Opinion

Cartoon: NCAA basketball tournaments are here, but in a climate of sports betting, is player performance on the level?

When I wrote in SBJ last March about why sports fans could finally move on from legacy TV, the landscape felt more straightforward. Streaming promised lower costs, greater control and the flexibility fans had long wanted. For a moment, it seemed as if sports audiences had found an escape hatch from ...

The relationship dynamic between a league and its teams traditionally has been respectful and delicate but can be bumpy at times. Conventional wisdom says a league operates to support its teams, and the two should be in lockstep. But that’s too simplistic, as the goals are not always aligned and the...

President Donald Trump convened college athletic directors and other prominent figures at the White House last Friday to discuss the state of college sports, with an executive order on NIL reportedly forthcoming. Whatever guidance emerges from Washington will arrive to a system that has already adap...

March Madness still does something almost nothing else in sports can do. It makes the entire country care about basketball, all at once.

College sports are broken, but not for the reasons that dominate most headlines. Name, image and likeness policies did not fracture the system, even if they accelerated public awareness of its weaknesses. College sports are broken because the organization charged with governing them has chosen paral...

England’s Premier League clubs amassed around £6.3 billion in revenue in 2023-24, according to Deloitte, and grassroots sports still manages to recruit millions of volunteers. On the surface it looks like a robust system, a good pyramid. But behind the scenes, the foundations are showing clear signs...

The Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act (SPARTA) is a 2004 law that many in college athletics overlooked until the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) came knocking earlier this year. On January 12, 2026, the FTC sent letters to 20 Division I athletics institutions seeking information related to re...

When an expansion team in a sports league is announced, the first thing people usually think of is the incoming players and coaches. There will be articles posted about which players teams should sign, what their jerseys may look like and predictions about what their record may be at the end of the ...

Many of us will be rooting for the red, white and blue — others will push for Mexico, Japan and the 17 other countries that will be represented. But regardless, when you turn on your television to cheer on your respective country, I urge you not to forget about how we arrived at this point.