WSU prez: NCAA needs reform, not replacement
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Heather Dinich, ESPN Senior Writer
As the preferred structure of future NCAA governance remains debatable in college athletics, Washington State president Kirk Schulz on Thursday emphasized a need for the national organization and urged others to have patience as new leadership attempts to navigate its member schools through a critical and transformative time.
“It’s easy to throw hand grenades at the NCAA,” Schulz said on a Pac-12 media videoconference. “Schools do, presidents do, lots of people do. But at the end of the day, we need an organization that puts on championships, that does do some rules setting and handles enforcement. If you get rid of the NCAA — whatever that looks like — guess what? You’ve gotta stand up a separate organization that’s going to have those same functions and will have some of the same frustrations.
“As soon as anybody has to do enforcement, trust me — the school that is being investigated isn’t going to feel good about that,” he said. “I think the idea that we’re going to start seeing a bunch of conferences or schools break away from the NCAA and start their own grouping — whatever that is — I think at some point you just re-create the NCAA. Why not reform what’s there as opposed to let’s go re-create something?”
Schulz’s comments came one day after a high-ranking university official told ESPN there are some presidents and chancellors in the SEC and Big Ten who feel “very strongly” about pulling away from the NCAA.
“That’s an option that’s on the table,” the source said. “… It would be irresponsible on our part if we weren’t looking at a new governing process. There’s so much uncertainty happening in the world of college athletics. Do we want to continue this, or is there a better way of doing things? Yes, those conversations are out there.”
Those conversations tie into the ongoing discussions about the future of the College Football Playoff, as its leadership is considering what the format should look like starting in 2026. The CFP will have a 12-team playoff beginning this season and next, but the future is a blank slate. The CFP’s management committee is currently focused on a 14-team format. Before the presidents and chancellors can agree to a new TV deal with ESPN for the next eight years, they need to decide what the format will be, how teams will qualify for it and whether they are all working together under the NCAA umbrella.
Schulz, who represents the Pac-12 on the CFP’s board of managers, said his conversations with fellow university presidents over the past few months have reflected a general appreciation for new NCAA president Charlie Baker.
“Whether people like all of the proposals coming out or not, you’ve got to applaud the leadership there is saying, ‘Hey, we recognize people want to see something different out of the NCAA, and we’re going to respond to that,'” Schulz said. “It’s too early not to give Charlie the opportunity to continue to help lead and modify what the NCAA does and how it works with schools.”
New Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould, who now represents the conference on the CFP management committee, said the commissioners are “aligned” in their desire to develop a plan that has “adaptability.”
“I think none of us would have ever anticipated the amount of change that is going on right now,” she said in her introductory news conference. “Yesterday looks different than today. And who knows what the headline is going to be tomorrow. So our job collectively as the leadership of the CFP is to make sure that, whatever plan it is, that we have a plan that is adaptable and nimble to the changing times that we’re in. And that is one of the conversations that I want to make sure we continue to have in that room.”
LOS ANGELES — Shohei Ohtani hit two homers in an 11-5 win over the San Francisco Giants on Saturday night, emphatically ending the three-time MVP’s longest homer drought since joining the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Ohtani led off the bottom of the first with his 24th homer, hammering Landen Roupp‘s fourth pitch 419 feet deep into the right-field bleachers with an exit velocity of 110.3 mph.
The slugger had been in a 10-game homer drought since June 2, going 10-for-40 in that stretch with no RBIs, although he still had an eight-game hitting streak during his power outage.
Ohtani led off the sixth with his 25th homer, sending Tristan Beck‘s breaking ball outside the strike zone into the bleachers in right. He also moved one homer behind the Yankees’ Aaron Judge and Seattle’s Cal Raleigh for the overall major league lead.
Dodgers fans brought him home with a standing ovation as Ohtani produced his third multihomer game of the season and the 22nd of his career.
Ohtani reached base four times and scored three runs in his first four at-bats, drawing two walks to go with his two homers.
Ohtani hadn’t played in 10 straight games without hitting a homer since 2023 in the final 10 games of his six-year tenure with the Los Angeles Angels.
Ohtani had slowed down a bit over the past two weeks after he was named the NL Player of the Month for May with a formidable performance, racking up 15 homers and 28 RBIs.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
BOSTON — Hunter Dobbins had quite the week.
First, he said last weekend that he would rather retire than pitch for the Yankees because his father was drafted by New York twice before being traded.
Then, he went out and beat the Yankees.
A few days after his comments about never wanting to pitch for New York, he had to defend his dad’s story about being drafted by the Yankees in response to a New York Post article that cited multiple official databases and the Yankees’ own records that couldn’t confirm Lance Dobbins ever played with the organization.
On Saturday night, Dobbins (4-1) followed up by going six shutout innings in Boston’s 4-3 victory over New York, his second win over the Yankees in less than a week.
“It’s a lot of fun,” he said. “I’m more worried about just the win column, whether it’s against them or anybody. My job is to try and help this team win as many ballgames as we can, and pitch in meaningful playoff baseball games. That’s what I’m more focused on.”
But he realizes what it means to the fan base in this longtime rivalry, with the Red Sox fans heard chanting about the Yankees outside the park before he spoke in an interview room.
“Yeah, I love being able to perform and get those wins for the fans here,” he said. “They deserve it. It’s a great city, passionate fan base, so being able to get those wins — especially twice in one week — means a lot and looking forward to trying to build on that going forward.”
In his victory over New York last Sunday, Dobbins held the Yankees to three runs over five innings, two on a first-inning homer by Aaron Judge.
On Saturday night, Judge went 0-for-3 against him, striking out twice on curveballs.
“It was just kind of scouting,” Dobbins said of his game plan against New York’s slugger after Garrett Crochet struck him out three times in the series opener Friday.
“Crochet has an electric fastball. I can throw it hard, but the shape isn’t quite as elite,” he said. “So we knew we had better weapons to go at him with, so I felt like we did a good job of kind of keeping a balanced attack throughout the order.”
Dobbins struck out five and gave up only two singles Saturday.
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