The past week has featured a number of rather important sports stories. 

Some are quite newsworthy and will have lasting impact.  Others seem to be overblown stories being pushed by the media just to meet deadline requirements.

How do you view these stories?  News or Snooze?

Oklahoma Sooners downed North Carolina to claim the men’s College World Series title

A: Newsworthy

The SEC just won its seventh consecutive men’s College World Series baseball title after unseeded Oklahoma blasted the favored and #5 seed North Carolina Tar Heels 13-2 on Monday night in Omaha.

OU’s “Slugging Sooners” K-O’d every opponent they faced during the postseason in their unprecedented march to college baseball’s national title.

Oklahoma barely made it into the NCAA 64-team tournament field.  OU finished in 11th place in the SEC regular season with a lowly 14-16 conference record.

The Sooners took advantage of their good fortune to make the college baseball playoffs and took down #2 seed Georgia Tech in Atlanta in the opening round. They next traveled to #15 Kansas in the Super Regionals and swept the Jayhawks right out of the tournament.

In Omaha, OU took down #7 Alabama and #3 Georgia to earn a spot in the best-of-three title series against #5 North Carolina.

Yes, Oklahoma definitely caught fire at the right time of the season.  It was their first baseball title since 1994. Well done, Sooners!

Last week, troubled college QB Brendan Sorsby entered the NFL Supplemental Draft.  This week, the NFL canceled their own Supplemental Draft.

A: Snooze worthy

I just can’t muster up a lot of tears for either Brendan Sorsby or Texas Tech right now.  If anyone was wearing the black hat this week, it was definitely the NFL.

Brendan Sorsby (as we’ll explain later) made a timely application to the NFL before the league’s Monday, June 22 deadline to enter the Supplemental Draft.

On Tuesday, the pro football league completely hosed this young man by abruptly canceling its annual Supplemental Draft.  The event is normally conducted in August for a handful of eligible football players who did not participate in April’s seven-round selection process.

As you may recall, Brendan Sorsby was the young man who admitted to betting on college football games (including those of his own team) along with many other sports.

This spring, he acknowledged having a gambling addiction and went away for counseling and treatment.  Upon completion of the program, the NCAA ruled that Sorsby was still ineligible to play football this fall at Texas Tech as an incoming transfer student.  Sorsby then sued the NCAA in a final attempt to regain his eligibility.

With unprecedented speed, a court in northwest Texas ruled that Brendan Sorsby could, indeed, play football this fall for the Red Raiders.  His trial vs. the NCAA was generously moved to begin during February, 2027 (long after this year’s football season ends).

The Big 12 Conference objected, too. 

They wanted Sorsby banned this season for breaking the rules on gambling.  The conference met to determine an appopriate punishment for Texas Tech if Sorsby hit the field this fall for the Red Raiders.

Sorsby (as we predicted) did the right thing last week.  He said adios to Texas Tech and declared his intention to participate in the NFL’s Supplemental Draft.  The NFL then pulled the rug on this event and left Sorsby homeless (football-wise) for this fall.

Don’t feel sad for Brendan Sorsby, though.  Texas Tech (whose athletics program is supported by several wealthy energy leaders) agreed to pay the young man the estimated $5 million his 2026 NIL deal is worth anyway.

Invest it well, young man!

Speaking of drafts, the NBA held its annual player draft this week

A: Snooze worthy

Quick!  Tell me the first round NBA selection made by your favorite NBA team on Tuesday night.

Even many of the players being selected during the first and second rounds of the NBA Draft didn’t even know where they would be playing.

That’s because an incredible 27 of the 60 players taken in Rounds 1 and 2 of the NBA Draft were immediately traded by the team which had just selected them.

What’s going on here?

The first 12 selections in Round 1 will be playing (for now) for the teams which drafted them.  Ten of the next 18 players selected were shipped to another team moments after receiving a ceremonial team cap and shaking NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s hand on-stage.

Round 2 was an even bigger mess.  A total of 17 of the 30 players (57%) picked in the second round were immediately traded to another team.

Outside of the first 12 players selected in Round 1, the majority of basketball players picked in this week’s NBA Draft apparently were not highly coveted.

Cheap advice – Keep your bags packed!

The NCAA recommends college athletes be allowed to play for five seasons over five years?!!

A: Newsworthy

College athletes have long been given four years of athletic eligibility to participate in varsity athletics.  A flawed concept called taking a “red shirt” was used to allow underutilized players (generally freshmen) to participate in team practices for an extra year prior to playing in games.

This concept kept getting pushed to the limits.  Players injured before the midway point in a season started requesting the NCAA to grant them an extra year of eligibility.

This week, the NCAA’s Division 1 Cabinet issued a proposed rule change to make this issue much simpler (we hope).  The athlete will be allowed five years to participate in college athletics from the earlier of the date of full-time enrollment or the academic year following his/her 19th birthday.

This “Five in Five” concept is expected to begin this fall.

Yes, it means that a healthy athlete could (potentially) play five consecutive years of major college athletics.

The NCAA has finally acted on a relevant issue for college athletics.  Unsurprisingly, there has already been some legal pushback filed by players.

Stay tuned to see if this change to college athletics is actually implemented this fall.

The PGA Tour announced some radical changes to its structure beginning in 2028

A: Newsworthy

LIV Golf has been criticized by many, but the upstart league has forced the stodgy PGA Tour to make some radical changes.

The PGA Tour announced on Tuesday that there will be two “tracks” for top pro golfers beginning in the year 2028.

A new “Championship” division will feature up to 24 tournament events from February through August. This grouping will feature the top 100 ranked golfers playing 72 holes with a 36-hole cut (as before).  The prize money in these events will total at least $20 million.

There will also be a new “Challenger” level that will play at least 20 events from February through August. These will have larger fields (144 golfers) and 36-hole cuts, but the tournament prize money will be about $4 million per event.

Players who win two tournaments in one season at the “Challenger” level will immediately be promoted up to the Championship division.

Golfers in the Championship upper division who finish their season ranked #91-100 will be demoted to the Challenger level for the following year.

More details are expected to be announced in the coming months.

This announcement quietly confirms that the PGA Tour continues to struggle attracting its top golfers to appear in some of its mid-level tournaments.  Those events usually offer a lower payout than average, too.

In case you were wondering, LIV Golf (which might fold at any time) is paying its golfers a total tournament purse of $30 million in 2026.  However, LIV Golf is only playing 14 tournaments worldwide this year.

Caitlin Clark’s latest WNBA assailant gets suspended for one game

A: Snooze worthy

Many fans of the Women’s NBA (WNBA) want to watch the talented scoring outside shooting machine named Caitlin Clark produce plenty of points like the NBA’s Steph Curry.

The WNBA’s television ratings and attendance rise whenever third-year shooting guard Caitlin Clark’s Indiana Fever is featured on national TV or playing in an opponent’s arena.

Unfortunately, many players in the WNBA just don’t like Clark.  Some have made her life exceedingly difficult by playing excessively physical defense against the 6′ shooting guard.

The number of dirty plays involving Caitlin Clark on the receiving end are becoming far too commonplace in the WNBA.  Worse yet, the three referees on the court are letting a lot of the rough play go without even blowing their whistles.

Can you imagine if talented NBA offensive stars such as Pistol Pete Maravich or Larry Bird were being routinely mugged and injured by opposing players?  The men’s pro basketball league understood the value which those stars brought to their league.

On the other hand, the WNBA doesn’t seem to have a clue.

Another scary moment involving Caitlin Clark (fifth in the WNBA in scoring at 21 points/game) occurred Wednesday night as the Indiana Fever played the Phoenix Mercury.

Clark was tripped while handling the basketball.

As she laid on the floor, Phoenix forward Alyssa Thomas (who is listed at 6’2” and weighs 202 pounds according to the WNBA website) “recklessly made contact with her fist to the throat area of Caitlin Clark.”

That quote was issued by the league AFTER the game when this play was reviewed. For her part, Alyssa Thomas was assessed a Level 2 Flagrant foul and then received a one game suspension.

Question:  How could three highly trained WNBA referees miss all of that mayhem on the floor? 

What were they looking at?  Or, perhaps, were they instructed before the game to overlook it?

None of the officials blew a whistle on the play despite the rather obvious unnecessary roughness imparted by Caitlin Clark’s opponents.

Whether the WNBA players like Caitlin Clark or not, they better hope that she doesn’t vanish to play go basketball in Europe next season.

If that she should leave, fan interest in the WNBA may quickly revert back to the mediocre levels it had before Clark entered the league just three years ago. 

*Ol’ SwampSwami and his long-suffering sports wife will be out next week babysitting a couple of our energetic grandsons in N. Louisiana.  We’ll visit again after the July 4th holiday.   

Happy 250th birthday, America! 

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