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ATLANTA — GEORGIA TECH football coach Brent Key’s office looks out onto Bobby Dodd Stadium, with part of the Atlanta skyline in view as well. One of the buildings visible is the old Equitable building, now owned and operated by Georgia’s Own Credit Union, which has a 174-foot long digital sign around the top.

With that as the backdrop, Key was asked recently if the success of two-time defending national champion Georgia gives him extra motivation to right the ship for the Yellow Jackets.

“Kirby [Smart has] done an unbelievable job,” Key said of Georgia’s head coach. “He’s done a great job. I give him all the credit in the world. But we’ve known each other since college. And I respect him as a coach, I respect him as a man, and I respect the job he’s done. For me to worry about what goes on down there, I got way too much to do here to worry about that.”

He continued, “Now, when I walked in this office building [in January] of last year, and it was dark out, Georgia’s Own building right there said, ‘Congrats, Go Dawgs!’ Did that piss me off? Damn right it did.

“Did I call [strength coach] A.J. Artis up on the phone and tell him I want every single kid on our football team, when they’re done with workouts to come outside and do stadiums to the very top of the stadium and stare at it? You damn right I did.

“But to worry about what’s going on over there? I don’t have time to do that.”


THIS IS THE job Key has always wanted. When he was bumped up from offensive line coach to interim head coach after Geoff Collins’ firing four games into last season, Key told ESPN he wasn’t acting like it was a temporary seat at the table. His instincts were correct, and the interim tag was removed after the Yellow Jackets went 4-4 to close the campaign.

While Key, who played at Georgia Tech from 1997 to 2000, might have wanted the job, it clearly has its challenges. Tech hasn’t made a bowl game since 2018, its longest drought since 1992-1996. Collins, who was hired to replace Paul Johnson, never won more than three games during his three-plus-year tenure. In trying to attract talent, the school contends with some potential roadblocks, including higher academic standards than many big-time programs and an urban campus.

Meanwhile, the Yellow Jackets’ in-state rival roughly 80 miles to the east is aiming to become the first team to pull off a national title three-peat in almost 90 years and has won 18 of the past 21 meetings between the teams, including the last three by a combined score of 134-21.

After his playing days, Key was a graduate assistant at Tech for two years before a stop at Western Carolina, then a decade at UCF with his old head coach, George O’Leary. He spent 2016 through 2018 at Alabama before he returned to Atlanta as an assistant in 2019. He’s fully aware of the perceived complications of the job, and said he doesn’t buy into them.

“People say, ‘[The] school is hard, you have to take calculus.’ Look, I graduated but I never took one calc class in my life. So I’m like, what are you talking about? I didn’t take calculus.

“Now, I failed the hell out of chemistry.

“Other people talk about being in Atlanta — look, Atlanta made me who I am. Atlanta is an unbelievable city, the culture, the diversity, the things you learn, it creates a little bit of an edge to you.”

One of Key’s biggest priorities in trying to turn things around is to make sure his team has an identity. He has a spreadsheet mapping out every hour of every day from the start of camp to the Georgia game on Nov. 25 in Atlanta.

For every day through camp, the top of every sheet had a goal of establishing the identity of the team.

“That’s what this camp has been about,” he said. “And people talk about playing to a standard and our standard. We have no standard. There’s none. We have to create it. Nick Saban didn’t have a standard in 2006 at Alabama, he had his personal standard. You have to create those things.

“So what is our identity? We will be disciplined, we’re going to be tough as hell. This team is committed to themselves, number one, and they’re committed to this football team. And then when the number is called, we’ve got to execute.

“You got to expect good things to happen as opposed to bad things. It’s one thing to say, ‘Well, if you believe it, you say it, we’re gonna talk it into reality.’ Yeah, you got to believe, but you got to work your ass off in between. … That’s what I want our team to be. They say that there’s no greater compliment than a football team to take on the identity of the head football coach. That’s what I want.”


KEY ISN’T THE only new coach trying to restore old glory at Georgia Tech. Damon Stoudamire was hired in March to shape the men’s basketball program, and his mission — and approach — is similar to his football counterpart’s.

Stoudamire played at Arizona under the legendary Lute Olson and went on to play 13 seasons in the NBA, most notably with the Portland Trail Blazers. He came to Atlanta after being an assistant coach with the Boston Celtics. This is his second gig as a college head coach, having been at Pacific from 2016 until 2021.

Georgia Tech had a basketball team for many years, but Bobby Cremins turned it into a program in the 1980s and accumulated 354 wins over 19 seasons in Atlanta. The success continued to some degree under Paul Hewitt, who took the Yellow Jackets to a Final Four in 2004.

But since Hewitt’s departure, Tech has made just one NCAA tournament appearance after a surprising ACC tournament championship in 2021.

Like Key, Stoudamire talked about wanting to build a standard, which he said begins with toughness.

“I want to be the physically and mentally tougher team,” Stoudamire said. “I just think that wins games. We could talk about X’s and O’s and all those different things. But those two things there, and then the relationship part of it. I’m big on customer service, that’s what I like to call it. I just think that if you don’t have relationships with your players, you don’t have relationships in the workspace and different things, you can’t win.

“I’ve never really wanted to look at coaching from a coaching standpoint because I’m big on the relationship part of it, and I think if a player feels good, he plays good.

“So what does that mean? If a guy misses three in a row and he looks over, and the bench is like, ‘Keep shooting, keep shooting.’ I don’t react, I try not to at least, because I don’t want anybody to play on how they see me react. I want them to understand that Coach is calm, poised and staying in the moment.”

As far as reenergizing the fan base, Stoudamire believes in the only solution known to work anywhere and everywhere.

“I just think you got to win,” Stoudamire said. “We can get gimmicky, we can do different things, but I think you got to win. And I think people buy in. I just think it’s pretty simple.”


THE CHANGES AT Georgia Tech aren’t limited to the football and men’s basketball coaches. On the south end of Bobby Dodd Stadium is the Wardlaw Center, which itself is representative of the athletic department’s fresh start.

Georgia Tech’s athletic staff is moving into the building, which despite being part of the stadium for decades was occupied by the Institute Development and Institute Communications departments.

Settling into a new office is athletic director J. Batt, himself only about 10 months into the job. He replaced Todd Stansbury, who was AD from 2016 until his firing in 2022.

There are still some frames that need to go up on the walls in Batt’s office, which overlooks the field at Bobby Dodd Stadium. His most prized one, given to him by Homer Rice, lists the original qualifications of the award named for Rice, given annually to an athletic director who has made a significant impact on their profession and intercollegiate athletics.

Batt came to Atlanta from Alabama, where he had been since 2017, establishing himself as one of the country’s top fundraisers as executive deputy director of athletics, chief operating officer and chief revenue officer. But he’s familiar with ACC athletics. He grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia, and was a goalie for the North Carolina soccer team, helping win a national title in 2001. He also worked at Maryland as the school transitioned from the ACC to the Big Ten.

Georgia Tech is Batt’s first swing as an AD, and returning to the ACC was an immediate draw for him. But Batt saw the potential for success because of institutional alignment, the history of Georgia Tech, “and then a group of alums and fans that care.”

“[President Angel Cabrera] stepped forward and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to make athletics as good as the academics of this institution.’ And that was truly a huge part of it for me,” Batt said. “This brand, this program — four national championships, I mean, who else has Coach of the Year Bobby Dodd, Assistant of the Year [Frank] Broyles, AD of the Year [Homer] Rice, Player of the Year [John] Heisman,” referencing the namesakes of national awards who have Georgia Tech ties. “There’s no other program with that incredible tradition.”

But the opportunity boils down to a top-down commitment to athletics, which appears to give Batt — who has seen college programs run at the highest level in Tuscaloosa — a sense that he can be the one to fix Georgia Tech.

“This guy’s walking the walk,” Batt said of Cabrera. “He is literally providing resources, he’s providing access. I mean, look at this building. This is a building that’s been in the football stadium for 30 years, athletics has never occupied it. Truly taking a step forward, and prioritizing athletics. Moving us forward with our $85 million Student-Athlete Performance Center. That project is on a fast track to get done as soon as we possibly can.”

The need for a fresh start, both on his team and in the athletic department as a whole, and the importance of the financial commitment was echoed by Key.

“That’s no different than the offensive line room needing an O-line coach that was completely different than I was,” he said. “So that the line walked in every day and it was new, it was different.

“Because when the interim has become the head coach, I’m sure there’s that fear of, ‘Well, what if some of it is the same? What is going to be different?’ … Thankfully, the alignment with J and Dr. Cabrera has allowed a lot of these things to take place, knowing that those things matter.”

One of those things is the revamped football facility.

“People have a vision of what Georgia Tech is,” Key said. “They think engineers and architects and numbers and all this nerdy stuff, and old, and the industrial age of all those things. I said, ‘Well, guess what?’

“Imagine the old locomotive going through the tunnel and it busts out the other side, and it’s one of those bullet trains coming out going the speed of sound. That’s my vision of what Georgia Tech was and is. People walk in here, I don’t want to think the old things. I want it to look like an Apple store.”

Along with the new performance center and increased revenue through business partnerships, Batt had two critical hires to make in his first six months on the job.

“We’re looking for partners,” he said. “You know, stepping in as the new AD to Georgia Tech, the president stepped forward and linked arms with me and said, ‘Hey, we’re building this back.’ I think it had us looking for people that were going to build it with us.

“Brent and Damon, no strangers to hard work, right? These guys are tremendous competitors with tremendous passion to build it back. And so I was looking for a partner and both of those coaching hires, and certainly found it in both.”

With the new beginnings, there’s a sense around Atlanta that better days are ahead. Rather than worry about what has gone wrong, the focus is on what can be done right given everything Batt, Key and Stoudamire believe Georgia Tech has to offer.

“Since I’ve been here, we talked about alignment,” Stoudamire said. “I’ve always preached that. I think football, basketball, with the president and AD, I think all that aligns. I’ve always had a saying when one thing wins, everybody wins. And I think with football and basketball, what a tremendous opportunity that we all have here.”

Key has a notebook that he started back in 2009 in which he wrote down everything he wanted as a head coach. “One thing I never would have planned on was having a boss like J. Batt,” Key said. “He’s amazing.”

“To have a guy that’s just as driven, to have a guy that does his job like football coaches do their job. It could be 9 or 9:30 at night, and you’re here doing work, and to have an administrator just pop in and say, ‘Hey,’ because they’re working, too.

“To know what that position looks like at the most successful program in the history of college football, and they know what the most successful coach looks like, and how he goes about his business, but also to be able to allow those things to occur, and then give the resources and to help those things. And if the resources aren’t there, he gets out on the street and gets things done.

“A lot of people come up with a lot of ideas and sayings and all this kind of crap. He gets things done. He works. And when your boss is working that hard, it keeps you rolling now.

“You know everyone’s on the same page.”

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Buffs coach: Stars ‘should be going 1-2’ in draft

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Buffs coach: Stars 'should be going 1-2' in draft

BOULDER, Colo. — For the horde of NFL talent evaluators and some bleachers full of fans, Colorado coach Deion Sanders said Friday that they all got to see the top two players available in this year’s NFL draft.

Quarterback Shedeur Sanders and Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter were among the 16 Colorado players who took part in the school’s showcase event for scouts, coaches and personnel executives from every NFL team. And Deion Sanders said the two marquee players confirmed what he has known for a long time.

“It’s tremendous,” Sanders said. “… They should be going 1-2 [in the draft], that’s the way I feel about it. They are the two best players in this draft. … The surest bets in this draft are those two young men, and I didn’t stutter or stammer when I said that.”

Neither Shedeur Sanders nor Hunter took part in most of the position drills or physical testing, but Sanders had a throwing session for just under an hour and Hunter was one of the wide receivers who participated. Neither player worked out at the scouting combine earlier this year, so it was the first time Sanders had thrown in such a setting since the end of the season. He showed some full seven-step drops and play-action from the shotgun and under center.

“I think I did pretty good, to my expectations,” said Sanders, who set the career FBS accuracy mark in his two years at Colorado (71.8%) to go with his 4,134 passing yards and 37 touchdowns last season. “I know I did the best in college football right now, for sure.”

Asked after the throwing session whether he believed he was the best quarterback in the draft, Sanders said: “I feel like I’m the No. 1 quarterback, and that’s what I know. But at the end of the day, I’m not stuck on that because it’s about the situation, so whatever situation, whatever franchise believes in me, I’m excited to go. … I’m comfortable in any situation.”

Players Hunter, who did not speak to the media after the workout, and Sanders met with the Cleveland Browns contingent, including team co-owner Jimmy Haslam, on Thursday night in Boulder.

“They got me really full,” Sanders said. “I definitely needed to go to the sauna after that. … It was a good vibe.”

Said Deion Sanders said: “[I] spoke to the owner, truly delightful. He was engaging. … I think one of those guys is going to be there [at No. 2].”

Hunter, the No. 1 player on Mel Kiper Jr.’s Big Board, did not do any defensive drills Friday, but he ran a full assortment of routes.

Colorado safety Shilo Sanders, Shedeur’s brother, offered plenty of encouragement, shouting commentary and clapping after each throw, including “not a lot of quarterbacks can make that throw” after one deep completion.

The highly attended event — by NFL representatives as well as fans packing small bleachers — had a festive atmosphere. Deion Sanders named it the “We Ain’t Hard 2 Find Showcase,” complete with a large lighted “The Showcase” sign next to the drills.

Hunter, who has said he wants to play offense and defense in the NFL, won the Chuck Bednarik (top defensive player) and Fred Biletnikoff (top receiver) awards in addition to the Heisman. He said whether he will primarily be a wide receiver or a cornerback in the NFL depends “on the team that picks me.”

On Friday, Deion Sanders said “ain’t nobody like Travis.”

Hunter had 96 catches for 1,258 yards and 15 touchdowns as a receiver last season to go with 35 tackles, 11 pass breakups and 4 interceptions at cornerback. In the Buffaloes’ regular-season finale against Oklahoma State, he became the only FBS player in the past 25 years with three scrimmage touchdowns on offense and an interception in the same game, according to ESPN Research.

He played 1,380 total snaps in Colorado’s 12 regular-season games: 670 on offense, 686 on defense and 24 on special teams. He played 1,007 total snaps in 2023.

Shilo Sanders, who hoped to show teams more speed than expected, ran a 4.52 40-yard dash after he measured in at 5-foot-11⅞, 196 pounds. He did not participate in the jumps or bench press that opened the workout, citing a right shoulder injury.

With all NFL eyes on the Colorado campus to see Shedeur Sanders throw, one player who made the most of it was wide receiver Will Sheppard. Sheppard, who measured 6-2¼, 196 pounds, ran the 40 in 4.56 and 4.54 to go with a 40½-inch vertical jump and a 10-foot-11 broad jump.

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O’s Henderson off IL; will make ’25 debut vs. KC

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O's Henderson off IL; will make '25 debut vs. KC

Baltimore Orioles All-Star shortstop Gunnar Henderson was activated from the 10-day injured list and will make his season debut Friday night against the Kansas City Royals.

Henderson has been sidelined with a right intercostal strain and missed the first seven games of the big league campaign.

The 23-year-old Henderson will lead off and play shortstop against the host Royals.

Henderson was injured during a spring training game Feb. 27. He was fourth in American League MVP voting last season when he batted .281 and racked up career bests of 37 homers and 92 RBIs.

Henderson completed a five-game rehab stint at Triple-A Norfolk on Wednesday. He batted .263 (5-for-19) with two homers and four RBIs and played four games at shortstop and one as the designated hitter. He did commit three errors.

“I think everybody’s looking forward to having Gunnar back on the team,” Baltimore manager Brandon Hyde said Thursday. “The rehab went really, really well. I talked to him a couple days ago, he feels great swinging the bat. The timing came, especially the last few days. He just had to get out there and get some reps defensively and get some games in, and it all went well.”

Baltimore optioned outfielder Dylan Carlson to Triple-A Norfolk to open up a roster spot. The 26-year-old was 0-for-4 with a run and RBI in two games this season.

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Life after OMG: Can 2025 Mets replicate their 2024 vibes?

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Life after OMG: Can 2025 Mets replicate their 2024 vibes?

When New York Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns attempted to assemble the best possible roster for the 2025 season this winter, the top priority was signing outfielder Juan Soto. Next was the need to replenish the starting rotation and bolster the bullpen. Then, days before pitchers and catchers reported for spring training, the lineup received one final significant reinforcement when first baseman Pete Alonso re-signed.

Acquiring a player with a singing career on the side didn’t make the cut.

“No, that is not on the list,” Stearns said with a smile.

Stearns’ decision not to re-sign Jose Iglesias, the infielder behind the mic for the viral 2024 Mets anthem “OMG,” was attributed to creating more roster flexibility. But it also hammered home a reality: The scrappy 2024 Mets, authors of a magical summer in Queens, are a thing of the past. The 2025 Mets, who will report to Citi Field for their home opener Friday, have much of the same core but also some prominent new faces — and the new, outsized expectations that come with falling two wins short of the World Series, then signing Soto to the richest contract in professional sports history.

But there’s a question surrounding this year’s team that you can’t put a price tag on: Can these Mets rekindle the magic — the vibes, the memes, the feel-good underdog story — that seemed to come out of nowhere to help carry them to Game 6 of the National League Championship Series last season?

“Last year the culture was created,” Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor said. “It’s a matter of continuing it.”

For all the success Stearns has engineered — his small-market Milwaukee Brewers teams reached the postseason five times in eight seasons after he became the youngest general manager in history in 2015 — the 40-year-old Harvard grad, like the rest of his front office peers knows there’s no precise recipe for clubhouse chemistry. There is no culture projection system. No Vibes Above Replacement.

“Culture is very important,” Stearns said last weekend in the visiting dugout at Daikin Park before his club completed an opening-weekend series against the Houston Astros. “Culture is also very difficult to predict.”

Still, it seems the Mets’ 2024 season will be all but impossible to recreate.

There was Grimace, the purple McDonald’s blob who spontaneously became the franchise’s unofficial mascot after throwing out a first pitch in June. “OMG,” performed under Iglesias’ stage name, Candelita, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Latin Digital Songs chart, before a remix featuring Pitbull was released in October. Citi Field became a karaoke bar whenever Lindor stepped into the batter’s box with The Temptations’ “My Girl” as his walk-up song. Alonso unveiled a lucky pumpkin in October. They were gimmicks that might have felt forced if they hadn’t felt so right.

“I don’t know if what we did last year could be replicated because it was such a chaos-filled group,” Mets reliever Ryne Stanek said. “I don’t know if that’s replicable because there’s just too many things going on. I don’t know if that’s a sustainable model. But I think the expectation of winning is really important. I think establishing what we did last year and coming into this year where people are like, ‘Oh, no, that’s what we’re expecting to do,’ makes it different. It’s always a different vibe whenever you feel like you’re the hunter versus being the hunted.”

For the first two months last season, the Mets were terrible hunters. Lindor was relentlessly booed at Citi Field during another slow start. The bullpen got crushed. The losses piled up. The Mets began the season 0-5 and sunk to rock bottom on May 29 when reliever Jorge Lopez threw his glove into the stands during a 10-3 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers that dropped the team to 22-33.

That night, the Mets held a players-only meeting. From there, perhaps coincidentally, everything changed. The Mets won the next day, and 67 of their final 107 games.

This year, to avoid an early malaise and to better incorporate new faces like Soto and Opening Day starter Clay Holmes, players made it a point to hold meetings during spring training to lay a strong foundation.

“At the end of the day, we know who we are and that’s the beauty of our club,” Alonso said. “Not just who we are talent-wise, but who each individual is as a man and a personality. For us, our major, major strength is our collective identity as a unit.”

Organizationally, the Mets are attempting a dual-track makeover: Becoming perennial World Series contenders while not taking themselves too seriously.

The commemorative purple Grimace seat installed at Citi Field in September — Section 302, Row 6, Seat 12 in right field — remains there as part of a two-year contract. Last week, the franchise announced it will feature a New York-city themed “Five Borough” race at every home game — with a different mascot competing to represent each borough. For a third straight season, USA Today readers voted Citi Field — home of the rainbow cookie egg roll, among many other innovative treats — as having the best ballpark food in baseball.

In the clubhouse, their identity is evolving.

“I’m very much in the camp that you can’t force things,” Mets starter Sean Manaea said. “I mean, you can, but you don’t really end up with good results. And if you wait for things to happen organically, then sometimes it can take too long. So, there’s like a nudging of sorts. It’s like, ‘Let’s kind of come up with something, but not force it.’ So there’s a fine balance there and you just got to wait and see what happens.”

Stearns believes it starts with what the Mets can control: bringing positive energy every day and fostering a family atmosphere. It’s hard to quantify, but vibes undoubtedly helped fuel the Mets’ 2024 success. It’ll be a tough act to follow.

“It’s fluid,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “I like where guys are at as far as the team chemistry goes and things like that and the connections and the relationships. But it’ll continue to take some time. And winning helps, clearly.”

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