Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.
On Wednesday night, the UNC Asheville women’s soccer team faced off against the Winthrop Eagles. After a scoreless first half, the Bulldogs broke through to win the match, 2-1, clinching a trip to the Big South tournament. On paper, it seemed like a perfectly typical weekday college sporting event.
Except unlike other college sporting events, the Bulldogs had some unexpected visitors to the match. From the official game recap:
The teams traded runs, possessions and chances throughout the first half, with Winthrop outshooting Asheville 7-4 and earning three corner kicks to Asheville's one in the opening half. Despite the back-and-forth action, the match went to the break scoreless. Along with the action on the pitch, the first half did feature a short bear delay as bears were spotted near the field in the final 15 minutes of the first half.
Excuse me, did that recap say BEAR DELAY?
Why yes. Yes, it did.
UNC Asheville athletic director Janet Cone laughed as she recounted that portion of the broadcast to me. “It really did look like the bear just wanted to watch the match!”
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Bears are not an uncommon sight around campus, according to Cone, who has served as UNC Asheville’s AD since 2004. “Ten, 20 years ago, you’d never see any bears, since there [were] so many wooded areas for them to live,” she said. “But now that Asheville has grown and development has increased, I’ve seen them more often over the last three or four years.”
“Now it doesn’t feel uncommon to see a bear around here,” she said. “What’s uncommon is seeing bears this late in the season, but Wednesday was awful warm.”
UNC Asheville’s campus may have accidentally become a very attractive place for bears. Not only is the campus surrounded by woodlands, but it also has plenty of fruit trees and berry bushes, exactly the sort of thing a momma bear and her cubs would be looking for as they prepare to hibernate for the winter.
This particular momma bear and her cubs have been seen around campus before. Cone mentioned the family also seems to enjoy a hill near the baseball hitting complex, and staff and local police are trained on what to do if they see any bears. “Folks know not to feed them, to give them space, and let them just go about their way,” she said. “After all, bears have been in these mountains since forever. This is their land. We’re just using it at the moment.”
Colin Smith, the school’s senior associate athletic director for sport administration, notified game officials when the bears approached the stadium, and campus police and other officials had plans in case the animals decided they wanted to stick around for a while. Cone praised Smith for how well his staffers and others handled the situation.
It’s a funny image, for sure. But a black bear on the field isn’t exactly the same thing as a dog, raccoon, parrot or any other smaller animal. “You can chase some of those other animals away,” Cone told me, laughing, “but you do NOT want to chase a bear.”
We’ll have to see if “bear safety procedures” become part of UNC Asheville’s “other duties as assigned” for future job descriptions.
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Professors — bring this into your classroom!!!
Here’s some other stuff we worked on this week:
We’ve got the Extra Points Bowl in less than a month! Tell your friends, tell your neighbors, and most importantly, tell your local professors of sports administration. It’ll be a party!
There are a gazillion college sports lawsuits at the moment. I wrote about the one targeting Division III’s ban on athletic scholarships. Here’s why the math behind athletic department finances works very differently in D-III than D-II or D-I, and why losing this lawsuit could be a legitimate existential challenge for small college sports.
I also wrote about Bevo Lab, the massive new AI project built for Texas athletics. It’s funny to imagine Sark blowing a play call thanks to ChatGPT, but the potential for Bevo Labs to become a meaningful advantage for Texas is there, in my opinion. That is … if it can get the human component right.
Are we seeing more parity this college football season because of player payrolls? What conferences have the closest games right now? Let’s try to do some math and find out.
We’ve also added nearly 1,000 new documents to the Extra Points Library since last week alone. While we’re adding all kinds of data, the biggest recent increases have come from game contracts, assistant coach contracts and new vendor deals. Check it out today!
It’s crazy to think that 2026 is almost over. If you enjoy reading Extra Points and want to make sure it has the resources it needs to file a gazillion FOIAs, travel to campuses and call administrators about what to do about wild bears, then please consider upgrading to a premium subscription.
It’s just $9 a month and gives you access to all four newsletters every week and Athletic Director Simulator 4000. That money pays my salary, allows us to pay freelancers, covers our software development costs, pays for my health insurance and covers everything else we need to keep this business going.
Thanks for reading, everybody. Enjoy Halloween, be safe, and I’ll see you on the internet next week.
