kreed5120

He probably can't afford to settle for less and if it was a lock and shut case Kent would have offered nothing. I don't really know the details of his contract or the infraction so it's impossible to know if it's a wise decision or not. Time will tell.

It's because what Kent offered him was less than what his contract stated. He's wanting all the money guaranteed to him, not a partial total.

He can't afford to simply walk away from the buy out. He has creditors that he already couldn't afford to pay.

Perhaps his agent reached out to Memphis staff to see if there was interest.

The 2025 season was a lost cause already. The talent level is that of a bad FCS roster. The ramifications of not having a coach in place more impacts the 2026 and beyond. It's going to be challenging for Kent to recruit for the future without a coach.

Daniel Rivera transferring out of UMass. He averaged 11.9 points, 7.4 rebounds, and 1.8 assists last year. He transferred into the program this past year from Bryant so this will be his 3rd school in 3 years.

Tennessee QB is holding out of camp as he's wanting his pay increased from $2.4 million to $4 million. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/44630900/qb-nico-iamaleava-skips-vols-practice-amid-nil-talks-sources-say

The news is a bit old, but I didn't see it posted elsewhere. The NCAA is looking to expand the regular season from 31 games to 32 games. That way teams have more opportunities to play more games against other conferences. https://www.ncaa.org/news/2025/3/25/media-center-mens-and-womens-basketball-oversight-committees-propose-32-game-maximum-contest-limits.aspx

I'd say $ has just recently started going to basketball and it's already paying dividends. We didn't even have a practice facility for basketball until this past year. Football has had theirs for 20 years. Football also plays in one of the nicest stadiums in all of the G5. Meanwhile, basketball has a bottom 2-3 arena in the MAC. Basketball has capitalized on the additional funding (largely donor given) by making 3 NCAA tournament appearances in 4 years. We're only the 2nd team in MAC history to do that. Buffalo being the other. Meanwhile, in 30 years all football has achieved is 1 MAC championship and 3 bowl appearances. Money had been flowing to football for decades and still is. It wouldn't surprise me if the University spends more on Infocision alone than it does funding the entire basketball program. Football had it's time to shine, but failed. Our long-term struggles can't be blamed on lack of NIL and scheduling. NIL has only existed for 3-4 years and it was maybe 10 years ago that we started scheduling multiple buy games. We're not going to have Groce and Bud forever. Let's make the most of it. When basketballs window of opportunity closes we can reevaluate.

Why keep throwing more good money after bad? We've seen little to no improvement on the money we've already spent on football (stadium, field house, multiple coach buyouts, etc) The amount of money it will take to compete in football, even at the G5 level, is going to be absurd as that's what 90% of the FBS schools will be chasing. Dollars will go much further in basketball.

AJ Brown has entered the portal. Reports are he's going to Florida to play with his brother.

The article hinted at that already. It said solid MAC players had been going for 20k-100k before. Now with revenue sharing those players making 80k-100k before will be making 150k or more. Revenue sharing will be done at the school level as the MAC right now doesn't have any requirements or stipulations. Also, schools can allocate to the different sports as they wish. If let's say school A commits 1 million with 50% going to men's basketball, that's $500k they didn't have before. If school B commits $800k to revenue sharing, but only allocates 15% of that to men's basketball, as they're going all in on football instead, that's 120k. That means school A has an additional $380k now to spend on men's basketball compared to school B. I think you will see more G5 specialize in 1 sport as trying to out spend your peers in both will be too costly.

An article was done regarding MAC basketball to see how much players are getting paid and what teams are spending the most NIL. They label Akron and UMass as 1(A) and 1(B) in spending. One MAC coach polled believes Akron is spending $1 million, or more, on this year's roster. They also said that guards are much cheaper to get in the portal compared to bigs due to how they're in short supply. That seems to be true as every MAC board I've viewed I've seen posters complain about big depth, including this one. https://www.toledoblade.com/sports/college/2025/04/09/briggs-wonder-what-mac-basketball-players-are-getting-paid-we-found-out/stories/20250409124

I shared this link elsewhere. It might be useful for you to include it on your original post. Someone has been updating it and inputting stats. Buffalo for example has 4 incoming transfers, but 3 of them are very much under the radar since they're D2/NAIA players. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1_KQr_u9-3pHbYajqHmII1vuwYWZJLmw2UImJrAsiIIM/htmlview?pli=1

For those interested, I found this elsewhere on the internet. It lists all the incoming and outgoing transfers for the MAC, including player stats. It was probably last updated 2-3 days ago as I see Vanderjagt listed for Toledo, but not Ohio's transfers. I'm sure it will be fully updated soon. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1_KQr_u9-3pHbYajqHmII1vuwYWZJLmw2UImJrAsiIIM/htmlview?pli=1

UMass has lost 8-9 players to the portal. They did just bring in a top 100 JUCO rated player to replace some of the production lost. I'm sure they will be active and add more. Their fan base doesn't seem to believe they will compete with Akron this coming year, but that it will be a top 4 MAC team. Miami has their 2nd best player and 2 additional rotational players in the portal. They still haven't added anyone. I think for them it's too soon to tell. They could be improved if Craft decides to return. Otherwise they will have to replace 26ppg, 9 rpg, and 5 assists from the loss of Craft, Potter, and Cooper. Ohio is losing AJ Clayton to graduation and Elmore James to the portal. That roughly offsets what they've added in the portal. I think they would still need to add another piece, which is certainly possible, in order to see meaningful improvement. Kowalchoke has had luck both raiding other MAC rosters and finding guys at the D2 level in prior years. I think they will be about on par with what they were this year.

Exactly, revenue sharing is about to start and it's not like the University has deep pockets. Akron revenue sharing $1 million to pay players goes much further to building a competitive roster than a flashy arena would and costs a fraction of the price. The JAR is like a 12 year old Toyota. It's not flashy, maybe even has a few rust spots, but it's still dependable to get you from point A to point B. When it starts to become dilapidated then it becomes a different conversation.

If they did it would probably only be situational and for limited minutes.

I think way too much stock gets placed on who starts. I feel what's more important is who Groce has in to close out games and how many minutes everyone logs. My guess is he'll ride the hot hand.

I think they added 4 or 5 years to his existing deal. Also, it appeared to be intentionally meant to stay silent by both Groce and the University at the time. Likely because it wasn't long ago Akron said they needed to do another round of budget cuts. It's not a great look giving your highest paid employee a raise while eliminating programs and other jobs. The ABJ would eat that up even though Groce is worth the money.

Doesn't she already have her bachelor's degree? According to ESPN next year she will be a 3rd year senior so I'm guessing she must have done junior college before Memphis, but am no expert. In that case she could be looking to start her masters. My comment also wasn't about 4 schools in 4 years, which is dumb. More about if you spent 2 years at a school and they're no closer to winning than when you first got there it's understandable that you might want to look elsewhere. There isn't going to be huge NIL dollars thrown around in women's hoops or other Olympic sports unless you're at the top of the game. I imagine players jumping around yearly to the highest bidder in those sports will be far less common than in men's hoops.

I don't think that comment changes much. He was going to replace Gray in the lineup, which is still what I see likely happening. Akron will almost certainly start 3 guards, 1 wing, and 1 big. It's an improvement in size over the 4 guards and 1 big lineup we deployed last year.

That's a likely take. It's surprising the AD said in the article stated he thinks it will help Toledo basketball if that's the case. Other places online I've seen online are projecting when revenue sharing is fully implemented, FBS football will get ~60%, mens basketball 25-30%, and all other sports would split the remaining 10-15%. If a schools punts on football to focus on basketball and other sports, that gives them a fairly decent advantage in those sports.

Even before NIL it was challenging for bottom feeding teams to keep their best players. Those players want the opportunity to play meaningful games in March. Once you start adding NIL into the mix, now those players can both get paid more and have a chance of competing. What real incentive is there to stay?

Their basketball team was just gutted. One of their best players just went to conference rival Ohio. If they have all this money, where is it getting spent?