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WESTWOOD, Calif. — UCLA is officially heading to the Big Ten after receiving approval from the University of California regents Wednesday, but the approval comes with stipulations.

More than five months after the Bruins, alongside USC, announced their shocking intention to leave the Pac-12 for the Big Ten in 2024, the UC board of regents chair and UCOP president recommended allowing UCLA to continue its move to the Big Ten in a special meeting Wednesday on UCLA’s campus. The board of regents approved the move by a vote of 11-5.

“We looked at the reality of where we are and what the alternatives were,” board of regents chair Rich Leib said. “And I think in the end we just decided that the best thing to do is the way we did it, which is conditions, but allow them to go.”

As part of the board’s decision, UCLA will have to increase its expected investment in student-athlete resources and might have to provide a subsidy to the University of California, Berkeley in the range of $2 million to $10 million once a Pac-12 media deal is secured, depending on the amount of the deal. A UCOP spokesperson said the frequency of the subsidy to UC Berkeley is yet to be determined.

The board included other conditions for UCLA to address the impact of the move on athletes, including funds for academic support, nutritional support and mental health services.

According to the letter to the regents, the subsidy to UC Berkeley would be to “enhance student-athlete support on that campus.”

“Berkeley really took a hit by UCLA leaving,” Leib said. “They suffered quite a bit. We don’t know how much, but we felt it was important … that we somehow make Berkeley, maybe not whole, but at least help them in that situation.”

Leib said the board is allowed to revisit the issue once the Pac-12 has secured a media deal.

“We’re excited to join the Big Ten Conference in 2024 and are grateful for the Board of Regents’ thoughtful engagement in this decision,” UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond said in a statement after the decision. “We’ve always been guided by what is best for our 25 teams and more than 700 student-athletes, and the Big Ten offers exciting new competitive opportunities on a bigger national media platform for our student-athletes to compete and showcase their talent.”

During four meetings between July and December, the regents have discussed and considered input and research regarding the move. In September, UC regents general counsel Charles Robinson said the board had the authority to block the move. The board was expected to announce a decision in November but postponed it and called a special meeting for Wednesday to address any additional questions and provide a final decision.

According to a regents document, the board wanted more information and research regarding the additional resources that would be required to improve student-athletes’ experience as part of the move.

Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren expressed gratitude to the UC regents “for respecting the decision” of UCLA to change conferences.

“The landscape of collegiate athletics is evolving, and the Big Ten Conference is in a position of stability and strength with unmatched opportunities, exposure and resources for our member institutions and student-athletes,” Warren said in a prepared statement. “With the collective goals to prioritize the health and well-being of our student-athletes and forward our academic and athletic mission under the umbrella of higher education, we will continue our methodical integration process of UCLA and USC into the Big Ten Conference.”

The move to the Big Ten has had its detractors, including UCLA alum Bill Walton and the National College Players Association — run by former UCLA football player Ramogi Huma — which came out against realignment last week, citing the effect the extra travel would have on students’ academics and mental health.

UC Berkeley chancellor Carol Christ had also voiced her dissent, saying the move would further a professionalization of college athletics. UC Berkeley is the school most affected by the UCLA move. The sister schools will now be splitting, and a Pac-12 without the Los Angeles market of USC and UCLA likely lowers the value of a forthcoming media rights deal.

Before that aforementioned November meeting, UCLA provided the regents a document outlining the school’s financial plans for travel, academic support, mental health services, nutrition and other areas surrounding the conference move, as well as a survey of 111 athletes with their thoughts on switching leagues. The school has said it intends to spend an extra $10 million on resources for athletes because of the move.

On Wednesday, the board directed UCLA to provide additional yearly resources for student-athlete support as condition for its move to the Big Ten.

“We actually added more to it, so all together we have about, between 11 and 12 million of enhancements,” Leib said. The official number is a range between $11.03 million to $12.20 million.

Those enhancements include providing about $6.3 million to academic support, nutritional support and mental health services for all student-athletes. Roughly $4.3 million will be for food, requiring breakfast and lunch on campus for all UCLA athletes, professional dietitian services and nutritious meals while they are traveling.

“You’re not playing [Rutgers] every week,” Jarmond said while speaking at a Sports Business Journal conference in Las Vegas last week. “In the grand scheme of things, it’s not that much. The benefits far outweigh those challenges.”

UCLA, which has been plagued by $62.5 million in debt, according to the Los Angeles Times, has said it would be in line to earn up to $70 million annually in media rights and the subsequent exposure. In August, the Big Ten signed a seven-year, $7 billion media deal with Fox, CBS and NBC. The Pac-12 remains without a TV deal.

Speaking in Las Vegas last week, Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff said the conference would await the regents’ decision before further pursuing a media deal. The Pac-12 is the only conference without a deal, and Kliavkoff repeatedly expressed optimism in getting a lucrative deal done in the first quarter of 2023, which would be followed, according to Kliavkoff, by exploring expansion.

“We don’t know what’s gonna happen with the Pac-12 at this point,” Leib said. “They were hurt by USC and then UCLA making this [move] … but really USC was the first one. There are indications that it might be a very strong media contract that they get in the end, which would make Berkeley a lot better, so therefore maybe the payment would be far less. It just depends, it’s really hard to know. So we wanted to give ourselves a wide range.”

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Stanton won’t blame ailing elbows on torpedo bats

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Stanton won't blame ailing elbows on torpedo bats

NEW YORK — Giancarlo Stanton, one of the first known adopters of the torpedo bat, declined Tuesday to say whether he believes using it last season caused the tendon ailments in both elbows that forced him to begin this season on the injured list.

Last month, Stanton alluded to “bat adjustments” he made last season as a possible reason for the epicondylitis, commonly known as tennis elbow, he’s dealing with.

“You’re not going to get the story you’re looking for,” Stanton said. “So, if that’s what you guys want, that ain’t going to happen.”

Stanton said he will continue using the torpedo bat when he returns from injury. The 35-year-old New York Yankees slugger, who has undergone multiple rounds of platelet-rich plasma injections to treat his elbows, shared during spring training that season-ending surgery on both elbows was a possibility. But he has progressed enough to recently begin hitting off a Trajekt — a pitching robot that simulates any pitcher’s windup, arm angle and arsenal. However, he still wouldn’t define his return as “close.”

He said he will first have to go on a minor league rehab assignment at an unknown date for an unknown period. It won’t start in the next week, he added.

“This is very unique,” Stanton said. “I definitely haven’t missed a full spring before. So, it just depends on my timing, really, how fast I get to feel comfortable in the box versus live pitching.”

While the craze of the torpedo bat (also known as the bowling pin bat) has swept the baseball world since it was revealed Saturday — while the Yankees were blasting nine home runs against the Milwaukee Brewers — that a few members of the Yankees were using one, the modified bat already had quietly spread throughout the majors in 2024. Both Stanton and former Yankees catcher Jose Trevino, now with the Cincinnati Reds, were among players who used the bats last season after being introduced to the concept by Aaron Leanhardt, an MIT-educated physicist and former minor league hitting coordinator for the organization.

Anthony Volpe, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Cody Bellinger, Paul Goldschmidt and Austin Wells were among the Yankees who used torpedo bats during their season-opening sweep of the Brewers.

Stanton explained he has changed bats before. He said he has usually adjusted the length. Sometimes, he opts for lighter bats at the end of the long season. In the past, when knuckleballers were more common in the majors, he’d opt for heavier lumber.

Last year, he said he simply chose his usual bat but with a different barrel after experimenting with a few models.

“I mean, it makes a lot of sense,” Stanton said. “But it’s, like, why hasn’t anyone thought of it in 100-plus years? So, it’s explained simply and then you try it and as long as it’s comfortable in your hands [it works]. We’re creatures of habit, so the bat’s got to feel kind of like a glove or an extension of your arm.”

Stanton went on to lead the majors with an average bat velocity of 81.2 mph — nearly 3 mph ahead of the competition. He had a rebound, but not spectacular, regular season in which he batted .233 with 27 home runs and a .773 OPS before clubbing seven home runs in 14 playoff games.

“It’s not like [it was] unreal all of a sudden for me,” Stanton said.

Yankees manager Aaron Boone described the torpedo bats “as the evolution of equipment” comparable to getting fitted for new golf clubs. He said the organization is not pushing players to use them and insisted the science is more complicated than just picking a bat with a different barrel.

“There’s a lot more to it than, ‘I’ll take the torpedo bat on the shelf over there — 34 [inches], 32 [ounces],'” Boone said. “Our guys are way more invested in it than that. And really personalized, really work with our players in creating this stuff. But it’s equipment evolving.”

As players around the majors order torpedo bats in droves after the Yankees’ barrage over the weekend — they clubbed a record-tying 13 homers in two games against the Brewers — Boone alluded to the notion that, though everyone is aware of the concept, not every organization can optimize its usage.

“You’re trying to just, where you can on the margins, move the needle a little bit,” Boone said. “And that’s really all you’re going to do. I don’t think this is some revelation to where we’re going to be; it’s not related to the weekend that we had, for example. Like, I don’t think it’s that. Maybe in some cases, for some players, it may help them incrementally. That’s how I view it.”

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Rangers’ Eovaldi gets season’s 1st complete game

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Rangers' Eovaldi gets season's 1st complete game

CINCINNATI — Nathan Eovaldi pitched a four-hitter for the majors’ first complete game of the season, and the Texas Rangers blanked the Cincinnati Reds 1-0 on Tuesday night.

Eovaldi struck out eight and walked none in his fifth career complete game. The right-hander threw 99 pitches, 70 for strikes.

It was Eovaldi’s first shutout since April 29, 2023, against the Yankees and just the third of his career. He became the first Ranger with multiple career shutouts with no walks in the past 30 seasons, according to ESPN Research.

“I feel like, by the fifth or sixth inning, that my pitch count was down, and I feel like we had a really good game plan going into it,” Eovaldi said in his on-field postgame interview on Victory+. “I thought [Texas catcher Kyle Higashioka] called a great game. We were on the same page throughout the entire game.”

In the first inning, Wyatt Langford homered for Texas against Carson Spiers (0-1), and that proved to be all Eovaldi needed. A day after Cincinnati collected 14 hits in a 14-3 victory in the series opener, Eovaldi (1-0) silenced the lineup.

“We needed it, these bats are still quiet,” Texas manager Bruce Bochy said of his starter’s outing. “It took a well-pitched game like that. What a game.”

The Reds put the tying run on second with two out in the ninth, but Eovaldi retired Elly De La Cruz on a grounder to first.

“He’s as good as I have seen as far as a pitcher performing under pressure,” Bochy said. “He is so good. He’s a pro out there. He wants to be out there.”

Eovaldi retired his first 12 batters, including five straight strikeouts during one stretch. Gavin Lux hit a leadoff single in the fifth for Cincinnati’s first baserunner.

“I think it was the first-pitch strikes,” Eovaldi said, when asked what made him so efficient. “But also, the off-speed pitches. I was able to get some quick outs, and I didn’t really have many deep counts. … And not walking guys helps.”

Spiers gave up three hits in six innings in his season debut. He struck out five and walked two for the Reds, who fell to 2-3.

The Rangers moved to 4-2, and Langford has been at the center of it all. He now has two home runs in six games to begin the season. In 2024, it took him until the 29th game of the season to homer for the first time. Langford hit 16 homers in 134 games last season during his rookie year.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Source: USC flips Ducks’ Topui, No. 3 DT in 2026

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Source: USC flips Ducks' Topui, No. 3 DT in 2026

USC secured the commitment of former Oregon defensive tackle pledge Tomuhini Topui on Tuesday, a source told ESPN, handing the Trojans their latest recruiting victory in the 2026 cycle over the Big Ten rival Ducks.

Topui, ESPN’s No. 3 defensive tackle and No. 72 overall recruit in the 2026 class, spent five and half months committed to Oregon before pulling his pledge from the program on March 27. Topui attended USC’s initial spring camp practice that afternoon, and seven days later the 6-foot-4, 295-pound defender gave the Trojans his pledge to become the sixth ESPN 300 defender in the program’s 2026 class.

Topui’s commitment gives USC its 10th ESPN 300 pledge this cycle — more than any other program nationally — and pulls a fourth top-100 recruit into the impressive defensive class the Trojans are building this spring. Alongside Topui, USC’s defensive class includes in-state cornerbacks R.J. Sermons (No. 26 in ESPN Junior 300) and Brandon Lockhart (No. 77); four-star outside linebacker Xavier Griffin (No. 27) out of Gainesville, Georgia; and two more defensive line pledges between Jaimeon Winfield (No. 143) and Simote Katoanga (No. 174).

The Trojans are working to reestablish their local recruiting presence in the 2026 class under newly hired general manager Chad Bowden. Topui not only gives the Trojans their 11th in-state commit in the cycle, but his pledge represents a potentially important step toward revamping the program’s pipeline to perennial local powerhouse Mater Dei High School, too.

Topui will enter his senior season this fall at Mater Dei, the program that has produced a long line of USC stars including Matt Leinart, Matt Barkley and Amon-Ra St. Brown. However, if Topui ultimately signs with the program later this year, he’ll mark the Trojans’ first Mater Dei signee since the 2022 cycle, when USC pulled three top-300 prospects — Domani Jackson, Raleek Brown and C.J. Williams — from the high school program based in Santa Ana, California.

Topui’s flip to the Trojans also adds another layer to a recruiting rivalry rekindling between USC and Oregon in the 2026 cycle.

Tuesday’s commitment comes less than two months after coach Lincoln Riley and the Trojans flipped four-star Oregon quarterback pledge Jonas Williams, ESPN’s No. 2 dual-threat quarterback in 2026. USC is expected to continue targeting several Ducks commits this spring, including four-star offensive tackle Kodi Greene, another top prospect out of Mater Dei.

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