I’ve heard from somebody who’s better-connected than I am (which doesn’t take much at all) that there are attempts at upping our NIL to keep Laila Phelia. Maybe Cam too, I don’t know.
3 Likes
Both visited Texas schools recently.
Phelia very much acting like she isn’t committed to leaving.
Cam, not so much.
4 Likes
Chyra Evans to Utah
https://x.com/TaliaGoodmanWBB/status/1782205104239653061
former top 100 in state recruit coming back to Michigan!
Missed 2024 season due to injury but high ceiling player!
7 Likes
Have any transfers committed to play at Michigan? Or just transfers out?
Edit: mere seconds before my post
1 Like
Her BR page is pretty ugly
That was kinda crazy 
I honestly thought you were going to post that tweet so I hurried it haha
Phelia just posted a goodbye. Sounds like she is gone.
That’s a tough one to swallow
Dot was wrong then. Dammit
BR page? Whats that?
Basketball reference
I don’t believe I ever said she was certain to return.
4 Likes
Damn. That’s a shame.
True. You said she didnt seem committed to leaving. Well, she committed now. Sucks!
Her dad is the girls varsity head coach at Grand Rapids Catholic Central
It has been a seriously rough month for the women’s program. Feels like an entire reset is happening in the offseason leading up to a year where I was expecting them to push for a top 4 finish in the conference. Glad the incoming class is strong, but it feels like any sense of program momentum has entirely evaporated. What the heck happened?!
Hopefully, a year or two from now I’ll look back at this post and laugh about how unnecessarily dramatic it seemed, but yikes.
5 Likes
Women’s basketball is growing significantly in breadth and popularity and right-thinking schools understand that there are vast swaths of people interested in sports who aren’t men (or that some men are willing to watch women) - the NIL landscape in women’s basketball is wildly imbalanced reflecting the slow uptake that many schools have had in this concept. I like Kim Mulkey no better than anyone here, but she got her players paid.
I suspect Michigan is not on the vanguard here.
3 Likes
Two things can be true at the same time:
- Players making money off of their own name, image and likeness and having freedom of movement is good for them.
- It has almost singlehandedly eroded the experience of being a college sports fan.
It feels like it’s all we get to hear about anymore is NIL. It is exhausting, and it is very quickly killing my desire to stay invested in college sports at all. If it weren’t for Swords and Olson incoming this year, I would seriously consider forgoing season tickets entirely.
What fun is college sports if you don’t get to watch players develop over the course of their careers at your school? Will we ever again (I am being slightly facetious here) see an Eli Brooks go from he’ll-never-play-here to oh-thank-God-he’s-coming-back-to-lead-the-team-as-a-5th-year? If players can’t get immediate PT and/or a bag, they’re out. At least the pros have contracts and collective bargaining. The combination of “NIL” and the unlimited, play-immediately transfer portal has just killed this particular fan’s enjoyment. Why should I have any desire to invest my time and energy rooting for players who are just as likely as not to take off after the season? And I am certainly not going to give money to collectives to keep college athletes around. If that’s all the college sports has become at this point, count me out. All of it has sapped my fan energy so quickly.
I’m trying to find a reason to invest any energy into a MBB team next year that will be made up almost entirely of guys I have never seen play and who in many cases will be gone the following year anyway. Hearing a coach say he spends 1/3 of his time on NIL is just a deflating sign of the times. I don’t blame May for it at all. If he wants to be competitive, that’s what he needs to do. The fact ”NIL” has so quickly become one of the most important aspects of college “coaching” is depressing.
I realize this is a pretty negative post for me, but this offseason — football, MBB, and WBB — have just been all-NIL-and-transfers all the time and it has been so exhausting. Sorry for the bad vibes.
17 Likes
This is purely a gut feeling thing, but I can’t imagine KBA has a ton of desire to spend the amount of time and energy on NIL that apparently may be needed going forward. Given how hard it has been for the men’s program to be competitive in that space and that Crisler is filled with a fraction of the fans other competitive B1G WBB schools draw, that will be an incredibly uphill battle. I don’t know that I would be surprised to see her pull a Beilein and say, “Nah, I’m good” in the coming years.
3 Likes