📰🏟️ More CFP changes
Plus: The NBA’s new guard…
Good morning, and welcome to the end of a millennial era. After 4,900+ episodes and 20+ years on ESPN, the fast-paced, points-based Around the Horn aired its final episode on Friday.
Go behind the scenes of the show’s final days here.
—Peter & Kyle
On the clock: This newsletter takes ~3.70 minutes to read (984 words).
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🏈 OFFSEASON MOVES
More changes are coming to the College Football Playoff
Crop rotation, but make it football: The CFP is changing its seeding model. The playoff management committee last week unanimously voted to adopt a straight-seeding approach, where all 12 teams are ranked in order of the final playoff rankings of the regular season.
In practice: This means no more first-round byes for the four highest-ranked conference champions. However, everything else about the playoff will remain the same, including the financial payouts and first-round games being played at the higher-ranked school’s campus.
But it probably won’t stay this way for long
In spring 2024, when planning the future of the CFP, the Big Ten and SEC—the big dawgs of college football—threatened to walk away and create their own postseason system if they weren’t granted a majority of CFP revenue and full control over the playoff format.
And this hardball tactic worked. Execs of the 10 FBS leagues and Notre Dame eventually signed a memorandum of understanding handing control over to college football’s two richest conferences starting in 2026 (the season after next), when the CFP’s six-year, $7.8B media rights deal with ESPN kicks off.
What could change: The Big Ten and SEC have been pushing to expand the playoff to either 14 or 16 teams (from 12 currently), with multiple automatic qualifiers per conference—including four each for themselves.
- The 14-team format has been described as a 4-4-2-2-1+1 model, with the top two seeds receiving first-round byes. There would be no byes in a 16-team structure.
- Under these models, each power conference would need to establish the way in which they qualify their teams for the automatic berths, Yahoo Sports reports—potentially throwing conference championship games into flux.
In other college sports news: The Nick Saban-co-headed presidential commission has been put on hold, as the House v. NCAA settlement remains in limbo and the Senate negotiates over ongoing college sports legislation.
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⏱️ Catch Up Quick
Headlines
🏆 Conference finals: In the NHL, the Hurricanes topped the Panthers last night to force a Game 5; see an updated bracket here. | NBA: The Thunder beat the Timberwolves last night to go up 3-1 in the series; see the full playoff picture here.
🏀 Too bad it wasn’t a Fever: Indiana’s Caitlin Clark is expected to be sidelined for at least two weeks due to a quad strain, which, unfortunately, a prescription for more cowbell can’t fix.
📈 Growth = $: The New York Liberty's owners sold a stake in the WNBA team at a $450M valuation, the highest ever for a women's pro sports franchise.
⚾ Southern dominance: The NCAA college baseball postseason field has been finalized. SEC schools grabbed eight of the 16 regional sites, tying the record the conference set in 2023.
🥎 Southern dominance, cont’d: The NCAA Women’s College World Series is set, with Oregon the only school north of the Mason-Dixon line to clinch a berth.
🫡 Best of luck: Travis Hunter, the NFL’s #2 draft pick, married his fiancée, Leanna De La Fuente—and also reportedly gifted her a Mercedes worth $200k+.
🎾🇫🇷 Ooo la la: The French Open raised its total purse to a record $63.7M, a 5.2% increase from last year and up ~64% from 2021.
😬 Ouch: The results of the recently released NBA regular season awards will cost the Grizzlies' Jaren Jackson Jr. about $200M.
📸 Snapped
Pics from the weekend
🏀 Say hello to the NBA’s new guard. All four remaining teams in the NBA Playoffs feature superstar guards as their best players—Anthony Edwards (T-Wolves), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Thunder), Tyrese Haliburton (Pacers), and Jalen Brunson (Knicks)—which represents a historical oddity among teams competing for a title. Of the 77 championship teams in NBA history, just 22 have been led by guards (29%), according to Yahoo Sports. And of those guard-led title teams, 18 relied on inner-circle Hall-of-Famers: Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, Steph Curry, Isiah Thomas, and Dwyane Wade.
🏒 Miracle on Ice, Pt. 2 (featuring a tribute to Johnny Gaudreau): On Sunday, Team USA defeated Switzerland 1-0 behind an OT goal from Buffalo Sabres C Tage Thompson to win the gold medal at the IIHF World Championship, marking America’s first major tournament championship since the 1996 World Cup. And in a bit of news that would get Herb Brooks even more stoked, Team USA will experience another great opportunity soon—the 2026 Winter Olympics are expected to feature the return of NHL players for the first time in a decade-plus.
Paella all around😋: Alex Palou became the first Spaniard to win the Indy 500. The 28-year-old has been IndyCar’s best overall driver in recent years, winning three of the past four titles, but a victory at “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” had eluded him until this weekend. Palou’s historic victory, which saw him survive multiple crashes, came as the Indy 500 sold out its grandstands for the first time in nearly a decade—and also hosted its first-ever Wienie 500 in partnership with Oscar Meyer, which, similar to Jonah Hill in Accepted, keeps asking people to look at its wienermobile.
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🔢 Facts & Figures
By the numbers
Here are five stats from this past week that made our team say “whoa.” Hopefully you will, too.
- 📉 The Colorado Rockies turned in the worst 50-game start in modern MLB history (8-42), and the worst overall since 1895.
- 🏀 Since 1997-98, NBA playoff teams have 4 wins and 1,640+ losses when trailing by 7+ points in the final minute (.002 winning percentage). The 2025 Indiana Pacers account for 3 of those 4 wins.
- 🥎 NiJaree Canady, a star softball player paid a record $1M to transfer to Texas Tech, was the winning pitcher in 60% of TTU’s wins this season.
- 🏎️ A Ferrari driven by Michael Schumacher in two of his 2001 F1 Grand Prix wins sold for a record $18M at auction.
- ⚾ Tigers SP Tarik Skubal set a new record with 13 Ks in a “Maddux game,” aka a complete-game shutout with fewer than 100 pitches.
👀 Must See
Top plays
🏀 KAT’s and-one dunk puts Knicks ahead after 20-point comeback
💪 Watch Oneil Cruz hit the hardest ball in the StatCast era…
🌬️ …and Tarik Skubal throw the fastest strikeout pitch by an MLB starter
🏎️ Massive pile-up occurs at F2 race in Monaco
🏈 Cade Johnson submits UFL catch-of-the-year candidate
🤔 Trivia
In company with the Cruz missile
As you can witness in “Top Plays” one section higher, the Pirates’ Oneil Cruz on Sunday recorded the hardest-hit ball in the MLB StatCast era (2015 onward)—a 122.9 MPH bomb off the Brewers’ Logan Henderson that one-hopped into the Allegheny River.
Three other players appear on the list of MLB’s top-ten hardest-hit balls in the StatCast era. Can you name them?
Hint: Teammates + a stud recently back from injury
🌐 Web Gems
Cool things to click
🏃💨 Tracking well: Grand Slam Track, a global pro track-and-field league founded by former Olympic champion sprinter Michael Johnson, is halfway through its inaugural season. How it's going so far.
⚽ Learn: Congrats, you've been promoted to the Premier League! Now what?
⌚ A love affair: How Rolex became synonymous with tennis.
🤔 Answers
Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge, Ronald Acuña Jr.
