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Former West Virginia athletic director Oliver Luck still remembers, with vivid clarity, the day Pittsburgh and Syracuse officially announced they were bailing on the Big East to move to the ACC. He was headed east from Morgantown to the West Virginia-Maryland football game on Sept. 17, 2011, and made a plan to get to league commissioner John Marinatto as quickly as possible.

The two met alone in a suite inside Maryland’s football stadium. Marinatto sat in a high-backed chair at the bar as the two briefly discussed how exactly the Big East would survive as a football-playing conference. The elephant in the room, of course, was that Pitt and Syracuse had delivered a double gut punch that sent shock waves across the league, signaling to every remaining football-playing member that the time had come to forget about conference loyalties and look out for itself.

Neither said what appears obvious, in hindsight. Even if they wanted to, they never had the chance. Marinatto got a phone call five minutes into their meeting. Luck watched as Marinatto turned ashen and pale, then fell to the ground.

“I remember saying to myself, ‘Oh my god, the conference is falling apart, the commissioner just [fainted] in front of me and I don’t know what to do,'” Luck said in a phone interview, adding that the call concerned Dave Gavitt, the Big East founder, who died just as his beloved league was breaking up.

Luck raced to find medical personnel, who helped Marinatto regain consciousness. But there is a reason, 10 years later, that Luck remembers that moment so clearly. That day serves as a point of demarcation where nothing would ever be the same for the Big East or its league members.

In short order, TCU pulled out of its agreement to join the Big East after just 11 months. Forty days after Luck met with Marinatto, West Virginia announced it was moving on to the Big 12, beating out Louisville in a high-stakes race that drew in high-powered politicians and pitted two Big East members against each other for the final open spot.

Skepticism among remaining teams was high; trust was low. Presidents, athletic directors and coaches made calls behind one another’s backs to find a secure conference home that would not only provide stability but also a financial windfall that guaranteed their own futures, all while sitting in Big East meetings identifying schools to add in an effort to save the conference. As Big East officials worked on creating a Western flank with Boise State and San Diego State, remaining schools Louisville, Cincinnati, UConn, South Florida and Rutgers kept making entreaties to other conferences to find an escape route.

To be sure, the Big East did not set off the wave of realignment that impacted every Power 5 conference between 2010 and 2012. The Big Ten did that when it announced in 2009 that it would begin exploring expansion possibilities before ultimately adding Nebraska in 2010.

But the Big East was the only major conference to lose half its football-playing members over that span, and that ended up delivering a blow from which the conference could not recover. Ultimately, the basketball-playing contingent retained the Big East name and split off; the remaining football-playing members joined with nine new schools and formed the American Athletic Conference.

For those with deep Big East connections who watched the events unfold in real time, hurt feelings, anger and sadness remain 10 years later. Marinatto, who died in June at age 64, blamed himself for what happened to his beloved league on his watch, according to multiple former colleagues. He never granted an interview after he resigned as Big East commissioner in 2012.

“I don’t know if anybody could have stopped what happened from happening,” one former league official said. “Especially when you had schools hell-bent on taking care of themselves.”

Of course, the schools that left view what happened much differently.

“We were all aware of the movement happening around us,” former Syracuse athletic director Daryl Gross said. “We just had a TV deal fall through with the Big East, and the Big East is looking like a burning ship, and there’s a cruise ship here to pick us up. So what are you going to do?”


TO UNDERSTAND HOW everything unraveled for the Big East, a short history lesson is in order. The Big East formed in 1979 as a basketball conference and stood proudly behind that sport, even rejecting Penn State as a member in the early 1980s.

But as football grew in power and financial stature, the league invited in Miami, Virginia Tech, West Virginia and several others, and began sponsoring football in 1991, allowing long-standing league members like Pitt, Syracuse and Boston College to play football in a conference for the first time. But doing so always left the league slightly off-kilter compared to others because of the unusual football/basketball dynamic.

“Ever since the start of the Big East, there always was concern about the football schools breaking away,” one former Big East official said.

Realignment hit the Big East first in 2003 when Miami and Virginia Tech left for the ACC. That summer, the remaining Big East football-playing schools decided they wanted to split away, believing their interests were no longer aligned with those of the basketball-playing schools. Kevin O’Malley, a TV executive-turned-consultant, was brought in to help then-commissioner Mike Tranghese keep the league together.

“They had actually drafted a letter that was going to be sent,” O’Malley recalled. “As far as they were concerned, the basketball schools were history. What I pointed out was something that is a recurring theme through all of this, which is how much the basketball schools and the football schools needed each other. It took a while, but we put Humpty-Dumpty back together again.”

Boston College eventually left too. Though the league added Louisville, USF and Cincinnati to fill in the gaps, the growing importance of football from a revenue-generating standpoint, most importantly during television contract negotiations and making sure it had a seat at the table in the old Bowl Championship Series, only widened the chasm between the football and basketball schools.

It became much harder for the league to not only figure out its identity — caught between its basketball tradition and the riches of football — but also to keep everybody moving forward together.

“There are no rules in this game of realignment, right? There wasn’t an arbiter. You couldn’t go to the NCAA or the federal government. It was a game we likened to musical chairs. You don’t want to be the one standing when the music stops.”

Former West Virginia athletic director Oliver Luck

“Over time, it got more contentious because the basketball side was always wary of the football side,” one former Big East athletic director said. “And as we drove some of those ideas, it was viewed as more of a football play instead of a league play.”

That essentially is at the heart of where so much went wrong, starting in December 2009. When the Big Ten announced it would explore expansion over the ensuing 12-18 months, athletic directors across the country realized a seismic shift in the landscape was about to happen. Some schools and conferences would end up with an enormous financial windfall, while others would scramble to find a suitable home.

“The day the Big Ten announced that,” former Pitt athletic director Steve Pederson said, “I think everybody said, ‘OK, here we go.’ If you don’t know whether you’re going to be one that’s going to be selected, the risk is high. So we really tried to come up with some kind of way to cement the Big East together. Understandably, a lot of schools just didn’t want to make that kind of commitment. They said, ‘Well, what if what if we had a chance to go to one of these conferences?'”

Gross remembers attending one set of meetings before the conference basketball tournament in 2011, looking at the agenda and seeing nothing listed on the topic of expansion.

“To this day, I have no idea why no one wanted to touch the subject,” Gross said. “It was almost like, if we don’t talk about it, then we don’t have to worry about it.”

He raised those concerns during the meeting. Afterward, another athletic director walked up to him and asked, “Are you guys leaving?”

Gross maintains that at that point Syracuse had no plans to leave. “I was just trying to figure out, ‘What’s the plan?'” he said. “I felt so lost. I thought for sure this would be the biggest discussion topic in the entire room.”

Whether the league was proactive or not is a matter of perspective. Multiple times, the Big East tried to form a partnership with several Big 12 schools, but it was only in response to the possibility that Texas and Oklahoma would leave.

Once Texas and Oklahoma decided to stay put, the idea fizzled.

Marinatto sent a bottle of champagne to then-Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe to congratulate him on keeping his league from disintegrating.

Soon, there wouldn’t be much to celebrate.


THE BIGGEST DISCUSSION topic in the Big East became its television rights. At the time, the Big East was working with ESPN on a new rights deal that would bump its annual payout from $36 million per year to $155 million per year. All told, the new deal would be worth more than $1.3 billion over the life of the contract. As its television partner at the time, ESPN had an exclusive negotiating window to make a deal happen with the Big East.

But there were multiple presidents and athletic directors who wanted to wait and take the Big East to the open market once that window with ESPN closed, believing its entire rights package was worth more than what ESPN was offering. That group included Georgetown, Pitt and Rutgers.

“We just felt like at the time that the deal didn’t reflect our value,” Pederson said. “As you looked at the numbers, you just said, ‘If you’re going to sign a long-term deal that you feel is undervalued, then you’re just going to be sorry almost the minute you sign it.’ We understood we were not in the same position at that point as the Big Ten or the ACC, but we felt we were in a better position than the way the numbers came out.”

Though the majority of league schools wanted to take the deal, those with misgivings controlled the conversation and became the loudest voices in the room. Things came to a head in May 2011 when the newly expanded Pac-12 with Colorado and Utah aboard announced a television package of its own with ESPN and Fox worth a reported $3 billion — substantially greater than the Big East offer.

That caused everyone in the league to reevaluate what was on the table, and the decision ultimately was made to walk away from the proposed TV deal.

“That deal came out of nowhere, and people started to ask, ‘If they’re willing to pay that for the Pac-12, why wouldn’t we be able to get more?'” one person with knowledge of the discussions said. “So now everybody’s thinking Comcast has all this money, and we had a year to go before the end of our contract, so people said we should go to the open market.”

One former Big East official said ESPN asked for a counteroffer, but none ever came. O’Malley described multiple athletic directors as being “in disbelief” that the league walked away from the deal.

“I’ve always been the ‘one in the hand is better than two in the bush,’ and that would have kept us very stable,” then-Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich said. “But I was the newcomer talking. We were very happy where we were, and maybe those schools weren’t happy. Maybe they had bigger aspirations. I don’t know.”

Officials from the schools that eventually left deny they were in negotiations with other conferences at the time the TV deal was nixed. But there are some former Big East officials who remain dubious.

One went so far as to say “sabotage” would be an accurate way to describe the way some schools led the push against the TV deal only to later leave, though others in the room at the time felt that was too strong of a word.

“There were so many people that just loved the conference and were so invested in it, and then you had double agents in the room,” another former Big East official said.

Multiple sources pushed back on that assertion.

“There was sincere and genuine effort put towards trying to figure out a way to shore ourselves up and present more value to the market to capitalize on our deal,” one former school official said. “This theory that we deliberately tried to stop the TV deal from happening because we were all at the finish line with other conferences is bulls—.”

Multiple sources confirmed that Pitt and Rutgers tried early in the process to get league members to agree to a grant of rights, in which schools relinquish control of their TV rights to the conference. But there was no consensus. With no grant of rights, no expansion plan and no television deal, there was simply nothing to hold the league together.

Add to that a perceived vacuum in leadership — with the more mild-mannered and less well-connected Marinatto now the commissioner instead of Tranghese — and it seemed like a foregone conclusion that the competing agendas threatened to fracture the conference for good.

“There was no guarantee if we did that deal things weren’t going to still shift, but it would have helped the schools left behind to at least have that in their pocket, and if we had to renegotiate it down, fine, but we still had it,” a former Big East official said.

Despite the behind-the-scenes drama, league officials spoke optimistically at media days in Rhode Island in August 2011 about the lucrative potential for a TV package despite turning down ESPN. One league official told The New York Times, “We’re excited. It feels like the tide is turning in our favor.”

Clearly, not everyone felt that way.

Gross, who was in favor of taking the TV deal, said once that fell through “things were fragile and could fall apart or crumble.” He said he first heard from the ACC in early September, recalling that his phone rang as he walked to his car following a tennis match at the US Open. When ACC officials asked whether Syracuse would be interested in joining, Gross said yes without hesitation.

Within a week, the Syracuse trustees met at a hotel in Beverly Hills, California — where they had traveled to watch Syracuse play USC in football. Gross made a presentation, and the group voted to accept the ACC invitation. Similarly, the situation with Pitt and the ACC moved quickly in September. Both Gross and Pederson said they had no idea they would be joining together until the end of the process.

Despite the uncertainty and fragility of the Big East, multiple people described feeling “blindsided” that Syracuse and Pitt — two of the league’s most identifiable members, including one founding member — would leave. One person said it “shook the conference to its core.”

“Syracuse and the Big East were synonymous with one another for the entire history of the conference,” a former Big East official said. “When they left, there was no recovering.”

Added Jurich: “I know a lot of people’s feelings were hurt, especially the schools that had been in that league for a while. They were crushed because they had such a great loyalty and relationships with those schools.”

Pederson, when asked whether he thought the decision to leave surprised the league, said Pitt was always upfront about the situation. “I guess that would be from their perspective,” he said. “Nobody knew exactly where anybody might be going, and all those negotiations are very private. So maybe there were people that were surprised. I don’t know.”

At that point, any existing loyalties seemed to vanish.

“When one starts splitting away, then the avalanche occurs,” Jurich said. “Everybody was scrambling. It’s, ‘What are we going to do? How are we going to survive? How do we keep our head above water now that the TV deal is out?’ You don’t have a chance to use that as any leverage. From our standpoint, all I cared about was our program.”

Meanwhile, TCU, which agreed in November 2010 to join the Big East as a way of boosting its profile as a member of a BCS conference, pulled out to join the Big 12 in mid-October. By then, the Big East was pushing hard for Boise State to join as a football-only member — all while Louisville and West Virginia were jockeying for the last open spot in the Big 12.

“There are no rules in this game of realignment, right?” Luck said. “There wasn’t an arbiter. You couldn’t go to the NCAA or the federal government. It was a game we likened to musical chairs. You don’t want to be the one standing when the music stops.”


BOISE STATE PRESIDENT Robert Kustra took a keen interest in realignment, believing his football program had positioned itself well for a move into a bigger conference with better access to the BCS. In 2010, he met with the presidents of Utah, TCU and BYU to discuss whether Boise State was ready to make a move from the WAC to the Mountain West.

“I gave my salesman pitch, and then I said to them, ‘How can I know that the Mountain West is going to be the Mountain West it is today?'” Kustra recalled in a phone interview. “‘Are you all going to be there for the Mountain West?’ And these presidents, they were either lying through their teeth or they were completely ignorant of their athletic directors’ plans.”

Only a few days after Boise State announced it would join the Mountain West, Utah accepted an invitation to join the Pac-10. Then BYU announced it was going independent in football. In November 2010, TCU agreed to join the Big East. This was not the Mountain West the Broncos agreed to join.

At this point, Boise State had played in two BCS games as an undefeated team (2007 and 2010 Fiesta Bowls) but had never gotten a legitimate shot at playing for a national championship. Beyond national championships, the Mountain West did not have an automatic spot into the BCS, meaning Boise State would have to go undefeated every year and then hope for a selection as an at-large team.

Kustra felt he had to do something to improve those chances. He had previously lobbied the Pac-12 to no avail. So when the Big East, with an automatic bid into the BCS, called in October 2011 to see whether the Broncos would be interested in a football-only partnership, he listened.

At the time, Boise State was ranked in the top five. On paper, the move made sense: Boise State needed access to a BCS conference, and the Big East needed to fill gaps and boost its football-playing profile. As a way to make its move east more palatable, Boise State needed a travel partner from the West, boosting San Diego State into the conversation.

“I personally thought that taking the Boise State story on the road with the Big East was a great opportunity to get national coverage that we weren’t getting here in the Intermountain region,” Kustra said.

The Mountain West had taken one hit after another during realignment and could not afford to lose Boise State, its highest-profile school. Commissioner Craig Thompson worked the phones to both Kustra and then-San Diego State president Elliot Hirshman, telling them both, “There’s a lot of money being dangled in front of your face, but there’s not going to be a Big East in the long term,” according to a person with knowledge of their conversation. Thompson declined to comment for this story.

The Big East also had conversations with Air Force, Navy and Army but ultimately opted for football-only partnerships with Boise State and San Diego State. In addition, UCF, Houston and SMU would join as full-time members. The moves gave the Big East the largest footprint in the country.

But because the conference looked so different, nobody knew whether it would retain its BCS status or what a future television deal would be worth. Skepticism remained that bringing in Boise State and San Diego State from the other side of the country would actually keep the Big East together. The basketball schools were not thrilled either.

Though Boise State coach Chris Petersen and San Diego State coach Rocky Long spoke in positive terms about the move publicly, they expressed reservations privately. Long declined interview requests for this story; Petersen did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

“There were some ideas that were not ideal, but when you’re in a position like that, you start to look at everything,” Jurich said. “They were not just saying let’s put our head in the sand and say we’re fine when it truly wasn’t. Did it fit for everybody? Absolutely not, including us. It didn’t, but I don’t think you could look at and say it’s about fit when you were looking for survival.”

Several former Big East officials still believe this alignment could have worked long term at the time. But in April 2012, a plan for a four-team playoff was announced, and it became clear there would be no automatic qualifying designation for the Big East under the new format, taking away a huge advantage the league had over the Mountain West.

Marinatto resigned in May 2012 with the league in turmoil. As one friend of his said, “He was just a guy that was the student manager for the basketball team for Dave Gavitt at Providence College and was Mike Tranghese’s friend, and was handed the reins by the two of them. And the conference collapsed. That’s the weight that he carried with him.”

Whether he could have done anything differently to keep the league together is a question up for debate, considering all the outside factors that were beyond his control.

“I don’t think anybody deserves any particular blame for anything,” Pederson said.

Mike Aresco was hired as commissioner in August with an eye toward maximizing television rights. But first, Notre Dame announced it would be taking all of its Big East-affiliated sports to the ACC while remaining independent in football. When Rutgers (Big Ten) and Louisville (ACC) announced their own departures over a one-week span in November 2012, the Big East as a football-playing conference fell apart.

For good.

In mid-December 2012, the seven Big East basketball-playing schools announced a split from the football-playing schools. A few weeks later, Boise State struck a deal to return to the Mountain West. San Diego State followed shortly after that. The Broncos were given the green light to sell their home games separately from the conference’s television package, allowing them to earn more money than the other members of the conference — about $1.8 million more per year in revenues.

Kustra said the Mountain West presidents at the time called him and offered more money from television rights as a way to get Boise State back into the league.

“I’m asked, if you had to do all over again, what would you do?” Kustra said. “And I’d say, I would do exactly the way I did it. I didn’t know that the Big East was going to fold. But look what we got out of it. We landed on our feet financially. And to this day, the Mountain West is still trying to figure out what to do about that.”

Tensions over the special deal Boise State secured have grown over the past several years — and it was a major point of contention during the Mountain West’s most recent television rights negotiation.

Meanwhile, the newly reconfigured Big East – with Xavier, Creighton and Butler – has been led by Villanova basketball over the last decade, winning national titles in 2016 and 2018. But perhaps the biggest news in recent years involved UConn, which decided to go independent in football so it could rejoin the Big East, where it thrived as a basketball power. The Huskies officially rejoined in 2020 after a seven-year absence.

The American Athletic Conference — renamed and rebranded after the basketball split — has thrived as a Group of 5 conference. The league has secured the most Group of 5 automatic bids into the four-team playoff. With the playoff format soon expanding to 12 teams, its chances of making the playoff have increased. But the same could be said for Boise State in the Mountain West.

“Realignment hit us pretty hard,” said Aresco, now the AAC commissioner. “We were in disarray, making sure that the conference would survive. But it turns out, not only did we survive, we thrived immediately. We’ve been thriving ever since.”

While that is true, there are still those with a deep abiding affinity for the Big East who remain emotional about its breakup 10 years later. Because, as one former league official said, “it’s not what it was and will never be the same again.”

ESPN reporter David Hale contributed to this report.

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CFP Bubble Watch: Who’s in, who’s out, who has work to do after Week 8

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CFP Bubble Watch: Who's in, who's out, who has work to do after Week 8

Last year, in the inaugural season of the 12-team College Football Playoff, eight of the teams that qualified had two losses.

Five of the seven at-large teams had two losses, and three of the five conference champions had at least two losses. Keep that in mind as more contenders fall each week and the playoff picture changes — this system is more forgiving.

Below you’ll find one team in the spotlight for each of the Power 4 leagues and another identified as an enigma. We’ve also tiered schools into five groups. Teams with Would be in status are featured in this week’s top 12 projection, a snapshot of what the selection committee’s ranking would look like if it were released today. Teams listed as On the cusp are the true bubble teams and the first ones outside the bracket. A team with Work to do is passing the eye test (for the most part) and has a chance at winning its conference, which means a guaranteed spot in the playoff. A team that Would be out is playing in the shadows of the playoff — for now. And a team that is Out will have to wait until next year.

The 13-member selection committee doesn’t always agree with the Allstate Playoff Predictor, so the following categories are based on historical knowledge of the group’s tendencies plus what each team has done to-date.

Reminder: This will change week-to-week as each team builds — or busts — its résumé.

Jump to a conference:
ACC | Big 12 | Big Ten
SEC | Independent | Group of 5
Bracket

SEC

Spotlight: Vanderbilt. The Commodores probably have more work to do in the selection committee meeting room than with the AP Poll voters. As good as the win against LSU was, it was Vandy’s first win against a Power 4 opponent with a winning record. Both Virginia Tech and South Carolina are sub-.500 teams right now, and wins against FCS Charleston Southern, a 1-6 Sun Belt team in Georgia State and a three-loss Utah State team aren’t enough to make the CFP. Vandy has enough opportunities, though, to change that, starting Saturday. If Vandy beats Mizzou, its chances of reaching the CFP will climb to 49%. A loss, though, would drop that to 14%. Vanderbilt’s toughest remaining games are against Missouri, at Texas and at Tennessee in the regular-season finale. If the Commodores lose one more game and finish 10-2, they’ve still got a chance, but how that résumé stacks up with other 10-2 teams leaves the door open for debate.

Enigma: Missouri. The Tigers are in a similar spot to Vanderbilt, with a loss to Alabama and even less to compensate for it. Missouri’s best win might have been Saturday’s double overtime win at now four-loss Auburn. It also has an FCS win against 2-4 Central Arkansas, a win against a 2-5 Sun Belt team in Louisiana and a win against a 0-7 MAC team, Massachusetts. Both Kansas and South Carolina are unranked and sub-.500. A win at Vanderbilt on Saturday would give Missouri its first ranked win AND its first win against ANY opponent with a winning record. A loss would put the Tigers in a must-win situation in November, needing to beat Texas A&M and win at Oklahoma on Nov. 22. Missouri has found ways to win against lesser competition, but it needs the second half of the season to show the committee it can do it against more elite teams, too.

If the playoff were today

Would be in: Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma, Ole Miss, Texas A&M

On the cusp: Vanderbilt

Work to do: LSU, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas

Would be out: Mississippi State

Out: Arkansas, Auburn, Kentucky, South Carolina, Florida


Big Ten

Spotlight: USC. Many were quick to dismiss the two-loss Trojans following their road loss to rival Notre Dame, but it was a nonconference game and USC still has a chance to change the Big Ten’s playoff picture. If USC can run the table, that would include a Nov. 22 win at Oregon (another team that could fall under the enigma category, given what has happened to Penn State). That head-to-head result would be critical because in that scenario, both teams would have two losses, and it’s one of the committee’s tiebreakers when teams are comparable. That’s currently the only game left on USC’s schedule that it’s not projected to win, as ESPN Analytics favors the Ducks (72.3%). That’s why USC currently has the fourth-best chance in the Big Ten to reach the playoff (15%) behind Ohio State, Indiana and Oregon.

Enigma: Iowa. The Hawkeyes have quietly won four of their past five games, that lone loss coming Sept. 27 to Indiana — by a whopping five points. Is that really the gap between Iowa and the nation’s No. 2 team? Iowa has a chance to prove it in the second half of the season with back-to-back games against Oregon and at USC. Iowa would have to run the table and finish 10-2 to have a chance — and ESPN Analytics gives the Hawkeyes a less than 1% chance to do that. In addition to the loss to the Hoosiers, Iowa also lost at rival Iowa State, and the selection committee would consider that it was a close loss on the road early in the season to an in-state rival. It’s not a dagger — nor is a close loss to Indiana — but the Hawkeyes still have a lot to prove, and it won’t be easy. Iowa has less than a 50% chance to beat Oregon, USC and Nebraska.

If the playoff were today

Would be in: Indiana, Ohio State, Oregon

On the cusp: None

Work to do: Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, USC

Would be out: Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, Washington

Out: Maryland, Michigan State, Penn State, Rutgers, Purdue, UCLA, Wisconsin


ACC

Spotlight: Virginia. Following Miami’s loss to Louisville, the two teams with the highest chance to reach the ACC championship game are now Georgia Tech (62.3%) and Virginia (39.4%). The Cavaliers’ 30-27 overtime win at Louisville looks even better after the Cardinals knocked off Miami. The Sept. 6 loss at NC State will be a sticking point in the committee meeting room if the Cavaliers don’t win the ACC, though, or finish as a two-loss runner-up. Virginia isn’t likely to play a ranked CFP opponent in the second half of the season, but that also means running the table is a realistic scenario. According to ESPN Analytics, the only remaining game Virginia isn’t favored to win is Nov. 15 at Duke.

Enigma: Louisville. Any team that has a chance to win its conference has a chance to make the 12-team CFP, and Louisville has a 19.5% chance to reach the ACC title game and a 16% chance to win out. The Cardinals could be a CFP top 25 team if they continue to play like they did in their win at Miami. Their lone loss was in overtime to Virginia, and they now have a statement win against a CFP contender in Miami. Their problem is the rest of their résumé, but a nonconference win against James Madison is respectable, considering the Dukes are 6-1 in the Sun Belt with an outside chance at the playoff. The win against Pitt is decent, as the Panthers are over .500, but Louisville needs to look the part down the stretch, as only Cal and SMU are over .500 and nobody is ranked. The only game left on the Cardinals’ schedule they’re not favored to win is Nov. 22 at SMU, according to ESPN Analytics.

If the playoff were today

Would be in: Miami, Georgia Tech

On the cusp: Virginia

Work to do: Louisville

Would be out: Cal, Duke, NC State, Pitt, SMU, Stanford, Wake Forest

Out: Boston College, Clemson, Florida State, North Carolina, Syracuse, Virginia Tech


Big 12

Spotlight: Texas Tech. The close loss at Arizona State knocked the Red Raiders out of the top 12 projection and onto the bubble. If Texas Tech wins the Big 12 but finishes outside the selection committee’s top 12, it would still lock up a spot in the playoff as one of the five highest-ranked conference champions. The Red Raiders are still on track to do that and have the best chance (61%) of any team in the Big 12 to reach the conference championship, followed by undefeated BYU (59.1%). Those teams play each other on Nov. 8, and Texas Tech will have home-field advantage. The two can face each other again in the Big 12 title game. Where it gets tricky is if Texas Tech finishes as a two-loss Big 12 runner-up. Some of it would depend on how the Red Raiders lost in the title game and how ASU fares down the stretch. Texas Tech has the seventh-best chance in the country to win out (23.2%), according to ESPN Analytics.

Enigma: Cincinnati. The Bearcats are undefeated in Big 12 play and 6-1 overall, with their lone loss in the season opener to Nebraska. The question is if they can sustain their success against the No. 26 most difficult remaining schedule in the second half of the season. They have the third-best chance to reach the conference championship behind Texas Tech and BYU — two teams that still have to play each other. Cincy doesn’t play the Red Raiders, but it will face BYU on Nov. 22 at home. November road trips to Utah and TCU also won’t be easy, as ESPN Analytics gives Cincinnati a less than 50% chance to win each of those games.

If the playoff were today

Would be in: BYU

On the cusp: Texas Tech

Work to do: Arizona State, Cincinnati, Houston

Would be out: Arizona, Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas, TCU, UCF, Utah

Out: Colorado, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, West Virginia


Independent

On the cusp: Notre Dame. With the win against USC, the Irish climbed to No. 12 in this week’s CFP projection — quite a turnaround from the 0-2 start. But they would still be out if the playoff were today because the fifth highest-ranked conference champion, which this week is again projected to be South Florida, is outside of the committee’s top 12. That means the No. 12-ranked team gets excluded to include the Bulls. Notre Dame is in must-win mode for the rest of the season but still has the best chance of any team in the country (69.2%) to win out. If undefeated Navy can keep winning, the Irish might have another ranked opponent on their schedule to add to the USC win.


Group of 5

Spotlight: South Florida. No Group of 5 team has a better chance to reach the playoff right now than the Bulls (45.9%), according to ESPN Analytics — well above the second-best teams, North Texas (14.7%) and Tulane (14%). The American has separated itself from the other Group of 5 conferences because of the winning records, but also because of the strong nonconference opponents. South Florida’s wins against Boise State and Florida give it a significant boost over other contenders, and the lone loss — while lopsided — was on the road against a Miami team that still looks like a playoff contender. South Florida’s 63-36 drubbing of North Texas on the road was also significant. The American’s best teams, though, still have to play each other, and South Florida will travel to Memphis, Navy and UAB, which just beat Memphis.

Enigma: Tulane. Like South Florida, Tulane also played a respectable nonconference lineup that includes wins against Northwestern and Duke — both Power 4 teams that are above .500. The Green Wave’s only loss was a 45-10 drubbing at Ole Miss, but the Rebels are one of the top playoff contenders. Tulane and South Florida don’t play during the regular season, but they could face each other in the conference championship game. Tulane has the third-best chance to reach it (14%), just a hair behind North Texas (14.7%). The toughest game left on the Green Wave’s schedule is Nov. 7 at Memphis. ESPN Analytics gives Memphis a 66.2% chance to win.

If the playoff were today

Would be in: South Florida

Work to do: Boise State, James Madison, Memphis, Navy, North Texas, Tulane, UNLV

Bracket

Based on our weekly projection, the seeding would be:

First-round byes

No. 1 Ohio State (Big Ten champ)
No. 2 Indiana
No. 3 Alabama (SEC champ)
No. 4 Texas A&M

First-round games

On campus, Dec. 19 and 20

No. 12 South Florida (American champ) at No. 5 Georgia
No. 11 BYU (Big 12 champ) at No. 6 Miami (ACC champ)
No. 10 Georgia Tech at No. 7 Ole Miss
No. 9 Oklahoma at No. 8 Oregon

Quarterfinal games

At the Goodyear Cotton Bowl, Capital One Orange Bowl, Rose Bowl Presented by Prudential and Allstate Sugar Bowl on Dec. 31 and Jan. 1.

No. 12 South Florida/No. 5 Georgia winner vs. No. 4 Texas A&M
No. 11 BYU/No. 6 Miami winner vs. No. 3 Alabama
No. 10 Georgia Tech/No. 7 Ole Miss winner vs. No. 2 Indiana
No. 9 Oklahoma/No. 8 Oregon winner vs. No. 1 Ohio State

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‘The fans make it awesome’: What to expect in Brad Marchand’s first game back in Boston as a visitor

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'The fans make it awesome': What to expect in Brad Marchand's first game back in Boston as a visitor

BOSTON — On the day of the 2025 NHL trade deadline, one of the most transformative days for the Boston Bruins in recent memory, Charlie McAvoy was stuck on his couch.

The Boston defenseman was still recovering from an injury he sustained at the 4 Nations Face-Off that landed him in the hospital. The Bruins were in Tampa on a two-game trip.

McAvoy and his wife watched the minutes tick down to the 3 p.m. ET deadline and breathed a sigh of relief. Despite rumors his team might tear it all down, the damage wasn’t as bad as they had feared.

“And then things started coming in after the deadline, 3:10, 3:15,” McAvoy recalls. “And it’s just tough. It’s the nature of hockey. It’s the business of the game. But there’s human beings behind it all, great friends, great friends of my wife’s. And it’s sad. It’s never easy seeing your friends move on and go to different places.”

The Bruins were one of the busiest teams on March 7, trading five veteran players. The deepest dagger: saying goodbye to captain Brad Marchand. It wasn’t just that the Bruins parted with a player they drafted in the third round nearly 20 years ago, a feisty winger who helped them win a Stanley Cup in 2011 and a leader who matured under their watch and continued to establish the team culture. The destination was equally stunning: Florida. The Panthers shocked the historically dominant Bruins in 2023 by knocking them out in the first round of the playoffs, then won their first Stanley Cup the following season. They were the team with which Marchand had helped brew a new rivalry. And the team that catapulted above Boston atop the hockey world.

In the seven months since the trade, Marchand helped the Panthers win another Stanley Cup, scoring six goals (and two game winners) in the Final against Edmonton. Marchand continued to taunt opponents, became beloved in the Panthers’ locker room, and seemed to be having more fun than ever embracing Florida’s culture.

“Brad is an honest man, and that’s why he fits in our group,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said in June. “He loves the game, loves the people around him, is very open, very gregarious, so just fits right in. He’s completely accepted.”

Marchand re-signed in Florida this summer on a six-year, $31.5 million deal — which one rival front office executive called “sticker shock for a 37-year-old.” Meanwhile, the Bruins embraced a hard reset, recalibrating short-term expectations while injecting the roster with younger players.

On Tuesday, Marchand will return to TD Garden ice for the first time as an opponent of the Bruins (7:30 ET, ESPN).

“I’m excited for this one. I mean, it’ll be fun to compete against guys I played with for a long time and be on the other side of it,” Marchand said Monday. “I’m sure it will be a pretty intense game. It will be fun to play in front of the Bruins fans again.”

Everyone is bracing for emotion.

“I’m sure that we’ll have a very neat tribute for him and all the blood, sweat, and tears that he gave for the Bruins — one of the best Bruins to ever play,” McAvoy said. “I think he’ll get an amazing ovation from the crowd. And then he’ll probably get booed right after.”

“I’m sure it’s going to be tough for some people,” Marchand said. “They won’t be able to cheer because they don’t like the Panthers very much. Maybe they’ll like me enough to give a little ‘Yay’ or something.”


IT WAS ALWAYS Marchand’s intention to be a life-long Bruin. It was the Bruins’ design to contend for a Stanley Cup last season. It all derailed with a disastrous start, which cost coach Jim Montgomery his job 20 games into the season.

“Last year was a seismic shift in terms of how we’ve been,” Bruins GM Don Sweeney told ESPN. “We had to take a cold, hard look in the mirror and understand where we were. We weren’t anywhere close to the level we had been the last six, seven years, and we had to make some really hard decisions professionally, and really hard decisions personally.”

Marchand, who was named Bruins captain in September 2023, was in the final year of an eight-year $49 million contract. While he and the Bruins were engaged in contract talks for several months, the negotiations stalled, even with the pressure point of the trade deadline looming. Marchand wanted security and to be paid his value. The Bruins had other parameters.

“I was never going to take a one or two-year deal. Not even a three-year deal. That just wasn’t in the cards,” Marchand told reporters ahead of this season. “I want to play as long as I can. That’s the main reason why it didn’t work out in Boston. I want to play until I get kicked out of the league.”

Marchand was injured at the time of the deadline; it was looking like a timeframe of four to six weeks. Sweeney said his management group determined that because of the team’s place in the standings, the deadline would mark a “directional shift,” with a focus on adding to the team’s depleted prospect pool. Veterans Charlie Coyle, Brandon Carlo, Trent Frederic and Justin Brazeau were also traded as the Bruins acquired six draft picks (including two first-round picks and two second-round picks), two prospects (notably 21-year-old center Fraser Minten, who is already contributing) and several under-30 roster players, including Casey Mittelstadt, Marat Khusnutdinov and Henri Jokiharju.

The most difficult file was Marchand. According to sources, the Bruins had a deal in place with the Los Angeles Kings but honored Marchand’s desire to stay in the East for family reasons. Florida, unbeknownst to the public, was his top destination. He believed he might have only one more opportunity to win a Stanley Cup, and the Panthers were loading up for their back-to-back bid.

Even after that trade, the Bruins never saw the door as fully closed with Marchand. But they never got the opportunity to formally discuss a contract again, as he re-signed with the Panthers before reaching free agency on July 1.

“We certainly had discussions about it, where he would fit in long term,” Sweeney said. “Upon the opportunity to talk to Brad after the trade, he focused on the fact that he was going to get a long-term deal. That wasn’t going to change between what he accomplished of winning a Stanley Cup and if he were able to get to July 1. We didn’t get the opportunity to cross that bridge [because he re-signed with the Panthers], but we certainly would’ve entertained having Brad back if he had decided that, within the parameters that we could do.”

That closed the chapter on Marchand’s tenure with the Bruins, one that included 976 points over 1,090 games, and endless memories.

“Ultimately what he always wants is to be in the playoffs and to win, and that’s what he was able to accomplish last year,” Sweeney said. “So we’re proud of him for that, but unfortunately it wasn’t with us.”


MARCHAND HAS MAINTAINED his deep ties to Boston. He says his favorite part of the city is the fans, unequivocally.

“The city is incredible, but the fans make it awesome. They’re just very unique,” Marchand said. “It’s as simple as, every time I go get a coffee — I have the same routine, same coffee shop every day — there was a message on my cup, if I had a good game or bad game the night before. It would be like, ‘Tough one for you last night.’ All the way down, they bleed black and gold. It’s part of why there’s so much pressure on the team to have success and why they focus on it so much. You can’t slip. You don’t have the ability to slip in this city, or you’re going to hear about it. We wanted to produce and be good for the fans and live up to that reputation, so it makes it special to play here.”

The Panthers arrived in town early on the final leg of a five-game trip. On Sunday night, Marchand went to dinner with a group that included several former teammates: Patrice Bergeron, Zdeno Chara, Tuukka Rask and Adam McQuaid. On who fronted the bill, Marchand quipped: “They bullied me. I did.”

Marchand’s more recent teammates, such as McAvoy, were dialed in to his playoff run with the Panthers. McAvoy is superstitious, so because he didn’t text Marchand early in the playoffs, he held off reaching out until the series was over.

“We were able to connect right away after they won, and I told him it was just really inspiring watching him play,” McAvoy said. “He’s just a big-time player. It’s so fun to see a guy who has been with you, and to see the fire he still has. It allowed me to sort of reset in my head a little bit, and find that fire again.”

The Bruins have a new coach in Marco Sturm and, according to Sweeney, have put a heavy emphasis on being harder to play against. Everyone must earn their ice time. The culture is also continuing to evolve. The team has not yet named a captain, after the role had been filled consecutively by Chara, Bergeron and then Marchand.

McAvoy said he and David Pastrnak are learning how to take on a bigger role, while still staying authentic to themselves and the tradition before them. It’s one of the ways Marchand’s legacy still lives with the team.

“For a long time in Boston, you had Bergy, Z, and Marshy, and they were this perfect triangle of guys that leaned on each other, that each had different personalities,” McAvoy said. “You can talk forever about how amazing they are as individuals, how big their hearts are, how much they care for everyone around them. That’s certainly one of the pillars: caring for your teammate, and going above and beyond for them. Those three guys put that on display every day, making it fun to come to the rink. That was something they fostered there — that made it great to be a Bruin.”

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Toews continues comeback, nets 1st goal as a Jet

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Toews continues comeback, nets 1st goal as a Jet

CALGARY, Alberta — Jonathan Toews is on the board with his hometown Winnipeg Jets.

Toews scored a tying power-play goal in the third period of Monday night’s 2-1 win at Calgary. It was the first goal for the three-time Stanley Cup champion since April 13, 2023 — a span of 2 years, 189 days.

Toews is making a comeback with Winnipeg after missing the past two seasons because of the effects of chronic immune response syndrome and COVID-19.

He began his career with Chicago, captaining the Blackhawks to titles in 2010, 2013 and 2015. He won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP during the franchise’s first championship run since 1961.

Winnipeg trailed Calgary 1-0 before Toews redirected Neal Pionk‘s shot past Flames goaltender Dustin Wolf at 2:41. It was career goal No. 373 for the No. 3 overall pick in the 2006 NHL draft.

Toews became the third Winnipeg native to score for the Jets since the 2011-12 season, joining Eric Fehr and Cody Eakin.

At 37 years, 174 days, he also became the fifth-oldest player at the time of his first goal with the Jets/Thrashers franchise.

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