Morning Buzz

League One Volleyball has appointed former Nike and Jordan Brand exec Sandra Idehen as the first commissioner of LOVB Pro, a move that formalizes league leadership as the organization enters its next phase of growth. Idehen succeeds founding President Rosie Spaulding and will work alongside her during Season 2 to ensure continuity before Spaulding transitions into an advisory role later this season.

Excel Search & Advisory was retained by LOVB to lead the search for the league’s first commissioner.

Idehen said the opportunity was compelling because of how intentionally LOVB was built, particularly its integrated youth-to-pro model and athlete-first approach. “It’s an incredibly exciting opportunity ... to just be able to dream and dream boldly and work with a great team to figure it out,” Idehen said, citing the league’s innovation and the chance to build without an established blueprint. Idehen attributed her experience leading Jordan Brand’s global sports portfolio to shaping her approach to a growing league, which she said is “very much still building a brand,” while emphasizing an “obsession with consumers and athletes” as core principles.

Idehen spent more than seven years at Nike, most recently serving as Global VP/GM of Jordan Basketball and Sport, where she oversaw Jordan Brand’s global sports portfolio across basketball, football, baseball, golf and soccer, and served on Nike’s Corporate Leadership Team. Her tenure across Nike included executive roles across the U.S., South Africa and the Netherlands, including serving as VP/GM of Jordan Brand EMEA. Before joining Nike, Idehen spent nearly six years at The Boston Consulting Group, holding roles in South Africa and Nigeria.

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Golfer Brooks Koepka officially makes his return to the PGA Tour Thursday at the Farmers Insurance Open, his first tour event (majors excluded) since the Match Play in 2022. His return has “given a boost to the first tournament of the year on network television,” with CBS broadcasting the event this weekend. There is “so much interest in the return of Koepka” that ESPN will have coverage on its flagship channel from noon to 3pm ET on Thursday and Friday. It will be the first time in nearly 20 years that ESPN has live coverage of a regular PGA Tour event (AP, 1/28). Koepka tees off at 12:32pm ET on Thursday (SBJ).

Golf Channel’s Eamon Lynch said, “He is the big star here this week, and it’s very clear that the PGA Tour has driven home the fact that they did get Brooks Koepka back. ESPN is coming in live with coverage early for the first time in decades. ... He’s in the featured group straight away. They’re signaling that there is a ‘welcome back’ for those top assets” (“Golf Today,” Golf Channel, 1/28).

The Univ. of Michigan athletic department has selected Levy as its new food and beverage service provider for concessions and premium seating at Michigan Stadium, Crisler Center, Yost Ice Arena, and all other on-campus Wolverine athletic venues. The 10-year deal begins this summer, when Levy will replace incumbent Sodexo Live.

Levy beat out Sodexo Live and Aramark Sports + Entertainment to win the account. A release announcing the news quoted Levy CEO Andy Lansing describing the new deal as “very personal to me.” Lansing graduated from Michigan, as did his mother, brother, wife, and son.

Per a 2025 public records request, Michigan’s athletics facilities generated $15.75M in gross food and beverage receipts from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025. Nearly $6M of that total went to the university, per the terms of its agreement with Sodexo Live, which has operated the business (partly as Centerplate) since 2010.

Levy also won Michigan State athletics’ business in July 2025, around the same time Michigan launched its food and beverage RFP. Levy counts seven Big Ten schools as clients, in addition to the Rose Bowl, Stanford, Army and Air Force, and Central Florida and South Florida. Notre Dame’s F&B account is also up for grabs, with the university, where Levy has handled concessions for a decade, well advanced in its own RFP journey.

The K.C. STAR’s Vahe Gregorian revealed in a column that he was one of the Pro Football HOF voters who did not vote for former coach Bill Belichick to get in on the first ballot, but he wrote while many may suggest “that Deflategate and Spygate and ‘politics’ led to this situation ... it certainly didn’t ultimately influence my vote.” Gregorian: “In fact, I didn’t vote against Belichick or Kraft. I voted for the three senior candidates: Ken Anderson, Roger Craig and L.C. Greenwood. You could call that rationalizing, I suppose. ... And no doubt this thinking won’t satisfy those many who feel this was an egregious misjudgment.” Gregorian added that Anderson, Craig and Greenwood “have been long deserving of induction” into the HOF, and “all three have been, well, snubbed for decades” (K.C. STAR, 1/28).

Other columnists also reacted to the ongoing Belichick HOF saga:

• USA TODAY’s Jarrett Bell: "I’m a Pro Football Hall of Fame voter. We blew it with Bill Belichick snub."
• DALLAS MORNING NEWS‘ Calvin Watkins: "Why my vote on Bill Belichick’s Hall of Fame candidacy was an easy decision."
• DETROIT FREE PRESS‘ Dave Birkett: "As a Hall of Fame voter, my colleagues got it wrong on Bill Belichick."

Lakers G Luka Doncic “avoided serious injury after falling off the side of the Cavaliers’ raised court” at Rocket Arena on Wednesday, but the “threat of a player being hurt by Cleveland’s unique 10-inch drop off between the court and the arena floor came into focus again” during the Lakers’ 129-99 loss to the Cavaliers. Lakers coach JJ Redick said, “It is absolutely a safety hazard, and I don’t know why it’s still like that.” Rocket Arena is also home to the AHL’s Cleveland Monsters, and the basketball court is “raised to accommodate the ice underneath the floor.” But “several teams in the NBA, including the Lakers, share their arena with hockey teams and none have a court that drops off like Cleveland’s” (L.A. TIMES, 1/28).

In 2023, Heat G Dru Smith injured his right knee “when he got stuck between the court and arena floor contesting a 3-point shot.” The Heat “reportedly contacted the NBA with safety concerns after Smith’s Grade 3 ACL sprain” (THE ATHLETIC, 1/28).

Meanwhile, Wednesday’s game also served as a homecoming for Lakers F LeBron James, who received a “touching tribute” from the home team and “cried” in front of the sellout crowd. James has played in Cleveland eight times since leaving in 2018 and “there have been that many tribute videos” -- but he has “never reacted like that.” James said afterwards, “I was just more present today than I’ve been over the previous seven” (Cleveland PLAIN DEALER, 1/28).

The Mavericks on Wednesday “honored” Norm Sonju, who co-founded the team and was their president & GM for 16 seasons, in a ceremony at American Airlines Center during their game against the T’Wolves. Wednesday night was “all about Sonju, with the first 5,000 fans in the door receiving Norm Sonju bobbleheads” and a “two-minute tribute video” that was played during a first quarter timeout. At the video’s conclusion, the words “Thank You Norm” appeared on the videoboard and fans “gave Sonju a standing ovation.” Later, during a halftime ceremony, Mavericks CEO Rick Welts “presented Sonju a framed No. 80 green Mavericks jersey, signifying the franchise’s birth year.” Meanwhile, the Mavs “will honor” former NBAer Mark Aguirre during halftime of Thursday night’s game against the Hornets by making him the fifth Maverick to have his jersey (No. 24) retired to the rafters (DALLAS MORNING NEWS, 1/28).

Clay County, Mo., leaders on Wednesday said that they “would not compete with other jurisdictions” for a new Royals ballpark, a “striking concession that appears to cool the possibility” of a ballpark in North K.C. for now. The seven-member Clay County Commission confirmed in a statement that it “would not put forward” a ballpark-funding measure on the April 7 ballot after a key deadline lapsed earlier this month. Bayless writes Clay County’s statement “did not directly end negotiations with the team,” and a North K.C. ballpark “could pop up again.” But the news from Clay County, alongside an announcement from the Royals on Wednesday about not pursuing a ballpark in Overland Park, “appear to put to rest -- for now -- two prominently discussed” locations in Kansas and Missouri as the team “weighs its future home after its lease expires in 2031.” The announcements “appear to shift the conversation to the likelihood of a downtown” K.C. ballpark, the team’s “original desire.” City officials have “long touted” a ballpark at Washington Square Park near Crown Center and east of Union Station (K.C. STAR, 1/28).

The U.S. Department of Education has “given San Jose State 10 days to comply with a list of demands” after finding that the school “violated Title IX concerning a transgender volleyball player in 2024.” A federal investigation was launched into San Jose State a year ago “after controversy over a transgender player marred the 2024 volleyball season." Four Mountain West teams -- Boise State, Wyoming, Utah State and Nevada -- “each chose to forfeit or cancel two conference matches to San Jose State.” The transgender player was on the San Jose State roster for three seasons after transferring from Coastal Carolina, “although opponents protested the player’s participation only in 2024.” The Education Department warned that San Jose State “risks ‘imminent enforcement action’ if it doesn’t voluntarily resolve the violations.” San Jose State responded with a statement that read in part, “The University is in the process of reviewing the Department’s findings and proposed resolution agreement” (L.A. TIMES, 1/28).

Sports operation platform Arkero has announced a $6M pre-seed round that was led by Game Changer Ventures’ Roger Ehrenberg. Others participants include Alexis Ohanian of 776, BoxGroup’s David Tisch, Garuda Ventures, Seattle-based Founders’ Co-op and other strategic investors like Sounders owner and Reign FC governor Adrian Hanauer.

Arkero is a sports-specific platform that looks to centralize a team’s operation, automating and streamlining processes by deploying AI to automate more of the tools that clients already use. The startups’ initial clients are four football clubs: the Sounders, Reign FC, San Diego FC and Bolton Wanderers FC in England’s League One. In its Sounders and Reign deployment, the organizations experienced more than a 50% improvement in efficiency planning for matchdays in 2026.

Arkero is founded by Shivaas Gulati (the company’s CEO), product and engineering lead Vamsi Narla, and business operations lead Daniel Shi. The trio formerly worked together for approximately 10 years at Remitly, a financial firm that went public in 2021.

On this week’s pod, host and SBJ media reporter Austin Karp breaks down the NFC/AFC conference championship, and whether he thinks Patriots-Seahawks will set a Super Bowl audience record. He also breaks down the CFP title game number, and why the SEC’s regular season numbers still dwarf the Big Ten on the whole. Plus, FanDuel President Christian Genetski gives insight on how sports betting is helping TV viewership, how he’s monitoring the Main Street Sports RSN mess and why the company’s ads feel different.

“The subtitle of a 2022 bio of this magnate who died in 1976 is ‘The meek shall inherit the earth -- but not its mineral rights.’”