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What’s Going On Needs the Pirate Now More Than Ever

Why Nick Saban really doesn’t like NIL [Photo: Robert Hanashiro, USA Today Sports]

Bigger potatoes, same small brain

Donald Trump has floated the idea of a commission on college athletics to look at the key issues of the day with Nick Saban as of the leaders. Because, as a wise man once said, we’re America and we love committees. 

A reminder here that Saban had an army of bagmen at LSU and Bama, but when the playing field got leveled, then all of a sudden players getting paid became a problem. Screw that guy. 27-20. The commission would be looking at issues like NIL, transfers, players getting paid directly, and presumably Title IX. There are certainly some things that need to be addressed in this current climate, such as how players without any eligibility left are still entering the transfer portal while lawsuits play out that would allow for more eligibility, like Tennessee’s Zakai Zeigler’s, which would effectively kill the redshirt rule, one of the few things the NCAA gets right. However, many things that the people upset at the current climate are mad about have been litigated in court already, with the courts holding that players can either be students or they can be employees, but you can’t call them students and treat them like employees. Thus, any plans to limit NIL while passing laws saying college athletes can not be called employees are a waste of time and will be struck down in court. The only real things this committee could lead to are a national law regulating NIL as opposed to the state-by-state system we have now and a restoration of some restrictions on transfers, should the NCAA be able to get an antitrust exemption from Congress. What that might look like is a return to the “one free transfer” rule, with maybe another freebie if the coach leaves. Grad transfers were free already. Let’s see how things are going with the committee.

Great start. In addition, the NCAA is working on a new NIL clearinghouse. Let’s see how that’s going. 

Perfect. Excellent work all around, as usual. 

*Sigh* Okay, fine, the Caleb thing

ESPN reporter Seth Wickersham has a new book out, called American Kings, about what it means to be a quarterback. One topic covered in the book was Caleb Williams’ hesitance to play for the Bears before being drafted by them a year ago. ESPN:

“Carl Williams went to great lengths to try to circumvent the NFL draft, Wickersham writes, wanting to give his son an opportunity to choose his future employer. The Bears had not drafted a star quarterback since the 1980s, and their recent draft selections, Mitchell Trubisky and Justin Fields, didn’t pan out. Carl Williams was worried that, with the franchise’s history, stadium uncertainty and offensive performances under then-head coach Matt Eberflus, Caleb Williams wouldn’t have the organizational support to succeed.

“I don’t want my son playing for the Bears,” Williams told several agents in 2024.

Looking for a way around the league’s collective bargaining agreement, Carl Williams spoke with Archie Manning, who helped Eli Manning assert a measure of control over his eventual team in 2004. He also met with labor lawyers and agents — and even considered whether his son could sign with the United Football League and become an unrestricted NFL free agent in 2025 to be able to pick a team. In addition to the draft process, Carl Williams vented about the rookie wage scale, which could lock his son into the team that drafted him for up to eight years. He calculated hundreds of millions of lost market-value income.

“The rookie cap is just unconstitutional,” Carl Williams told Wickersham, later adding that the CBA is the “worst piece of s— I’ve ever read. It’s the worst in sports history.”

After an up-and-down final season at USC, Caleb Williams was unsure of what he wanted to do as he prepared for the 2024 draft. At the NFL combine that year, he met with Minnesota Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell. The two hit it off, and Caleb Williams began to dream of what it would be like to play for Minnesota.

“I need to go to the Vikings,” he told his father.

“Let’s do it,” his father replied. But both Caleb and Carl knew that a trade to a divisional rival was extremely unlikely.”

People on Twitter seemed to almost unanimously take this at face value, to which I must ask: why? People have figured out that you can procure engagement online writing inflammatory things about Caleb Williams and/or the Bears. That’s why the goof who was a glorified coffee boy for the Jets for a few years ago couple decades ago keeps doing it. Now, did some version of this happen? Yeah, probably. I find it very easy to believe that Caleb spoke with Kevin O’Connell, was impressed, and imagined himself playing for him. I also find it easy to believe that Caleb and his father had thoughts about being able to pick where he’d play and about not being locked into the rookie wage scale. They would be far from the only ones to have those thoughts. But while Caleb’s dad might be insane enough to believe that he can rewrite league rules, Caleb himself never seriously tried to avoid going to Chicago. 

More from the article:

“Caleb Williams wondered aloud to confidants: “Do I want to go there? I don’t think I can do it with [former Bears offensive coordinator Shane] Waldron.”

…

The book also sheds light on Williams’ tumultuous rookie season, in which both Eberflus and Waldron were fired and the Bears lost 10 straight games.

At times, Williams said he would watch film alone, with no instruction or guidance from the coaches. “No one tells me what to watch,” Caleb Williams told his dad. “I just turn it on.””

This, we already knew. The coaching staff truly went AWOL last year. Jaxon Smith-Njigba was right about Waldron.

Ben Volin, Boston Globe:

“A book excerpt from ESPN‘s Seth Wickersham revealed that Bears QB Caleb Williams didn‘t want to play for the Bears, and that his father tried to circumvent the NFL Draft entirely before they accepted their fate. Lost amid the hubbub is the fact Carl Williams was 100 percent correct. It’s wholly unfair that the NFL Draft and rookie scale artificially capped Caleb Williams’s earning potential and sent him to a team that has failed quarterbacks time and again. In no other industry is a talented college graduate told where he has to work, and how much money he is allowed to make. Unfortunately for Williams, the NFL Players Association negotiated those rights away.”

This makes sense only if you don’t understand that the NFL as a whole is the company here and the teams are franchises. A guy might come out of college with an accounting degree and get a job with Deloitte or whoever and be assigned to a certain location. As for the rookie wage scale, there is some validity to that, but as Volin notes, it was collectively bargained. The irony being that it was veteran players who wanted the rookie scale, based on the premise that vets deserved higher pay than rookies who hadn’t proven themselves yet, but in practice, the rookie scale has just incentivized teams to replace vets with guys on rookie deals wherever possible. 

The Bucks stop here

After the Bucks’ first-round loss to the Pacers, questions exist as to Giannis’ future in Milwaukee. Bucks GM Jon Horst has a strategy:

The window is closed in Milwaukee. Damian Lillard turns 35 in two months and just tore his Achilles. The rest of the roster stinks and they don’t have many resources to improve it. In theory, this is the time to blow it up and rebuild, especially since Giannis can become a free agent after next season. However, there’s nobody with a bunch of resources that makes sense to bring in Giannis, save for maybe Houston. My guess is that Giannis is available, but nobody meets the asking price this summer, but push eventually comes to shove and Milwaukee takes what they can get and trades him at the deadline to avoid losing him for nothing. 

To Marner or not to Marner?

The Leafs finished doing what the Leafs do in the postseason and now they stand at a crossroads. Matthew Knies needs a new deal and Mitch Marner and John Tavares are unrestricted free agents. Tavares was clear that he wants to come back. Marner was non-committal. Marner is expected to get capital-P Paid this summer, with predictions going as high as 7x$14M. One team that keeps getting mentioned as a possibility is the Blackhawks. Chief from Barstool Sports doesn’t like the idea. 

I kind of agree. While I do think Marner really just needs a fresh start somewhere where there’s less pressure on him, he just turned 28 a couple weeks ago. Signing him doesn’t make the Hawks contenders just yet and it means that some tough decisions will have to be made down the line. The young core the Hawks have put together already have shown some real promise. Bedard is the real deal, Nazar looks like a star, Vlasic is already a legit top 4 D-man, Rinzel and Levshunov looked like they belonged immediately upon entering the NHL, and Knight looked like he’s really starting to come into his own. If they continue to develop at the same rate they have so far, the team could be very fun in a few years and if you can keep that together, you’ve got a long window to contend. That said, that previous sentence featured the word “if” twice. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush and I won’t be upset if the Hawks manage to land a top winger who would be a great fit with Bedard. 

What color smoke signals that the Hawks hired a coach?

Ben Pope at the Sun-Times wrote an article Monday detailing where the Hawks are at in their coaching search. Former Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill looks like the leading candidate. Pope didn’t seem overly thrilled about the idea; your author is more bullish. Blashill took over in Detroit at a time where nobody was going to win, but with him behind the bench, the Red Wings did see production and growth from their young players. Prior to taking over in Detroit, Blashill had won championships with AHL Grand Rapids and the now-defunct USHL Indiana Ice. He knows how to coach young talent. Currently, he’s one of Jon Cooper’s assistants in Tampa. This would be a good hire. 

Pope also mentioned something interesting in the article:

“[Sportsnet’s Elliotte] Friedman reported last week the Hawks talked to Michigan State coach Adam Nightingale, which is interesting. Nightingale fits the mold of a “Carle lite” candidate as another successful college coach. He has transformed the Spartans’ program from middling to elite in just three years, and he worked wonders on Levshunov in 2023-24. But he’s even less experienced than [David] Carle.”

Yes, please. Nightingale took over an MSU program that had had one winning season in their previous ten, that a 17-16-2 campaign in 2014-15 that featured a not nice 6-9 record outside a bad Big Ten and saw them finish nowhere near tournament contention. To say Nightingale has done a great job in East Lansing would be an understatement. Experience is an issue: college is the highest level Nightingale has been a head coach at and MSU is his first college HC job. I’d take the swing. I feel like there’s an non-zero chance they actually do since the word was that Carle was at the top of their list before he decided to stay at Denver. There was no mention in Pope’s article of former Oilers coach Jay Woodcroft, who I would also put ahead of Blashill on my list. 

Etc.: Bill Belichick and his girlfriend are engaged, Jenn Sterger’s episode of Untold about the Mississippi Welfare Bandit’s inability to keep it in his pants dropped yesterday on Netflix, NFL players can play flag football at the Olympics 

Here it is, your moment of zen. 

R.I.P. George Wendt

1948-2025

 

Elmo’s $44 billion vanity project, Bluesky, Threads: @312sportsguy

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