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DESCRIBING LIFE IN the minor leagues can sound like a twisted Mad Lib. The names and locations and adjectives may change, but for generations, the details of the climb to Major League Baseball have remained mortifying. The poverty. The working conditions. The food. The third-class nature of the entire operation. Now, after decades of mistreatment, of being told they were mere apprentices, the people who had given their young lives to the game were in a position to tell those running it who they were and why they mattered.

In January, at the MLB Players Association’s offices high atop the New York City skyline, Matthew Peguero told MLB officials his version of the story. He was from the Dominican Republic and signed with the Tampa Bay Rays. He came to the United States as a teenager not knowing English. He sent the pittance he received — a couple hundred dollars a week during the season without any pay in the offseason or spring training — home to support his family. He struggled to survive.

It was the same story relayed by Andres Angulo, who came from Colombia at 16 years old and spent four years in rookie ball. He saw countless friends who had forgone an education to chase a life in baseball released at 18 with no money, no skills, no job prospects — a dream turned nightmare. These stories and more were shared during in-person bargaining sessions on a landmark first collective-bargaining agreement for minor league players, who described their struggle to understand how an $11 billion-a-year industry could so disregard the mental and physical well-being of its next generation of players.

“If you didn’t sign for $50,000 or more, life in the minor leagues was unsustainable,” said Trevor Hildenberger, a relief pitcher who spent four years in the major leagues and, as he tries to claw his way back, took a leadership role in the unionization of minor league players. “It was just a ticking clock. Either you couldn’t afford to pursue this anymore or you made it to the big leagues.”

This was no narrative. The reality was too real for MLB to ignore anymore. Players were coming forward, social media had delivered their stories to the masses, and though every collective bargaining agreement is little more than an exercise in wealth distribution, MLB couldn’t discount what players were saying: Baseball’s development system was a moral abomination, and this was the opportunity to fix it

For five months, the league and the union, formed under the umbrella of the MLB Players Association, worked toward a deal. After more than three dozen bargaining sessions, they landed on an agreement that more than doubled pay for all players. The union fought for more guaranteed rights, from improved housing and transportation to enhanced medical privileges and health benefits. The league, after settling a class-action minimum-wage and overtime claim from players for $185 million in August, received the ability to manage roster sizes and protection from future wage suits, with any cases to go instead through the arbitration process. Owners approved the deal unanimously Monday; days earlier, 99% of the thousands of players voting had backed it.

In conversations with ESPN, more than a dozen people, from players to employees of the league and union, outlined how a once-unthinkable deal came together with shocking rapidity. Players, tired of the status quo, sought to forge a new one. The league, reeling from bad publicity, committed upward of $100 million yearly to fix its mistakes. By no means is the deal, which will last five years, perfect. But because of it, those involved said, no longer is minor league life a black mark for baseball.

“It was just so clear,” Hildenberger said, “what was right and what was wrong.”


DURING MLB’s 99-DAY lockout of major league players after the 2021 season, Kumar Nambiar spent his days in Jupiter, Florida, training at Cressey Sports Performance. Nambiar marveled at the players surrounding him there. He had pitched at Yale for four years, gone to the Oakland A’s in the 34th round of the 2019 draft and climbed to High-A on the strength of a changeup that dove from his left hand. And here he was, side-by-side with big leaguers trying to stay sharp as the contentious negotiations unfolded.

One day, Nambiar noticed a familiar face: Max Scherzer, the three-time Cy Young Award winner and future Hall of Famer who over the winter had signed for a record $43.3 million a year with the New York Mets. Scherzer also was one of eight executive-board members of the MLBPA, and every day, he would update players at Cressey of the latest goings-on in negotiations with a message on a whiteboard. Nambiar introduced himself to Scherzer and thanked him for his work trying to secure a new deal. Scherzer took the opportunity to educate Nambiar on the process.

“Hearing him talk about this and how important it was inspired me,” Nambiar said. “Before that, I didn’t really understand what the players’ association did. I didn’t know the negotiations, the past bargaining.”

Nambiar wasn’t alone. Despite the 100-plus years of the minor leagues’ existence, the MLBPA had shown no interest in forming a minor league unit. The prospect of organizing more than 5,000 minor league players was too daunting even for a union as renowned as the MLBPA.

Social media changed that, as did the work of a group called Advocates for Minor Leaguers, led by a former minor league pitcher-turned-lawyer Harry Marino. The stories of a half-dozen players cramming into a two-bedroom apartment resonated with the public. Tyler Cyr, a reliever at Triple-A for the San Francisco Giants, posted on Twitter his final pay stub of the 2019 season. The amount received was $165 — and $8,216.58 for the whole year.

A real turning point came in 2020, when, before caving to public pressure, teams were not paying minor league players during the pandemic shutdown.

“The importance of that can’t be understated,” Hildenberger said. “A lot of guys were in need of help, and owners didn’t want to pay anyone their salaries. That opened a lot of guys’ eyes.”

Inspired by their stories, Marino’s organization had begun the herculean task of organizing players. Advocates identified potential leaders and encouraged them to serve as conduits to the entire player population. After MLB took over control of the minor leagues before the 2020 season and reduced the number of affiliated teams from 162 to 120, players grew even more emboldened.

They pushed for organizations to provide housing, and MLB acceded before the 2022 season. That, players said, was a good first step, but dozens of other issues — none more than their salaries — needed remedying. The settlement in Senne v. MLB, the lawsuit that alleged players had been underpaid by hundreds of millions of dollars, inspired even more players.

Roused by Scherzer and the work of Marino and his cohort, Nambiar last year went and bought “Lords of the Realm,” the John Helyar book on the history of labor relations in baseball, which told the story of the player revolution that changed the landscape of professional sports. Throughout the season, he talked about the future of minor league labor with Jared McDonald, his teammate in the A’s. On a late-night bus ride in early September, McDonald, who had aligned with Advocates as it embarked on a union drive, retreated to the back to deliver news that stunned his teammates, Nambiar included.

“Guys, it’s happening,” McDonald said. “We’re unionizing.”

That month, the MLBPA absorbed Advocates and sent union-authorization cards to players, who overwhelmingly voted in favor of forming a minor league unit. Any fear that MLB would challenge the formation of the union wound up to be unfounded; within days, the league voluntarily recognized the minor league unit. And about a month later, on Oct. 27, the MLBPA made its opening presentation to MLB.

The goal from the beginning was clear: The players wanted a deal by Opening Day 2023. Because they had no intentions to strike, their leverage was minimal. And yet that didn’t worry them. For all the animus between MLB and the MLBPA, all the bad blood left over from the major league lockout, minor league players still believed that they were on the right side of history — and that with the right framing, MLB would see it, too.


CRAFTING THE STORIES they told the league would require a deft touch. It couldn’t be all horror — things such as the tale of the teammates who took their paltry per diems on an off-day, went to a local pet store, bought a rabbit, killed it, cooked it and ate it for dinner that night. Finding a balance between complaining about what they didn’t have and bargaining for what they wanted was exceedingly thin. So in late November, the union invited dozens of players to the Phoenix area for a strategizing session.

Players of all walks gathered. There were former big leaguers such as Hildenberger and Ivy League graduates such as Nambiar and representatives such as Angel Basabe, a Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder born in Venezuela and raised in Panama, helping speak for the half of minor leaguers from Latin America. They traded experiences, which served a dual purpose: to give the MLBPA a foundation upon which to ask for change, and to learn more about one another so they could achieve the solidarity necessary for a union to succeed.

“What’s important for me is important for all of us: Get something that is fair, that we deserve,” Basabe said. “I’m a Latin player, so I can be the example for a lot of situations that were not right.”

The two days in Phoenix emboldened the players and narrowed their priorities. Higher salaries were the clear No. 1 objective. Even after the league bumped salaries slightly in 2021, Triple-A players with no major league service maxed out at $17,500 per year, Double-A players at $13,800, A-ball players at $11,000 and rookie-league players at $4,800. The lack of offseason pay forced players into an impossible choice: spend the winter getting a job to make ends meet, or train so they could improve their game before the next spring. The players coalesced around their shared past, taking the emotions built up in Phoenix onto player-only Zoom calls and into the bargaining room.

“I felt so much more comfortable speaking to these guys who I knew understood what we were fighting for,” Hildenberger said. “That was a very powerful feeling. In college, you play with your best friends and you’re trying to get to Omaha. When you’re all pulling toward the same goal and achieving that, it’s the best feeling in the world. To do it on a wider scale with 60 guys in the room and 150 on Zoom, and representing more than 5,000 people who we knew deserved better, instilled me with a lot of hope.”

The union outlined dozens of asks to the league throughout December, as it delivered all of the initial proposals, and the league offered its first response in writing Jan. 12. Five days later, MLB delivered another proposal, this one addressing salaries for the first time. Bruce Meyer, the union’s lead negotiator, had warned players in Phoenix not to be alarmed by it — that the most important elements of the negotiation would come in the final two weeks of talks. In Meyer, the union had “someone who would stand up for us,” Nambiar said, even as MLB’s negotiating team — led by deputy commissioner Dan Halem and Colorado Rockies owner Dick Monfort — pushed back. Union executive director Tony Clark had spent considerable time in the meetings, too, with Marino playing a vital role and general counsel Matt Nussbaum helping map out strategy, while Patrick Houlihan, Peter Woodfork and Kasey Sanossian did the same for MLB.

A big breakthrough came in January, when the sides agreed that players would be salaried and compensation would be delivered for almost the entirety of the year. In addition to a bump in pay during the season, players would receive weekly checks during early- and late-offseason periods as well as spring training. The early success story heartened players and illustrated that the league was approaching the negotiations in good faith.

Throughout January, the sides hashed out other issues. Would players, the league wondered, consider dropping team-provided housing for higher salaries? No, players said. There was comfort in stability, and dealing with the vagaries of finding a short-term apartment rental diverged with the focus vital to a big league ascent. Would the league, players asked, consider termination pay for those released by teams? No, MLB said. That was a nonstarter.

Negotiations moved at a steady pace throughout January and February, with players going to New York City to participate — Hildenberger and Basabe flew in for sessions, and Nambiar, who lives in Westchester County, New York, attended regularly. On Feb. 16, the sides finalized the first of what would be nearly 30 tentative agreements on individual issues, with the signatures of Marino and Sannosian formalizing a two-page document. In it, teams agreed to provide players with “two full, nutritious meals of high quality” — one pregame, one postgame — every day during the season. The union and league would form a joint committee to address any nutrition complaints from players, whose per diem would rise from $25 to $30.

Collective bargaining agreements — particularly ones being drawn up from scratch — don’t happen overnight, and as the players left in late February for spring training, their participation would be limited to Zoom calls. March had arrived, and Opening Day was set for the 30th. The two-week window Meyer had talked about was fast approaching. The league said it was fine starting the season without a deal, but everyone involved understood: That outcome would be the latest disaster in a minor league history laden with them.


BY MID-MARCH, the sides were dug in with scant progress over the previous two weeks. Players wanted to push salaries past the point of comfort for MLB. The league wanted the unilateral ability to set the Domestic Reserve List, which governs the number of players a team can roster at its four minor league affiliates and Arizona or Florida complexes. The key issues for both parties were clear, and if past negotiations in the major leagues were any indication, they’d save them for the end.

Eventually, bit by bit, the makings of a deal came together. On March 14, they reached a tentative agreement on housing rules to be implemented at latest by 2024, giving Triple-A and Double-A players their own rooms and offering special dispensations for players with children, who are guaranteed at least two-bedroom apartments. Players at all levels would continue to receive free housing. A week later, after heated discussions over transportation to and from the stadium for players without cars, MLB agreed to provide rides for players in A-ball and rookie ball to and from all games.

One day later came an agreement on a grievance system that would cover discipline, a domestic violence policy and a joint drug-and-treatment program. The day after that, a pact on a no-strike, no-lockout provision. Then more: players receiving name, image and likeness privileges for the union to use in group licensing; the right to a second opinion on medical decisions, as well as free medical, dental and vision care; $2.5 million a year from the league to be distributed to players’ 401(k)s; and the reduction of the reserve — the amount of years a team owns a player’s rights in the minor leagues — from seven years to six for all future union members.

With each tentative agreement, the confidence in both sides grew. As loath as players were to give full control to MLB on the Domestic Reserve List, they found a compromise in its reduction from 180 players to 165. The agreement didn’t sit well with some players, who worry about the loss of more jobs after the contraction of 40-plus teams three years ago. The league countered with data that showed over the previous two years, teams on average had 166 players on their rosters — and in the end, the players decided that what they would get in return was worth the winnowing.

In its best and final offer March 29, the league agreed to bump Triple-A minimum salaries from $17,500 to $35,800, Double-A from $13,800 to $30,250, High-A from $11,000 to $27,300, Low-A from $11,000 to $26,200 and rookie league from $4,800 to $19,800. (Players in the Dominican Summer League, who are not part of the union, will not receive similar raises.) Further, the league agreed to supply back pay for spring training this year and will pay players for all but a six-week period between late November and Jan. 1. Offseason pay is a minimum of $250 a week and $375 extra a week for those who attend team-led winter training, such as instructional league, or rehabilitation at team complexes. Slight raises accompanied the last three years of the offer.

It was enough for the players. The leaders, on a Zoom call, were thrilled. And relieved. The past half-year had tested their patience and willingness to trust that the league would right its wrongs. And though there remains plenty to improve — ensuring more jobs aren’t lost, higher salaries, better benefits — the deal addressed enough key issues that player leadership approved it happily.

“With the offseason payment, now we can focus on baseball,” Basabe said. “I know [the rank and file] are grateful. We’re making changes. This is history.”

Word spread quickly among players, and within 24 hours of sending out the deal to a vote, the returns were nearly unanimous. The agreement was for everyone, from Basabe and Hildenberger and Nambiar to Matthew Peguero and Andres Angulo and the thousands of others who were lucky enough to play a game for a living but warranted dignity as they did so.

The story of life in the minor leagues, painful in many ways, had carried them to a better place.

“It’s life-changing for a lot of people now,” Nambiar said, “and for generations going forward.”

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Keys to ALCS Game 6 (and maybe 7): Superstar dilemmas, secret heroes and numbers to watch

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Keys to ALCS Game 6 (and maybe 7): Superstar dilemmas, secret heroes and numbers to watch

Are we having fun yet? Friday was one of the most unforgettable days ever seen in the playoffs, with Eugenio Suarez’s go-ahead grand slam rocking T-Mobile Park and putting the Seattle Mariners one win away from the World Series, and then Shohei Ohtani’s historic three-homer, 10-strikeout performance that goes down as perhaps the single greatest individual performance in postseason history.

Let’s call it a top-five day of all time and add this to our list of future projects to research. Meanwhile, with Ohtani’s Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series, we’re left with one game Sunday: The Seattle Mariners vs. the Toronto Blue Jays, Game 6 of the ALCS.

Let’s dig into it with some of the keys to watch with the remaining World Series spot at stake.


Guerrero is having a monster postseason, hitting .457/.524/.971 with five home runs. After a hitless first two games of the ALCS, he did his best Roy Hobbs impersonation in Seattle, going 7-for-11 with five extra-base hits. He has just two strikeouts in 42 postseason plate appearances, and he has had 15 balls in play register over 100 mph, including six of his seven hits at T-Mobile.

“He’s a special player, a special talent, an awesome guy to be around,” teammate Ernie Clement said. “He’s earned every bit of success that he’s having, and I couldn’t be happier for him. Just really proud of the work he’s put in. To do it on the biggest stages, it’s a testament to his work.”

In Game 5, the Mariners intentionally walked Guerrero twice, once in the fourth inning with nobody out and a runner on second base — his second intentional walk of the postseason with nobody out, the first time that has happened since 2016 — and then in the seventh with two outs and a runner on second.

The Mariners escaped both jams, but they’re playing with fire — and that’s whether they pitch to him or whether they put him on. It’s certainly not an easy decision for manager Dan Wilson with Guerrero so locked in, but eventually one of those intentional walks is going to backfire and potentially lead to a big inning.


Toronto’s challenge: Getting Cal Raleigh out

Raleigh is following up his historic 60-homer season with an outstanding postseason of his own, hitting .333/.435/.692 with four home runs, the one Mariner who has provided consistent offense. Suarez’s slam was the moment for the history books in Game 5, but that moment might never happen if Raleigh doesn’t first tie the game leading off the eighth inning with his towering home run to left that looked high enough to soar over the Space Needle.

“Oh my god, that ball took forever to get down,” said teammate Bryan Woo. “I can’t say that I’m surprised anymore, but he just continues to impress and show up in big moments.”

The Blue Jays have mostly gone right after Raleigh, who has drawn three walks in five games, one of those intentional. That included the game-tying home run when Brendon Little fell behind 2-0 but came in with a fastball — a little too much down the middle.

“A lot of times I get out there and just start swinging and try to hit something hard,” Raleigh said, “but I was patient waiting for my pitch there and understanding to let the game come to me, try and make solid contact, don’t need a home run, don’t need to try to hit a ball 500 feet, just do something good and adrenaline will usually take over in those moments.”


Toronto’s potential secret hero: Ernie Clement

Following the Blue Jays’ win in Game 3, Clement called himself “probably the worst hitter in baseball” a couple years ago. He was referring to 2022, when he hit .184/.243/.209 in 179 plate appearances with the Guardians and Athletics — which led to the Guardians letting him go, and then the A’s, with the Blue Jays claiming him on waivers during spring training in 2023.

The one-time worst hitter in baseball played 157 games this season, had his best season at the plate with a .277/.313/.398 line and 46 extra-base hits, and is a Gold Glove finalist at two positions — third base (where he started 66 games) and the utility slot (he also started games at second base, shortstop and first base).

He has followed that up with an exceptional postseason, hitting .429 with 15 hits, the most for a player in his first nine career postseason games since Daniel Murphy in 2015. He attributes his success to learning from his failures — “I’ve had quite a few of those,” he said — and understanding that he’s at his best when he’s swinging often, even if that goes against the modern convention of waiting for your pitch.

“I just started to lean into my strength a little bit, which is putting the bat on the ball. I kind of tried to work the count a little bit and maybe try to draw some walks and hit for more power, and that’s just not really my game. Over the last couple years, I’ve learned to just make it hard on the opposing pitchers with my ability to get hits on pitchers’ pitches, and I’ve just really been more aggressive.”


Seattle’s potential secret hero: Bryan Woo

The Mariners’ top starter in the regular season had been sidelined since Sept. 19 due to a right pectoral strain. He wasn’t on the ALDS roster but finally made his postseason debut in Game 5, pitching two innings in relief in Game 5. Alejandro Kirk greeted him with a ringing double and then Clement drove him with an RBI single, although bounced back with a scoreless seventh, getting out of that jam when Kirk tapped back to the mound.

It wasn’t necessarily a stellar effort — he didn’t record a strikeout and had just two swings and misses out of 28 pitches — but it was good enough. He did enjoy running through the “flames” as he left the bullpen for the mound. “Yeah, I told Logan [Gilbert] when he did it the other day, he looked like the coolest he’s ever looked, so I tried to replicate that.”

Woo said he’ll have to wait and see how he feels over the next couple of days, and he isn’t stretched back out to start yet but said “I’d love to contribute the next couple of games.” Given Wilson’s quick hook with Luis Castillo in Game 4 and relatively quick hook with Miller in Game 5, Woo’s potential to throw multiple innings to help bridge the gap to closer Andres Munoz looms large, whether it’s in Game 6 or Game 7.


Key stat to watch: 28 vs. 49

The Blue Jays have struck out just 28 times in the first five games compared to 49 for the Mariners. The Blue Jays had the lowest strikeout rate in the majors in the regular season and have been striking out even less often during the playoffs (just 14.4% of the time in the ALCS). That hasn’t actually produced much more hard contact in this series, however, as the Jays have 53 balls in play classified as hard-hit balls (95-plus mph) while the Mariners have hit 51. The Jays have 14 at 105-plus mph, and the Mariners have 15.

Still, on Friday everything went the Mariners’ way.

“To be honest, we dodged a lot of bullets today,” Raleigh said. There was a the double play on a line drive to first baseman Josh Naylor, Leo Rivas made a nice leaping grab of a line drive up the middle, Raleigh turned Clement’s ball in front of the plate into another double play and Randy Arozarena made a leaping grab at the wall in the eighth to rob Clement of a potential home run.

Over the long haul, swing-and-miss is still a good thing for pitching staffs, and Seattle’s hasn’t generated nearly as much as Toronto’s: The Jays have swung and missed 70 times compared to 102 for the Mariners.

Logan Gilbert, Seattle’s Game 6 starter, was a big swing-and-miss pitcher during the regular season with the third highest strikeout rate among pitchers with at least 100 innings, behind only Zack Wheeler and Chris Sale. He lasted just three innings in his Game 2 start, however, generating just five swinging strikes in 58 pitches. The Mariners will hope that poor effort was a result of starting on two days of rest after pitching two innings in relief in the 15-inning win over Detroit in the ALDS.

Likewise, Trey Yesavage, Toronto’s rookie starter who has pitched just 23.1 innings in the big leagues, will try to find his form from his ALDS start against the Yankees when he struck out 11 in 5.1 hitless innings. The Mariners got to him for five runs in four innings in Game 2 as he walked three, and Julio Rodriguez hit a three-run homer in the first inning.


The key decision: When to go to the bullpens

Both managers have deployed quick hooks with the starters — and both saw those moves backfire in the three games in Seattle. In Game 4, Wilson pulled Luis Castillo in the third inning after just 48 pitches, the shortest start of Castillo’s career, and went early to his high-leverage relievers, but Gabe Speier walked in one of Castillo’s runs, and Matt Brash threw a wild pitch to let in one of the two runs Speier allowed. Wilson doubled in Game 5, pulling Bryce Miller after a leadoff single in the fifth even though he had yet to allow a run. Brash let that inherited runner score, and then Bryan Woo later allowed another run.

Blue Jays manager John Schneider’s decision in Game 5 might have been even more questionable, leaving closer Jeff Hoffman in the pen in the eighth while going first to Brendon Little and then to Seranthony Dominguez, and they combined to allow five runs in blowing the 2-1 lead. Hoffman never got in the game.

Little came on and gave up the home run to Raleigh and then walked the next two batters.

“We talked about it all series,” Schneider said after the game. “Little’s been one of our best pitchers in big spots. Tough guy to elevate. Cal’s a really good hitter. I get it, man. After that, you got to settle down and throw strikes too. So that’s been part of Little’s game. So has strikeouts. Again, I trust every single guy on this roster. It’s hard. No one feels worse than Little, no one feels worse than Ser right now, or me. But I trust every single guy on this roster. Today it didn’t work out, but we’ve won two games in a row a whole lot this year.”

That’s where we’re at: The Blue Jays need to win two to reach their first World Series since 1993. The Mariners need one to reach their first. Ohtani and the Dodgers await. Let’s play some ball.

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Driven since Week 1 loss, red-hot Tide rout Vols

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Driven since Week 1 loss, red-hot Tide rout Vols

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — After Alabama beat Tennessee 37-20 on Saturday night, coach Kalen DeBoer wanted to make sure his players enjoyed their postgame cigars to celebrate another win in their storied rivalry.

There is still a long road to go, but what Alabama has done to get to this point is worthy of a celebratory cigar, too.

After a Week 1 loss to Florida State, Alabama has stacked one victory after the next, winning six straight, finding an edge and different ways to motivate themselves. Proving they were better than that team that opened in Tallahassee is certainly one of those reasons. But there were others — proving they could win on the road and doing so against Georgia. Beating Vanderbilt after losing to them last year. And Saturday night, regaining the edge against Tennessee after losing to them last year, too.

The result? Alabama is the first team in SEC history to win four straight games, all against ranked teams, with no bye week mixed in, according to ESPN Research.

“They’ve got an edge to them still, and haven’t lost it since the beginning there after week one. That’s hard to do,” DeBoer said afterward. “It’s really hard to do. As you go through the weeks, there’s been enough reasons, different motivation factors, to get up for games, and our guys, each and every week, find a way to do it. So we’ve got to keep the pedal down.”

The key turning point happened just before halftime. Tennessee was on the Alabama 1-yard line with eight seconds left in the quarter, down 16-7. Joey Aguilar dropped back and threw right toward tight end Miles Kitselman, who appeared to be open in the end zone. But Zabien Brown jumped the route and intercepted the pass, returning it 99 yards for the score to give Alabama a 23-7 lead.

“The ball fell right in my hand,” Brown said. “I [saw] open field and I started running. I’m like, if I get tackled, the time [will] go out. So I gotta find a way to get in that [end] zone.”

It was a triumphant day for the defense, which had struggled at times to limit explosive plays throughout the course of the season and put their stamp on a game. Alabama also had a safety in the first half and made life uncomfortable for Aguilar all night. Tennessee came into the game as the highest scoring offense in the SEC, but Alabama held them to a season-low 20 points and 410 total yards. The Vols only scored on two of their five red zone chances.

Alabama fans lit their cigars in stadium well before the game ended. It was Alabama’s 11th straight home win in the series, and also ran DeBoer’s record at home to 11-0 since his arrival last year. He has also won six straight since switching to a black hoodie on the sideline, something that has become a major talking point among the Alabama fan base.

When asked if he was giving the fans what they wanted by continuing to wear the black hoodie, DeBoer said, “This isn’t new. I’ve done this for years. But we’re going to ride the momentum. I told the guys not to get any [cigar] ashes on it.”

The Crimson Tide sit at 4-0 in SEC play and are one of two unbeaten teams left in the league, along with Texas A&M. Up next is a trip to South Carolina before an open date.

“I think we understand the week of preparation gets you mentally in the right space to where you’re confident going out on the football field,” DeBoer said. “When you’re confident, you got a little more energy. And that’s really what I see with our guys, and that fires me up.”

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ND’s Freeman hails Love-Price duo: ‘So talented’

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ND's Freeman hails Love-Price duo: 'So talented'

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — When the clock expired on a 34-24 win over USC, Notre Dame took a dig at its West Coast rival by playing a modified version of the song “California Love,” which began instead with the lyric “Jeremiyah Love.”

The serenade for USC players and coaches as they left a rain-soaked Notre Dame Stadium certainly didn’t sound good, but it wasn’t as bad as facing the actual Jeremiyah Love and his sidekick, Jadarian Price. Love rolled up 228 rushing yards, the most by a Notre Dame player in the 512-game history of Notre Dame Stadium, and the most by a Notre Dame player against USC in the storied rivalry. Price added 87 rushing yards and a 100-yard kick return touchdown that put the 13th-ranked Irish ahead for good.

Notre Dame kept its College Football Playoff hopes alive with its third straight win against USC in the final scheduled game of the historic intersectional rivalry.

“It’s not very common in college, not very common in life, to see two guys that are so talented, that deserve the ball in their hands every snap, put the team above themselves, and then make the most of their opportunities,” coach Marcus Freeman said. “They’re not pouting, they’re each other’s biggest supporter.

“That might be one of the hardest things we ask our plays to do — put team before me. Everything outside of here says, ‘No, you come before team.'”

After getting only 20 touches combined in a season-opening loss at Miami, Love and Price knew they would be featured against No. 20 USC, as the forecast called for heavy rain. Love raced 63 yards on his first carry and finished Notre Dame’s opening drive with a 12-yard touchdown run. On the team’s next scoring drive, Price had 56 rushing yards and a 16-yard touchdown.

“We believe that every game goes through the running back room,” Love said, “so if we’re on our stuff, the offense is going to be on their stuff. Just be great backs, be great teammates.”

Price’s biggest play came on special teams, after USC had taken a 24-21 lead with 4:32 left in the third quarter. He initially erred by going outside his blocker on the kick return, but eventually found room and sliced through USC’s defense.

He became the first Notre Dame player with multiple 100-yard kick returns, as he had one Sept. 20 late in the first half against Purdue. Price also had a 99-yard scoring return against USC in 2023 on the same field.

“I am sitting there like, ‘God, I get you, now,'” Freeman said, smiling. “Notre Dame, there is something [here]. At that moment I’m like, ‘What is going on?’ … That was a huge play for this team.”

A preseason All-America selection, Love only received 14 total touches — 10 rushes and four receptions — in Notre Dame’s season-opening loss at Miami, while Price had just six carries against the Hurricanes. But both backs have seen their workload increase as Notre Dame shapes its offensive identity around them.

“It’s really dangerous,” Price said. “We start with the run game.”

USC answered for much of the night with its passing attack, which piled up 328 yards. But after converting a third-and-9 with a 42-yard pass from Jayden Maiava to Makai Lemon into Notre Dame territory, USC called for a wide receiver option pass, and Lemon lost the ball, recovered by Irish linebacker Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa.

“Stupid call,” coach Lincoln Riley said. “It was a stupid call.”

Notre Dame and USC met for the 96th time Saturday night, but the future of the series is in doubt despite a desire on both sides to continue. The schools have differing views on the length of a future scheduling agreement and where games are played.

The rivalry hasn’t lost its zest, as players and coaches barked at each other after the game, and several USC players were whisked away as the Irish gathered to sing their alma mater.

“This is the biggest intersectional rivalry in college football,” Notre Dame linebacker Jaylen Sneed said. “It just means more to us. … It should still be played. It’s a game that I circle every year on my calendar, and I think everybody else does.”

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