Angel Reese

Much is expected to change between now and then, but probably not the…

In August 2019, two swim coaches at San Jose (Calif.) State reported allegations they had heard about University of Kentucky head swimming coach Lars Jorgensen to a Title IX officer at their school. The allegations were that Jorgensen had been in a relationship with one of his swimmers at an earlier coaching stop and that he had sexually assaulted a woman on the swim staff at Kentucky. The Title IX officer at San Jose State then alerted a counterpart at Kentucky.

It was at least the third time Kentucky was made aware or should have been aware of an allegation of misconduct by Jorgensen.

In June 2012, Mark Howard, a former assistant swimming coach at the University of Toledo, sent separate emails to Gary Conelly, then Kentucky’s head swim coach, and UK athletic director Mitch Barnhart. “This is no joke at all and I cannot stomach the fact that (Jorgensen) will be coaching women again,” Howard wrote to Conelly, who had recently added Jorgensen as an associate head coach. He informed both men that a swimmer had told him that she had been in a sexual relationship with Jorgensen while he coached her at Toledo.

In October 2014, a former Toledo softball coach repeated the allegation that Jorgensen had been in a “long-term romantic relationship” with a student-athlete in a…

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…

Former Virginia Tech guard Georgia Amoore is transferring to Kentucky, she announced on social media Thursday, following former Hokies women’s basketball coach Kenny Brooks, who accepted the coaching job with the Wildcats on March 26.

Amoore entered the transfer portal Monday and had a “do not contact,” meaning she did not want coaches to reach out to her. That implied that Amoore likely already knew where she wanted to go or had a few finalists.

The news of Amoore heading to Kentucky comes a day after Virginia Tech announced it hired Megan Duffy as its next women’s basketball coach. Duffy spent the past five years coaching Marquette, taking the Golden Eagles to the NCAA Tournament three times.

Amoore started 124 of 126 games over her four-year tenure with the Hokies. She averaged 18.8 points, 6.8 assists, 2.6 rebounds and 0.9 steals on 41.2 percent shooting this season, leading the team in assists and steals. Her points, assists and field goal percentage were all career highs. She has career averages of 14.7 points, 5.2 assists and 2.6 rebounds.

The Victoria, Australia, native had a storied career with the program, initially being named to the ACC All-Freshman team after the 2020-21 season. She continued to stack accolades from there. They include being named an AP…

It could be an elevator, a hallway or a corridor this weekend at one of the Final Fours, the men’s in Arizona or the women’s in Cleveland. Greg Sankey, commissioner of the SEC, has a team in each, so doubtless he will be at both. Len Perna, meanwhile, has an idea, and if he sees Sankey he may do everything in his power to get a minute.

At most, Sankey will smile politely, nod and keep the conversation short. For now, the chances of Sankey and his conference wanting any part of Perna’s idea are about as good as the SEC giving up football as a varsity sport.

Because that’s essentially what it would be doing here.

The notion of a college football “Super League” has been percolating for a while, and one idea finally went public on Wednesday, when The Athletic reported that a number of power brokers, including the presidents at Syracuse and West Virginia and Perna, the CEO of TurnkeyZRG, were pushing for a 70-team permanent group, employing athletes as players, making its own rules and leaving non-football sports to the existing conferences, as is.

Publicly, the reaction among SEC power brokers was crickets: Sankey and the presidents at…