DALLAS — LSU forward Angel Reese isn’t just leading her team to the Final Four. She’s also leading the entire sport in name, image, and likeness deals.

The 2023 AP All-American has inked a total of 17 NIL deals, according to a recent SponsorUnited report. Only four other Division I athletes have more than her — and none of them play basketball.

Reese has an estimated earning potential of $392,000, which ranks sixth across D-I women’s basketball. She previously said her NIL earnings top the value of a WNBA contract.

In addition to more traditional sports partnerships with companies like Bose and JanSport, Reese has partnered with brands that reflect her image as the “Bayou Barbie,” like luxury fashion brand Coach.

Juggling NIL and tournament play isn’t easy. 

“It’s been a lot,” she told reporters on Thursday, explaining that she’s had to stick to a strict posting schedule. Reese’s last pregame post, for example, was Thursday at 1 p.m. ET.

NIL Support Staff

Reese isn’t the only Tiger with NIL success — her teammate Flau’jae Johnson has a budding rap career and a deal with RocNation. 

But unlike other teams, LSU head coach Kim Mulkey isn’t involved at all. “I don’t want to deal with it,” Mulkey told reporters. “It’s too much. I just want to coach.” 

Instead, Mulkey designated an assistant coach to help players navigate NIL.

Mulkey’s Tigers take on Virginia Tech in Friday’s first semifinal at 7 p.m. ET. Iowa faces South Carolina in the second game, with a 9 p.m. ET tipoff scheduled.

If Jim Ratcliffe’s bid for Manchester United is successful, he’ll likely have to give up his stake in another European soccer club.

The British billionaire and his company INEOS — which he founded in 1998 and serves as its chairman and CEO — hold a stake in Ligue 1 side OGC Nice.

Current UEFA rules state that an owner is only allowed to have one club in a European club competition at any given time — meaning that if Ratcliffe wins the race to buy Man United, the club would risk being excluded from the Champions League or Europa League if Nice were also to qualify.

Therefore, Ratcliffe could be forced into selling his portion in Nice should his bid win out for the chance to buy United, according to ESPN. Ratcliffe, a lifelong Manchester United fan, would probably happily oblige.

Earlier in March, UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin said that the federation is considering softening its rules pertaining to shared ownership across its competitions.

Ratcliffe could also demonstrate that there is enough separation between his clubs to justify letting them play in the same competition, such as Red Bull did with its Leipzig and Salzburg clubs in 2017.

It’s far from a sure thing that Ratcliffe will even win the bidding war for Manchester United. Qatar’s Sheikh ­Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani reportedly submitted a bid “in the ballpark” of the Glazer family’s $7.4 billion asking price for the club — but Ratcliffe did not.

As Northwestern University gears up to potentially build a new $800 million stadium to replace the old Ryan Field, it’s getting significant pushback from the venue’s surrounding neighborhood.

The university is seeking a zoning change from the city of Evanston that would allow it to host concerts and serve alcohol at the stadium — something the 47,000-seat, 96-year-old current Ryan Field cannot do.

More than a thousand Evanston residents have signed a petition asking city leaders not to approve the construction of the stadium, which is being entirely funded by private money. Dissenters worry that adding alcohol to the stadium’s concessions will lead to drunken disruptions for the neighborhood, as well as “crimes of opportunity” in the late-night hours.

The petition’s organizers have pointed to hypocrisy from Northwestern board of trustees chair Peter Barris, who asked local government officials in Martha’s Vineyard to stop construction at a hotel across the bay from his vacation home in 2021.

“The surfacing of this personal circumstance, which is distinctly dissimilar to Northwestern’s proposal, is an attempt to distract from our goals — to transform a century-old stadium into a community asset that will benefit all of Evanston and create one of the finest stadiums in the country,” Barris told the Wall Street Journal.

The new stadium is just the latest development for Northwestern, which has spent roughly $1 billion over the last 10 years building up its athletic facilities on its private stretch of Lake Michigan shore.

Chelsea’s former owner had deeper tentacles in European soccer than previously known.

Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch who was forced to sell his Premier League club by the U.K. government after Russia invaded Ukraine, secretly funded the takeover of Vitesse Arnhem, a top-division club in the Netherlands, according to the Guardian. 

The oligarch proceeded to bankroll the Dutch club for years after, loaning it $127.6 million by 2015.

This financial arrangement came to light in what are being called the Oligarch Files, a cache of leaked data from a Cyprus-based offshore service provider called MeritServus.

Former Georgian player Merab Jordania, who is friendly with Abramovich, bought Vitesse Arnhem in 2010. Chelsea loaned many players to Vitesse Arnhem over the next decade.

Jordania, who owns Maltese club Valletta FC, left Vitesse Arnhem in 2013 and was replaced by another associate of Abramovich’s, Alexander Chigirinsky. 

Another Russian oligarch close to Abramovich, Valeriy Oyf, became majority shareholder in 2018. In March 2022, Oyf said he would resign from the team’s board and sell his shares in light of the Russia-initiated war.

The Royal Netherlands Football Association investigated the team’s connections to Chelsea in 2010 and 2015 but found no indications of managerial influence over the Dutch club.

Chelsea was taken over by the U.K. government and sold to a group led by Los Angeles Dodgers, Lakers, and Sparks co-owner Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital in a deal worth more than $5 billion, factoring in the team purchase itself and promised investments.