🎗 Never Forget. September 11, 2001.

✡ Happy New Year. It’s the first night of Rosh Hashanah. To those who celebrate, Shanah tovah.

🎶 Your Morning Pick Me Up. The Rising. Bruce Springsteen

“Millions of dollars are flowing into Washington to shape the rules governing the millions of dollars now flowing to college athletes.

Coinciding with the kickoff of the college football season, the Senate is planning a vote between Sept. 15 and Sept. 26 on the Protect College Sports Act – a sweeping bill that would establish federal guardrails for the new college sports economy in which schools can pay players directly.

The measure has sparked a surge of lobbying from broadcasters, athlete‑advocacy groups, individual universities and their athletic conferences. Although the Senate bill was introduced just weeks before the second quarter closed, more than 90 organizations had already referenced it or its House counterpart by name in their lobbying disclosures through June 30. Together, those groups reported $31.4 million in lobbying activity during the quarter – a figure that reflects all of the issues they worked on, not just the Protect College Sports Act, since federal reports do not break out spending by individual bill.”

» State of Play. “The Senate is racing to act before the pre-election window closes – but House leaders on Sept. 3 canceled the final two weeks of the session before the election, meaning any Senate-passed bill couldn’t reach the House floor until November at the earliest.”

» Making Their Voices Heard. “The bill – which also includes provisions governing collective media rights negotiations – has drawn attention from several major broadcast and cable companies. The National Association of Broadcasters and NCTA – the Internet and Television Association lobbied the legislation. Amazon, Paramount Skydance and Disney Worldwide Services also each referenced the bill in their lobbying disclosures. A total of 60 colleges and university systems lobbied the measure during the second quarter. That includes 36 members of the NCAA’s four most powerful conferences – the Southeastern, Big Ten, Big 12 and Atlantic Coast. The ACC, SEC and Big 12 also filed their own lobbying reports on the legislation.”

» Dark Money. “But the most vocal organization pushing for the legislation is Saving College Sports, the group Texas Tech Board of Regents chairman Cody Campbell founded in February 2025 with a stated purpose of advocating for legislation and rules to support intercollegiate athletics. Since its formation, it has spent $820,000 lobbying the federal government on bills and issues related to college sports. Because Saving College Sports – formally, Americans for the Preservation of Intercollegiate Athletics, Inc. – is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that does not have to disclose its donors, the true source of its funds may never be publicly known. An attorney for the organization declined to identify its donors when OpenSecrets requested them.”

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“Arizona State hockey player Matthew Mayich remains hospitalized after collapsing during a workout conducted at campus facilities on Aug. 20.

The offseason session was run by Tim Zeisel, a former Green Beret who was not an ASU employee. According to multiple reports, Zeisel conducted the approximately one-hour morning workout in roughly 90-degree temperatures, which led 21-year-old Mayich to develop exertional heat stroke that caused a lack of oxygen to the brain.

Zeisel’s lawyer told The Arizona Republic that the workout, which was the first in a planned three-day program, was mid-intensity, “not a Green Beret or SEAL workout.” Mayich’s legal counsel, Rob Carey, has disputed this. Regardless of each party’s description of the ASU session, third-party, military-inspired workouts have become part of elite-athlete training at both the college and pro levels.”

» What It’s All About. “There’s no strict definition for what constitutes “military-style” training. Adam Annaccone, a clinical associate professor in kinesiology at the University of Texas at Arlington, tells Front Office Sports they can often include simple exercises like sprints or crawls, usually performed at high volume or intensity and with limited recovery. He believes the idea of putting teams in situations of adversity is good for training and leadership. So, when things get dangerous, it’s not necessarily due to the “military” nature of the workouts themselves. Rather, it’s when the authorities facilitating them haven’t evaluated the plans in advance from a physiological-principle standpoint to make sure they’re safe and effective, or put in place action plans to address emergencies if they do occur.”

» What’s Next. “That leaves individual institutions responsible for evaluating each plan and creating a governance system. This is what Tufts did following a military-style conditioning session in 2024 that left nine students hospitalized. Tufts has instituted a stringent “vetting process” on any proposal for third-parties to work with its athletes; now, conditioning is conducted almost exclusively by its own internal athletic-department staffers.”

» Yes, But. “In the meantime, Annaccone believes military-inspired sessions will continue. “Everyone’s looking for that little bit of competitive advantage. You’re trying new things and different types of activities to see what connects and what can pull a team together. You’re asking, ‘What’s one thing that would make us a little bit better or help us win a championship?

“Once billed as a cutting-edge marriage of equals, the partnership between Antioch University and Otterbein University is now mired in divorce court.

The roots of the conflict were embedded at the beginning of the relationship, in the founding of what was billed as the joining of two equal institutions into a partnership called the Coalition for the Common Good. Their differences came to be exacerbated by early decisions that turned out to be consequential, and they were further accelerated after leadership changes. And, like many divorces, it’s turned messy.”

» Court Awareness. “Antioch and Otterbein each entered the partnership for its own reasons. Antioch officials saw the move as the culmination of a yearslong search for a partner institution. They wanted to pair Antioch’s low-residency graduate programs, which are intended to increase educational opportunities for students traditionally shut out of them, with an undergraduate feeder program. Otterbein, meanwhile, wanted to preserve its identity as a small liberal-arts college, which was distinct from Antioch’s brand as a provider of graduate education for adults.”

» She Said. “We’ve worked for the last months to do everything we can to reconcile,” Lori E. Varlotta, Antioch’s president, told The Chronicle. She cited a litany of breaches in the relationship stemming from a closed-door meeting by the leaders of the CCG: Their vote to dissolve Antioch’s board, take over its bank accounts, insert themselves as liaison to its accreditor, and then fire her. “I just don’t imagine that the Antioch board has a lot of trust that a partnership with this particular group of educational leaders would be in the best interest of Antioch moving forward,” she said. In its court filings, Antioch characterizes the partnership’s actions as a “hostile takeover.”

» He Said. “We’d had no issues in that structure for the first two, two and a half years,” said John L. Comerford, Otterbein’s president. That’s when those who were present at the founding of the partnership were still involved in its operations, and everyone was moving “in lockstep,” he said. “Maybe nine months or so ago, we started to get this tension in the system.”

» Remembering Todd Beamer. ““Let’s roll.” Those were the last two words from Todd Beamer. Sept 11, 2001, Beamer, a 1991 graduate of Wheaton (Ill.) College and a two-sport athlete, was on United flight 93 when the plane was hijacked. While on the phone, he uttered those words as he and other passengers and crew tried to fight back. The plane would eventually crash in an open field in Pennsylvania.”

» Lacrosse. “Salisbury University women's lacrosse head coach Jim Nestor will be enshrined as a "truly great coach" to the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame Class of 2026, announced by USA Lacrosse on Thursday morning. Nestor will be inducted into his second hall of fame after being a part of the IWLCA (Intercollegiate Women's Lacrosse Coaches Association) Hall of Fame Class of 2024.”

ESPN’s SC Featured remembers former Boston College lacrosse player Welles Crowther, who led people to safety after terrorists struck the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

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