The University of Arkansas will discontinue its men’s and women’s tennis programs at the conclusion of the 2026 spring season. “After considerable reflection and thoughtful discussion, we have made the very difficult decision to discontinue our men’s and women’s tennis programs,” Vice Chancellor and Director of Athletics Hunter Yurachek said.
Student-athlete eligibility in college sports is more muddled and legally combative than ever. Changes now under consideration could seek to resolve that.
A group of 18 Univ. of Nebraska football players are challenging the College Sports Commission (CSC) over rejected NIL deals, according to Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger. The players “are challenging more than a million dollars of third-party NIL deals rejected” by CSC. “Husch-Blackwell, a national law firm familiar with handling college athletics cases,” has been retained in the case. “Multiple university administrators” tell Dellenger that their athletes are also considering arbitration after rejected NIL contracts.
The CEO of the College Sports Commission, the new body charged with approving athletes’ outside name, image and likeness (NIL) deals, said Tuesday the organization is running into unexpected challenges due to a surge of school-affiliated deals it believes do not comply with the rules the schools themselves established.
Iowa State Cyclones made an incredibly difficult decision to suspend their women’s gymnastics season after only four competitions on Feb. 8. Conflicts arose between individual teammates, members of the coaching staff and parents that made it impossible for the team to operate properly. However, several players have reported off the record the systemic issues with the program dating back before 2018 across several atheltic staff and coaches that does not sync with the timeline this was a current player issue but the same issues related to lack of funding of the program as the key issue.
Next week, President Donald Trump is set to host a roundtable to discuss the future of college sports. But no current college athletes (or active coaches) were invited to participate, according to a list of invitees obtained by Front Office Sports. The list is subject to change. But it offers a window into the type of group Trump hoped to assemble to discuss issues plaguing college sports.
This week should be an exciting one for athletes on Marshall’s women’s swimming and dive team, who are competing at the American Athletic Conference championships in Greensboro, N.C., through Saturday. Instead it has become, in the words of a parent of one of the swimmers, a “whirlwind of emotions” following the news that the university has decided to cut the team at the end of the season. That means as many 30 scholarship athletes will need to decide whether to transfer or end their college careers when the conference tournament is over.
Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater, chief of the DOJ’s antitrust division, announced on Thursday she is stepping down—a move that could increase the odds of a settlement between the government and Live Nation and invite new thinking on antitrust enforcement and athletes’ rights in college sports at a pivotal time.
If you watched a minute of college football this fall, you saw the ads. A voice-over darkly warns that, without congressional action, college sports face an existential crisis. NIL is forcing schools to cut women’s sports and Olympic programs. The very fabric of amateur athletics is unraveling. The solution, viewers are told, is the SCORE Act. It would solve the crisis, though it’s not really explained how.
There are three proposals in front of Congress, will any of them progress and would they even help maintain the NCAA’s relevance?