A Pac-12 title race, the Big Ten move and the latest in the USC-UCLA rivalry
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Paolo UggettiESPN
SHANE LEE WAS CONFUSED. The USC linebacker walked out of Monday morning meetings this week and saw the Trojan statue near the center of campus covered in shimmering silver tape pulled taut. Lee, who transferred to USC this offseason from Alabama had to turn to backup quarterback Miller Moss for clarification.
“I thought UCLA did it or something,” Lee said. “They told me it’s just for protection.”
Lee knows about Auburn‘s Toomer’s Corner, the Iron Bowl and what SEC disdain for another team looks like. But the mild-mannered linebacker is new to the Pac-12’s marquee rivalry. He’s not the only one. With a brand new head coach in Lincoln Riley, a new coaching staff and more than 40 transfer players, the usual disdain between the two teams has felt tempered this week.
“We’re not doing anything honestly too specific with this rivalry and not to discount it in any way,” Riley said. “We’ve acknowledged that it is a rivalry game. There’s a lot of history behind it. It’s going to be a great game to play in. But past that, I think we’re really zeroed in on what we believe is going to help us play well, and that’s where our focus is going to be.”
USC’s approach to the game has been largely matter of fact. To hear players — mainstays who have been there for five seasons to those who are brand new — talk about it, there is excitement, but nothing close to determined disdain for UCLA.
West of downtown Los Angeles, there was at least one player who wasn’t shying away from providing any bulletin board material. Over five years in Westwood, Dorian Thompson-Robinson‘s filter has only dissipated as his confidence has risen. When it comes to USC, he’s long past the point of holding back.
“Obviously we hate those guys across town,” Thompson-Robinson said on Monday. “There’s definitely a bitter feeling toward those guys.”
Institutional antagonism has found its way deep into Thompson-Robinson’s vocabulary because, unlike most USC players, he’s revved up for this game five times and, after Saturday, played in it four times. But if getting into a war of words was the goal, USC players did not engage.
“Even all the guys that’ve been here and the new guys that came in, we are all treating it pretty much the same,” Lee said. “It’s just another game, a game that’s on our list that we have to go out there and take care of business.”
That perspective underlines what a unique year this is for the rivalry. For the first time since Pete Carroll left for the NFL, USC is being led by a coach with no roots to the program and a roster full of players who have come to spend one season, maybe two, at the school. It’s not just the Trojans.
“I don’t think anybody — the fan bases might have something to say about this — but I don’t think anyone on the team really hates anybody on the other team,” said UCLA wide receiver Jake Bobo, who transferred from Duke. “So at the end of the day, it’s just a big game, we need a win right now, they obviously need a win as well, so I’m excited.”
Stakes — not animosity — might be what give this sold-out game at the Rose Bowl the biggest boost. Even after Arizona beat UCLA last week, preventing the game from likely being the first top-10 matchup between the teams since 1988, there’s plenty to play for. Both programs need a win to keep their seasons alive. In the case of the Bruins, a win still gives them a shot at making the Pac-12 title game and their first Rose Bowl since 1999. A loss eliminates them. For the Trojans, a win would punch their ticket to that title game and keep their playoff hopes alive as a one-loss team.
This season, the rivalry and the regional bragging rights seem second to the fact that there are bigger things to look to, in the present and the near future, especially as both teams get closer to their eventual, controversial departure to the Big Ten in 2024.
“When both teams are good and there are a lot of opportunities ahead for both teams,” Riley said this week of rivalry games, “it makes it way, way better.”
JUST A FEW years ago, in the days of Steve Sarkisian and Clay Helton, there was a USC player or two who would keep an eye on the sidelines of the Trojans’ practices at Howard Jones Field in search of any shade of blue during UCLA week. Media, staffers and any others who were in attendance were called out for wearing the color of the team across town, even if sometimes, it wasn’t quite the shade of the team across town. It didn’t matter. The blue was not to be seen.
The Riley regime has been different in many ways, and this week featured none of that. While the sidelines of that same practice field featured USC players being asked plenty of questions about their feelings toward the game, and the Bruins at large, the message they voiced rang like that of a choir who had all perfectly hit the same note.
“I haven’t learned much about the rivalry to be honest,” said quarterback Caleb Williams. “It’s just another game to me.”
“It’s just any other game really,” said running back Austin Jones. “At the end of the day we got to go out there and play our brand of ball.”
“We’re just taking it week by week, trying to be the most successful team we can be,” senior offensive lineman Andrew Vorhees said when asked if, having had experience with the rivalry, he has tried to amp up the energy in practice this week. “I mean, we heard the Rose Bowl is sold out so, we’ll see what that’s like.”
“You gotta make sure that winning football is winning football regardless of what the logos on our helmets are,” defensive coordinator Alex Grinch said.
Grinch had to even catch himself when complimenting Chip Kelly, with whom he worked at New Hampshire as a cornerbacks coach when Kelly was the head coach.
“I got a lot of respect for Chip,” Grinch said. “I call him a friend and I’ve been a fan for — I can’t be a fan anymore, it’s the way it goes — but I am, I have been for a long time.”
In recent years, the game has been less about two great teams facing off and more about the built-in hostility between the programs. Last year, Thompson-Robinson ran roughshod over a USC team that was in shambles and went 4-8. This week, he said he wanted to score 60 points on the Trojans, who he recalled “cussing us out and flipping us off” in the 2020 version of the game at the Rose Bowl.
“As disrespectful as you can get,” Thompson-Robinson said. “So we’ve got to go out there on Saturday and do the best we can to win this game, so we know what’s at stake and we know what it means to our fans and this community, we’ve got to go out there and win this game.”
In some ways, Thompson-Robinson is a dying breed. Not only is his case unique — usually, players face their rivals for only four seasons and he was awarded an extra year of eligibility because of the COVID-19 pandemic — but with the advent of the transfer portal and USC and UCLA’s looming exodus to the Big Ten, this rivalry is about to, at the very least, evolve, if not have fewer and fewer players and figures who feel the need to lean into the matchup. As long as talent enters the portal, transfers will keep making their way to Southern California, and in a new conference, bigger games against the Ohio States and Michigans of the world might become more important in the race to what is likely an expanded playoff.
The irony of an outgoing Thompson-Robinson expressing his hatred for USC is that the two programs find themselves closer than ever thanks to not just the rankings, but that contentious, impending defection from the conference they sit at the top of this season. Just as Riley seems to have USC heading back to the top of the sport and Kelly is finding his stride in Westwood, the two teams not only seem to be playing their best ball in some time, they’re also finding themselves united in an ongoing evolution to upend the sport.
FROM PARKING LOT tailgates in Eugene where fans curse the USC and UCLA names when discussing the move to the Big Ten (only to wonder in the next breath if they’re next), to new commissioner George Kliavkoff understandably maligning the departure at every turn as he tries to secure a new media rights deal and replace the two outgoing schools, the spectrum of emotions that have been born out of the L.A. schools’ move East has made this season in the Pac-12 a fascinating one. The fuel to that fire is that, from a football standpoint, it has been a stellar year for the conference and a stellar season for its two departing members. Case in point: Six Pac-12 teams are ranked in the latest version of the College Football Playoff poll, the most of any conference.
In many ways, this season from USC and UCLA is exactly what the conference has been missing the past few years and part of the reason it has failed to compete with the SEC, Big Ten and even the Big 12. In other ways, this season from the Bruins and Trojans could be seen as proof that their transition to the Big Ten is forward thinking and necessary (see: the 10:30 p.m. ET kickoffs and the three required appearances on Pac-12 Network). Or in the case of the Bruins, financially essential. Pac-12 After Dark is fun and all, but so is playing in prime time and a $7 billion media deal.
The kicker is that this move is not quite a done deal. While both USC and UCLA have routinely refused to talk about an exodus that’s still two years away, the University of California Board of Regents has been put in a position to decide the fate of UCLA, which, unlike USC, is a public institution that’s part of the UC system. At first, UCLA appeared to have made the move without any issues and unspoken approval from the regents. But as more discussion was brought forth about how the move could damage UCLA’s sister school, Cal, the board of regents has reaffirmed its power to hold UCLA back if it so chooses.
On Thursday, the regents could have voted on the move, but instead they announced a Dec. 14 session would be held to either approve or rescind the decision on UCLA’s Big Ten membership. In other words, there is still a world in which the regents decide to outright block the Bruins’ move and the USC-UCLA rivalry is, at the very least, paused, if not permanently put on hold after next season.
Even if the UCLA-USC rivalry does not go away, it is certainly evolving. And that, at least, serves to make Saturday’s game feel more like the one Thompson-Robinson is hyping up than the one USC players are trying to downplay as just another game.
Yet for all the rather tepid energy surrounding this game from a rivalry standpoint, coaches and players acknowledged that once Saturday comes, the emotions will be high and USC will care about beating UCLA in the same way UCLA will care about beating USC.
“A lot of emotion and intensity and excitement in these games and that’s what makes them fun, right?,” Riley said. “Sometimes in the heat of the battle you have to really balance it, but you also have to have the intensity, too. You can’t do it without that.”
As part of the regents’ agenda update this week, a report and survey of athletes commissioned by UCLA and the UC Office of the President was included that shed some light on one thing. Athletes at UCLA were asked what they thought the benefits were to making the move to the Big Ten. Of the 20% of athletes who participated, only 28% mentioned maintaining rivalry with USC as one of the benefits. And yet, as the report points out, prompted by a separate question 93% of respondents said it was important or very important to have USC and UCLA in the same conference, while only 24% said it was important for Cal and UCLA in the same conference.
Even if this year’s game carries high stakes but low hostility, it seems at least some athletes still care about being in the same conference as their main rival. And if the past two years of realignment in college football have taught us anything, it’s that keeping your friends close but your enemies closer seems to pay off.
NEW YORK — The Jazz Age is in full swing at Yankee Stadium.
Whether with his bat, his glove, his arm or his smile, Jazz Chisholm Jr. is energizing the New York Yankees and their fans.
Chisholm hit a second-inning, go-ahead homer and a bases-loaded triple while making three sparkling defensive plays at third base Sunday in a 12-5 romp over the Athletics.
“That’s why we got him. That’s what the Yankees do. They go after guys that are going to make an impact,” said New York captain Aaron Judge, who homered twice to reach 30 for the sixth time.
Chisholm is batting .318 with six homers, 18 RBIs and four stolen bases since returning from a strained right oblique on June 3, raising his season totals to .242 with 13 homers, 35 and 10 steals in 53 games.
“I feel like me. I feel I’m back in my era, that I was younger just going out there and just hitting, just not worrying about stuff,” the 27-year-old said. “Just not worrying by my swing, not worrying about striding too far. Everything just feels good and I’m just going.”
After a four-RBI night against Boston in his fourth game back, Chisholm made the unusual assertion he was thriving by giving 70% effort and not stressing.
With New York seeking to reopen a 1½-game AL East lead, he drove a first-pitch sinker from former Yankee Luis Severino into the right-field seats for a 1-0, second-inning lead. Ever exuberant, he raised his right hand and made a peace sign toward the Yankees bullpen after rounding first.
Chisholm snagged Jacob Wilson‘s two-hopper with two on and one out in the third, bounded off third base for the forceout and balletically arced a throw to first for an inning-ending double play.
With the bases loaded in the bottom half, Chisholm hit a changeup to the right-center gap that rolled past center fielder Denzel Clarke. He pulled into third base standing up and raised three fingers.
“It’s like a blackout situation,” Chisholm said. “I didn’t even realize I put up three at third base.”
With the bases loaded in the sixth, he made a diving stop near the dirt behind third on Luis Urías‘ 102.1 mph smash, popped up and followed with a one-hop throw to first baseman Paul Goldschmidt. Then he caught Tyler Soderstrom‘s foul pop in the eighth inning while falling against netting in the narrow space next to the rolled-up tarp.
“Jazz’s defense I think was better than even his day at the plate,” said pitcher Marcus Stroman, who won in his return from a 2½-month injury layoff. “He was incredible over there: a bunch of huge plays that helped me out in big spots, plays that are not normal plays.”
New York acquired Chisholm from Miami last July 27 for three minor leaguers. Since then, he has hit .257 with 24 homers, 58 RBIs and 28 stolen bases in 99 games.
“His game’s so electric, and he can change the game and kind of affect the game in so many different ways in a dynamic fashion,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “So, when he is playing at a high level, I think it does energize everyone.”
Chisholm briefly caused worry in the sixth. He grimaced in pain after stopping his swing at a 1-2 fastball from Elvis Alvarado, which sailed high and outside. Chisholm went to the dugout and immediately up the tunnel to the clubhouse.
Then he reappeared at third base for the start of the seventh.
“The bat kind of slipped out of my hand and hit me on the finger,” he said. “It just hit the bone and when you get hit on the bone, it’s kind of funny, it’s just feels weird. So, it was kind of scary at first, but we’re good.”
Judge, meanwhile, didn’t allow Athletics reliever Tyler Ferguson to make good on last year’s wish of striking out the Yankees slugger.
Ferguson, who set his goal last year after making his debut with the Athletics following nine seasons in the minor leagues, was one strike away in his first matchup with Judge on Sunday. Instead, he gave up a two-run shot off a 95.5 mph four-seam fastball in the seventh to become the 261st pitcher to give up a homer to the slugger.
Judge said he had been unaware of Ferguson’s comment.
Ferguson turned around and watched the 426-foot drive as YES Network play-by-play announcer Ryan Ruocco proclaimed: “The King of Fresno.”
“That’s why you don’t talk in public,” YES Network analyst and former reliever Jeff Nelson said on the telecast. “You don’t make a comment that I want to strike out Judge in public. You keep it to yourself.”
Ferguson graduated from Clovis West High School in Fresno when Judge batted .308 as a sophomore at Fresno State in 2012.
“First time facing him, best hitter in the league,” Ferguson said. “So I was looking forward to that at-bat. I was able to get ahead and then wasn’t able to execute a couple of pitches and he was able to get it back to 3-2 and I didn’t get the ball quite as high as I would have liked and he made a good swing on it.”
Judge reached 30 homers for the fifth straight season and fourth time before All-Star break. He also became the sixth player in team history with six 30-homer seasons, and he joined Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio as just the third to do so in the first 10 years of his career.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
If you picked the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers to be the first team to win 50 games this MLB season, you weren’t alone.
You were also wrong.
If you picked the Detroit Tigers, congratulations! We’re not sure we believe you, but we’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.
The Tigers won their 50th game on Tuesday, a full day before the Dodgers, and they got there thanks to big contributions all season from ace Tarik Skubal, the red-hot Riley Greene and the resurgent Javier Baez, among many others.
But are they really as good as they’ve played so far? Are they even the American League’s best team? Could they defeat the Dodgers (or whichever team comes out of a stacked National League) in the World Series?
We asked MLB experts Bradford Doolittle, Tim Keown, Jeff Passan and David Schoenfield to tackle all things Tigers before they play host to the Minnesota Twins on “Sunday Night Baseball” (7 p.m. ET, ESPN and ESPN2).
Who is the biggest threat to Detroit in the AL — and would you take the Tigers to beat them in an ALCS showdown?
Doolittle: The Yankees still have the AL’s best roster and remain the favorites in the circuit, even with the Rays and Astros closing in fast on both Detroit and New York. This feels like a season in which, by the time we get to October, there’s not going to be a clear-cut front-runner in the AL. But if we zero in on a possible Tigers-Yankees ALCS, I like the interchangeability of the Detroit staff, which we saw in action late last year. Max Fried and Skubal cancel each other out, so it really comes down to the number of favorable matchups A.J. Hinch can manipulate during a series of games between two postseason offenses likely predicated on timely multi-run homers.
Keown: It’s obviously the Yankees — unless it’s the Rays. Tampa’s lineup is deep and insistent, and the pitching staff is exactly what it always seems to be: consistent, stingy and comprised of guys only hardcore fans can identify. They’re really, really good — by far the best big league team playing in a minor league ballpark.
Passan: It’s still the New York Yankees. They’ve got Aaron Judge, they’ve got Fried and Carlos Rodon for four starts, they’ve got better lineup depth than Detroit. Who wins the theoretical matchup could depend on how aggressively each team pursues improvement at the trade deadline. Suffice to say, the Tigers will not be trading Jack Flaherty this year.
Schoenfield: I was going to say the Yankees as well, but as I’m writing this I just watched the Astros sweep the Phillies, holding them to one run in three games. As great as Skubal has been, Hunter Brown has been just as good — if not better. (A couple of Brown-Skubal matchups in the ALCS would be super fun.) Throw in Framber Valdez and you have two aces plus one of the best late-game bullpens in the biz. The offense? Nothing great. The difference-maker is clear: getting Yordan Alvarez healthy and hitting again.
Who is the biggest threat to Detroit in the NL — and would you take the Tigers to beat them in a World Series matchup?
Doolittle: The Dodgers are the team to beat, full stop. In many ways, their uneven start to the season, caused by so many pitching injuries, represents the lower tier of L.A.’s possible range of outcomes. And the Dodgers still are right there at the top of the majors. I can’t think of any good reason to pick against them in any 2025 competitive context. In a Tigers-Dodgers World Series — which would somehow be the first one ever — I just can’t see the Tigers scoring enough to beat L.A. four times.
Keown: The Dodgers. No need to get cute here. The Dodgers are the biggest threat to just about everything baseball-related. And while the matchup would be a hell of a lot of fun, filled with all those contradictory juxtapositions that makes a series riveting, let’s just say L.A. in seven.
Passan: It’s still the Los Angeles Dodgers. They’re getting healthier, with Shohei Ohtani back on the mound and still hitting more home runs than anyone in the National League. Will Smith is having the quietest .300/.400/.500 season in memory. Freddie Freeman is doing Freddie Freeman things. Andy Pages is playing All-Star-caliber baseball. Even Max Muncy is hitting now. And, yes, the pitching has been a problem, but they’ve got enough depth — and enough minor league depth to use in trades — that they’re bound to find 13 more-than-viable arms to use in October.
Schoenfield: A Tigers-Dodgers showdown would be a classic Original 16 matchup and those always feel a little more special. Although who wouldn’t want to see a rematch of the 1945, 1935, 1908 or 1907 World Series between the Tigers and Cubs? Those were split 2-2, so we need a tiebreaker. But I digress. Yes, the Dodgers are still the team to beat in the NL — especially since we’ve seen the Phillies’ issues on offense, the Cubs’ lack of pitching depth and the Mets’ inconsistency. The Dodgers have injuries to deal with, but there is still time for Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow and everyone else to get back.
One game, season on the line, who would you want on the mound for your team: Tarik Skubal or any other ace in the sport?
Doolittle: I’d go with Skubal by a hair over Zack Wheeler, with Paul Skenes lurking in the three-hole. The way things are going, by the end of the year it might be Jacob Misiorowski, but I’m probably getting ahead of myself. Anyway, Skubal has carried last season’s consistent dominance over and he’s just in that rare zone that great starters reach where you’re surprised when someone actually scores against them. He and Wheeler are tied with the most game scores of 70 or better (18) since the start of last season. Their teams are both 17-1 in those games. It’s a coin flip, but give me Skubal.
Keown: Skubal. There are plenty of other candidates — Wheeler, Fried, Jacob deGrom, and how about some love for Logan Webb? — but I’m all but certain a poll of big league hitters would reveal Skubal as the one they’d least like to face with everything riding on the outcome.
Passan: Give me Skubal. Even if others have the experience and pedigree, I’m going to bet on stuff. And nobody’s stuff — not even Skenes’ — is at Skubal’s level right now. He doesn’t walk anyone. He strikes out everyone. He suppresses home runs. If you could build a pitcher in a lab, he would look a lot like Skubal.
Schoenfield: I’m going with Wheeler, just based on his postseason track record: He has a 2.18 ERA over 70⅓ career innings in October, allowing no runs or one run in five of his 11 career starts. Those are all since 2022, so it’s not like we’re looking at accomplishments from a decade ago. And Wheeler is arguably pitching better than ever, with a career-low OPS allowed and a career-high strikeout rate.
What is Detroit’s biggest weakness that could be exposed in October?
Doolittle: I think elite October-level pitching might expose an overachieving offense. It’s a solid lineup but the team’s leading run producers — Greene, Spencer Torkelson, Zach McKinstry, Baez, etc. — can pile up the whiffs in a hurry. If that happens, this is a team that doesn’t run at all, and that lack of versatility concerns me.
Keown: The Tigers are the odd team that doesn’t have a glaring weakness or an especially glaring strength. They have a lot of really good players but just one great one in Skubal. (We’re keeping a second spot warm for Riley Greene.) They’re managed by someone who knows how to navigate the postseason, and they’ve rolled the confidence they gained with last season’s remarkable playoff run into this season. So take your pick: Any aspect of the game could propel them to a title, and any aspect could be their demise. And no, that doesn’t answer the question.
Passan: The left side of Detroit’s infield is not what one might consider championship-caliber. With Trey Sweeney getting most of the at-bats at shortstop, the Tigers are running out a sub-replacement player on most days. Third base is even worse: Detroit’s third basemen are barely OPSing .600, and while they might have found their answer in McKinstry, relying on a 30-year-old who until this year had never hit is a risky proposition.
Schoenfield: I’m not completely sold on their late-game bullpen — or their bullpen in general. No doubt, Will Vest and changeup specialist Tommy Kahnle have done the job so far, but neither has a dominant strikeout rate for a 2025 closer and overall the Detroit bullpen ranks just 25th in the majors in strikeout rate. How will that play in the postseason against better lineups?
With one month left until the trade deadline, what is the one move the Tigers should make to put themselves over the top?
Doolittle: The big-ticket additions would be a No. 3 or better starting pitcher or a bona fide closer — the same stuff all the contenders would like to add. A lower-profile move that would really help would be to target a shortstop like Isiah Kiner-Falefa, whose bat actually improves what Detroit has gotten from the position just in terms of raw production. But he also adds contact ability, another stolen base threat and a plus glove. For the Tigers to maximize the title chances produced by their great start, they need to think in terms of multiple roster-filling moves, not one big splash.
Keown: Prevailing wisdom says to beef up the bullpen and improve the offense at third base, which would put names like Pete Fairbanks and Nolan Arenado at the top of the list. But the pitching and offense are both top-10 in nearly every meaningful statistic, and I contend there’s an equally good case to be made for the Tigers to go all in on a top-line starting pitcher. Providing Sandy Alcantara a fresh environment would deepen the rotation and lighten the psychic load on Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize. (Every word of this becomes moot if the MLB return of 34-year-old KBO vet Dietrich Enns is actually the answer.)
Passan: Bring Eugenio Suarez home. The third baseman, who currently has 25 home runs and is slugging .569, signed with Detroit as an amateur in 2008 and spent five years in the minors before debuting in 2014. That winter, the Tigers traded him to Cincinnati for right-hander Alfredo Simon, who, in his only season in Detroit, posted a 5.05 ERA in 187 innings. Suarez’s power would fit perfectly in the Tigers’ lineup and is robust enough to get over the fence at Comerica Park, one of the largest stadiums in MLB.
Schoenfield: This is the beauty of the Tigers: They can go in any direction. As good as the offense has been, it feels like several of these guys are ripe for regression in the second half: Baez, McKinstry, maybe Torkelson and Gleyber Torres. That group is all way over their 2024 level of production. If those guys fade, an impact bat might be the answer. But is one available? Arenado certainly isn’t an impact bat anymore and might not be traded anyway. Maybe Eugenio Suarez if the Diamondbacks fade. But the likeliest and easiest answer: bullpen help.
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