United States of College Basketball 2021-22: Where every team ranks in each state, from top to bottom

Rawlings Creates New Brand, Combat, Bringing Drop Culture To Baseball Gear

In the midst of the MLB World Series, baseball gear brand Rawlings Sporting Goods is reaching out to a younger generation of fans with a new brand that leans into the exclusivity of drop culture.

The Combat brand, launched today, features a collection of individually numbered baseball bats in small batches. Once the first drop of 500 bats sells out, the brand will drop a new collection of bats in a different colorway.

"In the last five to 10 years, baseball players have started really expressing themselves and adding flavor to their kits — what they wear on field," said Rick Albano, executive creative director at agency The Alt League, which worked with Rawlings on the campaign.

The brand has been drumming up hype for the launch since earlier this month with teaser videos on Instagram. Its Built for Combat brand campaign, which launched today, stars four high school baseball athletes with name, image and likeness (NIL) deals.

Using young athletes at the start of their careers was an intentional step for Combat, as it aims to reach a younger audience of players and fans.

In working with NIL athletes, "you can have some of the best emerging players — that we will probably see in the World Series someday — working with these guys on an emerging product," Albano said.

The campaign video is mostly black and white, with brief flashes of the pink used in the product line's logo.

"We very intentionally chose to shoot in black and white," Albano said.  "A lot of what we are seeing in this market is just color and gloss, and they're trying to be really cool and hip," he noted, but much of the work therefore ends up looking the same.

Photon Studios managed video production, and Piñata did post-production. The brand is sharing campaign content through its website, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

Global Baseball And Softball Training Facility Secures Location At Oaks Mall

Texas-based D-BAT, a global indoor baseball and softball training facility, will expand to Oaks Mall in May 2025. According to a Colliers GNV Commercial Advisory Team release sent Friday, the 14,669-square-foot facility will be located across from the UF Health Ear Nose and Throat Center at Oaks Mall, located at 6419 W. Newberry Rd. In Gainesville. "We are thrilled to introduce the D-BAT franchise to Gainesville, bringing a top-tier training facility to our local athletes," said Priscilla Screen of D-BAT in a press release. "Our goal is to create an environment where athletes of all ages and skill levels can grow and thrive in the sports they are passionate about. By offering state-of-the-art equipment, expert coaching, and a supportive community, we are committed to helping each athlete excel and reach their full potential. We look forward to being part of Gainesville's athletic journey and watching our athletes succeed both on and off the field!" Become A Member Mainstreet does not have a paywall, but pavement-pounding journalism is not free. Join your neighbors who make this vital work possible. D-BAT was founded by Cade and Kyle Griffis in 1998 in Addison, Texas. The franchise, which now has over 170 worldwide locations, is known for its state-of-the-art, climate-controlled environments with personalized player development programs. The Oaks Mall location will offer pitching machines, indoor batting cages and a fully stocked pro shop that will provide a complete experience for aspiring players and their families. D-BAT's mission is to bring elite softball and baseball training to more communities. "Securing a location in Gainesville has been in the works for over two years, requiring significant commitment and collaboration from both D-BAT and our team," said Lauren Edwards, a senior associate with Colliers, in the press release. "We're thrilled to see this come to fruition and know it will have a tremendous positive impact on young athletes as well the overall sports culture in the region."

Science-based Training Lifts Caleb Williams, Brock Purdy To New Heights

BROCK PURDYIS one of the NFL's feel-good stories of his era, the quarterback who went from the final pick in the draft to a Super Bowl starter as both fans and league insiders looked on with wonder. But Purdy says he believes without Tom Gormely and his team, he would have been somehow less relevant than "Mr. Irrelevant."

"If I hadn't come to Tom, I would have already topped out," Purdy said.

It was in preparation for his 2022 pro day and the combine that Purdy sought the services of Gormely, a physical therapist who works with athletes at CORTX Sports Performance, the facility he founded in Jacksonville, Florida. Gormely said Purdy was eager for feedback that would help optimize his chances of reaching the NFL.

"He told me, 'I want to be able to have more arm velocity, I want to be able to throw better on the move,'" Gormely said. "'I want to know what I'm good at and what I'm bad at so I can improve. Tell me everything.'"

Using biomechanical analysis and visual cueing via high-speed cameras, Gormely and his CORTX team saw the issues that would hold back Purdy if not resolved. His throwing shoulder was tight with limited external rotation compared to other quarterbacks. Purdy needed the ability to create separation between his shoulder and his hips that would allow him to access increased rotational motion to create stronger throws.

Purdy described himself as "very stiff" when he first arrived at Gormely's facility to train in advance of the NFL combine.

"I was more of a box," Purdy said. "I felt like a block from college."

Gormely gave Purdy a plan to address deficits specific to his delivery. It involved physical therapy to address joint stiffness and soft tissue mobility, exercises in the gym to target specific muscle groups that would assist in his throwing delivery and movement patterns and work on the field with CORTX's quarterbacks coach, Will Hewlett, to turn those neuromuscular developments into actual football skills.

"These guys broke me up, loosened me up and got me throwing like I needed to," he said.

The changes were visible almost immediately. At Purdy's pro day, several scouts recognized more explosiveness and pop in his throwing than they'd seen during his final season at Iowa State or on tape. The 49ers were impressed enough to use the final pick of the draft pick on him, and during his first training camp and NFL preseason reps the evolution continued. Purdy was amazed by how quickly the work he'd done at CORTX during the spring and summer began to have practical applications.

"There are a lot of plays where the pocket starts closing in on you. You've got offensive linemen getting pushed back into your lap," Purdy said. "And you're thinking, 'How do I get this ball off with a lot of velocity and zip on it?' And when I would watch back the [practice] film it's like, 'Oh shoot, that looks like the drills that we were doing.' Warming up with the balls against the wall or exercises in the weight room. And I'm like that's that."

Within months, Purdy was the 49ers' unlikely starting quarterback.

Two years later, Purdy's legend has grown -- along with Gormely and CORTX's business. More quarterbacks, including 2024 top pick Caleb Williams, have traveled to Jacksonville in search of the secret weapon that might launch or improve their career. As it turns out, the key to unlocking the arsenal requires a return to each individual's fundamental base: the athlete's biomechanical fingerprint.

WILLIAMS ARRIVED AT CORTX in the spring of 2024 with a reputation as a one-man cheat code at the quarterback position. It would have been understandable if the presumed No. 1 pick in the draft, a Heisman Trophy winner at USC who had earned raves from NFL scouts as a generational talent, would have considered himself a finished product lacking only experience at the professional level.

But Williams sought improvement. He came to Gormely via Hewlett, who had worked with Williams since he was in seventh grade. When Carl Williams, Caleb's father, called Hewlett in December 2023 asking him to train his son in advance of the NFL draft, Hewlett said he believed Gormely's system would be a perfect fit.

"Caleb was the most pro-ready quarterback I've ever worked with," Hewlett said, "in terms of his readiness as a professional to handle the pressure, his athleticism and just raw ability. It was just going to be transitioning to a different type of pocket presence at the pro level, meaning you're going to have to play from the pocket through progressions."

But Williams' elite talent presented a unique challenge for CORTX. His explosiveness and technical skills were at such a high level, they could mask minor deficits while still allowing him to succeed in college football. Gormely and his team, knowing that the NFL could expose even the smallest weaknesses, focused on identifying things Williams had been previously able to overcome as an elite "compensator."

"Mechanically he did some things the best we've ever seen on any quarterback," said Hewlett, noting "we didn't want to take away from that but it was giving him a framework of things he needed to be aware of with his base to build consistency."

Gormely observed a bit of an excessive forward lean during Williams' delivery that ultimately affected the trajectory of the ball. Chris Hess, founder of Biometrek and another key member of the CORTX team, used his collection of high-speed cameras to confirm via motion capture analysis where Williams was losing velocity as a result of the lean. Hewlett saw the intermittent lack of accuracy that accompanied this body position when Williams threw to receivers on the practice field.

"I was leaning forward and it would cause different paths for the ball," Williams acknowledged.

After visual feedback sessions to assist Williams in recognizing where and how these deficits were showing up, Gormely crafted a plan to focus on reinforcing stability through Williams' legs while enhancing rotation through his hips and torso to generate power.

Williams said the exercises and hands-on treatments Gormely did with him affected his technique within the first month of working together.

"I can feel the change," Williams said. "Being stable, slamming into the ground basically with my front leg and rotating with my hips and staying connected through the ground with both feet, then letting the arm come flying through. [The ball] is going to be right where you want it."

Despite all the accolades he had received as a prospect, Williams was eager to grow.

"Caleb never wanted a pat on the back," Gormely said. "In fact, it was the opposite. He only wanted to know how he could get better."

NUMEROUS NFL QUARTERBACKS including Josh Allen and Sam Darnold are familiar with Hess, who arrived at CORTX as an already established figure in the motion capture space. Hess, who captures three-dimensional footage of quarterbacks as a means of identifying deficits and poor habits along with strengths and efficiencies in their throwing motion, says he believes not enough has been done to develop young quarterbacks.

"In baseball, we expect a thrower to continue to evolve after they're drafted," he said. "In golf, we talk about perfecting a swing over the life of your golf career. Why is it different in football?" In Gormely, Hess found a like-minded specialist with a medical background who could merge the data and visual feedback with his biomechanical findings.

"We're trying to identify: [Is] this inefficiency physical, something we're able to address through work on the soft tissues?" Hess said. "Is this structurally how they're built, or is it just a pattern that's been trained over and over?"

Gormely, whose background is in baseball, stresses efficiency of movement as a means of improving performance, especially for elite athletes who have developed bad on-field habits because of their physical gifts. Metrics more frequently tied to baseball analytics than football -- such as velocity and spin rate -- are part of Gormely's analysis.

"What you're trying to do is explain to them, hey, better movement, more efficient movement, makes things easier," Gormely said. "Understanding how we want you to generate power and torque allows you to then access those different arm positions, arm patterns, hip positions more easily in the game and hopefully makes you a more dynamic athlete."

Purdy, who returned to CORTX after injuring his elbow in the 2022 playoffs, has seen results from this approach.

"They've got me into different positions and movements that have helped me within my hips and my shoulder capsule to be able to make throws around defenders and the different windows and the different arm slots on the move," Purdy said. "There's a bunch of plays on the run that I've made where my arm slot has been like a middle infielder, where it's like, 'OK, that's all the training we've done with these guys.'"

NATHAN PETERMANIS best known -- perhaps famously -- for his NFL debut.

On Nov. 17, 2017 in his first start after being selected in the fifth round of the draft that spring, Peterman threw five interceptions against the Los Angeles Chargers before being benched at halftime. Peterman, who has since played for the Raiders, Bears and now the Atlanta Falcons as a member of the practice squad, has stayed in the league -- despite his debut -- thanks in part to Gormely.

Peterman sprained the ulnar collateral ligament in his throwing elbow in 2019 and rehabbed the injury throughout the season. Then, at the suggestion of a high school friend who was a minor league baseball player, he decided to reach out to Gormely. Peterman said his friend raved that Gormely not only understood rehab, but as a former baseball player himself, specifically understood throwers. Peterman wondered if Gormely could design an offseason throwing program that would get his elbow ready for football.

Gormely started by asking Peterman what a normal offseason program for a quarterback looked like when it came to throwing-specific warmups, interval throwing protocols and sequencing. He was surprised by the answer. Gormely learned quarterbacks often prepared for the season primarily by gathering receivers for throwing sessions. Even for those who had a more structured program in place, the focus was largely on building the volume of work, not throwing preparedness, skill acquisition or fine-tuning. Gormely's approach would be markedly different.

"One of the biggest differences I noticed right away," Peterman said, "was the throwing regimen. I had never done throwing-specific warmup drills or strengthening exercises after a throwing workout, designed to get the soreness out of my arm.

"Before working with Tom, I had never tracked throws per day, or the entirety of throws in a preseason."

After spending the 2020 offseason working with Gormely, Peterman called him midway through the next season and told him it was the best his arm had ever felt.

"It was the first time I had never felt a sore arm or a fatigued, weak arm during the season," Peterman said. "And I knew I was going to keep coming back every offseason."

Gormely knew he was onto something.

"From there it was like, let's keep this going," Gormely said. "And from that point forward it's been a snowball effect."

Purdy's case illustrates how quarterback development with Gormely is viewed as a continual process. Along with Williams and Peterman, Purdy plans to return to Jacksonville this offseason to continue a progression that shouldn't end until he retires.

"I come in here with a purpose every day. Not just coming in and throwing, but actually working on your mechanics," Purdy said. "It's always going to be a thing with my career. I'm not going to perfect it this season or next season. I can get closer and closer but that's the beauty of this sport ... The science is off the field. Once I step on, I let it rip and those habits take over."

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