Connect with us

Published

on

Welcome to MLB Opening Day 2023!

After one of the most exciting preludes to a regular season in recent memory — from offseason chaos to players (and fans) learning baseball’s new rules and enjoying faster-paced games to an epic World Baseball Classic — it’s time to play ball.

What are we looking for as the season gets started? Our reporters give their pregame takes from the ballpark, plus we’ll post lineups as they are announced and live updates throughout the day, including takeaways from each game as it concludes.

Season preview: How all 30 teams rank as baseball returns | Predictions
New rules: What you need to know | Passan: Welcome to a new era

Jump to …
Live updates | Takeaways from completed games | Lineups and what to watch


Live updates: Opening Day sights, sounds and moments


Takeaways from every completed Opening Day game

Recap | Box score | Highlights

>

The last time we saw the Houston relievers, they were carving through opposing hitters in the postseason with cruel efficiency. On a night when the Astros celebrated their World Series championship at Minute Maid Park, the bullpen did not pick up where it left off. Yasmani Grandal homered off Rafael Montero to tie the game in the eighth and then Andrew Vaughn doubled in two runs off Ryan Pressly in the ninth. Indeed, with the rotation minus Justin Verlander, Dusty Baker needs another dominant year from his pen. He didn’t get it in the opener. Dylan Cease, meanwhile, did pick up where he left off after finishing second in last year’s Cy Young voting, striking out 10 and retiring 18 in a row at one point before ultimately getting a no-decision. — David Schoenfield


Recap | Box score | Highlights

We have our game of the day. Nineteen runs, 34 hits, multiple late-inning lead changes, Tyler O’Neill homering for the fourth consecutive Opening Day and a five-hit game from George Springer, including the game-tying blooper in the top of the ninth. More of this, thank you very much — even if it lasts 3 hours and 36 minutes. Not a great debut for the Cardinals bullpen as late-game relievers Andre Pallante, Jordan Hicks and Ryan Helsley all surrendered runs. Hicks even knocked catcher Willson Contreras out of the game when Contreras whiffed on catching one of Hicks’ 103 mph(!) fastballs, and the ball hit him in the knee. Contreras will remember his first official game in a Cardinals uniform for all the wrong reasons. — David Schoenfield


Recap | Box score | Highlights

Oneil Cruz and Hunter Greene will be competing as division rivals for the next six years, so while the Pirates and Reds aren’t exactly favored to make the playoffs, these two young stars are worth keeping an eye on because the spectacular may happen at any time. Round one in 2023 goes to Cruz, as he launched a 425-foot home run off a Greene 101-mph heater. Greene racked up the K’s — eight in 3.1 innings — but the command he showed down the stretch in 2022 wasn’t present, and it led to an early exit. He did, however, throw 44 pitches at 100-plus mph … which, well, velocity isn’t everything. — David Schoenfield

Recap | Box score | Highlights

The Rangers are a popular pick to make a leap in the American League and while Jacob deGrom gathered plenty of headlines leading into Opening Day, new manager Bruce Bochy has to like what he saw from his offense. A solid approach produced 10 hits and six walks as a nine run fourth inning changed the dynamic of the game.

Perhaps it made fans forget deGrom’s forgettable performance. He simply couldn’t put guys away after the first inning as the Phillies pummeled him with opposite-field extra base hits — five of them in total — chasing him from the game after just 3.2 innings. He gave up five runs in his Rangers debut. Thankfully his offense picked him up. Texas is an intriguing team with a veteran, know-how-to do it manager. — Jesse Rogers


Recap | Box score | Highlights

Max Scherzer versus Sandy Alcantara was the must-see pitching matchup of the day, and while that didn’t end up materializing, this game had a little bit of everything. Mets owner Steve Cohen hung out in right field with the Mets fan club 7 Line Army. Jeff McNeil was given a strike because Pete Alonso took too long to get back to first base. The Mets blew a 3-0 lead but rallied as Brandon Nimmo hit a go-ahead two-run double. In the absence of Edwin Diaz, David Robertson got the save. The biggest Mets news of the day, however, came before the game when Justin Verlander went on the IL — joining Diaz and Jose Quintana. Mets fans will enjoy the win and then start sweating Verlander’s injury on Friday. — David Schoenfield


Recap | Box score | Highlights

We get our fourth shutout of the day as the Twins shut down the Royals on two hits, tying their team record for fewest hits allowed on Opening Day. New starter Pablo Lopez drew the start and tossed 5.1 innings with eight strikeouts, but the key takeaway is the Twins have a chance to have a really good bullpen. Caleb Thielbar, Jorge Lopez, Griffin Jax and Jhoan Duran combined for the final 3⅔ hitless innings with Duran and his 100 mph fastball finishing it off, so Duran does get ninth-inning duties over Lopez (who was an All-Star in that role for the Orioles last season). Also: Byron Buxton legs out a triple. Stay healthy, BB. — David Schoenfield


Recap | Box score | Highlights

One sequence from Shane McClanahan, facing Jonathan Schoop in the fifth inning: Changeup on the outside corner, swing and a miss; curveball low and in, taken for a ball, looked like a strike; another changeup that starts on the outside and darts left at the last moment like a Wiffleball, swing a miss; 97 mph four-seamer at the top of the zone, swing and a miss. Good night and good luck. Look, the Tigers aren’t exactly the ’98 Yankees, but McClanahan is one nasty lefty. He looked like the pitcher who dominated the first half last season and started the All-Star Game, throwing six scoreless innings and registering 16 swings and misses. He’s an ace. — David Schoenfield


Recap | Box score | Highlights

Boston threw gasoline on the overreaction fears of fans with their performance on Thursday. Opening Day starter Corey Kluber looked like a mess, struggling to throw strikes and working deep into counts, going 3⅓ innings while walking four and allowing five runs on six hits. The Red Sox bullpen struggled to throw strikes too, as Zack Kelly walked two batters followed with Ryan Brasier allowing three runs on two walks in an inning.

While the Red Sox offense struggled in the first half of the game, they slowly chipped away at Baltimore’s lead. After scoring a run to bring Boston within two, Masataka Yoshida came to the plate as the go-ahead run. Yoshida promptly grounded into what looked like a sure double play to end the game, but Orioles shortstop Jorge Mateo made a throwing error, bouncing a ball to first baseman Ryan Mountcastle that allowed Boston to come within one run. Baltimore held on, though, with Felix Bautista striking out Adam Duvall to end the game.

Boston ultimately could not keep up with the Orioles offensive output, which was led by star catcher Adley Rutschman, who had five hits and four RBIs with a homer, looking every bit the part of the player he became upon his callup last season.

Fans left Fenway Park by the top of the sixth inning, leaving large splotches of seats empty, an unusual Opening Day sight at Fenway Park since John Henry brought the team ahead of the 2002 season. — Joon Lee


Recap | Box score | Highlights

It was a brisk game at Wrigley Field in more than one sense of the word. It was a chilly 42 degrees at first pitch, and for fans worried about lingering in the cold, their first pitch-clock game zipped by in 2 hours, 21 minutes. Warning to scorecard keepers: Stay alert and forget bathroom breaks. There’s no time. The Cubs took advantage of a rare erratic outing from Corbin Burnes, who walked three and struck just three. Highlighting the Cubs piecemeal offense was a three-hit game for Dansby Swanson in his Cubs debut, backing a sharp Marcus Stroman. Stroman would certainly prefer this day be remembered for his six shutout innings. Alas, he will go down in the history books as the first pitcher to be issued a pitch clock violation in a regular season game. It was a familiar day at Wrigley Field even as the game on the field felt, well, not exactly new. Let’s say it felt tuned up. — Bradford Doolittle


Recap | Box score | Highlights

On the second pitch he saw as Yankees captain, Aaron Judge homered into Monument Park, 422 feet away. Rookie Anthony Volpe manned shortstop — at 21 the youngest Yankee to start on Opening Day since Derek Jeter — and, while he didn’t get a hit, he kissed the “NY” on his jersey during the Bleacher Creatures roll call, then walked in his first plate appearance and stole his first base. Gerrit Cole set a Yankees Opening Day record with 11 strikeouts. The Bombers’ bullpen threw three scoreless innings to preserve a shutout against the San Francisco Giants. It was chilly day in the Bronx, but pretty much a perfect afternoon for the home team. And the whole thing took a grand total of 2 hours and 33 minutes. — Matt Marrone


Recap | Box score | Highlights

No surprise here. A team that won 101 games last season beat a team that started a pitcher who led the majors in losses each of the past two seasons. The Braves knocked out Patrick Corbin in the top of the fourth inning after hitting him around for seven hits, three walks and four runs. It wasn’t all happy news for the Braves, however, as Max Fried left the game in the fourth inning with left hamstring discomfort. The Braves are already starting the season with rookies Jared Shuster and Dylan Dodd in the rotation, so their starting pitching depth will be tested early on here if Fried misses any time. Bryce Elder probably gets the first call if Fried has to go on the IL, with Ian Anderson another option. — David Schoenfield


What to watch and lineups for remaining Opening Day games

The pitching matchup: Shohei Ohtani vs. Kyle Muller

The big storyline: As it was, as it is, as it shall be: Shohei Ohtani. He’s not only the One Big Opening Day storyline, he’s bound to be one big season-long storyline. This could be the beginning of the end to Ohtani’s career as an Angel, and it starts on the mound — and in the batter’s box — in the barren expanse of the Oakland Coliseum, nearly five years to the day after he made his first big league start on the same exact spot.

One obscure thing to impress your friends: Center fielder Cristian Pache, considered the best prospect in the trade that sent Matt Olson to the Braves, couldn’t crack Oakland’s Opening Day roster despite being out of options. He was traded Wednesday for Billy Sullivan, a Phillies reliever who had a 4.59 ERA in Double-A. “It was really hard to run out of time with a player that you feel is young and still has a huge future in this game,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay said. The A’s, a franchise eternally waiting for something — a new home, a contending team, the next trade of a known quantity for a group of unknowns — finally found something that wasn’t worth the wait. — Tim Keown

Angels lineup:

1. Taylor Ward (R) LF
2. Mike Trout (R) CF
3. Shohei Ohtani (L) P
4. Anthony Rendon (R) 3B
5. Hunter Renfroe (R) RF
6. Luis Rengifo (S) 2B
7. Brandon Drury (R) 1B
8. Gio Urshela (R) SS
9. Logan O’Hoppe (R) C

A’s lineup:

1. Tony Kemp (L) 2B
2. Conner Capel (L) DH
3. Aledmys Diaz (R) SS
4. Seth Brown (L) LF
5. Jesus Aguilar (R) 1B
6. Ramon Laureano (R) RF
7. Jace Peterson (L) 3B
8. Shea Langeliers (R) C
9. Esteury Ruiz (R) CF


The pitching matchup: Zac Gallen vs. Julio Urias

The big storyline: Teams doled out free agent dollars in record fashion this offseason, but the Dodgers, among the most aggressive spenders these past few years, opted to mostly stand pat in order to create a path for their homegrown players. We’ve already seen that backfire in one respect, with Gavin Lux, primed to be the everyday shortstop, suffering a season-ending knee injury in spring training. Do they have enough to contend the way they have over the past decade? And can the D-backs — an underrated team that plays really good defense, runs the bases well, received solid contributions from key members of its rotation last season and has several young players ready to make an impact — give them a run?

One obscure thing to impress your friends: Keep your eyes on Miguel Vargas, the 23-year-old who will get his first opportunity to play every day in the major leagues. His hitting has never really been in question — the concern has been his defense. But the Dodgers believe he’ll be a lot better defensively at second base than many outsiders expect, pointing to the work he put in during the offseason. They see him as a potential breakout star, somebody who will compete for the Rookie of the Year award. Just as important: He plays with high energy, runs the bases aggressively and should be lots of fun to watch. — Gonzalez

Diamondbacks lineup:

1. Kyle Lewis (R) DH
2. Ketel Marte (S) 2B
3. Lourdes Gurriel Jr. (R) LF
4. Christian Walker (R) 1B
5. Evan Longoria (R) 3B
6. Nick Ahmed (R) SS
7. Corbin Carroll (L) CF
8. Gabriel Moreno (R) C
9. Jake McCarthy (L) RF

Dodgers lineup:

1. Mookie Betts (R) RF
2. Freddie Freeman (L) 1B
3. Will Smith (R) C
4. Max Muncy (L) 3B
5. J.D. Martinez (R) DH
6. David Peralta (L) LF
7. Miguel Vargas (R) 2B
8. James Outman (L) CF
9. Miguel Rojas (R) SS


The pitching matchup: Shane Bieber vs. Luis Castillo

The big storyline: One of just two Opening Day games where both teams made the playoffs last year (Blue Jays-Cardinals is the other), this one showcases a terrific pitching matchup between Bieber and Castillo. That’s fun, but all eyes will be on Julio Rodriguez, who enters the season as one of the must-watch players in the game after his stellar Rookie of the Year campaign. He ranked seventh on ESPN.com’s list of the top 100 players in the game, an aggressive ranking, but symbolic of what the 22-year-old might achieve after hitting .284 with 28 home runs and 25 steals — with the charisma to match.

One obscure thing to impress your friends: The Mariners made the playoffs last year for the first time since 2001, but going back to 2007, they have the best Opening Day record in the majors at 13-3 (the Mets and Dodgers are 12-4). Much of that is thanks to Felix Hernandez, who started 11 Opening Day games and posted a 1.53 ERA. — Schoenfield

Guardians lineup:

1. Steven Kwan (L) LF
2. Amed Rosario (R) SS
3. Jose Ramirez (S) 3B
4. Josh Bell (S) DH
5. Josh Naylor (L) 1B
6. Andres Gimenez (L) 2B
7. Will Brennan (L) RF
8. Mike Zunino (R) C
9. Myles Straw (R) CF

Mariners lineup:

1. Julio Rodriguez (R) CF
2. Kolten Wong (L) 2B
3. Ty France (R) 1B
4. Teoscar Hernandez (R) RF
5. Cal Raleigh (S) C
6. Eugenio Suarez (R) 3B
7. Jarred Kelenic (L) LF
8. Tommy La Stella (L) DH
9. J.P. Crawford (L) SS

Continue Reading

Sports

Book excerpt: Does the future of college football need a commissioner?

Published

on

By

Book excerpt: Does the future of college football need a commissioner?

Editor’s note: On Sept. 2, ESPN writer Bill Connelly’s book “Forward Progress: The Definitive Guide to the Future of College Football” will be released. This edited excerpt looks at whether the sport needs central leadership like professional leagues.

In 1920, professional baseball was in crisis. The Black Sox scandal, in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox — star outfielder “Shoeless Joe” Jackson; co-aces Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams; four other starters (first baseman Chick Gandil, shortstop Swede Risberg, third baseman Buck Weaver, and outfielder Happy Felsch); and a key backup infielder (Fred McMullin) — were indicted and accused of throwing the 1919 World Series, had, along with allegations of other fixed games, shaken the sport to its core. Baseball had been governed by a National Commission consisting of three parties with extreme self-interest: National League president John Heydler, American League president Ban Johnson, and Garry Herrmann, president of the Cincinnati Reds team that had beaten the White Sox in the World Series. Its leadership proved lacking in this moment, and its questionable independence severely damaged perceptions. Herrmann resigned from the commission in 1920, and the commissioners couldn’t agree on a new third member.

In early October 1920, days before the start of that season’s World Series between the Brooklyn Robins and Cleveland Indians, leaders of the Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, New York Giants, and Pittsburgh Pirates proposed a tribunal of, in the words of the New York Times, “three of America’s biggest men, with absolute power over both major and minor leagues.” A letter sent to every major and minor baseball club said, “If baseball is to continue to exist as our national game (and it will) it must be with the recognition on the part of club owners and players that the game itself belongs to the American people, and not to either owners or players.”

The letter stated that “the present deplorable condition in baseball has been brought about by the lack of complete supervisory control of professional baseball,” that “the only cure for such condition is by having at the head of baseball men in no wise connected with baseball who are so prominent and representative among the American people that not a breath of suspicion could be ever reflected.” It concluded, “The practical operation of this agreement would be the selection of three men of such unquestionable reputation and standing in fields other than baseball that the mere knowledge of their control of baseball, in itself, would insure that the public interests would first be served, and that, therefore, as a natural sequence, all existing evils would disappear.” This tribunal would have the power to punish players, strip owners of their franchises, “establish a proper relationship between minor leagues and major leagues,” you name it.

This proposal, first discussed by Cubs shareholder A.D. Lasker, became known as the Lasker Plan. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a number of clubs — particularly, those in the American League still loyal to the strong-willed Johnson — initially balked at the idea, to the point where the National League considered beginning an entirely new league with a few insurrectionist AL clubs, including the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. But all necessary parties eventually came to the table, and figures as grand as former president William Howard Taft, General John J. Pershing and former treasury secretary William G. McAdoo were under discussion for the tribunal.

The search pretty quickly began to revolve around a single figure: Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. A known baseball fan and an occasional showman on the bench, the 54-year-old Landis was known primarily for his antitrust judgment against Standard Oil, issuing the corporation a $29.2 million fine in 1907, equivalent to almost $1 billion today. (The U.S. Court of Appeals would eventually strike down the verdict.) He was regarded as tough but thoughtful, a grand figure but a supporter of the everyman. He would go on to serve as the sport’s first commissioner, a one-man tribunal, until his death in 1944.

Landis proved ruthless and uncompromising when he felt he needed to be. Despite all of the indicted “Black Sox” being acquitted in a criminal trial, Landis still banned them from baseball for life, stating, “Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player that throws a ball game; no player that undertakes or promises to throw a ball game; no player that sits in a conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing ball games are planned and discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball.” For better or worse, he stuck to that decision through the years despite both legal and emotional appeals.

Landis wasn’t a ruthless traditionalist, however. The All-Star Game was created under his watch in the early 1930s and proved to be a big hit, and while he didn’t seem to approve of the development of farm systems, in which minor league clubs developed affiliations with major league clubs to develop and promote their talent through the ranks, he also didn’t stop it, choosing only to step in on a case-by-case basis. He was far from infallible — you can certainly find inconsistency in some of his decisions, and Lord knows baseball didn’t exactly speed toward integration under his watch. (Jackie Robinson’s major league debut came two and a half years after Landis’ death. He might not have stopped that from happening had he still been in charge, but he certainly wasn’t pushing owners to become more progressive in this regard.) But he provided as steady a hand as possible, and both the trust in and popularity of baseball grew under his watch.

Absolute power? A dictatorial hand over the sport you’ve loved since childhood? Man, sign me up. That sounds amazing. Sure, I’ve never issued a billion-dollar fine to anyone, and my strongest bona fides regarding my general incorruptibility probably stem from the time I went on “The Paul Finebaum Show” and proclaimed that Cincinnati should have ranked higher than the SEC’s Texas A&M in the 2020 College Football Playoff rankings. But that qualifies as speaking truth to power, right?

In 2017, while at SB Nation, I indeed decided to run for college football commissioner. Granted, there was no such election and no such position, but it felt like a good use of time all the same. “College football needs someone to make long-term decisions,” I wrote. “College football needs someone who can reflect the interest of programs at every level: Alabama, Alabama-Birmingham, North Alabama, and all.”

There was an explosion of commish talk in 2016, thanks to a number of issues like College Football Playoff selections, conference schedules (mainly that some conferences play eight conference games and others play nine), and high school satellite camps, an issue that was all the rage for a few months and then vanished from consciousness altogether, to the point where I don’t even feel the need to define it here. “There needs to be somebody that looks out for what’s best for the game,” Alabama‘s Nick Saban said at the time, “not what’s best for the Big Ten or what’s best for the SEC or what’s best for Jim Harbaugh, but what’s best for the game of college football — the integrity of the game, the coaches, the players, and the people that play it. That’s bigger than all of this.” (Harbaugh was at the center of the satellite camp issue that I’m still not going to explain further.) But even with Saban’s high-visibility comments, nothing came of it. Nothing ever comes of it.

Through the decades the only thing everyone has seemingly agreed on in this sport is the need for a commissioner figure.

“Charley Trippi, one of the all-time greats in college and professional football … said college football today needs a national commissioner to direct the game on a national basis. Trippi … charged that the National Collegiate Athletic Association is ‘controlled by the Big Ten.’ He said he felt no conference in the nation should have any kind of monopoly in the game.” — Macon News, 1958

“You don’t think we need a commissioner and a set of rules to make things even? We’re the only sport in America that doesn’t have the same set of rules for everybody that plays … Everybody goes to their own neighborhood and makes their own little rules.” — Florida State head coach Jimbo Fisher, 2016

“I think there’s a perception with the public that perhaps college football doesn’t have its act together because there are so many different entities pulling in different directions.” — former Baylor head coach Grant Teaff, 1994

“… If you’re biased by a specific conference or if you’re impacted by making all your decisions based on revenue and earnings, then we’re never going to get to a good place.” — Penn State head coach James Franklin, 2024

“What this business needs is a commissioner who has the best interest of the game in mind. There needs to be somebody who creates a structure in which people just don’t cannibalize each other. … The NCAA president doesn’t have any legal authority to do much, in his defense, because they’ve given away that authority over the course of the last 60 years.” — West Virginia athletic director Oliver Luck, 2011

“I think we need to have a … commissioner. I think football should be separate from the other sports. Just because our school is leaving to go to the Big Ten in football … our softball team should be playing Arizona in softball. Our basketball team should be playing Arizona in basketball. … And they’ll say, well, how do you do that? Well, Notre Dame’s independent in football, and they’re in a conference in everything else. I think we should all be independent in football. You can have a 64-team conference that’s in the Power 5, and you can have a 64-team conference that’s in the Group of 5, and we separate, and we play each other. You can have the West Coast teams, and every year we play seven games against the West Coast teams and then we play the East — we play Syracuse, Boston College, Pitt, West Virginia, Virginia — and then the next year you play against the South while you still play your seven teams. You play a seven-game schedule, you play four against another conference opponent, division opponent, and you can always play against one Mountain West team every year so we can still keep those rivalries going. … But I think if you went together collectively, as a group, and said there’s 132 teams and we all share the same TV contract, so that the Mountain West doesn’t have one and the Sun Belt doesn’t have another and the SEC another, that we all go together, that’s a lot of games, and there’s a lot of people in the TV world that would go through it. … But I think if we still do the same and take all that money … that money now needs to be shared with the student-athletes, and there needs to be revenue sharing, and the players should get paid, and you get rid of [NIL], and the schools should be paying the players because the players are what the product is. And the fact that they don’t get paid is really the biggest travesty. Not that I’ve thought about it.” — UCLA head coach Chip Kelly, 2023

Kelly’s spiel, spoken at a pace faster than his fastest old Oregon offense at a press conference before UCLA’s LA Bowl appearance, made waves. In a way, he was basically calling for a College Football Association of sorts, an all-of-FBS league that could negotiate a huge television contract to be divvied out in a fair manner. In a perfect world, maybe that’s what would exist. But as with any other “In a perfect world …” construct, the real world prevailed instead.

The waves continued after Kelly’s comments. In January 2024, Nick Saban retired in part because he was frustrated with all the different demands of the NIL era. In February, Saban told ESPN’s Chris Low, “If my voice can bring about some meaningful change, I want to help any way I can, because I love the players, and I love college football. What we have now is not college football — not college football as we know it. You hear somebody use the word ‘student-athlete.’ That doesn’t exist.” A company man until the end, Saban suggested that either SEC commissioner Greg Sankey or Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne might make a good commissioner for the sport. (“They would be more qualified than I am. They’re in it every day and know all the issues.”) In December 2024, Penn State head coach James Franklin expressed frustration with the state of the college football calendar and the fact that his backup quarterback, Beau Pribula, felt he needed to hop into the transfer portal before the Nittany Lions’ College Football Playoff journey began to make sure he had a solid home for the winter semester. His solution? “Let’s get a commissioner of college football that is waking up every single morning and going to bed every single night making decisions that’s in the best interest of college football. I think Nick Saban would be the obvious choice if we made that decision.”

Did anything come of that? Of course not. But that just means I’m still a candidate, right?

Back in 2017, my campaign platform consisted of nine pillars intended to maximize both the athlete’s experience and the fan’s enjoyment of the sport:

  1. A student-athlete bill of rights to ensure proper health care options, guaranteed undergraduate scholarships, and freer transfer rules.

  2. A modernized definition of amateurism that allowed players to profit off of their name, image, and likeness.

  3. The return of the EA Sports video game. (Hey, you have to throw some red meat to the base, right?)

  4. A fairer recruiting landscape that allowed players easier releases from their letters of intent if a coach left and explored changes to signing periods and regulations surrounding official visits and other recruiting rules.

  5. A system of promotion and relegation that incorporates actual merit into the sport’s power structure. (This one’s always on my mind.)

  6. An expanded playoff.

  7. Ditching unequal conference divisions in favor of a system of permanent rivalries and a larger rotation of opponents.

  8. Increasing creativity and flexibility in nonconference scheduling. (One idea: a “BracketBuster Saturday” in November in which everyone in FBS gets paired off based on in-season results.)

  9. Changes in clock rules that stemmed the recent increases in average game times, which had reached nearly three and a half hours per game.

It’s been about eight years since I put that list together, and damned if I haven’t gotten a lot of what I wanted: We’ve seen either partial or complete success for items No. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 9. That’s a hell of a success rate, especially considering how hard it is to actually institute change in this sport at times. But it feels like a lot of the forces I was responding to at the time — mainly, massive disorganization within the sport and an ever-increasing imbalance between haves and have-nots — have only gotten worse since 2017. Why? BECAUSE WE STILL HAVE NO COMMISSIONER! Any change that could have produced progressive outcomes only made the imbalance worse because when no one’s in charge, that really means that the most powerful and self-interested figures in the sport are in charge. And their only goal is to reinforce the power structure.

“I can’t tell you how many times I heard [former Big Ten commissioner] Jim Delany say two things,” former Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson said. “One: ‘You didn’t bring the Rose Bowl, or the Orange Bowl, or the Sugar Bowl, or the Fiesta Bowl, so [you get] whatever we decide you are worthy of.’ He also used to say, ‘The world cares more about 6-6 Michigan than 12-0 Utah, and until you realize and understand that and accept that …’ and I got it. But we always seemed to find a way to work together for the good of the cause, the good of the overall enterprise. Great, you started the Rose Bowl, but was it all bad that TCU beat Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl [in 2011]? That Utah beat Alabama in the Sugar Bowl [in 2009]? Did the enterprise come crumbling down? No. We’re trying to look at the good of the cause and what’s best for the second most popular sport out there, and what I always had in the back of my mind trying to protect was how we could make sure that people give a damn about college football.”

For somewhere between 10 and 30 years, Delany was the sport’s most powerful figure. He kick-started multiple runs of conference realignment, and the Big Ten’s creation of the Big Ten Network turned out to be a game-changer. But college football’s most powerful figure was also doing everything he could to keep other conferences’ ambitions in check, to almost limit the sport’s potential growth in other areas of the country.

“When people talk about wanting a commissioner, what they’re really asking for is someone whose job it is to look out for the betterment of the sport as a whole,” said NBC Sports’ Nicole Auerbach. “I know it sounds really pollyannaish and idealistic, but you don’t have someone whose job it is to look out for the greater good. So you have competing interests. You have an NCAA president who has certain motivations and goals — and major college football is not even under their purview. And then you have all these different commissioners, and it makes a lot of sense that we ended up in a position where conferences started hiring outside of college sports. They hired businesspeople, they hired media executives, and then those people believe that their goal is to advance the interest only of their conference because that’s how those jobs work.”

“Lately, it seems like we’ve morphed into, ‘I’ve gotta feed the beast,'” said Thompson. “‘I’ve got 18 schools, 16 schools …’ In 2023, there were five autonomous conferences with an average membership of 13 schools each. Now we’ve got four autonomous conferences with an average membership of 17. We’ve gone to that consolidation, and a commissioner is paid to protect his 14, 16, 18 school interests. But, man, it just doesn’t seem like we care as much about how we just keep this thing going, how we keep 80,000 people, 50,000 people, hell, even 30,000 people coming to games.”

Now, professional sports have proven rather definitively that you can be disorganized and inequality-friendly with a commissioner atop the organizational chart. Just look at the last 35 years for most of Europe’s biggest soccer leagues or large swaths of Major League Baseball’s history — baseball had all the inequality a fan of capitalism could possibly crave, especially in the 1990s. And, hey, having an occasional tyrant like David Stern in charge didn’t stop the NBA from basically being ruled by three teams for decades — from 1980 to 2002, the Los Angeles Lakers, Boston Celtics, and Chicago Bulls won 17 of 23 titles. Even in the NFL, all the parity measures in the world couldn’t stop the teams that employed either Tom Brady (New England, then Tampa Bay) or Patrick Mahomes (Kansas City) from winning 10 of 24 Super Bowls from 2001 to 2024.

It’s also not hard to see how a dictatorial figure like the Landis-style commissioner I dream of becoming could get corrupted. (I wouldn’t, of course — you can trust me — but others might.)

You can obviously manage things quite poorly with a commissioner in charge. But the only thing worse might be not having one. Professional organizations have commissioners, and at its highest level college football is now a professional organization of sorts. But a quote from Notre Dame president Father John J. Cavanaugh from the late 1940s still rings impressively true: “The type of reformers I refer to are those who play with the question for public consumption, who seem to say that an indefinable something has to be done in a way nobody knows how, at a time nobody knows when, in places nobody knows where, to accomplish nobody knows what. I wonder if there are not grounds to suspect that the reformers … protest too much, that their zeal may be an excuse for their own negligence in reforming themselves.”


Of course, there’s no place for a commissioner in college football’s structure. There’s no National College Football Office for him or her to occupy. England has spent the last few years working toward an “independent football regulator” (IFR) to oversee soccer as a whole in the country — in a lot of the same ways we’re talking about here — and it might create an intriguing model to follow. Or it might prove to totally lack independence from either partisan government or financial influence. We’ll see.

The creation of the College Football Playoff as an entity might have produced an opportunity for a leadership structure of sorts — imagine a situation in which schools must opt in to CFP membership (which features a set of rules and protocols you must follow) to compete for the CFP title — but it doesn’t appear we’re anywhere close to that at the moment. Among other things, expanding the CFP’s governance potential would again require a vote from Sankey and Petitti to strip themselves of power. “It could come through the CFP,” Auerbach said. “They already have a governance structure. In theory, they could build that out and add all of the bureaucratic pieces they would need to truly govern the sport. But you would need the people who are powerful now to be willing to give up some of that power for the collective good of the sport — you would need to have a willingness from the SEC and Big Ten commissioners, or those schools in their leagues, to give up power to have a collective, centralized, powerful figure. … It’s just hard to imagine that that would happen.”

“I think any governance system probably has to shift power away from the presidents,” said Extra Points’ Matt Brown, “… That could be a centralized commissioner. That could be a different board.” Right now, however, it’s nothing. And without anyone atop the pyramid, any change that could be good for the sport just exacerbates the haves-versus-have-nots divide that already exists.

Writing about the possibility of interleague play in Major League Baseball in the early 1970s, Roger Angell wrote, “The plan is startling and perhaps imperfect, but it is surely worth hopeful scrutiny at the top levels of baseball. I am convinced, however, that traditionalists need have no fear that it will be adopted. Any amalgamation would require all the owners to subdue their differences, to delegate real authority, to accept change, and to admit that they share an equal responsibility for everything that happens to their game. And that, to judge by their past record and by their performance in the strike, is exactly what they will never do.” He was right and wrong: it did come into existence, but it took 25 years to do so. We’ve been talking about a college football commissioner for far longer than that, and there doesn’t yet appear to be much of an appetite for subduing differences or delegating real authority. And it’s hard to imagine that changing without some sort of Black Sox-level emergency.

Then again, we can only envision what we know to envision. “Our imagination is bound by our experiences,” The Athletic’s Ralph Russo said. “And that’s making it hard to see where all this could possibly go. I feel like there’s a conclusion here that nothing in our collective experience could have brought us to. There’s just something, some other event, that is going to influence college football, probably an outside event. I say that because the history of college football is riddled with outside events totally influencing the power structure. It’s demographic movement — where the population goes within the United States. It’s wars. It’s segregation and desegregation. All of these things. So is the next thing something that completely disrupts the university system? Is it something that disrupts the U.S. government?”

At best, a commissioner figure could for the first time give the sport a vision to follow and a steadying hand for guidance. At worst, he or she would reinforce the divides and inequality that have already been established, furrowing his or her brow and talking about how great and deep college football is and how hard it is to satisfy everyone before simply giving the SEC and Big Ten whatever they want.

Regardless, I’m keeping my hat in the ring. CONNELLY 2025 (or 2036, or 2048, whatever it ends up being).

Continue Reading

Sports

Sarkisian’s advice for Manning: ‘Just go be you’

Published

on

By

Sarkisian's advice for Manning: 'Just go be you'

As the No. 1 Longhorns head to Columbus to face No. 3 Ohio State in what coach Steve Sarkisian called an “epic matchup,” all eyes are on Texas’ new starting quarterback, Arch Manning.

Manning, the preseason Heisman Trophy favorite according to ESPN BET, has made just two starts in two years — against UL Monroe and Mississippi State last season — and this will be his first start on the road or against a ranked team.

With all the noise, Sarkisian said his message to Manning has been just to be himself.

“We’re not asking any superhuman efforts of you to do anything that is extraordinary,” Sarkisian said Monday about what he told Manning. “Just go be you. What you’ve done is good enough to get us to this point and to get him to this point in this juncture of his career. Now go play the way he’s capable of playing to the style that he’s comfortable doing it.”

Manning threw for 939 yards with nine touchdowns and two interceptions in spot duty last season, also rushing for 108 yards and four touchdowns. His best performance was off the bench against UTSA last year, when he replaced Quinn Ewers and threw for 223 yards and four touchdowns on 9-of-12 passing while adding a 67-yard touchdown run — the longest by a Texas quarterback since Vince Young in 2005.

Now that he’s got the job full time, he said he won’t take the opportunity for granted.

“This is what I’ve been waiting for,” Manning said Monday. “I spent two years not playing, so I might as well go have some fun.”

The game marks just the second time since the AP poll debuted in 1950 that two top-3 teams will meet in their season opener, according to ESPN Research. The last time was 2017, when No. 1 Alabama beat No. 3 Florida State 24-7 and went on to win the national championship.

It’s also a rematch of last season’s College Football Playoff semifinal, when the Buckeyes beat the Longhorns 28-14 in the Cotton Bowl.

Sarkisian said these are two different teams from the end of last season.

“If you look at last year’s game, 26 players got drafted off of the two teams,” Sarkisian said. “If you include free agents, 32 players that were playing in that game a year ago are now in the NFL.”

The Longhorns return nine starters and 30 players from last year, but they still are the preseason No. 1. Sarkisian said both teams’ rankings are a testament to their quality, and he touted Ryan Day’s 70-10 head-coaching record.

“They’re not a gimmick team at all,” Sarkisian said of the Buckeyes. “I don’t mean to offend anybody, but the things that they do are sound and so you have to beat them.”

But the Buckeyes have two new coordinators and, like Texas, are breaking in a new starting quarterback, sophomore Julian Sayin in their case.

“He’s a natural passer; he’s got a quick release,” Sarkisian said of Sayin. “He’s a better athlete than you think, and he can run. So we definitely need to be alert to that. … This is going to be one of those where, when you go into the ring with somebody, what’s the plan? As the rounds go on, you’ve got to have to be able to adjust.”

The Longhorns have won their past 11 true road games, which Sarkisian said is a result of their process, focus and game-day routine. But neither he nor Manning has ever been to Ohio Stadium. Manning said he knows he’s got a talented team around him and doesn’t feel any pressure going into such a hostile environment.

“I always have to remind myself, it’s not all about me; it’s the whole team,” Manning said. “It’s going to be a fun one.”

Manning said he doesn’t feel a target on his back as he steps into the role of full-time starter.

“I think that’s all of us at Texas, and I think we kind of try to shift the narrative,” Manning said. “We’re going for everyone else. Target’s not on our back, but we got the red dot on everyone else.”

Continue Reading

Sports

Wolverines go with freshman Underwood as QB1

Published

on

By

Wolverines go with freshman Underwood as QB1

True freshman Bryce Underwood has been named Michigan‘s starting quarterback, coach Sherrone Moore said Monday.

“He’s earned the opportunity,” Moore said. “It was not given to him.”

Other Michigan quarterbacks were informed Sunday that Underwood will start, a source told ESPN’s Pete Thamel.

Moore said sophomore Jadyn Davis, who appeared in one game last season, had a strong camp and will serve as the backup to Underwood as the No. 14 Wolverines open the season Saturday against New Mexico before traveling to Oklahoma on Sept. 6 to face the No. 18 Sooners.

Underwood, from nearby Belleville, Michigan, was ESPN’s No. 1 overall recruit in this year’s signing class, flipping his commitment from LSU last November.

He beat out Fresno State transfer Mikey Keene and Davis for the starting job. Davis Warren is still recovering from a torn ACL in his right knee suffered in last season’s bowl win.

The 6-foot-4, 228-pound Underwood won two state championships with Belleville and won 38 straight games in high school.

“Just did the things the right way and used his skill and never tried to do too much,” Moore said. “For a young guy, he was very mature beyond his years, and he’s only 18 years old. He’s going to make mistakes, but that’s what we’re here for, coaches and players. We’re all going to support him.”

Continue Reading

Trending