Recruiting fireworks put a close to this 4th of July as the top wide receiver prospect in the 2025 class made his official commitment to the Oregon Ducks.

Dakorien Moore chose Oregon over Ohio State, Texas and LSU.

Moore was previously committed to the LSU Tigers since August, but decommitted back in May. After reopening his recruitment it appeared like LSU had slid down the list despite remaining in his top four.

The Oregon Ducks are not only getting the number one overall receiver in the 2025 class, but also the number three overall prospect in the country.

The 5’11” and 182-pound star receiver from Duncanville, Texas caught 65 passes for 1,303 yards and 15 touchdowns in his junior season. When asked on Instagram live during the announcement about whether he would change his commitment again, Moore stated that he was done after this and putting all of his focus towards his senior season.

Prior to Moore’s commitment to the Oregon Ducks, On3 ranked Oregon at fifth overall in the 2025 rankings and 247 Sports has the Ducks at seventh overall. Moore will not only be a great bump for head coach Dan Lanning’s group, but will also potentially be able to make an impact early due to several veteran receivers prepared to go to the NFL in the next year or two.

As for the Buckeyes, snagging Moore felt like more of a long-shot but they had a chance. Their next chance to snag a five-star wide receiver is Jaime Ffrench in this same 2025 class. Ffrench is considered the fourth best wide receiver on 247 Sports and the crystal ball predictions have been trending in favor of the Buckeyes over Texas and a few other schools.

The former Ohio State forward was dealt from the Brooklyn Nets to the New York Knicks along with star wing Mikal Bridges and a second-round pick. In return, the Nets get Bojan Bogadanovic, Mamadi Diakite, Shake Milton, four unprotected first-round picks, an unprotected pick swap, a top-four protected first-round pick and a second-round pick.

Sources: The Knicks are signing-and-trading Shake Milton as part of Mikal Bridges/Bojan Bogdanovic trade to the Nets, who will also send Keita Bates-Diop to New York. Milton will sign a three-year, $9 million contract, with over minimum in year one and two non-guaranteed years.

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) July 4, 2024

Although the Knicks will be Bates-Diop’s sixth team since he was selected in the second round of the 2018 NBA draft, the 28-year-old has proven to be a solid backup forward throughout his career. Bates-Diop has averaged six points and three rebounds per game while shooting 47.4% from the floor and 33.3% from beyond the arc through six seasons.

His 2023-24 season came to an abrupt end when he suffered a stress fracture in his shin on March 23, one that required season-ending surgery. While he averaged just 1.6 points in 4.9 minutes per game after getting dealt to the Phoenix Suns midway through last campaign, the 6-foot-8 forward’s best season came in 2022-23, his last with the San Antonio Spurs. Bates-Diop averaged a career-high 9.7 points, accompanied by 3.7 rebounds and 1.5 assists per game. He shot 39.4% from beyond the arc that year.

Bates-Diop recently exercised his $2,654,644 player option for 2024-25 and will become an unrestricted free agent following next season.

He played four seasons at Ohio State, averaging 11.7 points, 5.7 rebounds and 1.1 assists per game. His breakout campaign came in 2017-18, when Bates-Diop averaged 19.8 points, 8.7 rebounds and 1.6 assists per game, earning Big Ten Player of the Year and consensus second-team All-American honors.

The campaign behind a $15 minimum wage amendment in Ohio opted not to submit the hundreds of thousands of signatures it collected before the state’s Wednesday deadline and instead vowed to try for a ballot measure in 2025, according to a statement.

One Fair Wage’s decision means there will be no option to raise the state’s $10.45 minimum wage this November, to the delight of many pro-business groups, including the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce.

“The proponents are calling themselves ‘One Fair Wage?’ I guess my reaction would be, ‘Fair to who?’” said Chris Kershner, president and CEO of the Dayton chamber, in an interview. “It doesn’t sound like mandates on the business community are very fair to the employers in Ohio.”

Under One Fair Wage’s proposal, a $15 minimum wage would be phased in over two years and would be tied to rise at the same rate of inflation.

“When mandates are put onto businesses, businesses have to make operation decisions that impact their companies, their people, their investments and their growth,” Kershner said. He added that the chamber would still need to run the numbers and he couldn’t provide real estimates of how much a higher wage would affect Dayton-area businesses, or how many layoffs it might bring.

One Fair Wage would have needed to deliver its petitions to the Ohio Secretary of State’s office in Columbus before midnight Wednesday.

In order to get on the ballot, any citizen-initiated constitutional amendment aiming for the ballot this year would need to submit 413,487 signatures of valid Ohio voters, with at least half of Ohio’s counties producing signatures that represent 5% of the voters who partook in the last gubernatorial election in that county.

In a statement first shared by the Statehouse News Bureau and later confirmed by Journal-News, One Fair Wage said it fell short in Ohio’s rural areas and, therefore, did not meet the 44-county requirement.

The organization attributed its shortcomings to “violence and intimidation toward our low-wage worker of color canvassers, who were verbally abused and harassed by those opposing raises for workers” in rural counties. The campaign did not immediately provide details to corroborate these accusations when the Dayton Daily News asked.

In a Wednesday night statement, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose called out One Fair Wage for placing blame on rural Ohioans. He characterized it as “a duplicitous, disorganized goat rodeo of a campaign that has made every excuse in the book for their lack of compliance with the law.”

“I won’t sit quietly while any group distorts the truth to cover for their own negligence,” LaRose said.

One Fair Wage’s own statement concluded with a vow to continue collecting signatures and to try again next year.

By holding off, One Fair Wage is playing it safe to ensure that it can use the bulk of the signatures it already collected in the future. Here’s how the cost-benefit analysis works in these situations:

• In Ohio, turning in 413,487 signatures is enough to begin the state’s verification process. From there, the state would send each county’s signatures to the respective county board of elections, which would then verify whether those signatures are valid. The counties would then send their findings back to the Ohio Secretary of State, which would determine if, in the end, the campaign had submitted enough valid signatures to meet the state’s lofty ballot requirements.

• If it’s determined that there weren’t enough valid signatures, the campaign would get a 10-day cure period to try to collect enough valid signatures to get over the line.

• However, if the campaign falls short of the initial 413,487 signature haul, or falls short after the 10-day cure period, the entire process would restart and none of the previously collected signatures could be used in the future.

• Luckily for organizers in positions like One Fair Wage, signatures for citizen-initiated amendments in Ohio are evergreen (so long as the individual’s voter registration remains the same), which gives petitioners the option of simply holding off until they are absolutely certain they’d make the ballot.

This story originally appeared on journal-news.com.