Report

How good is your basketball program these days? That would be a key consideration I would think for an invite as the AAC is pretty good in basketball these days having had a final four team just a year ago and whatnot.

The 2024 “winners” of the annual Shkreli awards, given each year to perpetrators of the most egregious examples of profiteering and dysfunction within the healthcare industry, have been released from the Lown Institute, an independent healthcare thinktank. The recipients are chosen by a panel made up of health policy experts, clinicians, journalists and advocates. The awards are named after Martin Shkreli, the infamous “pharma bro” who rose to international notoriety after increasing the price of lifesaving anti-parasitic drug Daraprim 50-fold. “All these stories paint a picture of a healthcare industry in desperate need of transformation. In 2024, healthcare practices were put in the spotlight,” Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute, said during the ceremony. “But doing these awards every year shows us that this is nothing new. We’re hoping that these stories illuminate what changes are needed.” The No 10 spot this year went to the University of North Texas health science center in Fort Worth for allegedly neglecting to notify next of kin before selling body parts of deceased people. An NBC News investigation uncovered that the school did not properly receive consent from the deceased or their family members before dissecting and distributing unclaimed bodies, despite the network finding that said family members were fairly easy to identify and contact. LINK: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/07/annual-awards-healthcare-profiteering

Big 12 runs thru 2031, ACC theu 2036

Media value, Football strength, then basketball strength, geographic and population area, all go into conference considerations. The ACC may lose 2-3 schools max to the SEC/BIG. Rice won't get an interview.

It probably should be that, but it's never that clean and easy to start something that big. Mainly because of media and GOR contracts in force with the conferences and non-consistent stop dates. It's all about the revenue streams! The only reason the PAC split up so easily was their media contract was ending and they had no Grant of Rights given to the holdovers. This is what binds the ACC now from having teams leave. The new MWC just had their remaining teams sign GORs to lock them in from going to the new PAC.