LOS ANGELES — There is no feeling in this world quite like reaching the pinnacle of your profession, whether that means hoisting a 35-pound College Football Playoff championship trophy on the floor of a Los Angeles stadium or being handed an 8½-pound Oscar in a nearby Hollywood auditorium.
But no sooner has the last piece of confetti been swept from the stage than the same question always sweeps in to step on the celebration.
“Hey! You think you can do this again next year?!”
“Can we repeat? Is that what you’re asking me? Funny, I haven’t had that question at all today,” said Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett, the on-field leader of the reigning national champs, at Saturday morning’s CFP title game media day ahead of their clash with TCU on Monday (7:30 ET, ESPN).
He shook his head and laughed, looking down at his wrist as if he were checking a watch.
“No, wait, sorry. What I meant to say is that I haven’t had that question in almost three minutes.”
Then the 25-year-old Bulldogs folk hero looked up, no longer smiling.
“Hell yeah, we can. I don’t care what the stats or history or anyone else has to say about why we won’t.”
Actually, they say a lot. Because it almost never happens. Call it a repeat, going back-to-back, two titles in a row, whatever your chosen description, but backing up one championship with another is an accomplishment that specializes in scarcity, across all sports, particularly in college football. Since 1990, only three teams have managed to win consecutive national titles, including none during the current nine-year CFP era, when so many have complained that the participants have been too repetitive. Alabama was the last of those three back-to-back title teams, but that was a decade ago, in 2011 and 2012, way back during the latter stages of the BCS era.
“Well, I’m aware because I was a part of that while at Alabama, and I know how hard that is to do,” said Georgia coach Kirby Smart, who was a Crimson Tide assistant from 2007 to 2015. “I know how hard it is to do because there’s a lot of times we didn’t do it. We did it once, but while we were there, we won four and we were only able to repeat once.”
There is a reason it happens so infrequently. OK, reasons. Plural. An unforeseen obstacle course of impossible expectations and endless distractions that no one can truly understand until they have stood in those cleats.
Resolving the riddle of the repeat performance is a challenge that has confounded even the greatest coaches and athletes ever seen. Even Alabama’s Nick Saban. The owner of seven rings has managed to defend that jewelry only the one time. His quest to overcome that obstacle has led him to call on his fellow titans from other sports. It has been a frequent topic of conversation with his former boss and longtime pal Bill Belichick, who has won six Super Bowls at the helm of the New England Patriots but even with Tom Brady behind center pulled off the double dip only once.
Not surprisingly, any time Belichick has been asked about the difficulties of repeating, he has responded with his typical, yes, repetitive answers, immediately pivoting to the likes of “I am only focused on today’s practice.” But privately, he and Saban have delved into the psychology of it all. And they have studied how fellow GOATs have done it.
‘The disease of me’
“What you worry about is a quote from another coach who has won a lot of championships, Pat Riley,” Saban has said of the owner of five NBA titles with a record of three non-successful defenses and one pair of consecutive titles — after which the Los Angeles Lakers lost to the Detroit Pistons in the 1989 NBA Finals and, famously, after Riley had just filed a trademark on the term “three-peat.”
Saban gives Riley credit for another phrase: “He talks about ‘the disease of me.’ How much credit do I want relative to how much I’m willing to invest in the team being successful?”
As Alabama prepared to defend its 2020 CFP championship, Saban used that quote often. Then he bought in Alex Rodriguez, who talked to the Tide about the disappointment he experienced when his New York Yankees failed to back up their 2009 World Series title the following season, even though Rodriguez has always considered the 2010 team to be the more talented of the two.
“Alex said it wasn’t the distractions, it was the attractions,” Saban explained after the visit. “Everybody got more attention. Everybody had more people pulling at them, whether it was to speak at banquets or whatever, so it made it much more difficult to focus on the things that you needed to focus on to be the best player that you can be and to be the best teammate that you can be.”
Bennett offered his take.
“It’s everything man, all of that stuff,” Bennett confessed. “So, what you have to do as a group is look around and make sure everyone is accountable. We’re not going to keep someone from an amazing opportunity. But as a team, if you see that start to change someone, you owe it as a friend and teammate to check that.”
‘The fat belly’
In order to guard against those outside distractions, everyone interviewed who has been in that position is quick is say the key is not looking outward but inward. Instead of worrying about forces you can’t control, work on what you can. Yourself.
“That is really hard to do because human nature is to relax,” Smart warned. “When people pat you on the back, the human nature is to say, ‘I’m good. I’ve done a good job. And we won it last year. Let’s take a year off.'”
As one of Smart’s defensive anchors, Christopher Smith, added, “Let’s step outside of football to top CEOs. And what do people fear the most? It’s complacency. When you get to that highest point, and you feel like, we call it the fat belly: ‘Ah, I’m good, man. I’ve done enough. We good.’ You can’t be good. You can’t let the guy next to you be good.”
That’s a hard enough challenge in a professional locker room, with grown adults pulling large paychecks. It can feel downright impossible when you’re standing there addressing a room full of teenagers.
“For me, for my teammates, it was finding new ways to challenge yourself, to motivate, because your first motivation, what drove your entire life up to that point, was to win a championship, and that’s already done,” said Tim Tebow, who won a pair of national titles during his four years at Florida, but the Gators failed to defend either one. “Now, you have to find another goal. Another chip for your shoulder.”
“Once you win, there’s nothing else to do but to win again. Anything less than that is a complete failure,” said Jeter, winner of five World Series titles, including the only three-peat (do we owe Pat Riley money now?) seen in Major League Baseball in the past half-century. “We had the mindset that we were proving to people that we can do it again. You’ve got to have something you have to reach for, and for us, it was to win back-to-back.”
This is the part where we as sports fans and so many athletes are likely thinking, “Well, true champions don’t need such billboard-posted goals! They should want to win naturally!”
That’s easy to say. But even the greatest — heck, even “The Great One” — knows it’s not that simple.
“I’ve won it one time. Now I want to win it again and again and again,” explained Wayne Gretzky, owner of four Stanley Cup titles, earned via a pair of back-to-back titles, in 1984 and 1985 and again in 1987 and 1988. “But it’s not always about that.”
‘This is a totally different team’
Seemingly hours after stepping off the ice with the Cup in his arms, Gretzky was traded by the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings. He never won another Cup. The Oilers won again the following year, but they haven’t won it since.
In college football, every single offseason is like that, thanks to the NFL draft, graduation and now the light speed roster makeovers triggered by the transfer portal.
“I had the great fortune of having a really good team last year. Our staff and our organization did such a good job with that team, but we lost all of them,” Smart said about a roster that lost a stunning 15 players to the NFL draft, five more than any other team. “So, it was like starting over.”
UConn coach Geno Auriemma summed it up prior the current NCAA women’s basketball season, during which his Huskies are chasing their 12th national title, including a three-peat, a four-peat and five failed title defenses.
“The problem with winning one year and then winning the next is a lot of times having everybody back is not ideal,” he said. “That’s not the same guys coming back. Those guys that were content to be fourth, fifth, sixth in the pecking order. They went home during the summer and somebody told them, “Yo, you’re going to be No. 1 and No. 2 this year!’ So, everything changes.”
How they react to that is up to them. Sometimes they cave in, but often they do not, certainly not when they are fully integrated into the machines of college football’s most powerful programs. You know, Nick Saban’s famous “Process” and all that.
“The motivation job [for us this year] was probably not as hard as most repeats are,” Smart continued with a recognizable tone of hope. “And our staff changed. [Defensive coordinator Dan Lanning took the head-coaching job at Oregon.] So, you get a little hungrier staff sometimes when you get four new guys, and those guys have helped provide energy for a new group of players.”
Players like Sedrick Van Pran, who was a key member of Georgia’s offensive line one year ago but this season, as a redshirt sophomore, has been a visible lead Dawg, including securing co-captainship for a large chunk of the schedule.
“We don’t look at it as we’re defending a national championship,” he said. “That’s long gone. This is a totally different team. So, it’s all about leaving our legacy, especially for me, because I wasn’t the leader last year. I have a national championship as a supporter, but I don’t have one as one of the lead guys. So, that’s something that’s important to me.”
‘Championship game? That’s been every week, man’
Simultaneously, the best and worst aspects of spending a season as the champ are that you are no longer the team climbing the mountain but now the one everyone else is trying to shove off the peak.
“It’s the worst because every game you play is now the biggest game on your opponent’s schedule. Every single one of them.”
It sounded exhausting just coming from the mouth of the man explaining it, former Alabama safety and now SEC Network analyst Roman Harper. He never defended a title in Tuscaloosa, having played just prior to Saban’s arrival. But he did win Super Bowl XLIV with the New Orleans Saints. The following year, they were bounced from the playoffs in the wild-card round.
“There is zero chance to catch your breath. And if it takes you a minute to get going because of all those offseason distractions, as happens to most teams, now you’re playing catch-up while you are also catching their best effort and the road crowd’s best effort. It can wear you down.”
Harper also pointed out that a championship run means more games and that Georgia has played more football over the past two seasons than anyone else. Monday night will be its 30th game, coming off the drama of the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl semifinal win over Ohio State during which the Dawgs appeared visibly drained.
“But they have also been on that stage already,” Harper continued. “Nothing that happens Monday with schedule or preparation or routine, none of that will surprise them. They can focus on football. TCU is going to be experiencing all of this for the first time.”
Bennett agreed.
“Championship game? That’s been every week, man,” Bennett said. “A championship game is your opponent giving their best while you give your best in an environment that is the best you can experience.”
The quarterback leaned back in his chair, tilted his head and made very direct eye contact.
“Everyone wants to come up with all the problems that come with being the defending national champion. All I know is that it’s a great problem to have.”
Jeff Legwold covers the Denver Broncos at ESPN. He has covered the Broncos for more than 20 years and also assists with NFL draft coverage, joining ESPN in 2013. He has been a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Board of Selectors since 1999, too. Jeff previously covered the Pittsburgh Steelers, Buffalo Bills and Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans at previous stops prior to ESPN.
BOULDER, Colo. — For the horde of NFL talent evaluators and some bleachers full of fans, Colorado coach Deion Sanders said Friday that they all got to see the top two players available in this year’s NFL draft.
Quarterback Shedeur Sanders and Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter were among the 16 Colorado players who took part in the school’s showcase event for scouts, coaches and personnel executives from every NFL team. And Deion Sanders said the two marquee players confirmed what he has known for a long time.
“It’s tremendous,” Sanders said. “… They should be going 1-2 [in the draft], that’s the way I feel about it. They are the two best players in this draft. … The surest bets in this draft are those two young men, and I didn’t stutter or stammer when I said that.”
Neither Shedeur Sanders nor Hunter took part in most of the position drills or physical testing, but Sanders had a throwing session for just under an hour and Hunter was one of the wide receivers who participated. Neither player worked out at the scouting combine earlier this year, so it was the first time Sanders had thrown in such a setting since the end of the season. He showed some full seven-step drops and play-action from the shotgun and under center.
“I think I did pretty good, to my expectations,” said Sanders, who set the career FBS accuracy mark in his two years at Colorado (71.8%) to go with his 4,134 passing yards and 37 touchdowns last season. “I know I did the best in college football right now, for sure.”
Asked after the throwing session whether he believed he was the best quarterback in the draft, Sanders said: “I feel like I’m the No. 1 quarterback, and that’s what I know. But at the end of the day, I’m not stuck on that because it’s about the situation, so whatever situation, whatever franchise believes in me, I’m excited to go. … I’m comfortable in any situation.”
Players Hunter, who did not speak to the media after the workout, and Sanders met with the Cleveland Browns contingent, including team co-owner Jimmy Haslam, on Thursday night in Boulder.
“They got me really full,” Sanders said. “I definitely needed to go to the sauna after that. … It was a good vibe.”
Said Deion Sanders said: “[I] spoke to the owner, truly delightful. He was engaging. … I think one of those guys is going to be there [at No. 2].”
Hunter, the No. 1 player on Mel Kiper Jr.’s Big Board, did not do any defensive drills Friday, but he ran a full assortment of routes.
Colorado safety Shilo Sanders, Shedeur’s brother, offered plenty of encouragement, shouting commentary and clapping after each throw, including “not a lot of quarterbacks can make that throw” after one deep completion.
The highly attended event — by NFL representatives as well as fans packing small bleachers — had a festive atmosphere. Deion Sanders named it the “We Ain’t Hard 2 Find Showcase,” complete with a large lighted “The Showcase” sign next to the drills.
Hunter, who has said he wants to play offense and defense in the NFL, won the Chuck Bednarik (top defensive player) and Fred Biletnikoff (top receiver) awards in addition to the Heisman. He said whether he will primarily be a wide receiver or a cornerback in the NFL depends “on the team that picks me.”
On Friday, Deion Sanders said “ain’t nobody like Travis.”
Hunter had 96 catches for 1,258 yards and 15 touchdowns as a receiver last season to go with 35 tackles, 11 pass breakups and 4 interceptions at cornerback. In the Buffaloes’ regular-season finale against Oklahoma State, he became the only FBS player in the past 25 years with three scrimmage touchdowns on offense and an interception in the same game, according to ESPN Research.
He played 1,380 total snaps in Colorado’s 12 regular-season games: 670 on offense, 686 on defense and 24 on special teams. He played 1,007 total snaps in 2023.
Shilo Sanders, who hoped to show teams more speed than expected, ran a 4.52 40-yard dash after he measured in at 5-foot-11⅞, 196 pounds. He did not participate in the jumps or bench press that opened the workout, citing a right shoulder injury.
With all NFL eyes on the Colorado campus to see Shedeur Sanders throw, one player who made the most of it was wide receiver Will Sheppard. Sheppard, who measured 6-2¼, 196 pounds, ran the 40 in 4.56 and 4.54 to go with a 40½-inch vertical jump and a 10-foot-11 broad jump.
Henderson has been sidelined with a right intercostal strain and missed the first seven games of the big league campaign.
The 23-year-old Henderson will lead off and play shortstop against the host Royals.
Henderson was injured during a spring training game Feb. 27. He was fourth in American League MVP voting last season when he batted .281 and racked up career bests of 37 homers and 92 RBIs.
Henderson completed a five-game rehab stint at Triple-A Norfolk on Wednesday. He batted .263 (5-for-19) with two homers and four RBIs and played four games at shortstop and one as the designated hitter. He did commit three errors.
“I think everybody’s looking forward to having Gunnar back on the team,” Baltimore manager Brandon Hyde said Thursday. “The rehab went really, really well. I talked to him a couple days ago, he feels great swinging the bat. The timing came, especially the last few days. He just had to get out there and get some reps defensively and get some games in, and it all went well.”
Baltimore optioned outfielder Dylan Carlson to Triple-A Norfolk to open up a roster spot. The 26-year-old was 0-for-4 with a run and RBI in two games this season.
ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the Washington Wizards from 2014 to 2016 and the Washington Nationals from 2016 to 2018 for The Washington Post before covering the Los Angeles Dodgers and MLB for the Los Angeles Times from 2018 to 2024.
When New York Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns attempted to assemble the best possible roster for the 2025 season this winter, the top priority was signing outfielder Juan Soto. Next was the need to replenish the starting rotation and bolster the bullpen. Then, days before pitchers and catchers reported for spring training, the lineup received one final significant reinforcement when first baseman Pete Alonso re-signed.
Acquiring a player with a singing career on the side didn’t make the cut.
“No, that is not on the list,” Stearns said with a smile.
Stearns’ decision not to re-sign Jose Iglesias, the infielder behind the mic for the viral 2024 Mets anthem “OMG,” was attributed to creating more roster flexibility. But it also hammered home a reality: The scrappy 2024 Mets, authors of a magical summer in Queens, are a thing of the past. The 2025 Mets, who will report to Citi Field for their home opener Friday, have much of the same core but also some prominent new faces — and the new, outsized expectations that come with falling two wins short of the World Series, then signing Soto to the richest contract in professional sports history.
But there’s a question surrounding this year’s team that you can’t put a price tag on: Can these Mets rekindle the magic — the vibes, the memes, the feel-good underdog story — that seemed to come out of nowhere to help carry them to Game 6 of the National League Championship Series last season?
“Last year the culture was created,” Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor said. “It’s a matter of continuing it.”
For all the success Stearns has engineered — his small-market Milwaukee Brewers teams reached the postseason five times in eight seasons after he became the youngest general manager in history in 2015 — the 40-year-old Harvard grad, like the rest of his front office peers knows there’s no precise recipe for clubhouse chemistry. There is no culture projection system. No Vibes Above Replacement.
“Culture is very important,” Stearns said last weekend in the visiting dugout at Daikin Park before his club completed an opening-weekend series against the Houston Astros. “Culture is also very difficult to predict.”
Still, it seems the Mets’ 2024 season will be all but impossible to recreate.
There was Grimace, the purple McDonald’s blob who spontaneously became the franchise’s unofficial mascot after throwing out a first pitch in June. “OMG,” performed under Iglesias’ stage name, Candelita, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Latin Digital Songs chart, before a remix featuring Pitbull was released in October. Citi Field became a karaoke bar whenever Lindor stepped into the batter’s box with The Temptations’ “My Girl” as his walk-up song. Alonso unveiled a lucky pumpkin in October. They were gimmicks that might have felt forced if they hadn’t felt so right.
“I don’t know if what we did last year could be replicated because it was such a chaos-filled group,” Mets reliever Ryne Stanek said. “I don’t know if that’s replicable because there’s just too many things going on. I don’t know if that’s a sustainable model. But I think the expectation of winning is really important. I think establishing what we did last year and coming into this year where people are like, ‘Oh, no, that’s what we’re expecting to do,’ makes it different. It’s always a different vibe whenever you feel like you’re the hunter versus being the hunted.”
For the first two months last season, the Mets were terrible hunters. Lindor was relentlessly booed at Citi Field during another slow start. The bullpen got crushed. The losses piled up. The Mets began the season 0-5 and sunk to rock bottom on May 29 when reliever Jorge Lopez threw his glove into the stands during a 10-3 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers that dropped the team to 22-33.
That night, the Mets held a players-only meeting. From there, perhaps coincidentally, everything changed. The Mets won the next day, and 67 of their final 107 games.
This year, to avoid an early malaise and to better incorporate new faces like Soto and Opening Day starter Clay Holmes, players made it a point to hold meetings during spring training to lay a strong foundation.
“At the end of the day, we know who we are and that’s the beauty of our club,” Alonso said. “Not just who we are talent-wise, but who each individual is as a man and a personality. For us, our major, major strength is our collective identity as a unit.”
Organizationally, the Mets are attempting a dual-track makeover: Becoming perennial World Series contenders while not taking themselves too seriously.
The commemorative purple Grimace seat installed at Citi Field in September — Section 302, Row 6, Seat 12 in right field — remains there as part of a two-year contract. Last week, the franchise announced it will feature a New York-city themed “Five Borough” race at every home game — with a different mascot competing to represent each borough. For a third straight season, USA Today readers voted Citi Field — home of the rainbow cookie egg roll, among many other innovative treats — as having the best ballpark food in baseball.
In the clubhouse, their identity is evolving.
“I’m very much in the camp that you can’t force things,” Mets starter Sean Manaea said. “I mean, you can, but you don’t really end up with good results. And if you wait for things to happen organically, then sometimes it can take too long. So, there’s like a nudging of sorts. It’s like, ‘Let’s kind of come up with something, but not force it.’ So there’s a fine balance there and you just got to wait and see what happens.”
Stearns believes it starts with what the Mets can control: bringing positive energy every day and fostering a family atmosphere. It’s hard to quantify, but vibes undoubtedly helped fuel the Mets’ 2024 success. It’ll be a tough act to follow.
“It’s fluid,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “I like where guys are at as far as the team chemistry goes and things like that and the connections and the relationships. But it’ll continue to take some time. And winning helps, clearly.”