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St. John’s is claiming the Garden as its home court. It better keep winning.
Matt Brown & Tim Casey
February 17, 2026
In partnership with
Hey there,
This is Matt Brown, from our sister publication, Extra Points. Kyle and Joan are both out this week, so I’m stepping in for today’s newsletter, along with a special guest. This is a little beefier than our typical Tuesday newsletter, so you’re going to want to dig in for all this one.
— Matt
When it all clicks.
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KICKOFF
RIP Regional Conferences. Sacrameto State is in the MAC now
It’s officially official. Today, the MAC confirmed that it will bring in Sacramento State as a new football-only member, starting this football season.
this is particularly notable because unlike almost every other FBS conference, the MAC remained a (mostly) regional league, with the vast majority of league schools in the Great Lakes region. Buffalo and UMass are in the league too, but it’s not like those places are thousands of miles away from Akron or Toledo.
Sacramento State, as you might imagine, is in Sacramento. In California. A good 2,000 miles away from every other league member.
We have more about the math behind the move at Extra Points, but it’s worth noting that the official announcement states this arrangement is for a “five year period.” Conference invites don’t usually come with an expiration date. Is the MAC just collecting a check while Sacramento State tries to play their way into the MWC or Pac-12? What happens if that plan doesn’t work out?
At any rate, if the ACC can have Stanford, Conference USA can run from New Mexico to Delaware, and the Big Ten can include Oregon and Rutgers, there’s only one thing left to do for our last regional FBS league, the Sun Belt.
LSU is the first SEC school with an official jersey sponsor
Almost everybody in D1 is at least kicking the tires on jersey sponsorships, now that new NCAA legislation permits them.
LSU is the first major athletic program to officially announce a sponsor. Woodside Energy will have a patch on the unforms for all 21 official LSU sports, from football to women’s soccer. According to the release, “Woodside will have prominent signage at all athletic venues as well as a diverse mix of marketing assets across all LSU sports channels, highlighting its long-term commitment to the Tigers, the Baton Rouge community and the state of Louisiana.”
UNLV also has an official jersey sponsor locked down. Expect other announcements to come later in the Spring, once more schools have a better understanding of where the market actually is. Based on converations we’re having at NIL Wire, we believe many FCS and non-football D1 schools will also have secured jersey patch partnerships for the 2026-2027 athletic season.
What does revenue sharing look like for college baseball?
The Athletic caught up with several college baseball coaches to get a better for what House distribution budgets look like, and how programs are adapting to deal with the money and transfers that have become part of the daily life for football and basketball teams.
Just because you’re a huge school with a huge budget doesn’t mean you’re distributing meaningful money directly to baseball players (sup, most of the Big Ten). And there are elite baseball teams at schools who can’t come close to funding the full House limit, like Troy or Southern Miss.
There aren’t many sports where Troy might be spending more than Washington or Ohio State. But that’s baseball for you! Interesting, at least to me, to see coaches not use this forum to complain so much as they pointed out that they’re all just trying to learn how this new compensation system operates. Just like the rest of us.
More news and links:
Another Big Time college football coach calls for a CFB Commisssioner
Nebraska’s old AD claims he tried hard to get them back into the Big 12, and that his old president (now at Ohio State) supported him
How did College Football get so important in the first place?
DOWN TO BUSINESS
St. John’s is claiming the Garden as its home court. It better keep winning.
by Tim Casey
As St. John’s coach Rick Pitino walked on to the Madison Square Garden floor before his team’s Feb. 6 game against UConn, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’s “Empire State of Mind” blared on the loudspeakers. Before heading to the Red Storm’s bench, Pitino shook hands with and hugged Mike Repole, an alum and billionaire booster who was among the sell-out crowd of 19,812.
UConn, winners of six national titles since 1999, refers to MSG as “Storrs South,” a nod to Huskies fans who usually fill the arena. That night, even Pitino said he’d expected UConn fans would account for just 30 or 40 percent of the crowd. But after St. John’s upset the Huskies, snapping their 18-game winning streak and dropping them from No. 3 to No. 6 in the AP poll, Pitino admitted he was wrong, estimating 90 percent of fans had been rooting for St. John’s.
“I thought the Garden was as good as I’ve seen it,” Pitino said.
Said UConn coach Dan Hurley: “I looked around during the anthem. I saw a lot of red. That felt like a real road game.”
This year, the Red Storm are playing 12 regular-season games at MSG and just five at their on-campus, 5,260-seat venue, Carnesecca Arena. St. John’s hasn’t played this many regular-season games at the Garden since 1951-52, and the uptick is part of a calculated move under Pitino, who made it clear when he was hired in 2023 that he wanted as many games as possible at MSG.
And while the spotlight of playing in Manhattan at a nearly 20,000-seat historic venue provides obvious appeal, the Red Storm’s scheduling decision isn’t quite so simple as it might seem. Carnesecca offers its own benefits: There, St. John’s doesn’t have to pay rent and can keep all the money generated from ticket sales, concessions and other revenue streams. At MSG, the Red Storm must pay top-dollar rent, and they need to draw large crowds to make the finances work. Until recently, as the team struggled on the court, it only made sense for St. John’s to schedule MSG games against programs such as UConn, Villanova or Providence that have a significant number of fans in the New York area. Even then, many games were nowhere close to sell-outs.
But with the hiring of Pitino and the financial backing of Repole, the landscape shifted. Over the past two seasons, St. John’s has re-emerged as a Big East power; after beating Providence on Saturday, it’s ranked No. 17, riding an 11-game winning streak — and drawing crowds worthy of its more permanent move to MSG. But the Red Storm will have to keep winning to make it worthwhile.
