Josh Weirich

@UWAthletics Tyee Club ☔️. @OhioStateAlumni & @uofcincyalumni OH➜WA
"On your worst days, be good. On your best days, be great. Every other day, get better"

[Josh Weirich @jwire25]

2nd day in a row with the bullpen imploding. This is not #GuardsBall

[Josh Weirich @jwire25]

Hey #GuardsBall looks like a good day to win the series and get T Bibee his 1st win!

[Josh Weirich @jwire25]

Yikes! Welcome to the Bigs kid…

[GuardsInsider @GuardsInsider]

Will Dion has been CALLED UP 📞

In 11.1 IP this month, Dion has notched 18 Ks and has only allowed one run. The LHP boasts a 0.79 ERA in the month of May.

#GuardsBall

[Pete Thamel @PeteThamel]

Sources: All of the Big 12’s presidents and chancellors in attendance at Big 12 spring meetings are in the process of signing the College Sports Commission’s Participation Agreement. They’d become the first power conference to get all of the schools to agree to do this.

[Josh Weirich @jwire25]

Fixed it Jon. *Sources: The annual *Skyline Crosstown Shootout between Cincinnati and Xavier will be played next season on Saturday, December 5th at Fifth Third Arena.

[Jon Rothstein @JonRothstein]

Sources: The annual Crosstown Shootout between Cincinnati and Xavier will be played next season on Saturday, December 5th at Fifth Third Arena.

[Sports Business Journal @SBJ]

Nationwide Insurance is buying a 37% stake in the Columbus Crew at a $900M valuation.

The Haslams sell 30%, the Edwards family sells 7%, and Columbus's biggest insurer just became one of its biggest sports investors.

(via Crains Clevland Business) https://t.co/hllTLr3tgd

[Bob Nightengale @BNightengale]

MLB proposes the first salary cap since August, 1994, at $245.3 million, with a salary floor of $171.2 million.

[Josh Weirich @jwire25]

...Yes, but this time on Sunday!!!

[Washington Football @UW_Football]

Three games. 14 days. The Greatest Setting under the ☀️.

9.6 Apple Cup · 1 PM · NBC
9.12 Utah State · 12:30 PM · BTN
9.19 Eastern Washington · 4:15 PM · BTN

Full Details ➡️ https://t.co/AJZosl3A3A

[Marla Ridenour @MRidenourABJ]

A sad day for Akron. Hard to imagine @FirestoneCC without the @ChampionsTour or @PGATour: Firestone Country Club losing its place on pro golf tour in 2027 https://t.co/Dk5kx3wFUP via @beaconjournal

[Josh Weirich @jwire25]

The VGK playoff history is astonishing, 8 appearances in 9 seasons, entering their 4th Stanley Cup final by sweeping the Avs. I’m not mad at them but seeing them do it again this year with Torts really tortures me as a CBJ fan.

[Josh Weirich @jwire25]

John Tortorella and the @GoldenKnights are going to the #StanleyCup Wow

[Nick Lord @nickatnocap]

Listened to a podcast this AM where Rutgers AD @ZinnKeli was asked about facilities and she led with this: “Our focal point on facilities right now surrounds those that can, in fact, generate revenue.”

Forward-thinking leadership when it comes to capital strategy.

Luxury boxes and premium club space are the obvious first move, and Rutgers is heading there at SHI Stadium. But that’s still just the beginning of what these assets can do. Most athletic facilities sit dark 300+ days a year, and what’s sitting inside them is valuable. Parking infrastructure that cost tens of millions to build, food and beverage operations already permitted, staffed, and equipped, hospitality square footage with better finishes than most local event venues, and a built-in audience with demonstrated willingness to spend money in that building.

A private event company or corporate hospitality operator trying to replicate that from scratch would spend years and significant capital just to get to baseline. Athletic departments already have it.

Programs are going to look at their venues the way a real estate developer looks at an underperforming asset. Private event revenue, corporate buyouts of premium sections for client entertainment, named interior spaces sold on multi-year deals, membership models that give donors year-round access to facilities, not just game days, partnerships with local businesses that want physical presence inside a venue that already has foot traffic and brand affinity baked in. The list goes on…

Athletic departments that interrogate every square foot of their real estate are the ones that will create a structural revenue advantage over the programs that are still building for optics. Cool to see Rutgers thinking this way. #rutgers

[Josh Weirich @jwire25]

Ballgame! 4 Game sweep. 30 wins, 6 in a row and 1st place. Let's go #GuardsBall

[Josh Weirich @jwire25]

2 and a 1/3, 0 Hits and 3Ks of nasty work by @Brycej33

[11Point7 College Baseball @11point7]

How bout them Washington Huskies??? 👀👀👀

Huskies advance to B1G quarterfinals facing Oregon next. Michigan and Ohio State face off tomorrow with winner facing Nebraska and loser goes home.

[Josh Weirich @jwire25]

Today seems like as good of a day as any to get Tanner Bibee a win! Let's go #GuardsBall a little run support for the guy!

[Josh Weirich @jwire25]

I mean, it is the most important play in football…

[Pete Thamel @PeteThamel]

The issue that the Big Ten coaches are most animated about at Big Ten meetings? The new/complicated punting rule (below), as the Big Ten coaches are 18-0 against it. Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz, a longtime punt advocate, was among the many animated coaches. “There’s no compelling reason to change it. It was already perfectly fine.”

[Josh Weirich @jwire25]

Today’s #GuardsBall includes a healthy dose of the long ball!

[Nick Lord @nickatnocap]

Really worth reading @bmarcello 's piece on the Big 12 and RedBird Capital. The headline most people grab onto is the $30M per school credit line, but the more interesting part of the deal is the $12.5M direct investment to build new EBITDA-generating businesses at the conference level, plus a commercial sponsorship operation that has already produced roughly $100M in new revenue through partners like PayPal.

What Gerry Cardinale describes is the YES Network and On Location playbook applied to college, where you monetize the intellectual property a league already owns rather than taking minority stakes and waiting. That's the model that actually moves the needle for a conference trying to close a real revenue gap with the Big Ten.

The schools are the front line, but the conference-level commercial layer is where a lot of the next decade of value gets built.

https://t.co/RhJslp4Hxs

[PGA TOUR @PGATOUR]

Ben Kern plays golf once a week. He just beat five of the world's top 10 players for 36 holes @PGAChampionship, and the club pro has secured a weekend tee time at Aronimink.

Kern, the general manager at Ohio's Hickory Hills GC, qualified for the PGA Championship as a top-20 finisher at this year's PGA Professional Championship. The Arizona native was recruited to play golf at Kansas State and played mini-tours for a few years before realizing it didn't fit his long-term career aspirations. "I am not one to want to practice all the time, so the week-in, week-out grind doesn't really appeal to me anymore," Kern said Friday.

Kern sets a goal of playing one round of golf per week with the members, and he said Hickory Hills has a great range that "I don't spend enough time on." But his natural talent was on full display Friday at Aronimink, where he carded six birdies en route to a 3-under 67 in cold, windy conditions that tied the second-lowest score of the morning wave.

Kern's 1-over total through 36 holes was better than five of the world's top 10-ranked players who competed in the same wave: Matt Fitzpatrick, Tommy Fleetwood, Justin Rose, J.J. Spaun and Russell Henley.

"It proves to myself that I can hang with these guys when I'm playing solid, and it was really nice," Kern said Friday. "I hung my head high yesterday, and I had a goal today and I surpassed it."

That he did. The only potential caveat: Kern is a plus-6 handicap back home, and he knows this round means he might need to give his members more strokes in future weekly games. It's a price he will heavily pay, though, for a weekend tee time at a major championship.

"I have no idea what the course rating is around this place, but I probably assume it's kind of high. So it's going to absolutely destroy my handicap," Kern quipped. "But that's okay. That's what it's for."