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“On Monday, Washington State announced a new partnership with a company called FanWord, which drew some pretty intense criticism online.

The deal is for FanWord Assist, a software platform that lets college athletics departments quickly produce game recaps, update player bios, and publish long-form features. How does it speed up the process?

You already know! FanWord provides a custom LLM where staffers can plug in a game’s play-by-play right after it ends and, moments later, have a story out the door.

But while the Cougars got raked for it, they are far from the only university that has adopted the software.”

» Driving The News. “To be fair, a lot of the criticism online was conflating the job of an athletic department with the job of a media outlet. Those are two different things with two very different goals. But while watching a webinar about schools adopting FanWord Assist, I gotta say… don’t love it.”

» Why It Matters. “While FanWord stresses it isn’t here to take away jobs, I have my doubts. If a school can’t find a way to use the students they have, can’t be bothered to fork over an extra $70,000 or whatever a year to pay them all minimum wage, so they can get valuable, on-the-job experience at the school they are paying to attend, how do you even call yourself a school anymore?”

» Zoom In. “Take a look at the recap of Tulsa’s opening season win against Oklahoma State. The piece alternates between using players' full names and last names. You get, in five references across six sentences, Tulsa’s QB called Baylor Hayes, Baylor Hayes, Hayes, Hayes, Baylor Hayes. There’s weirdly inconsistent field position references, with the ball spotted on the “OSU 35,” “the OSU33,” and the “Oklahoma St. 8.” And the sentences don’t roll off your tongue.”

» The Bottom Line. Some DIII institutions using FanWord include Cedar Crest, Dickinson, East Texas Baptist, Hamline, Haverford, Illinois Tech, Luther, Millsaps, Neumann, Occidental, Penn State Harrisburg, Simpson, Smith, Westminster (Pa.) and Wisconsin-Whitewater.

No. But now that the Division I Cabinet has adopted a proposal to shift men’s soccer to a year-round model, it could be coming sooner than later.

Competition segments will be held in both the fall and spring seasons with the championship tournament now occurring in the spring.

» Field Awareness. “The year-round playing season has long been supported by stakeholders in the men’s soccer community as a better way to develop talent in the sport. Advocates — including student-athlete representatives who serve on the Cabinet — also have argued that it would allow more time for rest and recovery between games for men’s soccer student-athletes, in addition to reduced weekday travel.”

» Of Note. “Under the new schedule, the men’s soccer regular season would be distributed over two semesters, maintaining the current limit on total games per year at 25. Teams would have the opportunity to schedule and play up to 18 games during the fall segment (starting in late August and concluding the week before Thanksgiving) and up to 10 games during the spring segment (starting in mid-February).”

» Worth Noting. The DI Women’s Soccer Oversight Committee reviewed the proposal and ultimately declined to propose a similar change in women’s soccer.

“Years of budget and staffing cuts have yet to solve Wittenberg University’s financial distress, but its president says the liberal-arts institution in Ohio has put in place the changes it needs to make to pull out of a tailspin that threatens the university’s future.

“We’ve made dramatic changes,” President Christian M. M. Brady told The Chronicle. “It’s a turnaround project, so to speak. We’re recognizing the fact that this is a university in a difficult place.”

» The Big Picture. “The litany of challenges is drawing attention from outside reviewers who are raising alarm over Wittenberg’s financial sustainability. The financial difficulties largely stem from the university’s cratering enrollment, which has dropped by nearly half over about a decade. Among those expressing doubts about Wittenberg are its outside auditors.”

» Reality Check. “The audit included two other markers of deep financial stress — notice of a technical default on a series of bonds and the existence of a letter of credit from a bank with the U.S. Department of Education listed as a beneficiary. The default doesn’t mean Wittenberg has missed any debt payments, but rather that it violated a requirement that its debt service-to-income ratio be above a one-to-one match.”

» Between The Lines. “The university has increased its net tuition revenue this year from just over $10,000 per student to closer to $15,000 per student by lowering the discount rate. It has brought in $13 million in donations, which helped balance last year’s budget and pay for the addition of new sports, which brought in more students. “We’ve added six new sports, and all their operations for the first five years are all funded by donor funds,” Brady said. “So the net tuition revenue on, say, our ice hockey team, our wrestling team, is the same as if they were not athletes.”

» News. “Leon Botstein, the former president of Bard College who stepped down from that post amid intense scrutiny of his ties with Jeffrey Epstein, will now sever all his connections with the college, including his professorship, The New York Times reports. The step follows a letter from the House Judiciary Committee to the institution that claimed Botstein “likely enabled and possibly even participated in” Epstein’s now-infamous abuse.”

» International Students. “The Trump administration wants to charge a significant fee for international students to work temporarily in the U.S. after graduation—a proposal that some warned would further deter foreigners from studying in the United States.”

» Soccer (M). Hanover gets a shot at the No. 2 team in Division I tonight, as the Panthers (4-3-4) travel to Bloomington to take on Indiana (10-0-2).

» Ice Hockey (W). “On Saturday, October 3, at halftime of the Homecoming football game, President Ian Baucom officially honored Emily "Mac" McNamara '07 with a posthumous appointment as Middlebury's fifth head women's ice hockey coach. McNamara passed away on September 11, 2026, following injuries sustained in a March automobile accident.”

“Students decorate these alcohol-filled jugs with names like “BORG to be wild” and “Teach me how to Borgie.”

A BORG, short for "blackout rage gallon," typically consists of a 1-gallon plastic water jug filled with a mixture of hard alcohol, water and flavor enhancement. It’s a drinking trend that has taken TikTok and colleges by storm in recent years, with controversial claims BORGs help reduce drink contamination and hangovers. But a new study, the first to examine BORG use and its consequences among college students, offers a look at the trend's dangers.

The drinks, which are typically DIYed at home, can contain up to a fifth of liquor, or about 17 standard drinks, according to the study, which polled more than 100 participants from a range of private and public U.S. colleges and universities.”

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