CHICAGO — Carson Kelly needed a moment to take in what he was hearing last Friday. Batting eighth in the lineup, the Chicago Cubs catcher had already hit two home runs and driven in five in what would end up as a wild 13-11 comeback win over the Arizona Diamondbacks.

He was about to step into the batter’s box in the eighth inning for his fourth at-bat when he heard it coming from the stands: “Car-son, Kel-ly. Car-son Kel-ly.”

“I had to take a step out,” Kelly told ESPN with a smile the next day. “‘Wait, is that actually what they’re saying?'”

Chants directed toward a catcher at the bottom of the order aren’t commonplace in MLB — but then again, neither is the month the Cubs catcher is having nor the production the team is getting from the bottom of the lineup.

Fast-forward a couple days and this time it was the Cubs’ No. 7 hitter, Pete Crow-Armstrong, who earned the treatment.

“P-C-A, P-C-A,” bellowed the Wrigley Field crowd during the team’s two-game sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers earlier this week. After slugging a whopping .897 against the Dodgers in the seven-game season series, the L.A. native deserved all the attention he was getting. In fact, the 7-8-9 hitters in the Cubs’ lineup are garnering as many headlines as other teams’ 1-2-3 hitters as Chicago has vaulted to the top of the run-scoring leaderboards in MLB.

To wit: Heading into their weekend series against the Philadelphia Phillies, the Cubs are averaging 6.3 runs per game. That’s nearly a full run higher than the next best team, the New York Yankees, who average 5.5 runs. The separator has been the bottom of the order, which includes Crow-Armstrong, Kelly and fellow catcher Miguel Amaya. That trio, along with newcomer Kyle Tucker, has transformed the team’s offense into the best in the league over the first month of the season.

“This team is a completely different ballclub than the one we saw in Tokyo,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “They’re playing a lot better.”

The Cubs went to Japan in mid-March hoping for the best in their two-game series against the Dodgers but instead got their worst. Their offense scored a total of four runs in two losses, looking as anemic as they had for much of last year when they missed out on the playoffs for the fifth straight (full) season. Chicago was a league-average offense in 2024, leading to a league-average type of year in the standings: 83 wins and ticket home for October.

But something clicked at the plate late in the season for two young players: Crow-Armstrong and Amaya. The former, in particular, began to show why he was taken in the first round by the New York Mets in 2020, eventually getting traded to the Cubs for Javier Baez one season later. PCA — as he’s known — is a five-tool speedster whose game is as brash as his personality, all in a good way. His OPS jumped 150 points in the second half of last season.

Meanwhile, Amaya was a once-promising prospect who got sidelined by injuries and was slow to find his form at the plate. There was chatter the Cubs were in the market to replace him in the first half of last season but then he eliminated a leg kick and suddenly found his stroke. His OPS jumped over 200 points from the first half to the second last year. The team added Kelly via free agency this winter and he has gone on to produce a 1.413 OPS in 14 games.

Needless to say, the bottom of the Cubs’ order is rolling.

“Me and Miggy [Amaya] talk about that a lot,” Crow-Armstrong told ESPN recently. “We take a ton of pride of being at the bottom and producing at the bottom, and f—ing turning the lineup over.

“That’s where we belong right now.”

The numbers bear out their production — as of Wednesday, the Cubs had led the majors in home runs (13) from their 7-8-9 hitters. According to ESPN Research, that’s as many home runs as 21 other organizations have from their 1-2-3 hitters and as many home runs as two entire teams have overall, Boston and Toronto.

“Last year, I felt like our offense really struggled because the bottom of the order really wasn’t producing,” president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said.

The players’ individual transformations all came in different forms. Crow-Armstrong got “on-time” (and quieter) with his swing, Amaya eliminated that leg kick while Kelly might be the biggest surprise as his 10-year major league track record showed a career high OPS+ of just 112 in a single season. It’s 293 right now.

“I finally found something I believe in and know that works,” Kelly said. “I’m not chasing a certain result. You have to go through the ups and downs to learn what it takes to be a big leaguer.”

Kelly’s production has prompted the speedy Crow-Armstrong to slow down on the bases when hitting behind the catcher.

“I have no inclination to steal when Carson is hitting,” Crow-Armstrong quipped. “It looks like he’s seeing f—ing beach balls.”

Perhaps there is no better illustration of the Cubs’ depth on offense than what happened the day after Kelly hit for the cycle earlier this month in Sacramento: He got a day off.

“The fact that he gets an off day the day after he hits for the cycle and the day after a two-homer game is pretty funny,” Crow-Armstrong said with a laugh.

The Cubs are getting the best version of Kelly — he’s hitting .342 — something the Diamondbacks were hoping for in the years he played for them, from 2019 to 2023. He hit 18 home runs that first season in Phoenix but never came close to who he is at this moment — smashing long balls against his former team, including a three-run homer earlier in the inning that brought on those chants last Friday.

“Carson Kelly is a way different player than when we had him,” Diamondbacks general manager Mike Hazen said after that game. “Good for him. We always believed in the potential. It seems like it’s coming together for him.”

Hazen sees the same overall potential coming together for the Cubs, who have a similar offense to the Diamondbacks: Both have plenty of power and speed.

“PCA is a stud,” Hazen continued. “That was probably more of an age/experience situation …. Their lineup is way deeper, way more dangerous and way more dynamic than I remember being last year.”

And that has proved to be the case so far. The Cubs are the first team in major league history to compile 35 home runs and 35 stolen bases in the first 25 games of a season. They lead all of baseball in batting average (.265), on-base percentage (.346), stolen bases (40) and OPS (.806) while tied with the Yankees for first in slugging and third in home runs.

“We’ve been consistent against everyone,” the longest tenured Cub, Ian Happ, said. “Scoring late, adding on. We’ve done it against everybody. It’s been 1-9, the ability of guys to get on base and make things happen. Every day is someone different.”

The Cubs truly have done it against “everyone” — they’re ending the toughest strength-of-schedule month of any team in baseball this season, at least as it’s rated right now. They’ve already won season series against the Dodgers and Diamondbacks while splitting six games with the San Diego Padres. All three of those teams are off to great starts, and the Cubs have played a whopping 20 games against NL West opponents already, meaning easier days should be ahead.

And while the bottom of the order has been the difference-maker, one player near the top is doing his part as well. Tucker has been every bit as good as advertised in his first month with the team, becoming the first Cubs player since 1900 to record at least seven home runs and seven stolen bases within the team’s first 26 games.

“He’s unbelievable,” Crow-Armstrong stated simply.

It hasn’t all been perfect for Chicago. The team has a glaring hole at third base after sending down struggling prospect Matt Shaw while shortstop Dansby Swanson is off to a slow start, striking out 33 times in 104 at-bats. But even he got into the flow in Wednesday’s win over the Dodgers, going 2-for-4 while driving in two runs in yet another thrilling Cubs victory, 7-6 over the reigning World Series champions.

Even after the night that he had, Swanson chose to direct conversation back to the bottom of the order — the driving force behind the Cubs’ 16-10 start, which has them in first place in the NL Central.

“Seeing a guy like Miggy or Pete grow up is really fun to see,” Swanson said. “The work, the conversations, the advice, you start to see it show up in real time. As a group, it’s a huge reason we’ve had the start that we’ve had.

“There’s no drop-off down there. It’s impressive.”

As the first-round series in the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs shift to the home ice of the underdogs, some teams have been pushed to the brink of elimination.

Will that be the case for the Montreal Canadiens, New Jersey Devils or Edmonton Oilers, as they carry 2-0 deficits into Friday?

Game 3 will be an important one. In Stanley Cup playoff history, teams with a 2-0 series lead have gone on to win the series 86% of the time; teams that have taken a 3-0 series lead have gone on to win 98% of the time.

Read on for game previews with statistical insights from ESPN Research, recaps of what went down in Thursday’s games, and the Three Stars of Thursday Night from Arda Öcal.

Matchup notes

Washington Capitals at Montreal Canadiens
Game 3 (WSH leads 2-0) | 7 p.m. ET | TNT

Strangely, the Capitals have not done well historically after going up 2-0 in a best-of-seven series. They are the NHL’s only team with a losing record (4-6) in that situation.

Capitals goalie Logan Thompson didn’t play during the Vegas Golden Knights‘ Stanley Cup run in 2023, and he is more than making up for it with his play in this series. In Game 2, Thompson stopped all 14 third-period shots from the Canadiens to preserve the Caps’ lead. Overall, he has a .951 save percentage and 1.47 goals-against average for the series.

Connor McDavid or Connor McMichael? The Caps’ winger scored two goals in a Game 2 win, his first career multigoal game. McDavid has more multigoal games in his career but has not had one yet this postseason.

The Canadiens have had three different goal scorers in the series, including first-line forwards Cole Caufield and Nick Suzuki, as well as veteran Christian Dvorak. For Dvorak, his goal in Game 2 was the third of his career.

Though Thompson has been a big story for the Caps, Sam Montembeault has been equally vital to the Canadiens. He has made some impressive saves en route to a .921 save percentage and 2.49 goals-against average (rates that a number of other teams would love to see from their goaltenders).

Carolina Hurricanes at New Jersey Devils
Game 3 (CAR leads 2-0) | 8 p.m. ET | TBS

The Hurricanes continued an impressive streak by winning Game 2 on Tuesday, as they’ve gone up 2-0 in each of their past five first-round series.

Frederik Andersen made 25 saves in Game 2, earning his 13th playoff win with Carolina, which is one shy of tying Arturs Irbe for the second-most playoff wins in Hurricanes/Whalers franchise history.

News flash: Seth Jarvis is good. His goal in Game 2 was his 14th career playoff goal, which ties Sebastian Aho for the most postseason goals scored by a player age 23 or younger in franchise history.

New Jersey is hoping for good news on injured players, as Luke Hughes and Brenden Dillon sat out Tuesday’s game. Hughes averaged the second-most ice time per game on the team in the regular season (21:09), behind only Brett Pesce (21:19).

Devils goaltender Jacob Markstrom has been solid in two defeats, with 66 saves on 71 shots (.930 save percentage).

Los Angeles Kings at Edmonton Oilers
Game 3 (LA leads 2-0) | 10 p.m. ET | TNT

With the caveat that the Oilers can never be counted out, the Kings now have history on their side as they look to escape the first round: the franchise has a 7-1 series record all time when leading 2-0 in a best-of-seven series.

The Kings’ power play continues to drive their success. Including the end of the regular season, they have scored a power-play goal in seven straight games, and are 5-for-10 in this series. That has helped them produce six goals in each of the first two games, a feat that has not been done since the 2014 San Jose Sharks (who did it against the Kings).

In Game 2, Adrian Kempe and Anze Kopitar became the first duo of Kings players to have four or more points in the same playoff game since Wayne Gretzky and Paul Coffey in 1992 (coincidentally, also against the Oilers).

After an uneven start to the 2023 playoffs, Stuart Skinner was benched, which seemed to improve his play thereafter. The Oilers are hoping something similar happens here; Skinner gave up five goals on 28 shots in Game 2 before being pulled. He is the third goalie in Oilers playoff history to give up five goals in consecutive playoff games, joining Grant Fuhr (1984, 1985) and Andy Moog (1981, 1983); the Oilers won the Stanley Cup in 1984 and ’85.

The Stars have shown up for Edmonton — Connor McDavid has four points, and Evan Bouchard and Leon Draisaitl have three apiece — but the depth scoring has not been there. Could Kris Knoblauch jumble his lines a bit heading into Game 3?

Arda’s three stars from Thursday night

When the Blues needed him, he delivered: a hat trick and an assist in a 7-2 win as St. Louis avoids going down 3-0 vs. Winnipeg.

With his two power-play goals in the win over the Golden Knights, Kaprizov climbed an impressive list; according to ESPN Research, only Mario Lemieux and John Druce have more power-play goals in their first 22 playoff games.

With his second straight game-winning goal, Schmidt became the first Panthers defenseman with two winning goals in one postseason.

Thursday’s scores

Florida Panthers 2, Tampa Bay Lightning 0
FLA leads 2-0

Defenseman Nate Schmidt scored a goal for the second straight game and Sergei Bobrovsky stopped all 19 shots the Lightning took on goal as the defending Cup champs took another on the road to start their playoff journey. But the biggest story in the aftermath was Brandon Hagel‘s hit on Aleksander Barkov that resulted in a five-minute major penalty — and knocked Barkov out of the game. Full recap.

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Nate Schmidt’s slapshot gives Panthers the early lead

Nate Schmidt scores on a slapshot to give the Panthers a 1-0 lead vs. the Lightning.

Toronto Maple Leafs 3, Ottawa Senators 2 (OT)
TOR leads 3-0

For the second straight game, the two teams needed extra time to settle matters. And for the second straight game, the Maple Leafs emerge victorious, sending the Senators to the brink of elimination. Claude Giroux and Matthew Knies traded power-play goals in the second, followed by Auston Matthews and Brady Tkachuk in the third. Leafs defenseman Simon Benoit scored the game winner on a seeing-eye shot from distance 1:19 into OT. Recap.

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Simon Benoit’s OT winner gives Leafs 3-0 series lead

Simon Benoit nets the overtime winner for the Maple Leafs to give them a 3-0 series lead over the Senators.

Minnesota Wild 5, Vegas Golden Knights 2
MIN leads 2-1

Well, this is an interesting one. In a postseason thus far driven by the favorites taking series leads, the Wild have outpaced the heavily favored Golden Knights through three games of this series. Kirill Kaprizov added a pair of goals in this one, giving him four this postseason. The Wild have scored five goals in two straight games, and 12 overall for the series. Recap.

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Marcus Foligno’s empty-netter completes Game 3 win for Wild

Marcus Foligno scores with under two minutes left to give the Wild a 5-2 win over the Golden Knights.

St. Louis Blues 7, Winnipeg Jets 2
WPG leads 2-1

St. Louis will not go quietly into the night. The Blues netted three goals in the first period — including the first two of Pavel Buchnevich‘s hat trick — and didn’t look back. Buchnevich also tallied an assist, while Cam Fowler (one goal, four assists) and Robert Thomas (four assists) joined him in filling up the box score. Recap.

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Pavel Buchnevich completes his hat trick for Blues

Pavel Buchnevich scores his third goal of the game for a hat trick to put the Blues up 4-1 over the Jets.

EMOTIONS TUG AT Clayton Powell-Lee as he pulls open the doors to the Georgia Tech football team facility a few minutes before noon on Monday. The 21-year-old strong safety has spent some sleep-deprived nights for the past month searching for an answer to perhaps the most consequential choice of his life: Stay put on his current team or transfer in search of a bigger payday.

Decision time has arrived.

If he stays at Georgia Tech for his final season of eligibility, he can build on his 53 tackles as a starter last season, after which he landed a six-figure name, image and likeness contract with the school. But Powell-Lee says he’s worth more. His agents — Jacob Piasecki and Jason Bloom of A&P Sports Agency — and his mother agree.

Earlier that morning, Georgia Tech had declined to negotiate an increase, Powell-Lee’s agents said. But the market for defensive backs is booming, they told him, and chances are good he could double his current payday. Provided, that is, he was willing to set aside his notions of team loyalty, leave his hometown Atlanta and abandon the school where his father, Gary Lee, had caught touchdown passes for the Yellow Jackets in the 1980s.

Sitting outside the team facility moments before entering, Powell-Lee dials into a conference call with Piasecki, Bloom, and his mother, Rometta Powell. All had agreed to let ESPN listen in.

“They need to be shook awake,” Rometta Powell says to the group. “They’re trying to play games. They’ve got the money.”

The pressure is building on Powell-Lee. The next step, they tell him, is to go upstairs and get the paperwork from a compliance officer to enter the transfer portal. Powell-Lee agrees with the others on the call, hangs up and pulls open the doors. But instead of the compliance office, he soon finds himself standing in the doorway of head coach Brent Key.

“I told him I had an offer on the table,” Powell-Lee said. “I have an offer on the table, and it’s sitting there in front of me.”

THE TRANSFER PORTAL — a phrase heard often in the NIL era but perhaps little understood by the general public — is extinguishing any remaining pretenses of amateurism in college football. Twice a year, players are set loose in an untamed, largely opaque marketplace to seek new teams and increasingly large sums of money. There are few, if any, universal truths or safe blanket statements that fully describe how this emerging world operates, but during the 10-day opening of the portal starting April 16, ESPN received an inside look at how some agents and general managers work with athletes and their families to sort through their options.

The player. The agents. The recruiter. All come together at the portal. This is a glimpse of the frenzied new reality of how college football rosters are formed.

The construction of a college football roster has changed dramatically in the past several years thanks to the introduction of NIL deals that serve as de facto salaries and a federal court order that allows players to transfer with almost no restrictions. The portal serves as a formal declaration that athletes are interested in hearing from new suitors.

The transfer market moves with the force of a riptide. Coaches act fast to fill the gaps in their rosters. The waves of players who enter risk losing their spot if they hesitate to pick a new school. To speed things along, the nitty-gritty aspects of deal-making in the portal are often sorted between two relatively new creatures to the college football universe: a team’s general manager and a player’s agent.

Gone are the days of predictable rosters and lengthy recruiting courtships where coaches sat in prospects’ living rooms to make their pitch. While many players will still visit campus and meet the coaching staff before officially signing with a team, most of their decisions are made in a matter of days through an onslaught of text messages, phone tag and two-minute calls that reach ,pitch on the day the portal opens.

JACOB PIASECKI HAS his phone pressed to his ear when he arrives at A&P Agency’s offices in Austin, Texas, shortly after 9 a.m. on April 16. Six of his agency’s roughly 120 clients have already declared their interest in transferring as of the portal’s opening day, and by the sound of the current call, another player is eager to join them.

The SEC player on the other end of the line just finished his post-spring-practice meeting with his coaches. The player has learned he’s not a guaranteed starter and therefore isn’t likely to receive a pay bump from his current $50,000 NIL contract.

Piasecki waves Bloom, A&P’s general manager, into his glass-walled office from across the hall. They both believe the player can command first-stringer money if he decides to transfer, which would mean making between five and 10 times what he currently makes.

The player’s parents have already called the coach to ask for more information. Are the coaches playing games to keep his value down? Parental intervention is exactly what Bloom and Piasecki don’t want. The agents’ goal, they say, is to serve as the sole point of contact with teams and move forward strategically. They coordinate with the player and his parents, setting up a plan to ask his current team for a raise before exploring options. By the end of the day, that player will be in the portal, but for now the morning’s first brushfire has been extinguished.

The corridor leading to Piasecki’s office is lined with boxes of promotional merchandise soon to be mailed to clients. The decor consists of posters and footballs signed by players A&P has represented. On one bookshelf along with memorabilia are two thick textbooks: “Astrophysics” and “Quantum Mechanics.” They are the last vestiges of the physics degree he was wrapping up at Texas A&M when he decided to launch his agency alongside co-founder Stefan Aguilera.

That was 2021, the first year college players could make money from NIL deals.

They have since built a six-person team and partnered with a fellow Texas A&M alum, attorney Tony Buzbee, whose law firm reviews the contracts A&P players sign. The agency says last year it generated roughly $1.25 million in revenue, a number they say should grow this spring as they represent a number of highly ranked players in the transfer portal. Physics class is mostly a distant memory.

“Physics teaches you to take really complicated problems and break them down into smaller pieces to solve one at a time,” Piasecki said. “And that’s pretty much what we’re doing here. It’s just piecing together a ton of small problems.”

POWELL-LEE MET with Piasecki and Bloom in early March to discuss what he wanted to get out of his last season of college football. That’s when the emotional tug became apparent. On the one hand, Powell-Lee said he wanted to finish his career and get his degree at Georgia Tech. On the other, he wanted a showcase to maximize his NFL draft potential.

He told the agents he would consider other schools if he couldn’t get a better deal from Georgia Tech.

“Obviously when you’ve been in a place for so long and coaches know you, you don’t necessarily want to leave,” Powell-Lee told ESPN. “But at this point, college football is a business. Decisions have to be made with money and playing time in mind. … Jacob and Jason have a lot of connections, so it’s about just letting them be my ears in the market.”

A&P’s team spends most of the spring working phones or traveling to meet with general managers from as many teams as possible, the agents said.

In mid-March, Piasecki and Bloom visited the University of Virginia. The Cavaliers’ recruiting director, Justin Speros, told them his coaches’ wish list included one or more defensive backs. The agents mentioned Powell-Lee among others who might be interested in transferring.

Coaches and staff members are prohibited from contacting any player who has not yet formally entered the transfer portal, but there are no rules against contact with agents to register a team’s needs. Schools, generally, won’t make any specific promises before a player is in the portal, but the current system provides ample gray area to make it clear to agents and their athletes what kind of money they could stand to make in the portal. So Powell-Lee’s “offer on the table” would have been more conceptual than literal during his meeting with his coach.

Speros says he did not make any specific offer to Powell-Lee or other players who were not in the portal. The interactions ESPN witnessed appeared to stay within NCAA rules.

“I might say ‘Hey, I need corners, so if you’ve got a guy, call me up once the portal opens,'” Speros told ESPN. “This past winter was really the first year that if you weren’t talking to the agent, you weren’t really recruiting a kid. You’re eight steps behind if you don’t know about a kid before he hits the portal.”

Bloom calls Speros at 12:36 p.m. on April 16, hours after the portal has officially opened. As the phone rings, he and Piasecki scan through lists and spreadsheets. One includes estimates of each client’s potential market value, calculated using their recruiting rankings, college experience, Pro Football Focus rating and current demand at their position, among other factors. Another lists teams and their current needs, based on information the agency gained from contacts earlier this spring.

Every past offer any team has made to one of its players is also recorded, along with contract comparisons organized by position and conference to get a sense of the market. Unlike in the NFL, player contracts are not public in college football. Good data is hard to find.

Using an agent — especially those who represent scores of clients — can help athletes get access to a better picture of the market. But that comes at a cost. A&P takes an 8% cut on most of the deals for Power 4 conference players it represents. That number can go as high as 15%, especially for young players or FCS-level players who won’t generate as much attention in the portal on their own.

It’s not clear how many of the thousands of athletes who entered the transfer portal this year are represented by agents, but several industry experts estimate that more than half have no representation.

Throughout the first day, Bloom and A&P’s director of scouting, Will Scott, constantly monitor online lists of players who have just entered the portal. A new listing is a new potential client. Scott has data on around 200 players he has evaluated ahead of time and A&P would like to represent if they want to transfer.

They reach out to players via direct message on Instagram to gauge their interest. Bloom calls to pitch prospects, usually citing the agency’s relationships with general managers throughout the country and unique brand endorsements its agents have arranged for athletes in the past, such as an arranged visit with celebrity jeweler Johnny Dang.

Most of the agents’ day, though, is consumed in a barrage of brief, unemotional phone calls. Some players receive raises from their current teams. Others jump in the portal and start to generate offers.

By 9 p.m., the A&P team is slouched in chairs around a conference room table covered with takeout trays of barbecue. People scroll through social media and text messages while making a plan for the next day, cracking jokes that are a better fit for locker rooms than boardrooms.

Most of the A&P team is not yet 30 years old. None of them had experience in the sports agent industry before joining A&P. But on just the first day of portal season, the group generated nearly $1 million in new money for clients. That’s the goal, Bloom says: a million dollars a day while the portal remains open.

“It is a little wild,” Piasecki says to the room, “that we’re just six guys in an office in Texas but we’re shaping a market for these institutions that bring in millions and millions.”

IT’S LATE THURSDAY morning and Day 2 of the 10-day sprint. At UVA, recruiting director Speros says he’s happy with his progress hunting for tackles and defensive ends, but defensive backs are proving to be an elusive, rare commodity in this spring’s portal.

Bloom and Piasecki are on the phone pitching Speros with prospects from their growing list of portal-declared clients. The agents offer defensive ends, a tight end and a running back.

Speros cuts them off. “I’m wasting my breath right now if I’m not talking about DBs, guys,” he says.

He tells ESPN that, for any position where he needs one or two players to fill out a depth chart, he knows he’ll need roughly 10 “hooks in the water” to make it work. Sometimes the players scouted will choose another team. Others come with too high of an asking price.

“We prefer not to be transactional, but it just is what it is,” Speros says. “There are things we need to do to keep pressing forward. And what that means is a lot of either just getting to a number or not getting to the number and moving on.”

Speros and Tyler Jones, a deputy athletic director, oversee the budget for building out their roster. For this spring, their total spending power is a somewhat flexible number that combines the money the school is expecting to be able to share with players directly starting this summer along with contributions from the school’s booster collective.

Speros and his staff have done months of scouting hundreds of players across college football to get a sense of what they’re willing to pay. As new players who might fit Virginia’s needs enter the portal, a group of interns creates short film cutups of their highlights so the coaching staff can evaluate the players based on about a dozen plays. Virginia also uses multiple data analytics programs to rate players and get a sense of their market value.

With one of the team’s starting cornerbacks out for the season with an ACL tear and a lot of interest in defensive backfield players, Speros acknowledges he’ll have to act fast and potentially pay high rates to fill that gap on the depth chart.

Bloom tells him that Powell-Lee is scheduled to meet with his coaches at Georgia Tech the following day and will make a decision about the portal soon after. Speros expresses interest. Enough interest, in fact, that he’s willing to sit tight on a few other options at safety until he hears about Powell-Lee’s decision.

A long weekend passes, and Powell-Lee is still unsure of how he wants to proceed. During spring practice, he told reporters he had developed a new sense of chemistry with his fellow defensive backs at Georgia Tech and felt a duty to help the younger players get settled into their new positions.

He hasn’t heard the answers he wants from coaches when he has asked about a raise, but now, with less than a week before the portal window closes, ambivalence sets in as he approaches the team facility to start the portal registration paperwork.

His agents say it would be crazy for Powell-Lee to pass up the money he could get in the portal. His mother, Powell-Lee says, has been supportive throughout the process but also tells him not to shy away from getting what he’s worth.

Still, he says, something doesn’t feel right.

“I was just sitting there, I was just thinking to myself, like, something in my heart and my gut is just telling me not to go grab those papers right now but instead go up there yourself and tell them that you want to talk to them,” Powell-Lee said a few days later.

He said his discussion with Coach Key went well. And later that night he discovered some new information that made his decision much easier: Virginia will accept only up to 60 credit hours of previous coursework for any transfer student. For Powell-Lee, that would mean essentially erasing a year’s worth of credits he has earned at Georgia Tech, making it impossible to graduate in the same academic year that he wraps up his college football career.

“I had to really just sit there and ask myself, is that really worth losing all those credits to make however much money?” Powell-Lee said. “Personally, I was like, no, it’s not fully worth it, honestly.”

Powell-Lee declined to say how much money he was potentially leaving on the table other than to say it was “a lot.”

By Wednesday, Powell-Lee had officially decided he wasn’t going to enter the portal. Virginia and Speros had already moved on to search for new options on defense. Piasecki and Bloom said Georgia Tech agreed to provide Powell-Lee with a relatively small increase in pay after learning about some of his other options — but nothing that compared to what other schools thought they might be willing to pay him.

“It just is what it is,” Bloom said. “That’s the business we’re in.”

Even though the transfer portal often makes it seem as if money trumps all other considerations, sometimes there are refreshing surprises. For Powell-Lee, at least, academics ultimately tipped the balance.