World
Two courts: NCAA's present (Gators!) and future play out 1700 miles apart on the same day
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — The final buzzer in San Antonio closed a drama that ended with confetti and Gator chomps — a thrill-a-minute NCAA title for the Florida Gators that reminded us all of what’s so good about the games these college athletes play.
In another court — a few hours earlier and 1,700 miles away — lawyers, a few athletes and a judge debated issues that will impact the future of games like these and what comes next for a multibillion-dollar college-sports industry that is struggling with change.
Those two scenes Monday illustrated all that’s at stake, and maybe even whether March Madness, which Florida wrapped up with a 65-63 title-clinching victory over Houston, will look the same in coming years.
So while Florida guard Walter Clayton Jr.’s clutch stop in the final seconds might have produced the day’s biggest headline, federal judge Claudia Wilken’s decision about the multibillion-dollar college-sports lawsuit settlement — which could come within days, weeks, months, who knows? — will carry more weight.
“Basically I think it is a good settlement, don’t quote me, and I think it’s worth pursuing,” Wilken said near the close of the daylong hearing she held in Oakland that finished about an hour before tipoff in the Alamodome. “I think some of these things could be fixed if people tried to fix them and that it would be worth their while to try to fix them.”
Judge seeks solutions for roster limits, future college players
Among Wilken’s top-line items is figuring a way to gradually implement roster limits prescribed by the lawsuit. A solution could prevent an immediate wholesale phase-out of hundreds of football players, swimmers, sprinters and other college athletes across the country.
She also wants tweaks to how athletes who haven’t yet reached college might be treated per terms of an agreement that’s supposed to last 10 years.
“We’re taking your feedback. We’ll take it to our clients,” NCAA attorney Rakesh Kilaru told Wilken.
The clock is ticking.
As currently structured, terms of the settlement are due to take effect on July 1, when the biggest change will be schools’ ability to pay athletes directly. Also at stake is $2.78 billion in backpay to former players who weren’t eligible for those payments.
Putting settlement’s terms in play will impact all sports
That’s where it comes back to the Gators, along with the thousands of varsity teams and players participating in college sports — from swimmers to pitchers to quarterbacks and everyone in between.
Like every other coach, Florida’s Todd Golden is learning to work with a payroll. It’s funded both from third-party booster groups that can funnel money to the players, and then, if Wilken gives the OK, from a pool of $20.5 million that schools like his will distribute among all its athletes — but mostly to football and a little less to basketball.
Those financial decisions, in turn, will dictate roster decisions and determine whether the Gators can afford another player like Clayton.
He’s the senior who left a small northeastern school, Iona, to come back to his home state and join Golden and the Gators. He scored 134 points in six tournament games that culminated with Monday’s final. He will be playing in the NBA next year.
Houston frustrated him and held him to 11 points in his final game as a collegian. But Clayton got the last laugh when he charged toward Cougars guard Emanuel Sharp, who was lining up for what could have been the game-winning 3-pointer with the clock ticking down in a tense, rugged, defense-focused game that left everyone on edge.
Clayton’s defense forced Sharp to let the ball go without shooting. It bounced once, then twice, then a third time — Sharp couldn’t grab it, lest he be called for traveling — before Clayton’s Florida teammate Alex Condon pounced on it and the buzzer sounded.
“I do think what separates us and has separated us all season long is our team talent, how our guys have played together and for each other all year,” Golden said. “Because of that, we can call each other national champions for the rest of our lives.”
While the Gators got ready to cut down the nets, the well-worn favorite, “One Shining Moment” — a treacly highlight reel from America’s three-week hoops extravaganza — played on the big screen above.
Florida sprinted and Houston trudged through the tunnel, into their locker rooms, and basketball — and college sports, in general — began the long wait to see what comes next.
___
AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness. Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here.
World
Britain drags feet on IRGC terror designation as Iran-linked center allegedly sells extremist merchandise
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British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government is facing intense criticism over its failure to swiftly outlaw Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The development comes as a London-based Islamic center has been accused of selling merchandise supporting terrorism.
Potkin Azarmehr, a British-Iranian expert on Iran who has written extensively on Iran’s influence operations in the United Kingdom, told Fox News Digital the “Islamic Centre of England is a regime outpost.
“The head of the center is directly appointed by Iran’s supreme leader. The letter of the appointment is publicly read during the inauguration ceremony. There is not a shred of doubt that the center is used to peddle the influence of Iran’s political Islam. It is also used to recruit disgruntled British individuals who are sent to Iran for training.”
The Daily Telegraph reported in late January that U.K. authorities were investigating the Islamic Centre of England for allegedly selling Hezbollah phone cases and pro-Iranian regime key rings. Britain has sanctioned the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist movement, Hezbollah.
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A Google Maps photo showing the Islamic Centre of England in London. (Google Maps)
The pro-Hezbollah and pro–Islamic Republic goods were reportedly sold at a bazaar Dec. 14, 2025, according to the paper. One key ring displayed the words, “With the kindness of God, Seyyed Ali [Khamenei] is our leader.” The Islamic Republic of Iran’s supreme leader, Khamenei, would order the murder of thousands of Iranian demonstrators just weeks later.
The bazaar also allegedly had stickers of late IRGC global terrorist Qassem Soleimani, who was responsible for the murders of over 600 military personnel, according to the Trump administration. President Trump ordered a drone strike in January 2020 that killed Soleimani in Iraq.
Emma Schubart, a research fellow at Britain’s Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital, “The Islamic Centre of England is not an isolated religious institution; it is part of a wider ecosystem of Iranian state-linked influence operating openly in the U.K., and at the center of that ecosystem sits the IRGC.
“The U.K. Government is dragging its feet over designating the IRGC. By delaying action, ministers are allowing hostile Iranian networks to continue operating under the cover of civil society and religious life. This is a dangerous blind spot in Britain’s national security.”
The Islamic Centre of England is a registered charity. When asked about reports of the Islamic Center’s role in selling pro-terrorist merchandise, a spokesperson for the U.K.’s Charity Commission told Fox News Digital, “As part of our ongoing statutory inquiry into (the) Islamic Centre of England, we have raised concerns with the trustees about material sold by third parties at a recent event hosted at the charity’s premises. We take very seriously any alleged links between a charity and extremism or terrorism. Such links are abhorrent and corrosive to the trust on which the charitable sector depends.”
A British Union flag flies from a souvenir stall near the Houses of Parliament in London Oct. 27, 2025. (Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Azarmehr, however, countered, “The U.K. Charity Commission, the regulatory body, has been ‘investigating’ the center for five years with no decisions and no updates other than appointing an interim director, but the center carries on business as usual.
“The only tangible result is that every time you make a complaint to the charity about the center, they reply by saying that because they are investigating the center, they cannot comment.
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“The first head of the center, Ayatollah Mohsen Araki, is now a member of Iran’s powerful Assembly of Experts and a key figure in propagating Iran’s soft power abroad. Araki’s family have U.K. citizenship. The previous U.K. government, in which Alicia Kearns was part of its administration, even paid the center in excess of £100,000 in COVID-19 furlough.”
In this photo released Jan. 6, 2020, by the official website of the Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, fourth from left, leads a prayer over the coffins of Gen. Qassem Soleimani and his comrades who were killed in Iraq in a U.S. drone strike at the Tehran University campus, in Tehran, Iran. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)
Kearns, who is the shadow minister for home affairs for the opposition Conservative party, is now demanding that the Islamic Center be shuttered.
“These latest revelations of terrorist tat being sold by the Islamic Centre of England are yet more evidence of why the center must be closed and those responsible for propagating terrorist propaganda face the law,” she told the Telegraph.
“The figures being idealized are responsible for the cold-blooded murder of tens of thousands of young Iranian protesters, adding to the many regional and international crimes of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
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A spokesperson for the Islamic Centre of England told Fox News Digital, “The trustees take all concerns about the center very seriously. We are currently reviewing matters pertaining to the Dec. 14 event and, in light of this, are unable to comment further at this time.”
The EU announced last week that it has classified the IRGC a terrorist entity. The U.S., Canada and Australia have previously designated the IRGC a foreign terrorist organization. The IRGC played a key role in the massacre of Iranian demonstrators last month.
Iranians gather while blocking a street during a protest in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 9, 2026. (MAHSA/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
The proliferation of pro-Iran activism unfolded last weekend in London. Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform Party in the United Kingdom, posted on X, “When people in Britain are chanting support for the thuggish regime in Iran, we are in serious trouble as a nation.”
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Video footage embedded in Farage’s post and other clips on social media shows a mix of pro-Palestinian and pro-Iran regime messaging at the protests.
Multiple Fox News Digital inquiries to the British prime minister’s office went unanswered.
The head of Europe’s leading human rights organisation, the Council of Europe, told Euronews that European countries need to provide the budgetary resources and political will to ensure accountability for Russian war crimes committed in Ukraine.
On the latest Sporticast episode, hosts Scott Soshnick and Eben Novy-Williams chat from Super Bowl Radio Row in San Francisco.
They open by discussing a chaotic start to the week for the NFL. Commissioner Roger Goodell held his annual state of the league press conference Monday, and he answered a number of questions that no commissioner wants to address. Reporters asked about why no Black head coaches were hired in this recent cycle, how Goodell feels about halftime performer Bad Bunny’s political comments at the Grammy’s and how the league is reacting to New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch’s frequent communications with Jeffrey Epstein.
Next they share clips from a few radio row interviews. In the first, former Seattle Seahawks running back Shaun Alexander discusses significant changes in how NFL teams treat his former position. Running backs were once among the highest paid players on an NFL team. Now, they’re valued quite differently. A former NFL MVP, he speaks about his own experience, his contracts and injuries, and why he thinks running backs are currently undervalued.
In another clip, USA Football CEO Scott Hallenbeck talks about the sport-wide push for flag football. At the Super Bowl alone, there was a flag Pro Bowl, a celebrity flag game and an exhibition for the flag football that will be coming to the Summer Olympics in 2028. He discusses NFL players participating in LA28 and the way flag football has opened the sport to wider demographics.
(You can subscribe to Sporticast through Apple, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts.)
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