The seventh-ranked coach in the Big Ten has a national title ring. That’s what kind of challenge ranking the Big Ten coaches presents.

Even for a league with campus institutions like Jim Boeheim at Syracuse and Jim Calhoun at Connecticut, this offseason was relatively quiet for the Big East coaching ranks.

The Big 12’s trade of Missouri and Texas A&M for West Virginia and TCU appears to be a small downgrade as far as basketball is concerned.

Athlon Sports likes a challenge.

This is your daily link roundup of our favorite sports posts on the web for July 13.

• The Phillies are upping their offer to star pitcher Cole Hamels before he becomes a free agent after the season.

What would recent Final Fours be without Butler and VCU? And how boring would college football be without coaches like Lane Kiffin and Pat Fitzgerald.

There’s an intriguing youth movement afoot in college sports where Butler’s Brad Stevens and VCU’s Shaka Smart, both under the age of 40, have reached the final weekend of the NCAA Tournament and subsequently turn down big-time jobs to continue building their mid-major programs.

Only in college basketball could 45 programs make coaching changes and only a handful of them be truly blockbuster. No moves at Arizona or Kentucky as in recent seasons.

The biggest name to move may be Frank Martin from Kansas State to South Carolina. The biggest vacancy was at Illinois, where the Illini struck out on their top candidates before hiring Ohio’s John Groce.

This is your daily link roundup of our favorite sports posts on the web for July 6.

• The New York Daily News previews this weekend’s Yankees-Red Sox matchup.

This is your daily link roundup of our favorite sports posts on the web for June 29: