Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark has renewed his pursuit of expansion target UConn, with league officials set for a meeting next week where the issue will be reintroduced for in-depth discussion, multiple Big 12 administrators and broadcasting sources told The Athletic.

Yormark, a Northeast native and former Brooklyn Nets executive, has been talking with the school since at least last summer before the Big 12 added Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah to expand to 16 schools. In August 2023, he said those talks were “no longer.” According to multiple Big 12 administrators, discussions resumed earlier this year, but Yormark did not yet have a consensus internally to extend an invite.

It’s unclear whether support among Big 12 presidents has increased in light of this latest round of discussions, according to league sources briefed on the process. Any further expansion would require support from a supermajority of 12 of 16 members in a president-level vote.

UConn declined to comment, while the Big 12 did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Yormark has repeatedly expressed his desire to position the Big 12 as the nation’s premier basketball conference, suggesting college hoops is “undervalued” by TV partners. UConn, the reigning back-to-back national…

Caitlin Clark entered the WNBA season with higher expectations than any rookie in recent memory. Not only was she tasked with leading the Indiana Fever back to relevance after a seven-year playoff drought, but the fate of the WNBA itself was put on her shoulders after she sparked a rapid increase in the popularity of women’s basketball at the college level.

At times, it seems like too much has been asked of the 22-year-old from Iowa, especially as she and the Fever began the season on an 11-games-in-20-days gantlet littered with nationally televised contests against the best teams in the league. A 2-9 start when Clark had one double-double, three single-digit scoring games and more turnovers than rebounds seemed to only confirm suspicions that WNBA dominance would be a ways away for the college superstar.

But that shaky start has become a distant memory. Clark has figured out the pro game on the fly. She leads the WNBA in assists (8.3 per game) and total points created (1,012) via points and assists. Indiana already has as many wins this season as it did a year ago and is tied for the fourth-most victories in the league since the start of July. Clark has also etched her name in the league’s historical record. Against the Seattle Storm on Sunday, she set the record for most…

PHILADELPHIA — Dawn Staley was talking about the balance of management and expectations when Nick Sirianni joined his team’s most high-profile players in the room. The decorated coach of the South Carolina women’s basketball team, who’d begun her Hall of Fame playing career at Dobbins Tech High in North Philadelphia, had spoken with Sirianni while attending a 76ers-Knicks playoff game and agreed to visit the NovaCare Complex in June.

Staley met with players who belonged to the Philadelphia Eagles’ leadership council. Among them: Jalen Hurts, A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, Saquon Barkley. They talked about the team’s desire to win. They talked about motivating teammates, how praising others aloud in the locker room can inspire others to also step up. They talked about how it’s really the little things that produce winning in a high-stakes environment.

It was “a very engaging session” that lasted about two hours, Staley told The Athletic. She left encouraged — both by the discussion and that one had happened at all. Others might have considered it “ludicrous” to speak with a woman in relation to “such a rough and tough sport,” Staley said. But they’d understood “success is relatable.”

Sirianni, too. He’d equated their teams. Their athletes. Their…

Caitlin Clark was glowing, beaming like a student who had just finished her last exam of the semester.

“I’m on vacation,” she said as she burst into her postgame press conference minutes at the 2024 WNBA All-Star Game. “This is the last time for a month, so get your questions in now.”

A welcomed recess was upon her. For the first time since March 2023, she was receiving an extended break as the WNBA season went on a 24-day pause for the Paris Olympics. “I honestly can’t wait to not touch a basketball for a while,” Clark said.

Though Clark’s omission from the U.S. Olympic team caused a stir among fans, her absence from the roster may turn into one of the best things to happen to her as a rookie. Being left off Team USA has provided her with something more than motivation: time.

Caitlin Clark signing off from her first WNBA All-Star Weekend pic.twitter.com/VuQvAmO2KI

— Indiana Fever (@IndianaFever) July 21, 2024

Her schedule has been a slog — although a successful one — that few athletes can compare, even most contemporaries in her rookie class. As one of the sport’s brightest stars, she’s fit in cross-country trips for awards ceremonies and appearances into a schedule built around practices and games (69 in all including college and WNBA preseason…

By Sabreena Merchant, Ben Pickman and Chantel Jennings

The Division I Board of Directors on Tuesday introduced a highly anticipated proposal to include financial units for the women’s NCAA basketball tournament, a practice already existing on the men’s side. The fund, if passed in a final vote in January involving the full Division I membership, would begin during the 2025 women’s NCAA Tournament with payouts starting during the 2025-26 fiscal year.

Conferences are awarded units — a fixed amount of revenue — for each game that their teams play in the tournament. The conference then splits the payout among its member schools and has the authority to divide the amount at its discretion. For a mid-major conference, units can dramatically increase total revenue.

Assuming the vote goes through, units will be dispersed from the aforementioned fund. The fund will begin at $15 million in 2025-26 before increasing to $20 million in 2026-27 and $25 million in 2027-28. After that, the funds would grow at the same rate as all other Division I revenue distribution funds (around 2.9 percent).

The proposal comes in the wake of the media rights deal the NCAA signed with ESPN in January 2024.

The eight-year, $920 million deal included the domestic rights to 40 championships,…

The NCAA’s new name, image and likeness transparency platform, NIL Assist, went live on Thursday morning, providing deidentified NIL compensation information, as well as a service provider registry and educational programming.

The app and website, created in conjunction with Teamworks, creates for the first time a public database-like platform where athletes and the public can find the average and median earnings for NIL deals, sortable by conference, sport, position and type of NIL transaction. It can show, for example, what an average SEC quarterback makes for a social media post.

In January, the Division I Council adopted new rules requiring athletes to disclose to their schools any NIL agreement exceeding $600, including terms of the deal, services rendered and payment. The schools then must share the information, stripped of names, to the NCAA at least twice per year. More than 20 states already require similar disclosures.

“We’ve heard from coaches, student-athletes, their families, they want some information about what the market is yielding, and we think if we do it publicly, that’s the best way to do it,” NCAA vice president of academic and membership affairs David Schnase said. “There are going to be some who want way more information than this is going to…

UConn star Paige Bueckers is signing a name, image and likeness deal with Unrivaled, the new three-on-three league that promises the highest average pay in pro women’s basketball, sources briefed on the deal said. The deal will make Bueckers the first NCAA athlete to receive ownership equity in a league.

Bueckers, who is entering her fifth season at UConn, is expected to join an Unrivaled team after her first WNBA season, the sources said. The current deal does not include playing services because of NIL restrictions.

With a 10-15 percent ownership pool for players, Unrivaled, which was announced by WNBA stars Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier in July 2023, has been aggressive with its pursuit of WNBA stars. The league will include six franchises with 30 players total. The league cap for the 30 players will be at least $7.5 million, an average of $250,000, the sources said — just above the WNBA supermax of $241,000.

The league will officially launch in January.

“Women’s sports is on such a rise, and it feels like everyone is benefiting from that except the women in the sport, and obviously that’s something we’re trying to change and then also create generational wealth for these women,” Collier told The Athletic in May. “From the beginning, (Stewart) and I…

In a nod to its four West Coast newcomers, the Big Ten will hold its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments in Las Vegas one time each in the next four years, the league office announced Wednesday.

The news comes eight days after Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti announced that Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium will remain as host of the Big Ten football championship game through 2028.

Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena will host the 2027 women’s and the 2028 men’s basketball tournament. The Pac-12, the former home of new Big Ten members USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington, staged its men’s basketball tournament at T-Mobile Arena from 2017 to 2024; its women’s tournament had been held at other Las Vegas venues since 2019.

Other men’s basketball tournament future sites includes Indianapolis’ Gainbridge Fieldhouse in 2025 and ’27 and Chicago’s United Center in ’26. Gainbridge Fieldhouse also will stage the ’25 and ’26 women’s basketball tournaments, while Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena will host for the first time during the 2028 tournament.

“I’ve been really pleased in the interest from cities across, not just from the football side, but men’s and women’s basketball was just really good,” Petitti told The Athletic last week.

It’s a similar move to the…

LILLE, France — For the last seven Summer Olympics, Carol Callan has woken up on the morning of the opening ceremonies with a checklist and a hypothetical fire extinguisher. The checklist contained everything that could conceivably go awry: missing shoelaces, practice schedules in need of tweaks, backup transit solutions, alternate uniforms being packed in the off-chance that Team USA’s opponents showed up in the wrong gear. Every metaphorical pothole that could exist between that moment and a gold medal was already foreseen (and pre-fixed) by Callan, who from 1996 through the Tokyo Games in 2021 was the director of the women’s program for USA Basketball.

But Friday, the day of the opening ceremonies, Callan awoke in Paris following a red-eye flight from the States. There was no checklist or fire extinguisher. No shoelaces stored away. No file of phone numbers for backup transit solutions available in Paris. After helping Team USA to its seventh consecutive gold medal in Tokyo, she stepped away to join FIBA full-time.

Though her role is adjacent and continues the growth of basketball worldwide and, specifically, for women in the game, it is much different now. And as the Games kick off and Team USA goes for its eighth gold medal in the streak — its first without Callan…

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…