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INGLEWOOD, Calif. — There was no epic comeback and no miraculous finish because there was no chance — not when the No. 1 Georgia Bulldogs asserted their sheer dominance from the onset and sucked the storybook ending right out from under No. 3 TCU with a 65-7 win in the College Football Playoff National Championship game at SoFi Stadium on Monday night.

In a game that featured two Heisman Trophy finalist quarterbacks, Georgia’s Stetson Bennett piled onto his legacy, leading the Bulldogs to back-to-back national titles for the first time since Alabama accomplished the feat in 2011-12.

And they made it look so easy.

With 13:25 left in the game and Georgia sitting comfortably with a 52-7 lead, Bennett unhooked his chin strap, pulled off his helmet with a smile and went to the sideline, where he was greeted with hugs and high-fives from coaches and teammates for capping his career with the sport’s biggest prize. Bennett accounted for six total touchdowns in the victory, four rushing and two passing.

Georgia beat this scrappy but talented TCU team every which way, using its powerful tight ends for big plays in the passing game, finding holes for long bursts in the running game and pushing through the Horned Frogs’ offensive line to pressure TCU quarterback Max Duggan into costly mistakes. He threw two interceptions in the first half, including one with 36 seconds remaining that led to another Bennett touchdown pass two plays later and a resounding 38-7 halftime lead for Georgia. It was the largest halftime lead in a national championship game since the 2002 BCS, when Miami led Nebraska 34-0.

Georgia, having the experience of winning it all just a year ago, looked comfortable and calm, while the Frogs, who finished 5-7 a year ago and were picked to finish seventh in the Big 12, appeared wide-eyed and out of sorts under first-year coach Sonny Dykes.

“You have to give Georgia a ton of credit, they did a tremendous job of getting their team ready to play,” Dykes said. “Those guys came out and played exceptionally well, they’ve got a very good football team, really talented.”

Georgia closed as a 13.5-point favorite, the largest favorite in a national title game since 1998, but TCU, which defied the odds on a weekly basis, had won five games when trailing after halftime this season while capturing the nation’s attention with its funky Hypnotoad and underdog status along the way.

Not this time.

This wasn’t about a fairytale ending. No, this was about what’s beginning at Georgia under Kirby Smart.

“A lot of grit. A lot of toughness. The word we use around our place is ‘connection,'” Smart said on the championship podium. “Every one of our guys knows we stay connected, we’re hard to beat.”

Since 1990, the only other schools to win back-to-back national titles are Nebraska (1994-95) and USC (2003-04). The comparisons between where Georgia is heading and what Alabama has done began last season, when the Bulldogs defeated the Tide to win their first national title in 41 years. Now that Georgia has won consecutive championships, there’s an undeniable tilt in the balance of power between the two programs. The debate will heighten on whether Georgia already has usurped the Crimson Tide, who have won six national titles in 12 seasons under Nick Saban, as the most elite program in the SEC.

Smart, who spent nine seasons as Saban’s defensive coordinator at Alabama before he was hired at Georgia, took Saban’s championship blueprint with him to Athens. He has now won five SEC East titles, two SEC championships and two national titles. He has lured in seven top-three signing classes, and they were on full display Monday night.

For much of the first half, Bennett was throwing to open receivers without a defender in arm’s reach. He threw only four incompletions and accounted for two passing touchdowns and two rushing touchdowns in the half.

Georgia outgained TCU by 233 yards in the first half, the largest margin in any half of a national championship game since at least the 2004 season. The Bulldogs were shattering national championship records left and right. It was an utter meltdown for the Frogs, who were trying to win the program’s first national title since 1938.

“Really aggressive playing, not holding back anything, we wanted our kids to play without fear,” Smart said. “And all year I told them, I said, ‘We ain’t getting hunted guys. … We’re doing the hunting. And hunting season’s almost over. We only got one more chance to hunt, and we hunted tonight.'”

When TCU knocked off No. 2 Michigan in the CFP semifinal at the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl, it continued to convert critics into believers. It only took one half for Georgia to make it clear, though, that the gap between the SEC’s most elite program and TCU was as large as the score indicated.

Midway through the third quarter, Georgia had run as many plays (45) as it had points, which explains why the team’s fans in SoFi Stadium seemed as comfortable as the lead they were staring at. Just about everything collapsed for TCU, including its defense in the first half, which allowed its most points in a first half since giving up 38 to Oklahoma in 2017.

Entering the second quarter, Georgia’s players were waving their arms on the field and their white towels on the sideline, gesturing to the fans to get into the game. They did it again at the start of the second half. Georgia’s 17 points were the most scored in the first quarter by a team in a BCS or CFP National Championship game. Even with the resounding start, though, there was still a sense that TCU would put up a fight like it always does, and the first quarter was far too early to write off the Frogs. That happened in the second quarter.

TCU carved its identity this season through its relentless ability to find ways to win, but it was an insurmountable task against a program that has forged its identity as the best team in the country.

Again.

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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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