Snapshots and moon shots: Padres’ Polaroid tradition continues in NLCS
SAN DIEGO — Within the hallway that connects Petco Park’s home clubhouse to its first-base dugout, a mural has sprung, populated with a collection of Polaroid pictures that has grown with each passing triumph. The running tally sits at 163 photographs, neatly organized within 11 rows, a static highlight reel for the San Diego Padres‘ resurgent season.
Two were added in the wake of their dramatic Game 2 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies on Wednesday afternoon. One features Brandon Drury and Josh Bell, the two men who ignited a dramatic comeback. The other is headlined by Manny Machado, who used both his bat and his glove to secure the 8-5 win that evened the National League Championship Series at a game apiece.
Later that night, Jurickson Profar looked through them all once more, smiling at the memories they triggered. He was asked to pick a favorite.
“Man,” Profar said, shaking his head, “all of them.”
The concept began with Joe Musgrove, who was partly inspired by Marcell Ozuna‘s mock selfie celebration during home run trots in Atlanta. As more and more teams devised elaborate in-game celebrations, Musgrove was looking for a dugout ritual that would distinguish his Padres. He bought a Polaroid camera, figuring he might as well produce some keepsakes, too.
The Padres have faced their fair share of adversity in their quest to capture the first championship in franchise history, from Fernando Tatis Jr.’s suspension to Josh Hader‘s struggles to the offense’s prolonged inconsistency. Through it all, that wall has been a welcome reminder of the good times, marking their growing camaraderie. Home runs and strikeouts are depicted, but so are random gatherings and quirky moments, some of which don’t have an explanation.
When this 2022 season ends — whenever that is — Musgrove hopes to compile the photos into a coffee-table book, copies of which might be sold for charity.
“We’re not just co-workers — we’re friends,” fellow Padres starter Mike Clevinger said. “We have a lot of fun being together. We pick each other up, no one stays down on anybody else. It’s just great energy in this clubhouse, and we’ve built on it. It just keeps getting stronger and stronger.”
What follows is a story of the Padres’ season, as told through the players’ favorite photos.
The Padres defeated the Atlanta Braves in extra innings on May 15, and Yu Darvish immediately pulled out his checkbook. Nabil Crismatt had finally established himself as a reliable major league reliever last season, four teams and one decade removed from being signed out of Colombia. But he stayed stuck at 93 mph. It remained his highest fastball velocity, an encumbrance in an era of triple-digit throwers out of bullpens.
Darvish had offered Crismatt $1,000 for every tick he threw above 93, his way of challenging him to get better. On this afternoon at Truist Park, Crismatt, who pitched two scoreless innings and struck out four batters, finally reached 94 mph. It came against his second batter, resulting in a caught-looking strikeout of Adam Duvall in the bottom of the ninth. This, naturally, is his favorite photo.
“Yu told me if I hit 95 it’s a thousand more,” Crismatt said. “I’ll keep working at it.”
Several of the Padres players had a hard time picking a singular photo — perhaps none more than Musgrove himself.
The Padres starter identified as many as five photos as his favorite, including this one, from June 3, taken shortly after he completed eight scoreless innings in Milwaukee.
Musgrove joined the Padres in January 2021, during a three-week stretch in which A.J. Preller also traded for Darvish and Blake Snell. Musgrove was the least accomplished among the three starting pitchers, but he has become the most celebrated — as a San Diego product and lifelong Padres fan who threw the first no-hitter in franchise history in April 2021 and eschewed forthcoming free agency by signing a five-year, $100 million extension in August 2022.
When the Padres most desperately needed a win this postseason, Musgrove, fittingly, has been the one who has come through, pitching seven one-hit innings in a winner-take-all wild-card game against the New York Mets and following it up with six innings of two-run ball to eliminate the rival Los Angeles Dodgers. He’ll get the ball again in Game 3 of the NLCS from Philadelphia on Friday night, with a chance to swing the series in his team’s favor — and the Padres wouldn’t want it any other way.
Profar deliberated for a while before finally landing on this one, commemorating his leadoff home run on June 7.
The Padres’ offense operated as a one-man show for most of the first four months, carried largely by Machado. But some much-needed help appeared in late May, when Profar was moved into the leadoff spot in an effort to get him going offensively. It would become his home. Profar provided a .745 OPS as a leadoff hitter this season, 60 points higher than what he produced in any of the other spots in the lineup.
“It fits me really well,” Profar said. “It fits my style of hitting.”
Drury’s Padres tenure got off to a roaring start. On Aug. 3, one day after being acquired from the Cincinnati Reds, Drury hit a grand slam. It came in the very first inning, after Juan Soto and Josh Bell — the other new additions to the lineup — had reached in front of him. Drury became the first player to hit a grand slam in his first plate appearance after switching teams within a season.
The Padres celebrated with a group shot that ran nine deep.
“That was a pretty exciting photo right there,” veteran reliever Craig Stammen said.
“Just the moment,” Machado added. “It was everybody’s first day together, he does that, we end up winning by a lot — that was awesome.”
One problem: the camera malfunctioned, and a picture never sprouted. The Padres have lost several photos throughout the season, but this was one that needed to be salvaged. So they improvised: Clevinger found the professional photo online, printed it, framed it and posed with it for the Polaroid.
“It was a storybook moment,” Clevinger said.
One player is noticeably more prominent on the wall than any other — Nick Martinez, the veteran right-hander who has become an invaluable member of the Padres’ pitching staff for his ability to start games and, more recently, work in high-leverage roles out of the bullpen. Martinez has tried to get in on as many Polaroids as possible, often waiting an extra inning to walk to the bullpen in hopes that a picture-worthy moment will materialize.
The photo above, though, is his favorite. The date is unknown, but the theme is evergreen: players sitting together in the clubhouse, in no rush to get home, a common occurrence this season.
“It’s a testament to how close we are,” Martinez said. “We like hanging out with each other after games, and that one just kind of shows the camaraderie that we have.”
This is Bob Melvin’s only appearance on the wall. The picture is from Sept. 2, shortly after Darvish pitched seven scoreless innings from Dodger Stadium. A handful of players identified this as their favorite, not just because Melvin is in it but because he agreed to be photographed while a game was ongoing.
Snell called it “iconic.”
“It was Yu,” Melvin said. “He’s the only guy I’d do that with. After we took it, he was like, ‘I hope that didn’t make you uncomfortable.’ I told him, ‘Yeah, maybe a little bit, but for you I’d do anything.'”
One of Melvin’s greatest strengths as a manager is his ability to connect with players, a byproduct, largely, of genuine trust in them. Melvin won over the starting pitchers earlier this season — and got them to buy into the concept of a six-man rotation — by letting them pitch deeper into games than they normally would. It’s true of his offensive players, as well: Earlier in these playoffs, Trent Grisham credited Melvin’s “consistent faith” for his surprising offensive resurgence in October.
Melvin also knows how to pick his spots. He saved his first and only real postgame blow-up for the night of Sept. 15, in the visiting clubhouse at Chase Field in Phoenix, after the Padres were blanked by a rookie pitcher making his major league debut. The Padres had been playing to a losing record since the start of July, and Melvin chastised them for their lack of intensity. It shocked the players, but it also helped them lock in for the stretch run.
The Padres won eight of their next 10 and have played a much more crisp brand of baseball ever since. “It was the right time and the right place to kind of light a fire under everybody,” Padres second baseman Jake Cronenworth said, “and it seemed to work.”
Until this postseason, the Padres had been dominated by the Dodgers, losing their final nine games against them in 2021 and 14 of 19 during the regular season in 2022. But they navigated their NLDS triumph over Los Angeles with noticeable swagger — and maybe the roots of that were planted on Sept. 2 (moments before Melvin’s inaugural Polaroid appearance).
The Padres faced the famously demonstrative Dustin May that night, and one sequence in particular irked them. It was the third inning. May got Soto to swing through a 100 mph fastball to move ahead in the count, 1-2, and let out a primal yell to celebrate. Soto took the next three pitches for balls to work a walk, then flicked his bat and glared at May before beginning his jog to first base. Two pitches later, Machado launched a 410-foot home run.
The two returned to the dugout and prepared to strike a pose — and Soto’s improvisation quickly turned mocking.
“He’s screaming in the photo,” Musgrove said. “That was pretty funny.”
Musgrove got the photography bug through his girlfriend. The two have taken to scrapbooking their offseason camping trips, and Musgrove has learned to appreciate a good photo through it. This one — of Sean Manaea playfully blowing a kiss to a nearby Padres fan in Pittsburgh, moments after an on-field interview — stood out for the aesthetics.
“Just the sky, how it came together behind him,” Musgrove said. “That was a cool shot.”
Wil Myers represents a different time in Padres history. He was acquired from the Tampa Bay Rays in a three-team, 11-player trade in December 2014, one of the headliners in a dizzying five-month stretch that also saw Matt Kemp, Justin Upton, B.J. Upton, James Shields and Craig Kimbrel head to San Diego. The group lasted less than two years together before Preller traded away the veterans to kickstart the rebuild that produced the current nucleus.
Myers is the only player remaining from the prior era, and his remaining time in San Diego might be short, given the $20 million club option that is certain to be declined this offseason. As his Padres tenure nears the end, though, he has found a way to contribute. After the Soto acquisition made him the odd man out in a suddenly crowded outfield mix, Myers re-learned first base and became a defensive stalwart at the position.
In the middle of the eighth inning of the regular-season finale on Oct. 5, the Padres removed Myers so that the home crowd could salute him one final time. As he came into the dugout, Musgrove, camera in hand, twirled his right index finger in the air, signaling for teammates to gather. The Padres were headed into the postseason, but it would begin with a best-of-three wild-card series played exclusively in New York City. Nobody knew if Myers would get another home game as a Padre.
It’s no surprise that photo is the one he identified as his favorite.
Machado has a signature look — arms crossed, shoulders back, head slightly tilted. It never wavers.
“That’s my pose,” he said.
Usually that pose is surrounded by boisterous teammates. But in this photo he is distinctly alone, in the back corner of the visiting dugout at Citi Field. It was the fifth inning of the Padres’ postseason opener on Oct. 7, and Machado was fresh off clobbering a home run that ended Max Scherzer‘s outing prematurely.
Twelve days later, as Musgrove and Manaea looked through their swelling mural, that photo kept popping up in conversation — perhaps because of what it signified. That night, the Padres had announced themselves as legitimate threats in these playoffs, stunning the 101-win Mets to take Game 1 in emphatic fashion. Over the next two weeks, they would go on to play their best baseball of the season, saving their very best when it mattered most.
Suddenly they were carrying themselves like legitimate championship contenders.
That moment — that photo — embodied their attitude.
PHILADELPHIA — The Flyers celebrate the star of each victory this season by presenting him with a replica Bernie Parent goalie mask. The white mask with the Flyers logo on each side of the temples looks much like the one Parent wore as a cover boy in the 1970s on Time magazine when the Flyers truly meant something — beyond the Philly sports scene, and even the NHL — and he served as the cloaked face of the Broad Street Bullies.
The Flyers pulled out the mask Saturday night before their game against New Jersey and let it rest on top of one of the goalie nets. One more final tribute for Parent, the Hall of Fame goalie who was honored by the franchise this weekend two months after he died at age 80.
“Forever our No. 1,” said Lou Nolan, the Flyers’ public address announcer since 1972.
With that, the spotlight shone on Parent’s retired No. 1 banner that hangs in the rafters, just a row ahead of the two oversized Stanley Cup championship banners — the only ones in franchise history — that catch the eye in Flyers orange and might not even exist at all if not for the affable goalie from Montreal.
Parent anchored the net for the Flyers when the Bullies reigned under owner Ed Snider as one of the marquee teams in sports. Parent won Stanley Cup, Conn Smythe and Vezina trophies in back-to-back seasons when the Flyers captured the Stanley Cup in ’74 and ’75, the first NHL expansion team to win the championship.
Ahead of the game Saturday against New Jersey, a photo of a smiling Parent flashing his two Stanley Cup rings on the outside arena videoboard loomed large over the 9-foot bronze statue for Snider, the Flyers’ founder who died in 2016.
“‘We’ve got two Stanley Cups because of Bernie,” Hall of Famer Bobby Clarke said at a celebration of life event in front of thousands of Flyers fans.
Flyers fans poured out this weekend to remember Parent over a two-day celebration that started with Friday’s service and extended into Saturday’s tribute game. Flyers fans in droves wore No. 1 Parent jerseys during the game — and what would the goalie think even as, yes, his beloved Flyers scored three goals in 26 seconds against beleaguered Jake Allen — and they roared for every highlight from Parent’s glory years.
The loudest cheers were saved for the Stanley Cup highlights.
The Flyers beat the Boston Bruins in six games to win the Stanley Cup in 1974 and beat Buffalo in 1975. Parent had shutouts in the clinchers each season.
On the flight home from Buffalo, the Flyers plopped the Stanley Cup in the middle of the aisle. For close to 90 minutes, they couldn’t take their eyes off hockey’s ultimate prize.
“We were able to just sit back, look at the Stanley Cup and just savor it,” Parent said in 2010. “It was just a special time.”
With Parent the unstoppable force in net, “Only the Lord saves more than Bernie Parent,” became a popular bumper sticker in Philadelphia that would stick on him as a lifelong slogan — and popular autograph inscription request — through retirement and his many years as a team ambassador.
Parent also served as an ambassador for the Ed Snider Youth Hockey and Education program; a youth hockey program created in 2005 for under-resourced youth in Philadelphia.
The program announced Saturday it would honor Parent’s legacy with the Bernie Parent Goalie Development Program, aimed to prepare young people for success both on and off the ice. Flyers Charities presented a $50,000 donation which was matched by Snider’s children.
Parent, team captain Bobby Clarke and Dave “The Hammer” Schultz all became stars for the Flyers under Snider in an era when the team was known for its rugged style of play that earned the Bullies nickname. They embraced their moniker as the roughest team in the NHL and pounded their way into the hearts of Flyers fans. More than 2 million fans packed Philadelphia streets for each of their championship parades.
Most of the living members from the Cup teams attended the game Saturday and Clarke choked back tears at the memorial as he listed other Flyers from the Stanley Cup teams who have since died. Barry Ashbee. Ed Van Impe. Bill Flett. Ross Lonsberry. Rick MacLeish
“And now, God bless Bernie, because he’s going to join them,” Clarke said. “And the rest of us, until we go join them, we will talk together forever.”
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Mackenzie Blackwood made 35 saves to lead the Colorado Avalanche to a 3-0 victory over the Nashville Predators on Saturday night.
Brent Burns scored early, and Nathan MacKinnon and Jack Drury added empty-net goals for the Avalanche. Colorado has won eight straight, their longest winning streak since taking nine in a row March 4-24, 2024.
The Avalanche hold the best record in the league and are five points up from the second-place Carolina Hurricanes.
Juuse Saros made 23 saves for the Predators, losers of seven of eight. Saturday was the first game back in North America for the Predators after playing a pair of Global Series games last week against the Pittsburgh Penguins in Stockholm, Sweden. The Predators have been shutout in consecutive games.
The shutout was the first of the season and 15th of Blackwood’s career.
Burns scored the game’s first goal just 15 seconds after the opening faceoff.
After a battle in the right corner, the puck came to Burns above the right circle, where he beat Saros with a wrist shot on the first shot of the game.
The game remained 1-0 until MacKinnon scored an empty-net goal was 1:35 remaining in the third with Saros pulled for an extra attacker. Drury added another empty-netter with 51 seconds left.
MacKinnon has three goals in his last two games.
Colorado defenseman Cale Makar failed to record a point in a road game for the first time this season.
The Predators outshot the Avalanche 16-6 in the first, but couldn’t get one past Blackwood.
Saturday was just the fifth time this season that an opponent has outshot the Avalanche. Colorado is 5-0-0 in those games.
Blackwood stopped Nashville’s Michael McCarron with 5:47 remaining in the third on a backhand from the low slot to keep the Predators off the board.
Predators captain Roman Josi returned to the lineup Saturday after missing 12 games with an upper-body injury.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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David Hale
Amid a year in which chaos has been a near constant, preseason expectations have been turned on their heads and James Franklin has gone from No. 2 in the country at Penn State to splitting the dock fees on a pontoon boat with Bud Foster at Virginia Tech inside of six weeks, we had every right to expect Week 13 might deliver some twists and turns we didn’t see coming.
Instead, what we got Saturday was the status quo.
We might’ve hoped Missouri, with Beau Pribula back at quarterback, might’ve upended Oklahoma‘s playoff dreams.
We might’ve believed USC could deliver a dagger to an Oregon team that had largely gone unchallenged all season.
We might’ve dreamed that the Notre Dame–Miami debate could’ve been settled by an upset from Syracuse or the Hokies.
With less than 3 minutes to play in Salt Lake City, we might’ve at least expected to see one upset of Kansas State over Utah, one small fracture in the committee’s playoff rankings, one small shift in the big picture.
Heck, the least we could’ve asked for was a decision on Lane Kiffin’s future, and even that was punted for a week so that the Ole Miss coach can make his announcement at the Egg Bowl by feigning peeing like a dog on the hat of whichever team he plans to coach next year.
None of it happened.
Oklahoma’s defense smothered another SEC opponent, picking off Pribula twice and holding Ahmad Hardy to just 57 yards on the ground in a 17-6 win. The Sooners’ offense may be less than inspiring, but Brent Venables has put together a defense that rivals anything he mustered during his storied career at Clemson, a unit whose impact on the SEC is rivaled only by Jimmy Sexton.
Oregon’s strength entering Saturday appeared to be its dominant defense, too, but instead it was Kenyon Sadiq and Noah Whittington stealing the show on offense and Malik Benson breaking USC on special teams with an 85-yard punt return for a score. On the heels of Oklahoma’s win, seeing Lincoln Riley suffer such a dismal outcome, too, was almost too much beauty for Sooners fans to stand.
In any other year, Saturday’s road trip to Virginia Tech would’ve served as the perfect opportunity for Miami to slip on a banana peel and slide its way into the Sun Bowl, but not this time. Carson Beck threw for 320 yards and four touchdowns. Malachi Toney had 12 catches. The defense racked up five sacks. Miami won 34-17. The win was good enough that, for just a few moments, allowed the Canes to climb into the same tier as Notre Dame for the committee to compare the two teams directly — just in time for Notre Dame to win 70-7 and remind everyone that the Irish are actually way better. The committee immediately put Miami back into the “evaluate after we gorge ourselves on room service chicken fingers and need a nap” section of the playoff discussions.
BYU had no trouble dispatching Cincinnati, the SEC’s powers dominated lower-level opposition and Ohio State sent a sternly worded letter to the conference asking that the Buckeyes not have to get out of bed before 2 p.m. for the likes of Rutgers in the future. It was all easy.
If any of the top playoff contenders offered real drama, it was Utah. Kansas State’s run game was relentless, chalking up 472 yards and five scores. The two teams traded scores early with five lead changes and three ties through three quarters of action. But a Utah fumble midway through the fourth set up a K State score and a 47-37 Wildcats lead with 7 minutes to go. But the Utes refused to roll over, scoring twice in the final 2:47, and pulling away with a 51-47 win.
The come-from-behind victory could be more than just a necessary step in protecting Utah’s playoff hopes. Utah fans wondered if perhaps Saturday would be Kyle Whittingham’s final game at Rice-Eccles Stadium, knowing his exit as the Utes head coach was always destined to be a low-key affair, something akin to the end of “Good Will Hunting,” with Morgan Scalley knocking on Whittingham’s door one morning to find he’s no longer there and only a note explaining the departure: “I have to go see about a … used Ford F-350.”
And yet, for all the chaos avoided in Week 13, one final Saturday remains before any of our playoff calculus should be written in ink.
Oklahoma is well-positioned, but a date with LSU looms. The Tigers have fired a coach, stumbled from the rankings, taken out a second mortgage on Death Valley to try to lure Kiffin to Baton Rouge. Could LSU deliver one more dose of drama in 2025?
Oregon appeared to punch its playoff ticket with Saturday’s win over USC, and yet a trip to Washington still looms. This is not the 2023 Huskies, but a trip to Seattle is still hardly an easy win. It’s only fitting that the remnants of the Pac-12 can still offer some late-season drama, as if Larry Scott is still looking to cost the conference money, even from his new post as, we’re guessing, somewhere in the New York Jets front office.
Miami’s playoff hopes might come down to the whims of the committee or, just as likely, the fourth-quarter clock management of Mario Cristobal. The Canes have a date with Pitt in Week 14, and if you flip to page 306 of this year’s Farmer’s Almanac, you’ll see that a late-season loss to the Panthers after blowing a 14-point lead has been the likeliest outcome for the Hurricanes the whole time.
Utah and BYU, too, have playoff life even if they’re long shots.
No, Saturday didn’t upset the status quo, but the question as we head toward the finish line is whether Week 13’s action was a chance for the biggest winners to load the fireworks before the inevitable celebration or if they were simply getting all the deck chairs precisely situated before hitting the iceberg.
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Under the radar | Vibesman five
Week 13 vibe check
Each week, college football’s top teams battle to shape the course of the season. But beyond the headliners, dozens of smaller matchups prove to be just as consequential. We track those here.
Trending down: ACC certainty
Georgia Tech entered Saturday as the only ACC team with any real clarity: Win and the Yellow Jackets would clinch a spot in the conference title game.
Of course, nothing in the ACC is that simple.
Pitt jumped to a 28-0 lead, thwarted one Georgia Tech comeback with a 100-yard interception return for a score and then ended the Jackets’ hopes with a 56-yard Ja’Kyrian Turner touchdown run with 2:41 to go to seal a 42-28 win.
The ACC now has three teams tied atop the standings at 6-1 — Virginia, Pitt and SMU — followed by Georgia Tech at 6-2 and Miami and Duke at 5-2. It sets up the possibility of a six-way tie at 6-2 with the conference championship then being decided by a series of tie breakers that almost certainly will involve Pat Narduzzi losing a rock, paper, scissors match because he assumed rock was invincible and Cristobal edging out Tony Elliott in a staring contest by wearing a pair of fake glasses with a funny nose and mustache attached.
Trending down: Florida‘s optimism
Tennessee throttled the Gators 31-11 on Saturday, holding Florida to just 261 yards of offense and effectively setting the cruise control for the second half while Josh Heupel rewatched the first four seasons of “Stranger Things” to get prepped for new episodes.
Worse yet, as Florida floundered its way through another loss, AD Scott Stricklin looked up into the stands, where Lane Kiffin stood solemnly, his arm outstretched, offering a long pause to build the drama before offering a thumbs down. Florida will now turn to its next best option to coach the team in 2026: three toddlers wearing a trench coat and pretending to be a grown man.
Trending up: Style points
With just two games left against struggling ACC teams and a crowd of two-loss teams pushing for the final few playoff spots, Notre Dame knew Saturday’s contest against Syracuse would be about more than just winning. This one needed to look good.
So, by halftime, Jeremiyah Love was holding the charred corpse of Otto the Orange above his head and yelling, “Are you not entertained?”
The Irish led 49-0 at the half, picked off Syracuse QB Joseph Filardi three times and Love ran for 171 yards and three touchdowns in a 70-7 win.
Afterward, Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said he was disappointed the defensive game plan of recording enough sacks that the Orange circumnavigated the globe in reverse, thus finishing with negative points, didn’t come to fruition, but was encouraged by news that Stanford had increased the life insurance on its tree mascot before next week’s season finale.
Trending up: Suffering for the Seminoles
It was Friedrich Nietzsche who posited that all life was suffering, and though he came up with that idea a full 81 years before Mike Norvell was born, it’s safe to say Florida State‘s past two years are pretty much what he had in mind.
To recap: FSU’s Heisman candidate QB got hurt in a meaningless game against an FCS foe in November 2023. As a result, the Noles were snubbed from the College Football Playoff despite a 13-0 record. Norvell was a top candidate for the vacant Alabama job but instead returned to FSU with a huge new contract. The Noles limped into the next season, astonishingly went 2-10, overhauled the coaching staff, beat Alabama to open this season, lost four in a row, including one to Stanford, rebounded and then, on Friday, offered perhaps the single greatest example of the incredibly thin line between comedy and tragedy as the world has ever seen in the final four minutes of a 21-11 loss to NC State.
Only teams to have out-gained their opponents by 40 yards or more in all or all but one game this year:
No. 2 Indiana
No. 5 Texas Tech
No. 6 Ole Miss
No. 7 Oregon
Florida State (5-6)— 💫🅰️♈️🆔 (@ADavidHaleJoint) November 22, 2025
The Noles D stuffed the Wolfpack on fourth down with 3:53 to play. NC State punted. The punt bounced off an FSU player’s helmet, rebounded backward and landed in the arms of the Pack’s punter near the original line of scrimmage.
The Noles D held again, forced another punt and this time FSU’s Squirrel White fumbled the catch, giving the ball to NC State again.
The Noles D held yet again, but NC State opted to go for it on fourth-and-6 and found the end zone from 12 yards out.
FSU still had a chance but shanked a short field goal — its second of the game — and, by the end, all that was missing was the PA system at Carter Finley Stadium playing “Yakety Sax” on repeat and Novell being knocked unconscious after trying to exit the field through a tunnel a roadrunner had painted on a brick wall.
Of course, Neitzche also argued, in his “four great errors” that all free will was an illusion, so it’s fair to say this isn’t Norvell’s fault but rather the inevitable result of a chaotic universe. On the other hand, another of his “four errors” was “Don’t sign DJ Uiagalelei and Tommy Castellanos in back-to-back seasons,” so perhaps there’s ample blame to go around.
Trending up: Heavy trophies
Justin Lamson threw for 175 yards, ran for 80 and accounted for two touchdowns as No. 3 Montana State knocked off archrival and second-ranked Montana 31-28 to capture the Big Sky championship and win the Great Divide Trophy.
Montana scored on a 52-yard run with 6:59 to play, pulling to within three, but the Grizzlies never saw the ball again. Montana State engineered a 14-play, 72-yard drive, converting a fourth-and-1 and a third-and-4 along the way, to bleed the last 7 minutes off the clock and secure the win.
The Bobcats have now won the Brawl of the Wild in seven of the past nine matchups, which means prime bragging rights for Montana State fans over that family of bears who live down the block.
Trending down: SEC strength of schedules
It’s Week 13, which means it’s time for half the SEC to welcome in its regular host of hapless cannon fodder: The Little Sisters of the Poor, the Washington Generals, an adult flag football rec league team and, of course, Florida.
It’s tradition in the SEC to prep for rivalry week with one game after another against vastly overmatched foes, so on Saturday we saw Georgia demolish Charlotte, Texas A&M stomp Samford and Alabama trounce Eastern Illinois. Even Auburn got in on the action, walloping Mercer 62-17 in a game that even Hugh Freeze probably could’ve won.
This is all necessary because, as everyone knows, life in the SEC is a grind, with every other game of the season a brutal, physical affair that slowly chops away at the league’s best squads like a thousand paper cuts.
And sure, Gunner Stockton and Ty Simpson combined to throw three picks and zero touchdowns in their wins. It’s only reasonable given that they played half the game holding a tall glass of iced tea and listening to a podcast about woodworking. The important thing is, when it was all over, they had fully recovered from the season’s long, arduous journey through the SEC and emerged with a spring in their step, a pat on the back and a note from the playoff selection committee that read: “We loved your game control. XOXO.”
Trending up: Sun Devils’ resurgence
Kenny Dillingham turned Jordan Travis into a Heisman contender, salvaged Bo Nix’s career and made Sam Leavitt a star. But that was nothing compared to his latest trick: Jeff Sims is a good QB right now.
Sims threw for 206 yards and two touchdowns as Arizona State demolished Colorado 42-17.
The Sun Devils are 3-1 with Sims as the starter, matching the most wins Georgia Tech managed in any of three seasons with Sims at the helm.
The real star of the show, however, was Arizona State tailback Raleek Brown, who carried 22 times for 255 yards and, after the game, Deion Sanders reluctantly decided Brown’s jersey should be retired at Colorado, too.
Trending up: Andrew Luck’s cavalry
Dearest mother —
I bring good tidings from the battlefield. We have vanquished the hated enemy from Berkeley. Though our front lines sustained many casualties, our defensive battalions proved strong. Our men charged from the rear, thrice apprehending the enemy’s payload and delivering it to safe harbor. In addition, a young soldier called Micah Ford proved his valor, marching 150 yards into enemy territory. His bravery shall be rewarded with an officer’s commission at war’s end. Now, I must bid you farewell. While we celebrate this victory with much revelry and ale, my heart remains heavy with the awareness that an even greater enemy — men from across the sea in that emerald isle of St. Patrick — await. We must be prepared for an even greater battle to come.
Please, give my love to father and the children.
Sincerely,
Andrew Luck, captain, Stanford infantry
Trending up: ‘Seinfeld’ references
Washington didn’t gain statehood until 53 years after James Madison died, but that didn’t stop Washington State from trying to end James Madison‘s quest for the playoff Saturday.
The Cougars led 20-17 midway through the fourth quarter before Dukes’ tailback Wayne Knight took a handoff and ran like he was smuggling stolen dinosaur DNA off an island, scampering 58 yards for a go-ahead score.
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Wayne Knight scores 58-yard rushing touchdown
Wayne Knight scores 58-yard rushing touchdown
Knight finished with 126 yards on 15 carries, all while besting Kramer in an hourslong game of Risk, delivering a critical 24-20 win for the Dukes, who move to 10-1 on the season and remain in prime position to swipe the automatic playoff bid from the Group of 5.
It is, of course, Knight’s greatest contribution to an important sporting event since he assisted Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny in defeating a group of aliens in a game of pickup basketball in 1996.
Trending down: Ivy League dominance
Josh Pitsenberger ran for 143 yards and three scores, Dante Reno tossed three touchdowns and Yale upended Harvard 45-28 on Saturday to claim a share of the Ivy League championship.
When it was over, Yale’s fans stormed the field. Well, they didn’t so much storm it as have their concierge make a reservation and preordered the soufflé, which, of course, takes two hours to make, then had Jeeves bring the Mercedes around to properly escort them onto the field. The point is, they were excited.
0:35
Yale fans storm field after team clinches Ivy League FCS Playoff bid
Yale defeats Harvard 45-28 and fans celebrate the team getting the Ivy League’s first-ever automatic bid to the FCS playoffs.
It was a stunning defeat for Harvard, which had entered the game 9-0 and eager for some redemption after losing its past three to Yale. Afterward, the Crimson downplayed the loss by noting that a Harvard man would never be so crass as to run the ball 49 times. So much manual labor is fine for someone at Dartmouth or Brown.
Under-the-radar play of the week
The Victory Bell belongs with Duke, and Bill Belichick won’t be bowling in his first season in North Carolina after the Blue Devils escaped a trip to Chapel Hill with a 32-25 win.
While Duke controlled the first half, UNC stormed back with two long touchdown drives to take a 25-24 lead late in the fourth quarter. The Heels’ D then stuffed Duke on a third-down try, appearing to set up a field goal attempt for the lead. But Manny Diaz had a trick up his sleeve.
DUKE PULLS OFF THE FAKE FIELD GOAL 🤯 @DukeFOOTBALL pic.twitter.com/syr9FoOdue
— ACC Network (@accnetwork) November 22, 2025
Duke’s fake field goal caught UNC sleeping like a man in the fourth hour of watching his girlfriend’s adult cheerleading competition, and kicker Todd Pelino bolted 26 yards to the 1, setting up an easy touchdown that proved to be the difference.
Under-the-radar game of the week
With 1:07 to play and the score tied at 34, Kennesaw State‘s Amari Odom completed back-to-back passes — the first a 40-yard dagger down the middle of the field and the latter a 14-yard touchdown to go up 41-34.
0:27
Chase Belcher puts Kennesaw State ahead with 27 seconds left
Amari Odom finds Chase Belcher in the back of the end zone to put the Owls ahead late in the 4th.
That gave the ball back to Missouri State with just 27 seconds to play, but the Bears weren’t going down without a fight. Consecutive completions moved the ball to near midfield before Jacob Clark looked deep in search of the tying touchdown. Instead, Alexander Ford picked off the pass and sealed the win for the Owls.
Odom finished with 387 yards passing and five touchdowns, as the Owls moved to 8-3 on the season and 6-1 in Conference USA. With a win next week at Liberty, Kennesaw State will lock up a spot in the conference championship game after going 2-10 a year ago.
Vibesman five
This was not a fun week for the Heisman Trophy discussion. Georgia and Alabama played cupcakes. Indiana was off. Ohio State played Rutgers, which is somewhere between playing a cupcake and having off. So, rather than rehash last week’s list, let’s give flowers to the players who’ve been tons of fun this year without having much of a shot at the hardware.
1. Texas QB Arch Manning
Manning threw for 389 yards and accounted for five touchdowns, and as long as we ignore the first eight weeks of the season, he would have a real shot at the actual Heisman. Alas, the Heisman voters aren’t like the College Football Playoff committee. They can’t just choose to ignore certain outcomes they don’t like. And so, we’re forced to simply appreciate Manning’s greatness in the context of his slow start. In truth, it’s not his fault. He clearly got a sizable portion of his QB DNA from Uncle Eli, whose career was built upon playing mediocre ball until late in the season and then somehow winning two Super Bowls anyway.
2. Vanderbilt QB Diego Pavia
Pavia has a real shot at an invite to the Heisman ceremony, and even if he doesn’t win the actual award, he’s well-positioned for a lifetime achievement trophy of some sort after a dazzling 26-year career. And, if nothing else, Saturday’s 45-17 blowout of Kentucky in which Pavia threw for 484 yards and five touchdowns allowed us to witness Pavia’s best argument for winning the Heisman.
Wait for Pavia’s Heisman pose 🔥🏆 pic.twitter.com/F3RMrd81D9
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) November 22, 2025
3. North Texas QB Drew Mestemaker
Mestemaker wasn’t even the starting QB on his high school team, spending the entirety of his career at Vandegrift High (Texas) waiting for the starter to get hurt so he could come in, throw a Hail Mary to win the big game after the coach quits at halftime, then point to his dad and yell, “I don’t want … your life!” Instead, he walked on at UNT, started last year’s bowl game, and in 2025 blossomed into a star. On Saturday, he threw for 469 yards and accounted for four touchdowns in a 56-24 win over Rice, then calmly explained to his dad that, no, he’s not interested in following him into the insurance business, but he respects all his father’s life choices and appreciates all the sacrifices he has made for the family.
4. Louisiana governor Jeff Landry
Believe it or not, Brian Kelly wasn’t officially informed he was fired until this week, as the school deals with a lawsuit with the former coach over his contract buyout. How much of this is Landry’s fault? It’s hard to say, but his involvement has clearly complicated things, and it’s just so nice to finally see a coaching change result in utter chaos without somehow involving Phil Fulmer.
5. Hawai’i kicker Kansei Matsuzawa
Matsuzawa connected on a 45-yard field goal in Hawaii’s 38-10 loss to UNLV on Friday, making him a perfect 23-for-23 this season. It’s pretty impressive given that Matsuzawa taught himself to kick by watching videos on YouTube. All of this begs the question: Why can Matsuzawa learn to kick by using social media, but somehow every time Dabo Swinney types in “What is the transfer portal” on Bing, people laugh and say he’s out of touch?
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