I thought that the ladies played well after a slow start. The key I thou8gh would be the lack of depth of TCU. But in the 4th quarter when we should have made them work hard on defense, we too often to quick shots that didn't fall. Hats off to TCU they played like they wanted it more. Like you Terry, I'll miss some of our fine players.
Miles is in the Portal, not a big shock that she is leaving but most thought that it would be for the WNBA. She already has a BA and MS from ND so she's done well in the classroom and was rumored to be the #2 pick in the upcoming WNBA draft. The big shock though is that she is entering the portal. Lots of discussion on that, one of the thoughts is that she wants to wait for the new WNBA/CBA agreement which will be more favorable to the players and that she's going to command a big $$$ NIL agreement where ever she end up in college. Good luck to her. Here's what one respected poster speculated. - Liv is conflicted about college vs. WNBA, as she explained in post-game comments. - Plus, she just turned an ankle and her knee may be bothering her after a whole first season back. In short, her body can use a break rather than plunge into another intense season. And there is no Olympic break this summer for WNBA rookies. - As noted, she's leery of a lot of things in the WNBA, so perhaps the CBA negotiations can address some of these concerns before the '26 draft. Meanwhile.... - She's a Double Domer and a bit tiring of the school scene, but ... - NIL. It's rumored U$C paid Kiki Iriafen some $800,000 leave Stanford for the Trojans. Chavez went to Oklahoma for monies reported to be north of that. - So, Liv could get an NIL deal, play somewhere for a year and see what the redone CBA contract does for rookies....got to be better, less restrictive than it is now.
Portal is a way of life in college these days, I saw where over 1000 girls are in the portal. At ND the word is that Markus Burton is not likely to enter the portal and if he doesn't decide to go pro he'll come back to ND. Good news for Coach Shrewsberry. Even Purdue has dipped into the portal for a big man as noted in another subject. This years Purdue squad was 100% homegrown, not a common theme in the sport. Duke is a little different in that while they have a lot of guys who are Duke guys, most of them are 1 and done freshmen. They do have some portal guys though as well. Both Coach Shrewsberry and Coach Ivey are going to need to bring in some portal players. Coach Ivey only has 1 freshman coming next year and losing Miles,Westbeld,Citron,King and Karlen. There isn't a load of players returning either to fill in the gaps. We do have 3 players who will be coming back from injury in KK Bransford, Kylie Watson and Emma Risch. But she's going to need at least 3 others to fill out the roster. Big time rebuild for her. Coach Shrewsberry has a good freshmen class coming in and this years freshmen have some potential but he needs some solid upper classmen to fill in the gaps from the Portal.
Emma Risch in the Portal she was injured her 2 years here and never played very much. She arrived with a lot of hope and a reputation as a 3pt shooter. Hope she gets healthy.
From a NDNation poster who seems to really know his stuff with regards to ND and NIL. On the heels of the Miles announcement of entering the transfer portal, there have been a number of posts about NIL money and what ND should or shouldn't be doing in the NIL arena. Some of these posts seem to lack an informed understanding as to the current NIL $ landscape and how ND fits into such landscape; so I thought it might be helpful to provide a brief overview of where ND NIL has been, where it's currently going, and what appear to be the current rules that will govern NIL payments to athletes in the next few years. Where ND has been - After the NCAA adopted an interim policy in 2021 on NIL money being permissible without adversely affecting the eligibility of student athletes, in January 2022, Brady Quinn launched ND's collective, Friends of University of Notre Dame (FUND), a nonprofit NIL collective. The benefits of FUND’s nonprofit status were that as a 501(c)(3) organization, the collective could be tax exempt and offer donors tax-write-offs [Cue Seinfeld and Kramer's "write-off" Youtube clip]. For two years, donors sent payments to the collective, and athletes would receive NIL earnings in exchange for doing charity work. In its first year, the collective earned $7.7 million in revenue and paid $1.7 million to approximately 150 athletes. In the collective's second year, revenues were $20 million, and FUND distributed $5.1 million to ND athletes. (The collective also donated money directly to charities, including the local Boys and Girls Club, YMCA, and Ronald McDonald House.). While ND athletes were free to pursue NIL deals on their own, it is estimated that the collective's dollars represented about 80% of the total NIL payments to players. In September 2024, FUND announced that it was shutting down the collective and would cease accepting donations at the end of 2024. Where ND is going - In September 2024, ND announced the launch of RALLY, a collective and lifestyle agency for collegiate athletics dedicated to creating meaningful and market-based name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities for Notre Dame student-athletes. RALLY was formed as a for-profit corporation; likely in response to the May 2023 IRS Memo questioning whether the operation of an NIL Collective furthers an exempt purpose under Section 501(c)(3). RALLY is headed up by a Board that includes chairman Jack Shields ‘83 and board members Gayla Compton, Jordan Cornette ‘05, Matt Moroun, Kevin O’Connor ‘89 and Hannah Storm ‘83. Rally executive director Kayla Rogers previously served as the NIL athlete marketing manager at Altius Sports Partners. She's a 2012 University of Delaware grad, where she played basketball. The new collective will work with a liaison on the football team to help connect with players’ agents and facilitate deals but won’t be directly involved in the recruiting process. RALLY is going to be raising money for ND athletes through endorsement deals, but will not be disbursing any payments to the players. This new collective approach is intended to dovetail and supplement the new revenue-sharing concept that has come out of the impending final approval of a $2.7 billion settlement of three pending federal antitrust cases, most notably the House v. NCAA case pending in federal district court in the Northern District of California. The current NIL landscape - Judge Claudia Wilken granted preliminary approval of the House vs. NCAA settlement on Oct. 7, 2024. The final approval hearing is scheduled for next Monday, Apr. 7, 2025. Assuming final approval is granted, NCAA schools will be able to spend a maximum of $23.1 million each year in compensation for the use of student athletes’ name, image, likeness, and that cap will increase on a yearly basis during the ten-year-long settlement agreement. The spending limit is based on a formula that gives NCAA athletes 22% of the money the average power conference school makes from media rights deals, ticket sales, and sponsorships. ND has already stated that it will spend the maximum allowed each year. Notably, NIL collectives, or groups of donors who compensate athletes with funding and endorsements, will also be able to provide NIL payments to players as long as the NCAA deems them to be legitimate forms of endorsement compensation, i.e., the athlete must provide a service in exchange for the payment, not just receive money for their athletic ability alone. This means that other collectives like OSU's, which reportedly paid out $20 million to players when FUND was disbursing $5 million to ND players, will still be able to operate and supplement the school's revenue-sharing payments. It remains to be seen how such other collectives will be able to navigate the IRS "no tax-exempt status" position and remain in compliance with the new NCAA guidelines regarding "legitimate endorsement vs. simply pay-for-play". In that regard, ND has abandoned the "FUND collective direct payment" route in favor of the "RALLY talent agency" route. RALLY's new executive director has publicly stated that the $5 million paid by FUND to athletes is considered just the starting point for how much money RALLY hopes to raise in endorsement deals for ND athletes. So at least for the near future, it is likely that total NIL compensation to ND athletes will lag behind the amounts being paid by other schools like OSU, U$C, Texas, etc. In a nutshell, broad statements about ND RALLY matching all NIL offers to ND's top athletes are certainly idealistic goals, but they're not realistic statements for the immediate future.
Good Story about a kid from Detroit who has had a hard life but has endured and will come to ND on a full ride. Only thing that gripes me about the story is the author calls ND, Notre Dame University..grrrrrr. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/n...en-earns-full-ride-to-notre-dame/82747699007/
One of my favorite ND recruits/players was Drew Pyne. Not because he was a great QB, although the one year he ended up starting he was pretty good and almost beat USC at the end with Caleb Williams, but threw a bad INT that killed us. As we all know he's now been to ASU and Missouri and has now entered the transfer portal again. He was in the freshman class of 2020 at ND. He's 24 years old. He did come back to ND and finished his degree before moving on to Missouri. I can't imagine he'll be a starter anywhere but who knows. I guess he wants to give it another try.
Well our 5 star recruit from 2024, Kate Koval, has entered the Portal. This is a big time loss for the Irish and Coach Ivey. I can see why Emma and Olivia hit the portal, but Kate seemingly would have a big future with ND. I guess she either didn't like being at ND or didn't like Coach Ivey and Coach Owens who coaches the post players. But this is a big time loss.
Don't get me started on mistakes like that and others by lazy writers who don't take the time to check the accuracy of their work. I don't know if it's the lack of fundamentals in education or just plain laziness. What do I know? I'm just a crabby old man.
Wow, Kylie Watson to the portal. This is a complete shock. She was all around the program during her rehab, she seemed to be as big a fan of ND WBB as anybody. She's also pretty much guaranteed that she would have been a starter next season. What has gone wrong?
With Olivia Miles certainly one factor could be NIL, as I posted earlier there are some big dollars out there for somebody like Olivia. Kylie and Emma are both coming off of injury, and for Emma it's 2 years in a row so hard to imagine they have big $$ out there, Kate was a 5 star recruit and didn't get to play that much in the season and quite frankly when I did see her out there she was not a high level performing freshman as you might expect from a 5 star kid.