Truth & Rumors > NCAA

07:11 AM ET 05.17 | Oklahoma men's basketball coach Lon Kruger sees the positives, of course, in the Big 12's strength being enhanced by Marcus Smart, Markel Brown and Le'Bryan Nash returning to Oklahoma State. "Very, very good deal for the conference," Kruger said last week at the OU Caravan in Tulsa. "Tough for all the teams that have to play against them because they're really good. "They did a good job this year, in taking a step. Those guys, especially, that decided to stay in school, make them that much tougher. It'll be great for the conference but tough for all the other teams in the league." A true freshman last season, Smart was the Big 12 Player of the Year, and won the Wayman Tisdale Award as the best freshman in the country.

The Oklahoman

> Comment

07:10 AM ET 05.17 | It hasn't taken him long in Storrs, but Rodney Purvis has already made quite an impression in his first week at UConn. [Purvis'] first game is 18 months away, but he is already in attack mode. "I kind of reframed everything in my mind," Purvis said Thursday after a one-hour workout with new teammate Ryan Boatright and assistant coach Karl Hobbs. "I was calm, relaxed. Now my whole mind-set is different. I'm in the gym a lot, my mind-set is to try to destroy -- I know they're my teammates, but I've got to push these guys for the season. I'm only going to be in practice, but I'm going to treat these practices like they're my games." Purvis, who transferred from N.C. State on April 5, will have to sit out next season.

Hartford Courant

> Comment

06:29 PM ET 05.16 | News item! Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, the record executive who helped discovered him, are donating $70 million to USC, founding a degree program through which students learn how to meld marketing, business, and music-type stuff to learn how to become music moguls like Dre and Iovine. It's going to be called the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology, and the Business of Innovation. There are NCAA rules that prevent coaches from leveraging celebrities to demonstrate the benefits of a college sports team. Air Force couldn't even let their players teach Prince Harry how to play football, and there is a zero percent chance that the prospect of meeting Prince Harry would ever sway any college football recruit towards attending a service academy. So having the possibility of selling kids on taking classes in or near Classes by Dre Classes? As close as football coaches will ever get, within NCAA rules.

Jenna Wortham/New York Times

> Comment

06:19 PM ET 05.16 | Alabama is the latest program to tout its ability to get players into the NFL, here done by director of player personnel Tyler Siskey via tweet. It's a picture of every player that Nick Saban has put into the NFL, but unfortunately for the #BuiltByBama narrative they're trying to create, a huge number of those players did not attend Alabama. There are players from Toledo, Michigan State, and LSU on there as well. The thing is, though, nothing on that poster is inaccurate. Nick Saban coached all of those players when they were in college, but the inclusion of #BuiltByBama is a bit disingenuous.

Tyler Siskey, Associate Director for Player Personnel - University of Alabama Football

> Comment

06:03 PM ET 05.16 | The Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl, formerly known as the Insight.com Bowl, is in negotiations to form tie-ins with the Big 12 and Pac-12, according to CBSSports.com's Jeremy Fowler. The bowl formerly was tied to the Big 12 and Big Ten, and it would seem that the Big Ten will no longer be involved with the game. The Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl is far from the only bowl game looking into new tie-ins. A number of tie-ins have become shuffled due to the upcoming College Football Playoff, which would remove the semifinal games from any pre-existing conference tie-ins.

Jeremy Fowler/CBSSports.com

> Comment