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Leaders of the College Football Playoff issued an ultimatum to the Rose Bowl this week, giving a self-imposed deadline of Wednesday to determine whether the CFP can expand in time for the start of the 2024 regular season, and if the game’s most storied bowl can’t agree to the terms, it’s possible it could be excluded from the New Year’s Six bowl rotation in the next contract, sources told ESPN.

“We want the Rose Bowl,” a CFP source said. “We have a good partnership with the six bowls we are affiliated with. We do. And we want to continue with that. I hope the Rose Bowl will be part of that, but there’s no guarantee in any of that. None.”

If the CFP doesn’t expand in time for the 2024 season, it will lose roughly $450 million in potential gross revenue. There is mounting pressure to make a decision this week — possibly as soon as Tuesday.

While the Rose Bowl’s position in an expanded CFP isn’t the only obstacle that slowed the process, it is the last and most complicated. The discussion centered on one of the most lucrative television windows in college sports. Laura Farber, the chair of the Rose Bowl management committee, told ESPN earlier this month the game wanted to maintain the exclusive broadcast window on Jan. 1 at 2 p.m. PT in years that it would also host a CFP semifinal.

The Rose Bowl was willing to temporarily concede its relationship with the Big Ten and Pac-12 to host a quarterfinal game in 2024 and 2025, but in return asked for assurances in the new contract. There is no contract in place beyond the current 12-year deal, which runs through the 2025 season.

“We continue to have daily conversations with the CFP board of managers, and we remain hopeful we can come to an agreement,” a Rose Bowl spokesperson told ESPN on Tuesday.

Farber told ESPN in November the bowl was willing to be flexible.

“For anyone to say that the Rose Bowl Game is the sole reason right now that expansion may not happen before the current cycle runs out is categorically wrong,” Farber said. “Yes, we need to work through the details of our contract and our separate broadcast agreement, but we remain open to that.”

A CFP source said it was fair to call it an ultimatum, but not a threat. CFP leaders are asking the Rose Bowl to reconsider some of the guarantees it’s seeking in the next contract. When the 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick negotiate the next TV deal, they are unanimous in their desire to have multiple TV partners. ESPN is currently the sole rights holder through the 2025 season. A source said the CFP has assured the Rose Bowl it will do everything it can to work around the Jan. 1 2 p.m. PT slot, but has asked all of the bowls to take a leap of faith because the commissioners can’t be bound to promises that will or won’t impact the value as they’re trying to negotiate the next deal.

“We’re to the point where we’ve got to make a decision moving forward,” a source said. “That’s where we are.”

For the CFP to expand during this current contract, everyone involved — including all New Year’s Six bowl games, the CFP and ESPN as its exclusive rights holder — have to unanimously agree. Multiple sources told ESPN the calendar had been determined — the presidents and chancellors met Nov. 16 and figured out the revenue distribution, according to one source. The last piece of the puzzle was the Rose Bowl. When the next contract is negotiated, it doesn’t have to be unanimous — making it much easier to move on without the Rose Bowl and/or the Big Ten and Pac-12 votes.

The self-imposed deadline of Wednesday was issued because the host cities are running out of time and have bent over backward to accommodate the CFP to this point while they try to work out the details. In mid-August, the CFP announced Atlanta will host the national championship game in 2025, followed by Miami in January 2026.

With pressure mounting to make a decision quickly to expand in time for the 2024 season, discussions intensified Monday morning, when several members of the CFP’s board of managers held a meeting. The 11 presidents and chancellors who comprise the board of managers have the ultimate authority over the playoff.

In the proposed 12-team format for 2024, the Cotton and Orange bowls would stay true to the current agreement and host semifinals, and in 2025, the Fiesta and Peach bowls would also host semifinals as currently planned.

On Sept. 2, the CFP’s board of managers unanimously voted to expand the CFP to 12 teams in 2026 but encouraged the sport’s commissioners to try to implement it as soon as 2024. The original 12-team model, first made public in June 2021, includes the six highest-ranked conference champions and six at-large teams.

The rankings of the teams will continue to be determined by the CFP selection committee, which will remain largely unchanged.

The four highest-ranked conference champions will be seeded one through four with each receiving a first-round bye. Teams seeded five through 12 will play each other in the first round. The quarterfinals and semifinals will be played in bowl games on a rotating basis, and the championship game will be at a neutral site, as under the current four-team format.

“I don’t want it to just come down to the Rose Bowl as the reason we don’t start it early, I really don’t, but it may be,” a CFP source said. “We said this from Day 1 — there may be any number of reasons we can’t. We’re really down to one remaining issue.”

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Matchup in Ireland is among the last for the Farmageddon football rivalry

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Matchup in Ireland is among the last for the Farmageddon football rivalry

Week 0 is college football’s oft-ignored start to the season. The good stuff doesn’t generally happen until the smorgasbord of Labor Day weekend.

This year, though, it begins with a unique bang. Consider that, right now in some Dublin pub, two fan bases from Middle America are likely baffling locals by arguing not merely over their teams but the per-acre yields of wheat vs. corn.

It’s Iowa State and Kansas State to kick things off — in Ireland no less.

It’s Farmageddon on the old sod, or Farm O’Geddon, as some have dubbed it this year.

The rural-rooted and wonderfully self-aware rivalry is getting a rare but well-deserved turn in the spotlight.

These are two proud and solid programs. Both are nationally ranked. The Wildcats check in at No. 17, and the Cyclones at 22. It’s a Big 12 game with conference title and national playoff implications.

“It’s certainly a great opportunity, and we certainly feel honored to be able to be a part of it,” Iowa State coach Matt Campbell said.

It’s also a reminder of how, even when college football is doing something well, the sport’s self-destructive ways can hang over everything.

This is the 109th consecutive meeting between these two schools, a run that dates to 1917.

Yet in 2027, there will be no scheduled game; Farmageddon’s streak will be a casualty of conference realignment.

The series predates the old Big Eight, which is now called the Big 12 even though it has 16 members, complicating everything. Trying to manage a schedule in a league that large is a massive challenge. The conference relies on what it calls a “scheduling matrix” to get it done.

The Big 12 chose just four long-standing rivalries to be “protected” and thus forced into the matrix each season: Arizona-Arizona State, BYU-Utah, Baylor-TCU and Kansas State-Kansas.

Those make sense — each is an intense, in-state clash. K-State would rather assure a game against Kansas than Iowa State, just as Iowa State wants to make sure it plays Iowa, of the Big Ten, each year in nonconference play.

Scheduling is tough. Sometimes something has to give.

Still, Farmageddon’s run of games is longer than Texas-Oklahoma, Michigan-Ohio State and the Iron Bowl between Alabama and Auburn. While Iowa State-Kansas State will be played again in future seasons, any break feels unfortunate.

Obviously, the rivalry isn’t nearly as storied as those. Both teams have endured lengthy periods where even mediocrity would have been welcomed. Still, there is something endearing about tradition. It isn’t just for the winners.

The strength of college football isn’t the blue bloods, or at least it isn’t solely in the blue bloods. Yes, the powerhouse teams drive the boat and command the television ratings. Every sport has that, though.

What college football has is everything else, everywhere else. The nation’s 136 FBS-level programs hail from more than 40 states. They are in big cities and tiny towns. There are big state schools and small private ones, religious institutions and military academies. Not everyone expects a national title. Or even a conference one.

This is an American creation that represents America in the broadest sense. That is: None of it makes sense except all of it makes sense. The passion. The pageantry. The pride.

That includes these weird neighborhood rivalries. Leagues were once formed because of familiarity or cultural commonality. You went to one school, your neighbor another. The geographic footprint mattered. Now it’s all about media rights and money.

The Big Ten has 18 teams. The Atlantic Coast Conference has two schools overlooking the Pacific Ocean. And the Big 12 is so big that the Kansas State-Iowa State rivalry — which survived world wars, droughts and depressions — can be brushed to the side.

Saturday’s game is a showcase for what needs to be maintained against the avalanche of money. It’s old-school stuff featuring two programs with reasonable expectations that mostly just want a taste of the big time and all the fun that comes with it.

So they’ve invested in it — as institutions and individuals. Try explaining to some Irishman that the 50,000-seat Bill Snyder Family Football Stadium in the Little Apple of Manhattan, Kansas, is larger than any sporting venue in the Big Apple of Manhattan, New York.

Or that Iowa State running back Abu Sama III is already a school legend for racking up 276 yards and scoring four touchdowns during a winter storm in 2023 at Kansas State.

That game will be forever known as Snowmageddon.

The tradition continues in Ireland, of all places, now with everyone watching. It’s a fitting moment for an overlooked series. It’s also a reminder to appreciate what this sport can produce, because even the good stuff isn’t necessarily safe.

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MLB-best Brewers put SS Ortiz (hamstring) on IL

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MLB-best Brewers put SS Ortiz (hamstring) on IL

MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee’s Joey Ortiz went on the 10-day injured list with a strained left hamstring Friday, leaving the NL Central-leading Brewers without their starting shortstop.

The Brewers also reinstated first baseman/outfielder Jake Bauers from the injured list and sent outfielder Jackson Chourio to a rehabilitation assignment with Triple-A Nashville.

Ortiz left a 4-1 victory over the Chicago Cubs on Thursday after hurting himself while grounding out in the fifth inning. Manager Pat Murphy said he has been told it’s a low-grade strain, an indication that Ortiz’s stay on the IL might not be too long.

Ortiz, 27, is hitting .233 with seven homers, 43 RBIs and 11 steals in 125 games. He has batted .343 with an .830 OPS in August.

“I felt like I was finally kind of getting a groove going, especially offensively, that I was starting to swing the bat as I feel I can,” Ortiz said. “Things happen. It’s baseball. It’s going to happen. I’ve just got to do what I can to get back.”

Murphy said Andruw Monasterio will be the Brewers’ primary shortstop while Ortiz is out. Monasterio, 28, has hit .254 with two homers and 11 RBIs in 43 games.

Bauers, 29, was dealing with a left shoulder impingement and last played in the majors on July 18. Bauers is hitting .197 with five homers and 18 RBIs in 59 games. He had gone just 2-for-23 in July while dealing with the shoulder issue before finally going on the injured list.

“Since April, May, I’ve been dealing with it,” Bauers said.

Chourio, 21, hasn’t played since straining his right hamstring while running out a triple in a 9-3 victory over the Cubs on July 29.

“He’s got to be able to get comfortable standing on the diamond back-to-back days,” Murphy said. “He’s got to be comfortable playing all nine (innings) in the outfield back-to-back days, because you can’t bring him back here and then just [go] zero to 100.”

Chourio is hitting .276 with 17 homers, 67 RBIs and 18 steals in 106 games.

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Red Sox move Buehler to pen as RHP eyes ‘reset’

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Red Sox move Buehler to pen as RHP eyes 'reset'

NEW YORK — The Boston Red Sox are pulling Walker Buehler from their rotation and sending the struggling right-hander to the bullpen.

“It’s going to be his new role,” manager Alex Cora said Friday before the Red Sox continued a four-game series with the Yankees. “We’ll figure out how it goes, maybe one inning, multiple innings. Whatever it is, we don’t know yet.”

Buehler’s next scheduled start would have been the opener of a four-game series in Baltimore on Monday. The Red Sox did not immediately announce who would take his turn. Right-hander Richard Fitts, currently with the Red Sox, and left-hander Kyle Harrison, who is at Triple A after being acquired in the Rafael Devers trade, are options.

“It’s obviously disappointing,” Buehler said. “It’s the first time in my career that I’ve been in a situation like that, but at the end of the day, the organization and, to a lesser extent, myself, kind of think it’s probably the right thing for our group and it gives me an opportunity to kind of reset in some ways.”

In his first season with the Red Sox after seven seasons with the Dodgers, Buehler is 7-7 with a 5.40 ERA in 22 starts and has allowed a career-worst 21 homers. He was 4-1 with a 4.28 ERA in his first six starts but is 3-6 with a 6.37 ERA over his past 16 outings. He also missed two weeks in May because of bursitis in his pitching shoulder.

“He’s been very frustrated with the way he has pitched,” Cora said. “I still believe in him. He’s a big part of what we’re trying to accomplish.”

Buehler last started in Wednesday’s 11-inning loss to the Orioles and allowed two runs in four innings while throwing 75 pitches. It was the ninth time this season he did not complete five innings.

After the game, he didn’t fault Cora for the quick hook.

“At some point, the leash I’m given has been earned,” he told reporters. “I think they did the right thing in coming to get me before the [Gunnar] Henderson at-bat. Our bullpen has been great. For me, personally, I think everything went according to plan until the fifth. You go double, four-pitch walk. The way I’ve been throwing it, it all kind of makes sense.”

Buehler also issued 54 walks in 110 innings this season for a career-high 4.4 walks per nine innings.

The Red Sox signed Buehler to a one-year, $21.05 million contract in December. The deal contains an additional $2.5 million in performance bonuses. The Red Sox also gave Buehler a $3.05 million signing bonus and includes a $25 million mutual option for 2026 with a $3 million buyout.

Buehler was 1-6 with a 5.38 ERA and pitched 75⅓ innings in the 2024 regular season for the Dodgers after missing all of 2023 recovering from Tommy John surgery. He helped the Dodgers win their second championship since 1988 by going 1-1 with a 3.60 ERA and pitched a perfect ninth for the save in Game 5 of the World Series against the Yankees.

Buehler’s only previous relief experience was eight appearances as a rookie in 2017. His last relief appearance was June 28, 2018, when he allowed a run in five innings after missing time because of a rib injury.

A two-time All Star in 2019 and 2021, Buehler is 54-29 in 153 appearances. He finished fourth in voting for the National League Cy Young Award in 2021 after going 16-4 with a 2.47 ERA in 33 starts when he threw 207⅔ innings.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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