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2 years ago

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9:33 PM ET

The final weekend of the college football season is here and the stakes in the games could not be higher.

There is legitimate College Football Playoff drama. The No. 4 USC Trojans are out after their loss to the No. 11 Utah Utes in the Pac-12 title game. The No. 3 TCU Horned Frogs will have to await their fate after losing, in overtime, to the No. 10 Kansas State Wildcats.

The SEC, however, will be drama-free. At least as it pertains to Georgia. The Bulldogs cruised past LSU and locked themselves into the No. 1 spot in the final playoff ranking.

USC’s loss is the Ohio State Buckeyes‘ gain. Ohio State was No. 5 in the last ranking. TCU’s loss could put the No. 6 Alabama Crimson Tide back in the mix.

The No. 2 Michigan Wolverines are last up on championship Saturday. They’ll face the Purdue Boilermakers. The drama would only arise for Michigan should it lose.

Here are the top plays, biggest moments and playoff takeaways from championship weekend.

Big Ten championship

Wolverines regain the lead

Purdue responds with a TD

Michigan finds the end zone first

Playoff takeaway: Locked into No. 1

This will be the easiest part of the selection committee’s night.

Georgia further solidified itself as the No. 1 team in the country Saturday evening with its lopsided win over No. 14 LSU in the SEC championship game. Regardless of how soundly Michigan might beat Purdue in the Big Ten title game, there won’t be any debate over who’s No. 1 on selection day. If Michigan didn’t leapfrog Georgia in the fifth ranking after it beat then-No. 2 Ohio State, it’s certainly not going earn a promotion for beating an unranked, four-loss Purdue team.

The only question for Georgia is who it will face at No. 4 in a CFP semifinal. — Heather Dinich

If there was an image that encapsulated the SEC championship Saturday, it was this: Georgia star defensive lineman Jalen Carter knifing through the LSU offensive line and wrangling quarterback Jayden Daniels for a sack before lifting him up off the ground his left arm and holding out his right index finger to signal No. 1.

The message might have been two-fold. Carter showed why he’s in contention to be the top pick in next year’s NFL draft and why his team is the clear-cut top-seed in the College Football Playoff. When LSU showed some brief signs of life in the second half, like going for it on fourth-and-1 inside the red zone, it was Carter who helped stuff the run for no gain and a turnover on downs.

Georgia dominated LSU from start to finish to win. Even special teams got the job done as Nazir Stackhouse blocked a field goal attempt, Christopher Smith picked it up and ran 96 yards for a touchdown.

The Bulldogs’ offense was no slouch, either. Stetson Bennett was ruthlessly efficient, completing 23 of 29 passes for 274 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions. The running game, led by Kendall Milton, pitched in with 255 yards and two scores. — Alex Scarborough

UGA drops the mic

Tigers keep fighting

LSU turns a turnover into a TD

Halftime: Georgia 35, LSU 10

So Georgia is good and lucky.

Now maybe you create your own luck, but however you look at it, the Bulldogs got some fortunate bounces to jump out to a 35-10 lead on the Tigers in the first half of the SEC championship game.

First, after Georgia allowed LSU to drive the field and set up a chip-shot field goal, Nazir Stackhouse blocked the kick. Which was kind of normal. But then, with half the players standing around or celebrating as if the play was over, Chris Smith waited a moment, picked up the ball and ran it back 96 yards for a touchdown.

LSU responded with a touchdown of its own, but Georgia had an answer.

First, Stetson Bennett found Brock Bowers for a 3-yard touchdown reception. Then things got weird again.

LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels threw an errant pass, the ball bounced off Jack Bech‘s helmet and landed in the arms of Smael Mondon Jr. Georgia took over on the LSU 22-yard line and Bennett immediately hit Ladd McConkey for a touchdown to go ahead by two scores.

From there, it was a return to form for Georgia as it forced three consecutive three-and-outs and scored a pair of touchdowns to pad its lead. — Alex Scarborough

Georgia closes the half strong

Massive headwear

INT leads to Georgia TD

UGA’s offense gets involved

Trading big-play scores

Atlanta arrivals

Mike the Tiger is ready

play

0:38

Ty Zentner knocks in the 31-yard field goal, giving Kansas State an overtime win and the Big 12 title.

Playoff takeaway: Comparing Tide vs. Frogs

If TCU was going to lose to Kansas State in the Big 12 championship game, this was how it had to happen — the overtime, 31-28 defeat gives the Frogs a good chance to remain in the top four, but until it’s official an air of uncertainty will loom.

The selection committee has to concur that TCU is “unequivocally” one of the four best teams in the country — meaning there has to be no doubt within the room that the Frogs belong in the top four without the Big 12 title. If that’s the case, they don’t necessarily have to resort to tiebreakers, but the committee will at least compare TCU and Alabama side-by-side on large monitors in the center of the room.

TCU just lost a close game to a top-10 team — the same team it beat during the regular season. The Frogs also have a common opponent with Alabama — they both beat Texas on the road — and that will be considered. Alabama’s best wins are at Texas, against Ole Miss, and Mississippi State, which is now a top-25 team.

A two-loss team has never made the CFP before, though, and Alabama didn’t win its division. The bigger debate in the room might be if Ohio State moves up to No. 3 without winning its division, while the Frogs drop to No. 4. — Heather Dinich

Kansas State finally found the antidote to TCU’s magic. After withstanding a furious 11-point comeback to get to overtime — including TCU’s Max Duggan rushing for 95 yards on an 80-yard drive due to penalties to tie the game — and the Wildcats stopped Kendre Miller twice from the 1-yard line, including on fourth down in the first half of overtime. As a result, K-State was able to play it safe and kick a field goal to walk off with a 31-28 win to claim a Big 12 championship for the third time in school history. Deuce Vaughn was the backbone for the Wildcats as usual, carrying it 26 times for 130 yards and a touchdown, adding two catches for 30 yards. — David Wilson

Playoff takeaway: Welcome back, Ohio State

With No. 4 USC losing to Utah on Friday night in the Pac-12 championship game, the No. 5 Buckeyes (11-1) should slide right into the top four on selection day. The committee will justify the move with Ohio State’s wins against Penn State and Notre Dame, plus its lone loss was to a top-four team in Michigan. It’s extremely unlikely and unexpected for two-loss No. 6 Alabama to leapfrog Ohio State at this point, which is why the fifth ranking was so important. The Buckeyes will maintain their edge over the Tide, whose last hope would be for undefeated TCU to lose convincingly to K-State in the Big 12 title game — and even that might not be enough.

USC’s Friday night flop was an all-too familiar finish for the Pac-12 with the selection committee watching together here in their meeting room at the Gaylord Texan Resort in Grapevine, Texas. They’re not going to reward three-loss conference champion Utah with a top-four spot, and two-loss USC simply doesn’t have the defense to make a case as Pac-12 runner-up — especially with a second loss to the same team. Utah should be heading to the Rose Bowl again but that will be the league’s ceiling this year. — Heather Dinich

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Benintendi HBP, out 4-6 weeks with broken hand

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11 hours ago

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February 27, 2025

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Benintendi HBP, out 4-6 weeks with broken hand

  • Associated Press

Feb 27, 2025, 05:52 PM ET

GLENDALE, Ariz. — Chicago White Sox left fielder Andrew Benintendi will miss four to six weeks with a broken hand after being hit by a pitch in a spring training game on Thursday.

Benintendi was hit on the right hand with an 87 mph fastball by Cleveland right-hander Logan Allen in the first inning and left the game. The White Sox announced the diagnosis as a non-displaced fracture, with no surgery required.

The recovery timetable means Benintendi likely will start the season on the injured list. The White Sox open at home on March 27 against the Los Angeles Angels.

Benintendi signed a $75 million, five-year contract with the White Sox prior to the 2023 season. After debuting with Boston in 2016 and helping the Red Sox with the World Series in 2018, he was traded to Kansas City in 2021. He won a Gold Glove that year and was selected for his first All-Star team in 2022, before being traded to the New York Yankees for the stretch run.

Benintendi matched his career high in 2024 with 20 homers but batted just .229, his worst average for a full season, excluding the pandemic-shortened 2020 schedule. He has played in 286 games in two seasons with Chicago.

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Ex-Twins ML catcher denies giving away pitches

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14 hours ago

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February 27, 2025

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Ex-Twins ML catcher denies giving away pitches

Feb 27, 2025, 01:30 PM ET

Derek Bender, the former Minnesota Twins minor league catcher who is under MLB investigation for telling opposing hitters what pitches were coming, denied the allegations in an interview with The Athletic as he remains out of professional baseball.

“No,” Bender told The Athletic, in an interview published Thursday, when asked if he gave away pitches to opposing batters. “And I’ll live with this until the day I die. I never gave pitches away. I never tried to give the opposing team an advantage against my own team.”

Bender, a sixth-round draft pick out of Coastal Carolina in July, was playing for the Fort Myers Mighty Mussels, the Twins’ Single-A affiliate. In the second game of a Sept. 6 doubleheader, Bender told multiple hitters for the Lakeland Flying Tigers, a Detroit farm team, the specific pitches being thrown by starter Ross Dunn, sources told ESPN at the time.

Lakeland scored four runs in the second inning and won the game 6-0 to clinch the Florida State League West division and eliminate the Mighty Mussels from playoff contention. Fort Myers coaches were notified by Lakeland coaches about Bender’s pitch tipping after the game, sources told ESPN at the time.

Sources told ESPN that Bender had told teammates he wanted the season to be over. In his interview with The Athletic, Bender said he joked to teammates about letting a ground ball go under their glove, but said he wasn’t serious.

Major League Baseball’s investigation of the incident continues, according to The Athletic, and Bender could face a permanent ban from the league.

“I had to go dark for at least three days,” Bender told The Athletic of the reaction to the initial story. “I had to private all my social media accounts. I was getting death threats and awful, obscene things said to me.”

Bender, 22, said he is trying to get back into professional baseball. He said he’ll play for the Brockton Rox of the independent Frontier League this summer.

Meanwhile, Bender said he hasn’t heard from any of his former teammates, including Ross.

“There are a lot of times where you’re talking with people that you thought you were friends with, they just don’t look at you the same,” Bender told The Athletic. “I’ve heard my friends get questioned about me, why they’re still friends with me. That’s hard to hear.

“It’s not like I’m getting accused of committing a crime.”

Bender told The Athletic that the Twins were willing to keep him in the organization if he admitted to the accusations and apologize. He said he apologized, but he wouldn’t say what he was apologizing for.

“The only thing I had left was my character at that point,” Bender told The Athletic. “Literally, the way they put it was, ‘If you want to die by the sword, we’ll release you.’ I knew there was no bluffing involved.”

His agents at Octagon told The Athletic that they had dropped Bender as a client because they had told him not to do any interviews until the MLB investigation was closed.

“It’s about gaining control over my life,” Bender told The Athletic of why he did the interview. “And this whole situation. I’m not doing this as a last-ditch effort to get back into affiliate ball. It’s more of this is the start of me taking control of my life again. Because I’ve let this completely control me for months now.”

A catcher and first baseman selected with the 188th pick in 2024, Bender signed for $297,500, slightly below the $320,800 slot for that selection. He will keep the entirety of his bonus after playing 19 games for Fort Myers, hitting .200/.273/.333 with two home runs and eight RBIs.

In three seasons at Coastal Carolina, he hit .326/.408/.571 with 32 home runs and 153 RBIs in 144 games.

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Cubs’ Hoerner won’t make trip for games in Japan

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14 hours ago

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February 27, 2025

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Cubs' Hoerner won't make trip for games in Japan

  • Jesse RogersFeb 27, 2025, 02:52 PM ET

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      Jesse joined ESPN Chicago in September 2009 and covers MLB for ESPN.com.

Chicago Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner won’t be going to Japan where the team opens the regular season next month, manager Craig Counsell announced on Thursday.

Hoerner, 27, is still recovering from offseason arm surgery and will miss the two games against the Los Angeles Dodgers in Tokyo.

“Its good news because we were very much tracking towards opening day — domestic opening day,” Counsell said. “So it stinks in terms of not getting to be part of the trip, but his rehab in the last couple of weeks I think really took a step forward and he’s starting to progress quicker.”

Hoerner had surgery on his right flexor tendon back in October. He’s on track for an April return — but not for the mid-March beginning of the regular season. The Cubs and Dodgers play games on March 18-19, but the teams will be in Japan for about a week, eating up precious training/rehab days for Hoerner.

“He can’t play in games there and he needs at-bats,” Counsell explained. “He needs to be a baseball player, and the trip just does not allow for him to that in the proper way.”

Hoerner will stay in Arizona, playing in minor league games while the Cubs are in Japan. Counsell indicated back-ups Vidal Brujan or Jon Berti will likely start in Hoerner’s place.

The team also needs to make a decision on third baseman Matt Shaw, who has been slowed by an oblique issue throughout the first month of spring training. Shaw is scheduled to see his first game action this weekend. If he can’t play in Japan, Berti or Bruján — along with Rule 5 pick Gage Workman — will be candidates at third base.

“Nothing is off the table for Matt,” Counsell said. “No decisions have been made there.”

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