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…

The Women’s College World Series field is set with softball’s final eight teams heading to Oklahoma City, Okla., to continue the chase for a national title.

The field is led by defending champion Oklahoma. The No. 2 Sooners will be joined by No. 1 Texas, No. 4 Florida, No. 5 Oklahoma State, No. 6 UCLA, No. 8 Stanford, No. 10 Duke and No. 14 Alabama. Oklahoma has won the past three championships and five of the past seven.

The WCWS opens play on Thursday: UCLA versus Alabama (Noon); Oklahoma versus Duke (2:30 p.m.); Texas versus Stanford (7 p.m.); Florida versus Oklahoma State (9:30 p.m.). ESPN will broadcast all four games.

The OKC 8⃣ #WCWS pic.twitter.com/4iFnwB1EKb

— NCAA Softball (@NCAASoftball) May 27, 2024

How did the teams get here?

Texas: The Longhorns pulled out Game 3 of their Super Regional series against rival Texas A&M on Sunday and did most of their work in that series late in games, scoring 16 of their 20 runs in the sixth inning or later. The teams combined for a Super Regional record of 39 runs.

Oklahoma: The Sooners’ dynasty continues as they punched their ticket to Oklahoma City with a 2-0 series win over No. 15 Florida State. This year marks Oklahoma’s 12th WCWS appearance since 2010.

Florida: It was a record-setting day in Gainesville, Fla.,…

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….

The Oregon State players who departed after the team’s Elite Eight run have started to land on new teams across the country. On Monday, forward Raegan Beers announced her commitment to Oklahoma, and Talia von Oelhoffen announced her commitment to USC.

Their commitments come after the majority of Oregon State’s roster entered the transfer portal due to the Beavers heading to the West Coast Conference.

Raegan Beers

With Oklahoma — the Big 12 regular season champions — moving into the SEC, the Sooners were looking to grab a big interior player able to own the glass, and in Beers they got just that. As a sophomore at Oregon State, Beers averaged 10.3 rebounds and 17.5 points per game while shooting 66.4 percent from the floor. She had narrowed her choices to Oklahoma and UConn for her final two seasons of college basketball.

Beers joins a veteran group led by reigning co-Big 12 player of the year Skylar Vann (who is expected to return for her fifth season). Seniors Lexy Keys, Aubrey Joens and Naveah Tot are also all expected to use their COVID-19 seasons and with Payton Verhulst and Sahara Williams in the fold, the Sooners don’t just return their top six players, they now add one of the best bigs available.

With Beers anchoring the center, this spaced-out offense will have…

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

---

Why South Carolina over UConn?

South Carolina is losing Kamilla Cardoso, but otherwise…

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…

On Monday, Tennessee announced that it was moving on from Kellie Harper, who went 108-52 in five seasons with the Lady Vols.

The move is a strong indicator that Tennessee understands the arms race happening in women’s basketball and doesn’t want to be left behind. With South Carolina at the top of the conference, and LSU — the reigning national champs — right there, too, there hasn’t been a ton of space at the very top of the league. However, moving on from Harper — who in four of five seasons finished third in the SEC — is a pretty strong statement that anything other than contending for the top spot isn’t good enough. And, with Texas and Oklahoma joining the SEC next season, the league’s women’s basketball power only becomes stronger and deeper.

The big question here: Does Tennessee stick with another Pat Summitt-linked coach? Or after Holly Warlick (the Lady Vols’ head coach from 2012-19 who was a longtime Summitt assistant) and Harper (who won three national titles are a player for Summitt), is Tennessee going to step outside of the Summitt line?

The Lady Vols are legendary program that have helped lay the foundation of women’s basketball. They haven’t won a national title since 2008, but with the right coaching staff in place, this is a program…

Today, we will finish our first-round NCAA Tournament previews with a look at the second day of matchups and potential upsets in women’s March Madness.

A reminder: Our statistical model Slingshot, developed with help from the Furman University Mathematics Department, begins by estimating the strength of all Division I teams according to their scoring margin per 100 possessions and their 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 tactics that widen the variability of a team’s play, such as shooting lots of 3-pointers 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. We still don’t have the same depth of historical data for women’s basketball as we do for the men’s side, but we’re getting there.

Now, on to Saturday’s games!

More Bracket Breakers: Upset projections for Friday games

Odds are from BetMGM. For more Underdogs, listen to Peter and Jordan’s podcast. For all our March Madness coverage, check out our content hub. 

No. 6 Syracuse Orange vs. No. 11 Arizona Wildcats

Upset…

Over the last month, The Athletic connected with more than 35 head coaches across women’s basketball to get their candid opinions on an array of topics from the changing tides in the sport to the best coaches in the game to the greatest women’s college basketball player of all time. These coaches, who hail from power conferences and high mid-majors, were granted anonymity so they could speak openly without fear of retribution from their own programs or the NCAA. Throughout the week, we’re sharing coaches’ thoughts on the most pressing issues in their sport.

Head coaches’ jobs are all-encompassing in college basketball. They have to recruit, and in the age of the portal, re-recruit. They have to scour opposing rosters to find players who would be suitable transfers. They work with athletic departments for appropriate facilities and accommodations. There’s an entire ecosystem under their purview.

Of course, the most important part of their role is putting together the product that shows up on the court. That job is multi-faceted in and of itself. Beyond spearheading player development, coaches design the offensive schemes, the defensive game plans and make adjustments when necessary. This is the part that’s easiest for their peers to evaluate because the results…

The Athletic has live coverage of Selection Sunday and the NCAA Tournament bracket reveal. 

(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.)

Pure. Chaos.

Madness came early on Saturday, leaving a trail of stolen bids, burst bubbles and flummoxed bracketologists in its wake. Now? Selection Sunday is here.

We know we have four legit bid thieves: NC State in the ACC, Oregon in the Pac-12 and two more coming Sunday in the A-10 and AAC. Drake’s upset over Indiana State in the MVC title game might end up as a fifth functional bid thief. Wild.

Get your March Madness printable bracket

The bracket reveal is mere hours away. In the meantime, we’ll do our best to calculate the bubble math and take stock of an absolutely wild day of college hoops.

Here’s my best estimation of where things stand entering Sunday:

• There are 32 automatic qualifying bids via conference champions. There are 36 at-large bids. Total of 68.

• At least 21 of those 32 conferences will be one-bid leagues, including the Ivy League championship between Brown and Yale on Sunday. So let’s start with 21.

• Give at least four bids to the ACC: AQ and three at-large locks….