SLATE: Commits, NIL, TBT, oh my!

Welcome back to the Slate, everyone. Sorry, it’s been a full week since we last brought you the news and notes of the day. Real Life was not kind to most of the BotC staff this week, but thank goodness for BracketCat and Drew!

So, let’s roundup the things we missed this week.

Football

Since we last posted, Chris Klieman and the Kansas State football team have added the commitments of two scholarship athletes and one preferred walk-on.

Last Saturday, it was Gage Stenger, a 6’2” 195lb “athlete” from Omaha that projects as a linebacker for the Wildcats. K-State was his lone Power 5 offer at commitment time, but he did have strong interest from Wyoming and several of the MVFC schools. He’s mostly played quarterback at Millard South HS, but that’s not a problem for the K-State coaches; they once took some guy named Jabril Cox and did the same thing — and he just got selected in the 4th round in the 2021 NFL Draft by the Cowboys at linebacker.

On Monday, the Wildcats added Drake Bequeaith, a 6’5” 260lb lineman from Grapevine, TX, who picked K-State over offers from Tulsa and North Texas (among others). And it’s a two-for-price-of-one deal, as Drake will be joined in Manhattan by his brother Dylan, who accepted a preferred walk-on spot with the Wildcats. Dylan is a 6’1” 225lb “athlete” who has played linebacker and guard at Grapevine, but projects as a fullback for the Purples.

And of course they aren’t done yet. The staff is also after Mikey Pauley, a quarterback from Blue Valley Northwest HS in the KC area, who is currently committed to Nebraska to play baseball. There has been a recent increase in the number of guys playing both football and baseball in college, and if Coach Klieman and Coach Hughes can figure things out, K-State could get on that same train.

We had a whole slew in the countdown since the last Slate, and I won’t post them all, but we’re running through offensive linemen right now.

Basketball

TBT is back, and the Purple and Black are geared back up in the hunt for the $1mil prize. Drew broke up the Countdown with the announcement and a rundown of TBT and the Purple and Black team — which is mostly former K-State stars, but also includes a handful of friends. K-State Sports has their own write-up as part of the Sports Extra series.

We’ll be doing our best to cover Purple and Black and the TBT, so be on the look-out for that content as the tournament gets closer.

Other

K-State Sports dropped it’s weekly summer baseball update, and while it looks like a good chunk of the older guys are taking a break in the early summer, most (maybe all) of the incoming freshmen are already in action, as well as a large group of guys that were freshmen this past season. The MLB first-year player draft is soon (July 11th-13th), and Jordan Wicks is still expected to be a first-round pick (mlb.com’s lastest mock draft has him going 16th overall to the Marlins), and is also expected to be joined by a handful of other Cats in the first 10 or so rounds.

Women’s golf incoming freshman Remington Isaac has been named the All-Greater Houston Girls Golfer of the Year by the Houston Chronicle. Isaac is the younger sister of recent graduate Reid Isaac, who led the team last year in stroke average and had an individual victory. The younger Isaac won seven of the 10 events that she played in this past year, and won the individual titles at both District and Region competition, before earning a fourth-place individual (and overall team runner-up) finish at State.

Name/Image/Likeness

The NCAA has approved an interim name, image, and likeness policy that will allow students-athletes at member institutions to benefit from using their NIL as long as it is consistent with state law (where applicable) and/or school policy. This is huge news for college athletes, who will now be able to make money off things like autographs or their personal social media accounts, and will be able to sign deals to be paid promote brands. So now, a guy like Shane Porter, who has a video going viral because Angry Old Man Internet is upset at college kids being college kids, can actually profit for having thousands of follower on TikTok, like every other person his age would have normally been able to do.

So if BotC can sign a current K-State student athlete to be our “brand ambassador”, who would you pick, and why? (And be realistic, because you know we can’t afford Skylar Thompson or Deuce Vaughn or Ayoka Lee)