📰🏟️ Sanctioned
Plus: The wheel MVP…
Good afternoon. Today’s edition is full of the top sports stories from today. Let’s rock and roll.
1) Skubal, Skenes clean up Cy Young awards
Tigers ace Tarik Skubal—who could be on the move this offseason—won his second consecutive American League Cy Young Award last night, earning 26/30 first-place votes to finish ahead of Red Sox P Garrett Crochet.
- In the NL, Pirates SP Paul Skenes followed up his Rookie of the Year campaign last season by winning the Cy Young by unanimous vote—and finally cracking a smile.
- It marks the second time in MLB history that both starting pitchers from the All-Star Game went on to win the Cy Young Award, after 2001 (Randy Johnson and Roger Clemens).
2) Jokić makes NBA history in 55-point night
Last night, Nuggets superstar C Nikola Jokić tied the highest-scoring performance in the NBA this season with 55 points, as Denver beat the LA Clippers 130-116 for their sixth straight win.
- Jokić is now the first player in NBA history to average a 35-point triple-double while shooting 60% or better across a six-game stretch.
- Prior to last night, the Nuggets had an 0-4 all-time record when Jokić scored 50+ points.
Why “The Joker” is (also) cracking a smile
3) Atlanta awarded NWSL franchise with record $165M fee
The city was confirmed this week as the National Women’s Soccer League’s 17th franchise, with new owner Arthur Blank (Falcons, Atlanta United) set to pay a record $165M expansion fee.
- Atlanta’s NWSL team will debut in the 2028 season, after the league’s 15th and 16th teams—in Boston and Denver—begin play next year.
- Fun fact: As recently as 2020, expansion fees to buy an NWSL expansion team stood at ~$2M.
4) Michigan State football forced to vacate 14 wins
The Spartans’ football program received three years of probation from the NCAA and was forced to vacate 14 wins for violations that occurred during Tucker's tenure as coach (before he was fired for sexual harassment allegations).
- The violations center around members of Tucker’s staff who provided $10,000+ in impermissible benefits to several recruits from 2021-23.
- The list includes three athletes who eventually played in 26 games for MSU, covering the 14 vacated wins.
More on the Spartans’ punishment
5) College student pops wheelie for 93+ miles to break world record
French engineering student Oscar Delaite just set the Guinness World Record for the longest continuous bicycle wheelie.
- While on a standard commuter bike, he traveled 93.45 miles on an indoor track—or 752 laps—across ~6.5 hours, nearly doubling the previous record.
- It marks the culmination of more than a year of training at 10-15 hours/week, according to Delaite.
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