The Atlantic 10 is set to hire Big East senior associate commissioner Dan Leibovitz as its next commissioner, sources told ESPN on Sunday.

The sides are expected to come to a deal in the near future, sources said.

Leibovitz brings extensive experience in basketball, as he has led the sport for both the SEC and American Conference. He has also worked as a college head coach and NBA assistant and spent a decade in the Atlantic 10 as an assistant coach for John Chaney at Temple.

Leibovitz, who brings perspective of the conference from its heyday, will replace Bernadette McGlade, who is stepping down after 18 years as A-10 commissioner.

Leibovitz has emerged in the past decade as one of the most respected administrators in basketball, as he worked as the associate commissioner for basketball at the SEC from 2016 through 2023.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has credited Leibovitz for helping usher that league’s golden age for basketball.

“We needed somebody like that with a basketball pedigree, somebody who understood what we as coaches go through,” Tennessee coach Rick Barnes told ESPN about Leibovitz in 2025. “We were struggling. Our scheduling was poor. The officiating was poor, and back when John Guthrie was in the league, we had the best officials in the country in the SEC. We needed somebody like Dan, a strong voice for basketball in our league.”

Leibovitz’s duties at the Big East included managing the conference tournament as well as the league’s operations, strategy and scheduling.

Leibovitz served as an assistant coach at Temple from 1996 to 2006 and at Penn from 2010 to 2012. In between, he was the head coach at Hartford from 2006 to 2010.

He spent two years as an assistant for the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats.

Former Dallas Cowboys star Troy Aikman offered his own theory as to why there have been a spate of early-season injuries in the NFL over the last few years.

The Pro Football Hall of Famer said he believed the NFL’s rules to help players avoid injuries may actually be the cause of them.

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On Friday’s “Rodeo Time Podcast,” Aikman fondly remembered doing two-a-day practices in Wichita Falls, Texas, where the Cowboys would hold training camp in the summer. He suggested that while players aren’t as “taxed” as they were in the 1980s and 1990s during camps, they may not be as prepared for the toll their bodies take at the beginning of the season.

“I think they only wear pads one day a week or one time a day, and they have a walk-through, and then after, I don’t know how it all reads, but it’s pretty player friendly and favorable,” Aikman said. “And a lot of it, whenever they negotiate the CBA, the owners tend to always win on the financial side of things. And then the players say, ‘Well, all right, then we’re not gonna practice as long, or we’re not gonna practice as often.’ So, then they tend to get concessions when it comes to how much time they’re actually at facilities.

SUPER BOWL CHAMPION BRYCE HUFF RETIRES FROM NFL AT 27

Troy Aikman before game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Jacksonville Jaguars at EverBank Stadium on Dec. 4, 2023. (Nathan Ray Seebeck/USA Today Sports)

“I think the only ones who don’t have a voice in those negotiations are the coaches. They kind of have to wait till the dust settles and say, ‘All right, just how often do we get them?’ But some of it is that we see, too, is a lot of the reasons I think that we see so many injuries, especially early in the year. A lot of soft tissue injuries, a lot of muscle pulls, and things of that nature is the players, they’re just not able to train the way that we once did, they’re not able to callous their bodies as easily. Not that they’re not training hard and all that, but it’s different training on your own as opposed to being on the football field practicing football movements.”

Aikman made clear he was a fan of making changes in the name of player safety, but worried they may do more harm than good for some.

Cincinnati Bengals’ Joe Burrow, Minnesota Vikings’ J.J. McCarthy, San Francisco 49ers’ Brock Purdy and Baltimore Ravens’ Lamar Jackson were among the quarterbacks to miss time early last season.

Baltimore Ravens’ Lamar Jackson warms up before a preseason game against the Dallas Cowboys, Aug. 16, 2025, in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/Gareth Patterson)

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Player safety is set to be thrust back into the spotlight as the NFL reportedly eyes a Thanksgiving Eve game with the possibility of expanding to an 18-game schedule in the future.

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MELBOURNE, Australia — Another three members of the Iran’s women’s soccer team who accepted refugee visas to stay in Australia have decided to return to their homeland, an Australian government minister said on Sunday.

The departure leaves three of an initial seven squad members in Australia.

“Overnight, three members of the Iranian Women’s Football Team made the decision to join the rest of the team on their journey back to Iran,” Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said in a statement.

“After telling Australian officials they had made this decision, the players were given repeated chances to talk about their options,” Burke added.

Iran’s team arrived in Australia for the Women’s Asian Cup last month, before the war in the Middle East began on Feb. 28.

Initially, six players and a support staff member from a squad list of 26 players accepted humanitarian visas to stay in Australia before the rest of the Iranian contingent flew from Sydney to Malaysia on March 9.

Another later changed her mind and left Australia. Three left Sydney for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Saturday night, a government official said. The rest of the team has remained in Kuala Lumpur since they left Australia.

Iran’s Tasnim News Agency said the latest three to leave Australia were two players and the support staff member. The three were “returning to the warm embrace of their family and homeland,” the news outlet said in a statement.

Concerns about the team’s safety in Iran heightened when the players didn’t sing the Iranian national anthem before their first match.

The Australian government was urged to help the woman by Iranian groups in Australia and by U.S. President Donald Trump.

The Iranian news agency described the women’s return to the team as the “disgraceful failure of the American-Australian project and another failure for Trump.”