Sports
Thanks to the transfer portal, this March’s Cinderella stories are players, not teams
To find Cinderella stories at this men’s Final Four, you have to look at the name on the back of the jersey rather than the front.
For the second time in the history of the NCAA Tournament’s modern-day bracketing practices, all four top seeds advanced to the national semifinals. It will be No. 1 Florida vs. No. 1 Auburn and No. 1 Houston vs. No. 1 Duke on Saturday in the national semifinals, a perfect ending to a most chalky March Madness. Only one double-digit seed reached the Sweet 16, and all of the teams in the regional semifinals were from Power 4 conferences.
Where have you gone, Loyola Chicago and Sister Jean? Check the transfer portal.
Two of the very best players competing for a championship this weekend in San Antonio — Florida’s Walter Clayton Jr. and Auburn’s Johni Broome — might not be where they are today if not for this new world order of college sports, with unlimited, unrestricted transfers and name, image and likeness compensation.
Clayton is the former high school football star from Florida whose passion for basketball led him to New Rochelle, N.Y., a hidden gem uncovered by Rick Pitino during his time at Iona. You probably didn’t even notice Clayton scoring 15 points for the Gaels against eventual national champion UConn in the first round of the 2023 NCAA Tournament.
Now, he’s being compared to Steph Curry.
“He’s obviously a blessing to have in our program, have on our team,” Florida coach Todd Golden said. “He’s an incredible player, but outside of that, he’s a great leader. He’s been everything we could have asked him to be for this program since he got to campus two years ago.”
Broome, another Floridian, was the 471st-rated prospect in his recruiting class per 247Sports Composite rankings, not even good enough to get an offer from Florida Atlantic. To be fair, former FAU coach Dusty May put together a team good enough to reach a Final Four two years ago without Broome, so not being good enough for those Owls is no slight.
Instead, Broome landed at Morehead State and blossomed in two seasons in the Ohio Valley Conference before becoming the best player in the SEC in his third year at Auburn.
“Shoutout to Morehead State,” he said. “I think those two years of my college career have helped me become who I am.”
We’re not quite ready to declare the NCAA Tournament underdog dead. The trends are working against the mid-majors — specifically, relaxed transfer rules that turn every player in the country into a free agent every year.
For years, draconian transfer rules gave way too much power to schools and coaches. Not only did undergraduate basketball players have to sit out a season after transferring — a non-compete clause for non-employees — but schools could block athletes from going to certain schools, just because.
It was borderline shameful. Even Mark Emmert, the former NCAA president who was not exactly known for getting out in front of potential problems, knew change was needed.
“How complicated could this be?” Emmert said at the last Final Four in San Antonio in 2018. “It’s about students changing schools. And yet I’ve never seen anything that’s quite as intractable a problem as this one because you just can’t get agreement.”
Even back then, before the portal was a viable option for every player from superstar to walk-on, transfers were on the rise in college basketball, with instances increasing from 10 percent of Division I players in 2010 to about 13 percent in 2016.
The Villanova team that won the NCAA Tournament in 2018 started forward Eric Paschall, a transfer from Fordham. Surely, Rams fans were wondering what could have been as they watched Paschall score 24 points in the semifinal victory against Kansas.
Villanova, Kansas, Michigan and Sister Jean’s Loyola Chicago all started at least one transfer in the Final Four that season. There were a total of nine on those rosters, including players who were sitting out to comply with the NCAA rules of the time.
The Wolverines reached the title game with the help of Division III transfer Duncan Robinson.
According to the NCAA’s most recent reported figures, over 1,200 Division I men’s basketball players transferred after the 2022-23 season. Typically, there are about 4,200 scholarship athletes playing Division I men’s basketball.
This year’s Final Four teams have 20 scholarship transfers from other NCAA schools on their rosters, led by Auburn with seven. Florida has six, Duke has five and Houston has two, both from other Big 12 programs. Cougars star L.J. Cryer is in the Final Four for the second time after being part of Baylor’s 2021 title team as a freshman.
Florida, Auburn and Duke all have at least one starter who once played at a mid-major.
For Duke, that’s guard Sion James, a former three-star recruit from Sugar Hill, Ga. He played four seasons at Tulane before taking advantage of the extra year of eligibility all athletes received in the wake of the pandemic to become a glue guy for one of the most storied and prestigious programs in the country.
“I’d played a lot of college basketball games, but none in the tournament, and I knew that we’d have a chance to win a national championship,” James said. “And it’s cool being here, however many months later, just a few games away.”
The pendulum has swung hard toward player empowerment when it comes to transfer rules. It’s fair to say we might be in the too-much-ice-cream phase. Bouncing around the country and averaging about a school per season is probably not ideal for players with minimal pro prospects who would benefit from graduating from … somewhere.
Purdue coach Matt Painter made an interesting point earlier in the tournament about balancing the opportunity to get a degree with recognizing that for some players, college will be the last chance they have to make money playing basketball.
“I don’t think that’s a bad (thing) … like, why not?” he said.
Painter’s 2024-25 team, it should be noted, had no transfers, but former Boilermaker Mason Gillis is back in the Final Four with Duke.
Will Wade, who took the NC State head coaching job after leading 12th-seeded McNeese past Clemson in one of the few true upsets of this tournament, talked about selling his mid-major program as a place for players to develop into power-conference transfers. More and more mid-majors are recruiting that way, resigned to the fact that, yes, they are indeed farm teams for the big schools.
Maybe with a revenue sharing system coming to college sports, along with player contracts and something that replicates a salary cap for monied schools that opt into the system, the low-mid-major poaching will slow down. Probably not.
That’s not great news for the future of Cinderella in March Madness, but just last year Oakland, Yale, Grand Canyon, James Madison and Duquesne won first-round games as double-digit seeds. Then again, Morehead State made the tournament last year, two seasons after Broome left, and lost in the first round as a 14-seed to Illinois. Imagine what that team could have been with Broome.
We’re also only two years removed from FAU’s Final Four run. One of those players, Alijah Martin, is back in the Final Four with Florida. Others, from Michigan’s Vladislav Goldin to Arkansas’ Johnell Davis, came a win or two away from returns of their own.
Then there is Chaney Johnson, who played three seasons of Division II basketball at Alabama Huntsville before becoming a key reserve for Auburn.
Fans might lament the transient nature of college basketball, with mercenary players quickly coming and going, but this is Clayton’s second season at Florida. Broome has been at Auburn for three years, and it’s probably not a coincidence the Tigers only added three transfers this past offseason to a rotation with lots of multi-year veterans.
Thanks to NIL, Auburn fans have watched Broome and this core of players develop to be able to cut down the nets on the way to a Final Four.
“Man, words can’t even describe it,” Broome said after the regional final victory against Michigan State in Atlanta. “To stand on top of the ladder in front of all the Auburn fans still being there, traveling and witnessing it as well, and looking down and seeing my teammates, the whole Auburn family, it just means the world to me. To kind of be able to deliver for the Auburn family.”
And they all lived happily ever after.
(Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic; Photos: Andy Lyons, Alex Slitz / Getty Images)
Sports
Law firm fighting for women’s sports in SCOTUS battle comments on ruling possibly impacting SJSU trans lawsuit
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A law firm leading the charge in the ongoing Supreme Court case over trans athletes in women’s sports has responded after a federal judge suggested the case’s ruling could impact a separate case involving a similar issue.
Colorado District Judge Kato Crews deferred ruling in motions to dismiss former San Jose State volleyball co-captain Brooke Slusser’s lawsuit against the California State University (CSU) system until after a ruling in the B.P.J. v. West Virginia Supreme Court case, which is expected to come in June.
Slusser filed the lawsuit against representatives of her school and the Mountain West Conference in fall 2024 after she allegedly was made to share bedrooms and changing spaces with trans teammate Blaire Fleming for a whole season without being informed that Fleming is a biological male.
Meanwhile, the B.P.J. case went to the Supreme Court after a trans teen sued West Virginia to block the state’s law that prevents males from competing in girls’ high school sports.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is the primary law firm defending West Virginia in that case at the Supreme Court, and has now responded to news that Slusser’s lawsuit could be affected by the SCOTUS ruling.
“We hope the ruling from the Supreme Court will affirm that Title IX was designed to guarantee equal opportunity for women, not to let male athletes displace women and girl in competition. It is crucial that sports be separated by sex for not only the equal opportunity of women but for safety and privacy. Title IX should protect women’s right to compete in their own sports. Allowing men to compete in the female category reverses 50 years of advancement for women,” ADF Vice President of Litigation Strategies Jonathan Scruggs said.
Slusser’s attorney, Bill Bock of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, expects a Supreme Court ruling in favor of the legal defense representing West Virginia, thus helping his case.
(Left) Brooke Slusser (10) of the San Jose State Spartans serves the ball during the first set against the Air Force Falcons at Falcon Court at East Gym in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Oct. 19, 2024. (Right) Blaire Fleming #3 of the San Jose State Spartans looks on during the third set against the Air Force Falcons at Falcon Court at East Gym on October 19, 2024 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. ( Andrew Wevers/Getty Images; Andrew Wevers/Getty Images)
“We’re looking forward to the case going forward,” Bock told Fox News Digital.
“I believe that the court is going to find that Title IX operates on the basis of biological sex, without regard to an assumed or professed gender, and so just like the congress and the members of congress that passed Title IX in 1972, allowed this specifically provided for in the regulations that there had to be separate men’s and women’s teams based on biological sex, I think the court is going to see that is the original meaning of the statute and apply it in that way, and I think it’s going to be a big win in women’s sports.”
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared prepared to rule in favor of West Virginia after oral arguments on Jan. 13.
Slusser spoke on the steps of the Supreme Court on Jan. 13 while oral arguments took place inside, sharing her experience with a divided crowd of opposing protesters.
With Fleming on its roster, SJSU reached the 2024 conference final by virtue of a forfeit by Boise State in the semifinal round. SJSU lost in the final to Colorado State.
Slusser went on to develop an eating disorder due to the anxiety and trauma from the scandal and dropped out of her classes the following semester. The eating disorder became so severe, that Slusser said she lost her menstrual cycle for nine months. Her decision to drop her classes resulted in the loss of her scholarship, and her parents said they had to foot the bill out of pocket for an unfinished final semester of college.
President Donald Trump’s Department of Education determined in January that SJSU violated Title IX in its handling of the situation involving Fleming, and has given the university an ultimatum to agree to a series of resolutions or face a referral to the Department of Justice.
Among the department’s findings, it determined that a female athlete discovered that the trans student allegedly conspired to have a member of an opposing team spike her in the face during a match. ED claims that “SJSU did not investigate the conspiracy, but later subjected the female athlete to a Title IX complaint for ‘misgendering’ the male athlete in online videos and interviews.”
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SJSU trans player Blaire Fleming and teammate Brooke Slusser went to a magic show and had Thanksgiving together in Las Vegas despite an ongoing lawsuit over Fleming being transgender. (Thien-An Truong/San Jose State Athletics)
SJSU Athletic Director Jeff Konya told Fox News Digital in a July interview that he was satisfied with how the university handled the situation involving Fleming.
“I think everybody acted in the best possible way they could, given the circumstances,” Konya said.
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Sports
Myles Garrett cited for speeding a ninth time, an elite pass rusher seemingly always in a rush
Myles Garrett is in a hurry to become the greatest pass rusher in NFL history. The Cleveland Browns All-Pro defensive end set the single-season sack record in 2025 and has cracked the top 20 career leaders after only nine seasons.
“I’m going to take that down, and I prefer I take it down in the next five years,” Garrett told Casino Guru News last month.
Off the field, however, his urgency to get from point A to B is a problem. He’s accumulating speeding tickets at an alarming rate.
On Feb. 21, Garrett was handed his ninth speeding ticket since his NFL career began in 2017. He was cited for driving 94 mph in a 70-mph zone on Interstate 71 between Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio.
The citation from the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office says Garrett was driving his green 2024 Porsche at 1:35 a.m., returning home after attending a Miami of Ohio basketball game in Oxford.
Body cam footage shows the officer telling Garrett that she kept the charge under 100 mph so that a court appearance wouldn’t be mandatory. Garrett reportedly still holds a Texas driver’s license — he attended Texas A&M — and told the officer that he did not have an Ohio license.
Cleveland Browns’ Myles Garrett wears a jacket displaying his girlfriend Chloe Kim before the women’s snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy.
(Lindsey Wasson / AP)
The officer wrote that the famously affable Garrett was “kind and cooperative,” and that drugs and alcohol were not a factor.
Garrett’s need for speed flies in the face of his persona. He has written poetry since high school, peppers social media with inspirational sayings and donates time and money to several charities.
His girlfriend is two-time gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim, for whom he wrote a poem he shared on social media: “You enrapture fools to kings, and exist without a peer, put on this Earth for many things, but our love is why you’re here.”
Verse hasn’t slowed his roll. On Aug. 9 he was cited for ticket No. 8, clocked at 100 mph in a 60-mph zone in a Cleveland suburb a day after the Browns returned home from a preseason game at Carolina.
Garrett’s seventh ticket followed a frightening crash in 2022. He flipped his gray 2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S off State Road in Sharon Township and he and a female passenger were injured. He was cited for failing to control his vehicle due to unsafe speeds on what had been a slick roadway.
A witness told a responding police officer that Garrett’s vehicle went airborne, took out a fire hydrant and rolled three times. Garrett sustained shoulder and biceps sprains and was sidelined for the Browns’ game that week against the Atlanta Falcons. His companion was not seriously injured.
Cleveland television station WKYC reported that in September 2021 Garrett was stopped twice in a 24-hour period — for driving 120 and 105 mph. The infractions occurred on Interstate 71 in Medina County, where the speed limit is 70 mph, and he paid fines of $267 and $287.
A year earlier, Garrett was cited for driving 100 mph in a 65-mph zone of Interstate 77 — again while driving a Porsche — and paid a $308 fine. He accumulated his first batch of speeding tickets in 2017 and 2018, and the police reports recite similar circumstances: Garrett driving well over the speed limit, cited without incident, paid a nominal fine.
The piddly fines certainly aren’t a deterrent. Garrett, 30, and the Browns agreed to a four-year contract extension in March 2025 that made him the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history at the time. The deal pays the seven-time All-Pro more than $40 million a season and includes more than $123 million in guaranteed money.
He set the NFL single-season sack record with 23.0 last season, surpassing the 22.5 accumulated by T.J. Watt and Michael Strahan. Garrett has 125.5 career sacks, averaging 14 a season, a pace that would enable him to break Bruce Smith’s career record of 200 in five years.
“That is definitely on my mind to go out there and get,” Garrett said. “That’s a goal I’ve had for years now since college.”
Garrett has declined to discuss his driving habits.
“I’d honestly prefer to talk about football and this team than anything I’m doing off the field other than the back-to-school event that I did the other day,” he told reporters after ticket No. 8 in August, referring to a charity appearance.
“I try to keep my personal life personal. And I’d rather focus on this team when I can.”
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Former ESPN broadcaster Keith Olbermann once again incited backlash on social media Wednesday after he called late legendary college football coach Lou Holtz a “legendary scumbag” in an X post on the day Holtz was announced dead.
“Legendary scumbag, yes,” Olbermann wrote in response to a clip of Holtz criticizing former President Joe Biden in 2020 for supporting abortion rights.
Olbermann received scathing criticism in response to his post on X.
“You’re a scumbag that needs mental help,” one X user wrote to Olbermann.
One user echoed that sentiment, writing to Olbermann, “You’re the real scumbag here. Lou Holtz had more class, integrity, and genuine decency in his pinky finger than you’ll ever show in your lifetime.”
Another user wrote, “You’re a grumpy, lonely, Godless man. All the things Lou Holtz was not.”
Keith Olbermann speaks onstage during the Olbermann panel at the ESPN portion of the 2013 Summer Television Critics Association tour at the Beverly Hilton Hotel July 24, 2013, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)
Olbermann has made it a pattern of sharing politically charged far-left statements that are often combative and ridiculed on social media, typically resulting in immense backlash.
After the U.S. men’s hockey team’s gold medal win, Olbermann heavily criticized the team for accepting an invitation from President Trump to the State of the Union address. Olbermann wrote on X that any members of the men’s team who attended the event were “declaring their indelible stupidity and misogyny,” while praising the women’s team for declining the invitation.
In January, Olbermann attacked former University of Kentucky women’s swimmer Kaitlynn Wheeler for celebrating a women’s rights rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court during oral arguments for two cases focused on the legality of biological male trans athletes in women’s sports.
Former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz listens before being presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House in Washington, D.C., Dec, 3, 2020. (Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“It’s still about you trying to find an excuse for a lifetime wasted trying to succeed in sports without talent,” Olbermann wrote in response to Wheeler’s post.
In 2025, Olbermann faced significant backlash after posting (and later deleting) a message on X aimed at CNN contributor Scott Jennings, that said, “You’re next motherf—–,” shortly after the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk.
Holtz was a stern supporter of President Donald Trump, even saying in February 2024 that Trump needed to “coach America back to greatness!”
Near the end of Trump’s first term, shortly after former President Joe Biden defeated him in the 2020 election, Trump awarded Holtz with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States.
After Holtz’s death was announced Wednesday, several top GOP figures paid tribute to the coach on social media.
Those GOP lawmakers included senators Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.; Todd Young, R-Ind.; Tom Cotton, R-Ark.; and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; representatives Greg Murphy, R-N.C.; David Rouzer, R-N.C.; Erin Houchin, R-Ind.; and Steve Womack, R-Ark.; and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; Indiana Gov. Mike Braun; U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon; and Rudy Giuliani.
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Lou Holtz, former Notre Dame football coach, addresses the America First Policy Institute’s America First Agenda Summit at the Marriott Marquis July 26, 2022. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc)
At the time of publication, prominent Democrat leaders have appeared silent on Holtz’s passing, including prominent Democrats with a football background.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who worked as an assistant high school football coach; Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who was a recruiting target for Holtz in 1986 as a college prospect; Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, who played in the NFL; and Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Ill., who played football for the University of Illinois, have not posted acknowledging Holtz’s death.
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