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🚨 Headlines
🏈 Bowl games: UNLV beat Cal, 24-13, in the LA Bowl with the help of the most perfectly executed fake punt you’ll ever see; James Madison beat Western Kentucky, 27-17, in the Boca Raton Bowl for their first-ever Bowl win.
🏀 Wild finish: The SEC’s hot start reached a new high when undefeated Oklahoma’s Jeremiah Fears completed a four-point play in the final seconds to beat Michigan, 87-86.
👟 Lifetime deal: Damian Lillard agreed to a lifetime contract extension with Adidas, joining LeBron James (Nike), Kevin Durant (Nike) and Steph Curry (Under Armour) as the only NBA players with such deals.
⚽️ Trinity talks Dennis: Soccer star Trinity Rodman opened up about her relationship with her father, Dennis. “He’s not a dad. Maybe by blood, but nothing else.”
🏈 Ivy League in the playoffs: Ivy League teams will be eligible for the FCS playoffs starting next year, ending a self-imposed decades-long ban on its schools competing in postseason football.
🏈 “Absolute bedlam”: College football in chaos
Major college football exists in a state of unprecedented evolution as it shifts from an amateurism model to a professional entity, writes Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger.
As the expanded playoff arrives, the sport’s chaotic realities are on full display:
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Numerous players have left playoff-bound teams just days before kickoff due to the nonsensical timing of the transfer portal.
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An entire team, Marshall, withdrew from a bowl game as a result of so many players transferring out.
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A long-time and respected coach, Wake Forest’s Dave Clawson, abruptly resigned amid issues of the new era.
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At least three head coaches are contributing a portion of their salary to their school’s revenue-sharing efforts.
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Vanderbilt QB Diego Pavia won a court ruling that could result in him, and all former junior college players, being granted extra years of NCAA eligibility.
And perhaps wildest of all: Schools and their affiliated NIL collectives are promising prospects millions of guaranteed cash in an effort to distribute a large percentage of their pay before a new enforcement arm is implemented next summer.
What they’re saying: “Right now, it is absolute bedlam occurring across college football,” said Georgia president Jere Morehead.
At the center of much of this is the NCAA’s settlement of the House antitrust case, which will usher into the sport direct pay from schools to athletes under a quasi-salary cap of at least $20.5 million annually per school.
Deals executed before the settlement’s presumed approval in April are not expected to be subject to the new NIL clearinghouse, a Deloitte-run operation that is expected to police the many phony booster-backed compensation agreements so prevalent in the industry over the previous three years.
There are no real binding contracts; there is no players association; there is zero collective bargaining; and there is no punishment for rule-breakers as many of the rules themselves are the target of legal scrutiny.
Meanwhile, on the eve of the playoff… There’s already talk that it’s broken. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey only added fuel to that fire when he acknowledged last week, in an interview with Yahoo Sports, that the format was designed for the Power 5 era, not the current four-league landscape.
Bottom line: This should be a time for celebration. Woo! The 12-team playoff is here! But college football’s many problems are becoming too big to ignore.
⛳️ First look: TGL’s indoor golf facility
We got an up-close look at TGL’s home arena ahead of the indoor team golf league’s debut season, which kicks off on Jan. 7.
From Yahoo Sports’ Jay Busbee:
The first thing you notice when you walk into the SoFi Center is the screen that covers one side of the arena is HUGE. Like, five-stories-high huge.
The second thing you notice is that the green at the other end of the arena looks like it was sliced right off a PGA Tour stop and dropped in here. Ringed by bunkers, the green rises and falls, a challenging surface made all the more tricky by the hundreds of tiny, adjustable platforms just beneath its surface.
Players competing in TGL, a group that includes multiple major winners, top-10 players and Ryder Cup stalwarts, will start each “hole” facing the 64-foot-high, 54-foot-wide screen. Onscreen, they’ll see the view from the tee box of any of 30 virtual holes, and they’ll swing away, from a tee box located either 35 or 21 yards from the screen.
The real ball hits the screen with an audible, “Thwack!” and an instant later, a virtual ball with the exact same velocity and trajectory flies through virtual space, to land on a virtual fairway or perhaps virtual rough, virtual sand or — uh-oh — virtual water or a virtual canyon.
When a player’s shot gets within about 50 yards of the pin, the virtual action switches back to reality once again, and then it’s time to move to the Green Zone.
Players can chip onto the green or blast out of the sand, and once there can read the putts just like they can outdoors … although this time, they’ll have a shot clock watching their every move.
🏆 The NCAA fall champions
The NCAA’s fall season is nearly over: Five of seven sports have already ended, football is winding down and volleyball’s Final Four is tonight.
With that in mind, here’s a look at every fall champion so far.
⚽️ Soccer: Just how dominant are the North Carolina women? They’ve now won more than half (22 of 43) of the national championships ever contested.
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DI: Vermont (men); UNC (women)
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DII: Lynn (men); Cal Poly Pomona (women)
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DIII: Amherst (men); Wash U (women)
🏑 Field Hockey (women only): Middlebury has become an unstoppable powerhouse in the past decade, winning seven straight titles and eight of the last nine.
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DI: Northwestern
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DII: Saint Anselm
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DIII: Middlebury
🤽♂️ Water Polo (men only): UCLA won its 13th championship, second only to Cal’s 17, in a sport that spans all three divisions due to the limited number of programs (just 52).
👟 Cross Country: BYU became the first school since Colorado in 2004 to sweep the men’s and women’s Division I titles.
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DI: BYU (men and women)
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DII: Colorado School of Mines (men); Adams State (women)
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DIII: Wisconsin-La Crosse (men); MIT (women)
🎾 Tennis: Normally a spring sport, the NCAA introduced a two-year pilot program this season where Division I singles and doubles would be played in the fall. Team championships will still be played in the spring.
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Singles: Columbia’s Michael Zheng (men); Georgia’s Dasha Vidmanova (women)
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Doubles: TCU’s Pedro Vives and Lui Maxted (men); Virginia’s Elaine Chervinsky and Melodie Collard (women)
🏐 Volleyball (women only): While the Division I championship hasn’t been claimed just yet, Lynn University (DII) won its first title and Juniata College (DIII) won its fifth.
Still to come… Five more titles are still up for grabs: DII football (championship on Saturday), DI volleyball (Sunday), DIII football (Jan. 5), FCS football (Jan. 6) and FBS football (CFP title game on Jan. 20).
📆 Dec. 19, 1948: The Blizzard Bowl
76 years ago today, the Eagles beat the Cardinals, 7-0, in “The Blizzard Bowl,” winning their first NFL championship on a snow-covered field in Philadelphia.
The show must go on: Neither team was certain they’d actually play that day after waking up to a snowstorm that showed no signs of letting up. But much like we see about once a year in Buffalo, shovel-bearing fans pitched in to help clear the field.
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Nearly a foot of snow had fallen by kickoff, which was delayed half an hour while players helped the grounds crew remove the snow-covered tarp from the field.
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Along with the snow, 20 mph winds made offense extremely hard to come by: The teams combined for just 42 passing yards and missed all four of their FG attempts.
Philly’s hero: Halfback Steve Van Buren provided most of the Eagles’ offense, rushing for 98 yards and the game’s only score. And to think the future Hall of Famer nearly missed the game entirely…
Wake up, Steve! When Van Buren awoke that morning to heavy snowfall, he assumed the early afternoon game would be postponed, so he went back to sleep.
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A phone call from his coach woke him up and Van Buren rushed to his car, only to discover it was stuck in the snow.
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He ultimately made it just in time after taking a bus, a trolley and the subway, and walking the final six blocks to the stadium.
Sweet revenge: This was a rematch of the previous year’s NFL championship, which the Cardinals won for their second title. The Eagles went on to win three more championships in 1949, 1960 and 2017; the Cardinals haven’t won again since.
❄️ Watch: Archival footage (YouTube)
📺 Watchlist: Volleyball Final Four
The NCAA Volleyball Final Four is tonight in Louisville, where all four No. 1 seeds are playing in the semifinals.
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Louisville vs. Pittsburgh (6:30pm ET, ESPN): This ACC rematch (Pitt won both meetings this season) is between two schools who’ve never won the title but have recently come very close: Pitt has made four straight Final Fours, and Louisville has made three of the last four.
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Penn State vs. Nebraska (9pm): This Big Ten rematch (Penn State won their only meeting this season) is between two of the sport’s winningest programs: Penn State (7 titles) and Nebraska (5) trail only Stanford for the most titles all time (9).
More to watch:
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🏈 NFL: Broncos at Chargers (8:15pm, Prime)
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🏀 NBA: Thunder at Magic (7pm, TNT); Knicks at Timberwolves* (9:30pm, TNT)
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🏈 NCAAF: Georgia Southern vs. Sam Houston (7pm, ESPN2) … New Orleans Bowl at Caesars Superdome.
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⚽️ EFL Cup: Tottenham vs. Man United (3pm, Paramount+) … Winner joins Liverpool, Arsenal and Newcastle in the semifinals.
*KAT’s homecoming: Karl-Anthony Towns returns to Minnesota for his first game against the team that drafted him No. 1 overall in 2015.
🏈 NFL trivia
Five of the 14 NFL teams currently in playoff position (see above) have never won a Super Bowl. Can you name them?
Hint: Three AFC, two NFC.
Answer at the bottom.
🔮 Looking back and ahead
Looking back: We’ll have a full 2024 “Year in Review” for you tomorrow. Until then, here are 15 things we learned from a year of change.
Looking ahead: In the wake of so much change, where are sports going in 2025?
Trivia answer: Lions, Bills, Vikings, Texans, Chargers
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