March 18, 2024

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March Madness has turned sour, at least among some colleges, as the recriminations rise from Selection Sunday. … SI’s new publisher enters an entirely different realm of expectation. … The former Jaguars employee who embezzled the team for more than $22 million owns up to a serious gambling addiction. … Plus: More on Long Beach State coach Dan Monson, Caitlin Clark, pro golf negotiations, and the Premier League’s Nottingham Forest.

— Eric Fisher [[link removed]] and David Rumsey [[link removed]]

March Sadness? NCAA Tournament Snubs Leave New Round of Scars [[link removed]]

Kareem Elgazzar/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK

March Madness, ordinarily one of the most joyous events in sports, is becoming weighed down by hurt feelings and recriminations.

The NCAA on Selection Sunday unveiled the 68-team field [[link removed]] for the men’s Division I basketball tournament, led by UConn as the top overall seed. While debates rage every year about perceived tournament snubs, the exclusions this year are arguably reaching a new level, raising new questions about how the brackets are filled.

Among the recent flash-points surrounding the 2024 tournament field:

Indiana State, ranked No. 28 in NCAA NET rankings [[link removed]], set a new record for the highest-ranked team in those tabulations to be left out of the tournament. That made Sycamores coach Josh Schertz brand the team’s history-making status as “beyond disappointing.” The Big East had particularly raw feelings after No. 32 St. John’s was left out of the tournament, a fate also befalling No. 58 Providence and No. 67 Seton Hall. The conference was the second best in all of D-I, according to noted statistician Ken Pomeroy, but received only three bids—its smallest total since 1993—compared to eight each for the Big 12 and SEC, and six for the Big Ten (KenPom conferences Nos. 1, 3, and 4). Providence coach Kim English lashed out at the metrics helping to inform the selection committee, particularly those appearing to reward teams for running up the score in games against lesser opponents. “I think the analytics are bulls***,” English told reporters. “I think you could schedule bad teams in your non-league [schedule] and beat the snot out of them. Coaching for so long has been a gentlemen’s agreement … but right now, [there] might be a change in college basketball.” St. John’s turned down an invitation to the second-tier National Invitation Tournament on Sunday, as did the Big 12’s Oklahoma and ACC’s Pittsburgh, with the start of the transfer portal holding some influence [[link removed]] on that decision. Red Storm coach Rick Pitino also denounced the NCAA’s evaluation metrics, saying, “I think we all should probably never mention that word [NET] again because it’s fraudulent. I think the NET is something that shouldn’t even be mentioned anymore.” Several other schools, including Indiana, Memphis, and Ole Miss, previously signaled they also had no interest in the NIT. The situation even captured the attention of Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), who posted [[link removed]] on X, “I don’t get it. So if you aren’t a football conference the NCAA isn’t interested.”

In each of these instances, millions of dollars are at stake [[link removed]] for the involved schools and their conferences.

Non–Power 5 conferences, meanwhile, have an additional burden in the tournament. Eight First Four and first-round games feature teams from outside the Power 5 pitted against one another, equal to the number of such games in last year’s field. While that guarantees at least eight non-elite teams will win at least one game, it also immediately eliminates an equal number.

New ‘Sports Illustrated’ Publisher Carries Big Opportunities, Bigger Expectations [[link removed]]

Brianna Paciorka/News Sentinel via Imagn Content Services, LLC

The new operator of Sports Illustrated is anything but a household name among general consumers, but for years it has been one of the most widely trafficked outfits in digital sports media. And while Minute Media’s acquisition of the SI publishing rights offers a new realm of hope for the long-embattled company, it also presents an entirely fresh set of expectations.

Minute Media struck [[link removed]] an agreement Monday with Authentic Brands Group—the licensing giant that owns SI—to take the magazine and website publishing rights previously held by The Arena Group. Founded in Israel in 2011 and now operating around the world, Minute Media owns digital brands such as The Players’ Tribune, FanSided, and the soccer-oriented 90min. Those titles have a certain prominence—and Minute Media has consistently ranked among the top 10 entities in U.S. digital sports media as measured monthly by Comscore—but the SI publishing rights bring an entirely different level of attention.

Executives for Minute Media clearly acknowledged the heft of that incoming task in a memo sent Monday to its own staffers.

“Sports Illustrated is the gold standard for sports journalism in the U.S and around the world, and has been for nearly 70 years across both print and digital media,” wrote Minute Media CEO and founder Asaf Peled. “The weight and power of that distinction cannot be understated.”

In addition to the core SI operations themselves, the agreement also includes the long-running SI Swimsuit edition, SI Kids, and SI’s FanNation.

The arrival of Minute Media represents a sizable turn for SI after months of rising turmoil that have included a near-total layoff [[link removed]] of the editorial staff, artificial intelligence controversies [[link removed]], and a combative [[link removed]] company culture under The Arena Group’s Manoj Bhargava.

The Minute Media deal offers an opportunity for SI to turn the page. But the deal also means a potential ideological clash between the short-form, mobile-oriented content Minute Media focuses on, and the long-form material that is core to SI’s venerable brand.

“We have said from the start that our top priorities are to keep Sports Illustrated alive, uphold the legacy of the institution and protect our union jobs,” Emma Baccellieri, staff writer for SI and vice chair for the SI Union, said in a statement to Front Office Sports. “We look forward to discussing a future with Minute Media that does that.”

To that end, Minute Media intends to take the next couple of weeks to assess future staffing and organizational needs.

The initial deal is for 10 years with the option to extend it with two more 10-year deals, a source with knowledge of the agreement tells FOS. Authentic will take an equity stake in Minute Media as part of the deal. The SI agreement follows a January fundraising by Minute Media that valued the company at more than $1 billion, with that influx involving large institutional investors such as HSBC and BlackRock.

—A.J. Perez contributed to this report.

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How LeBron James and JJ Redick Decided to Launch a Podcast [[link removed]]

Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports

LeBron James and JJ Redick announced the launch of a new podcast Monday, and FOS has a few more details about the genesis of the project and what to expect moving forward.

Episodes of Mind the Game will be produced by James’s Uninterrupted and Redick’s ThreeFourTwo Productions, featuring the two basketball savants dissecting the X’s and O’s of the game. A source familiar with the arrangement tells FOS that James and Redick came up with the idea of the podcast while talking hoops over dinner and wine in Las Vegas during the NBA In-Season Tournament ( “This should be the show! This is the show!” [[link removed]]), which the Lakers would go on to win.

Consistent with that meeting: The show will stay more focused on basketball than off-court topics, and the pair’s shared love of wine, as seen in a teaser [[link removed]] for the debut episode, will be a through line. Mind the Game’s YouTube page suggests the stars will sit down weekly, but with equally busy schedules, the source says a true cadence is unclear at this point; it will come down to when they each have time to record. And that YouTube home is important: Mind the Game will launch with no media (or advertising) partners, as James and Redick want the show and its format to be 100% their own, no notes from above, akin to what Stephen A. Smith and Pat McAfee have with their own independently produced shows that are syndicated to ESPN.

LOUD AND CLEAR You Make Your Bet, You Lie in It

Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

“You wake up in the middle of the night and you’re betting on Turkish women’s volleyball.”

—Amit Patel, in an exclusive interview with The Athletic [[link removed]], on the sports gambling habit that led him to embezzle more than $22 million from his former employer, the Jaguars, over the course of four years. Last week a judge sentenced Patel to six and a half years in prison and ordered him to repay Jacksonville $21.1 million. “I was battling with a secret addiction that nobody knew about,” Patel told The Athletic. “Everyone thought I was doing great, dandy. You know, on Instagram they see you having fun, you’re with your friends and family, but there’s a mental demon inside.”

STATUS REPORT Three Up, One Down

Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports

Dan Monson ⬆ Last Monday, Long Beach State informed its men’s basketball team coach that he would not return next season. Monson (above) then led his team to three straight victories in the Big West tournament to claim the conference championship and the school’s first NCAA tournament berth since 2012. Monson’s contract [[link removed]], which is expiring this year, has a base salary of $283,560, with an additional $16,440 in supplemental income and a $20,000 bonus for winning the conference tournament. As a 15-seed, Long Beach will face two-seed Arizona on Thursday. Upsetting the Wildcats and making it to the second round would earn Monson another $25,000.

Caitlin Clark ⬆ Iowa is a one-seed in the Albany 2 region of the women’s NCAA tournament, and ESPN has assigned [[link removed]] veteran reporter Holly Rowe to cover the Hawkeyes’ superstar exclusively during March Madness.

Golf negotiations ⬆ Several PGA Tour players, including Tiger Woods, and commissioner Jay Monahan are meeting with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, in the Bahamas on Monday. Ahead of the Players Championship last week, Monahan said [[link removed]] talks about a potential $3 billion were “accelerating.”

Nottingham Forest ⬇ The Premier League club is now in the relegation zone after receiving a four-point deduction for breaching [[link removed]] its profit and sustainability rules threshold by nearly $44 million.

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Conversation Starters The NCAA women’s college basketball tournament ends April 7, but the drama will extend through May 11—that’s when ABC and ESPN+ plan to premiere a four-part doc [[link removed]]following this season’s biggest story lines, including, of course, Caitlin Clark’s wild year. The story of the weekend: NC State coach Kevin Keatts, who earned himself a bonus, a raise, and a contract extension by leading the Wolfpack to an ACC Conference tournament title. Check out his pay bump. [[link removed]] Check out the career path [[link removed]] of Keith Dambrot, who coached LeBron James in high school and just led Duquesne to its first NCAA tournament appearance in 50 years. Editors’ Picks In Realignment: You May Take Their Teams, but You’ll Never Take Their NCAA Tourney Units [[link removed]]by Amanda Christovich [[link removed]]Prizes in the NCAA men’s tournament do not follow realigning schools like Oregon to their new conferences. Selection Sunday, Transfer Portal Monday: An Extra Layer of Madness As Players Flood the Portal [[link removed]]by Margaret Fleming [[link removed]]About 300 men and 200 women have declared for the portal already. ‘Sports Illustrated’ Will Continue to Publish [[link removed]]by Alex Schiffer [[link removed]] and A.J. Perez [[link removed]]The famed publication has a new licensing deal with Minute Media, which begins immediately. Advertise [[link removed]] Awards [[link removed]] Learning [[link removed]] Video [[link removed]] Podcast [[link removed]] Sports Careers [[link removed]] Written by Eric Fisher [[link removed]], David Rumsey [[link removed]] Edited by Peter Richman [[link removed]], Catherine Chen [[link removed]]

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