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FORT WORTH, Texas — On the first weekend of the 2023 season, hype gave way to history.

Deion Sanders arrived in Texas with 86 new Colorado players — an unprecedented remodel — and took down No. 17 TCU 45-42 in the Horned Frogs’ first game since a College Football Playoff National Championship game appearance.

The Buffaloes were a 21-point underdog, giving Coach Prime the first win by an underdog of more than 20 points in his full-time FBS coaching debut since the 1978 FBS/FCS split.

“We’re going to continuously be questioned because we do things that have never been done,” Deion Sanders said. “We do things that have never been done and that makes people uncomfortable.”

The cornerstone stars of Sanders’ transfer congregation — Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter, who both came with him from Jackson State — definitely made the Horned Frogs uncomfortable. Along the way, they erased years of futility for Colorado in just one game:

• Shedeur Sanders completed 38 of 47 passes for 510 yards, the most passing yards by a player in his FBS debut over the past 25 years, while also becoming the first Colorado quarterback ever to top the 500-yard mark. He threw more touchdowns Saturday (4) than Colorado did in six road games last season (3). Over the past three years, Colorado had been one of three Power 5 teams without a 300-yard passer.

• Hunter played 129 snaps and became the first Division I player in the past 20 seasons to have 100 receiving yards (he finished with 119 on 11 catches) and an interception in the same game. He also had three tackles and a pass breakup.

“We had some guys that singled themselves out with their playing and their playing ability,” Deion Sanders said. “A lot of guys you doubted — one of them from an HBCU — I think he had 510 yards passing in a Power 5 football game. And he happens to be my son, and I’m proud of him, tremendously.”

Hunter, the former five-star recruit who was one of the first to buy into Sanders’ vision at Jackson State, wore a shirt with a montage of images from his coach’s Hall of Fame playing career. Like Sanders, he took the same opportunity to say that none of this was unexpected.

“Football is football no matter who’s playing. You got to go out there and dominate whoever’s in their way,” Hunter said. “I went out there and dominated. A lot of people doubted me because I rated myself as No. 1 on the Heisman watch list. Now people are praising me. They didn’t know what I could do. They’ve finally seen what I’ve seen, my vision and the coaches’ vision for me.”

Deion Sanders agreed, saying he believes he has to promote his players.

“We had a couple of guys who should be a front-runner for the Heisman right now,” he said. “Who did that? Who did what they did today?”

Dylan Edwards, one of the jewels of Sanders’ first Colorado recruiting class, for one.

The 5-foot-9, 170-pound freshman from Derby, Kansas, finished with 177 all-purpose yards and four touchdowns, becoming the first FBS freshman over the past 20 seasons with three receiving TDs and a rushing TD in his collegiate debut.

Sanders said he coached Edwards in youth football when the freshman was 7 years old, which led to the four-star recruit picking Colorado over offers from schools like Notre Dame, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Oregon. In fact he decommitted from Notre Dame to sign with Colorado.

“Don’t let the size fool you,” Sanders said. “Dylan looks in the mirror like ‘Shallow Hal.’ When he looks in the mirror he sees a 215-pound man that’s probably about 6-4. That’s the way Dylan addresses life.”

The Buffaloes also had four 100-yard receivers, a first in school history. Hunter and Edwards were two. The other two, Jimmy Horn Jr. (11 catches, 117 yards and a touchdown) and Xavier Weaver (6 catches, 118 yards) are transfers from South Florida.

It wasn’t all so magical. The Buffaloes gave up 541 yards, surrendered an 86-yard kickoff return and had a field goal blocked. Shedeur Sanders missed two deep balls to Hunter by inches, and Hunter just missed what could’ve been another interception.

The grand experiment looked like the shot in the arm Deion Sanders promised when he was hired, snapping a 27-game road losing streak against top-20 opponents in front of 53,294, the largest crowd in TCU history. The hype is gone. The Coach Prime era has already changed the fortunes at Colorado.

“These young men in there right now, they believe,” he said. “Not all of them believed before. But right now, they came up one by one, two by two, and said, ‘Coach, we believe.’ Now they believe. Now Boulder believes, people in the front office, people in the building, the fans, the students, now everybody wants to believe. I’m good with that. We got room.”

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Why Luis Robert Jr. could be MLB trade deadline’s most sought-after slugger

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Why Luis Robert Jr. could be MLB trade deadline's most sought-after slugger

CHICAGO — At 27, Luis Robert Jr. is already a relic of sorts, the last remaining player from the White Sox’s all-too-brief era of contention.

On the south side of Chicago, that era seems like a very long time ago. That’s how a pair of 100-loss seasons, including last year’s record-setting 121-loss campaign, can warp a baseball fan’s perception of time. In fact, it was only 3½ years ago when, on Oct. 12, 2021, Chicago was eliminated by the Houston Astros from the American League Division Series.

Seventeen players appeared in that game for the White Sox. Robert had a hit that day but had to leave early with leg tightness — one of a string of maladies that have bedeviled his career. He is the only one of those 17 still in Chicago.

The irony: If Robert was playing up to his potential, he wouldn’t be around, either. And if he regains his mojo, he’s as good as gone.

Robert has the chance to be the most sought-after position player in 2025’s in-season trade market. Pull up any speculative list of trade candidates and Robert is near the top. Executives around the league ask about him eagerly. Despite a lack of positive recent results — including a disastrous 2024 and a rough start to this season — it’s not hard to understand why.

“A player like Luis Robert always gets a lot of attention,” White Sox GM Chris Getz said when the season began. “We’re really happy where he’s at, and how he approached spring training and how he’s performing. We expect him to perform at a very high level.”

Robert’s tools are impossible to miss. His bat speed (93rd percentile in 2025, per Statcast) is elite. His career slugging percentage when putting the ball in play is .661, slotting him in the 89th percentile among all hitters. It’s the same figure as New York Mets superstar Juan Soto. Robert’s sprint speed (29.0 feet per second) is in the 94th percentile. When healthy, he’s a perennial contender to add a second Gold Glove to the one he won as a rookie.

Still, the allure of Robert is as much about his contract as it is about his baseline talent. Smack in his prime and less than two years removed from a 5.3 bWAR season, Robert will earn just $15 million in 2025 and then has two team-friendly club options, both at $20 million with a $2 million buyout.

No potentially available hitter has this combination: a recent record of elite production, a right-now prime age, top-of-the-charts underlying talent and a club-friendly contract with multiyear potential but plenty of off-ramps. That such a player toils for a team projected to finish in the basement has for a while now made this a matter of if, not when, he is moved.

“I didn’t think I’d be here,” Robert said through an interpreter. “But I’m glad that I’m here. This is the organization that made my dream come true. It’s the only organization that I know.”

The White Sox could certainly have dealt Robert by now, based on that contract/talent combination alone. But the luxury of the contract from Chicago’s standpoint is that it buys the team time to seek maximum return. First, Robert has to show he’s healthy — so far, so good in 2025 — then he needs to demonstrate the kind of production that would make an impact for a team in win-now mode.

“He’s just extremely talented,” first-year White Sox manager Will Venable said. “The one thing that I learned about him, and watching him practice every day, is he practices extremely hard. He’s extremely focused. He certainly has the physical ability, but he’s the type of player he is because he works really hard.”

Certainly, the skills are elite, but the production has been inconsistent and, for now, headed in the wrong direction.

When Robert broke in with Chicago a few years ago, he was a consensus top-five prospect. ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel ranked Robert fifth before the 2020 season, but in his analysis of the ranking, McDaniel noted one of the key reasons Robert is still on the White Sox five years later: “The concern is that Robert’s pitch selection is weak enough — described as a 35 on the 20-80 scale — that it could undermine his offensive tools.”

Since the beginning of last season, there have been 202 hitters with at least 450 plate appearances. According to the FanGraphs metric wRC+, only 15 have fared worse than Roberts’ 80. Only 10 have posted a worse ratio of walks to strikeouts (0.22). Only nine have a lower on-base percentage (.275).

Despite starting the season healthy, his superficial numbers during the early going are even worse than last year. As the team around him plunged to historic depths, Robert slashed to career lows across the board (.224/.278/.379 over 100 games). This year, that line is a disturbing .163/.250/.245.

There is real evidence that Robert is trying to reform. The most obvious evidence is a walk rate (10.3%) nearly double his career average. The sample is small, but there are under-the-hood indicators that suggest it could be meaningful. For example, Robert’s early chase rate (34.2%, per Statcast) is a career low and closer to the MLB standard (28.5).

For aggressive swingers well into their careers, trying to master plate discipline is a tall task. Few established players of that ilk have had a longer road to travel than Robert. During the wild-card era, there have been 1,135 players who have compiled at least 1,500 plate appearances. Only 17 have a lower walk-to-strikeout ratio than Robert’s career figure (0.21).

On that list are 133 hitters with a career mark of 0.3 W/SO or lower, who together account for 645 different seasons of at least 300 plate appearances. Only 26 times did one of those seasons result in at least a league-average ratio, or about 4%. Only one of those hitters had two such seasons, another 24 did it once and 108 never did it.

Still, 4% isn’t zero. To that end, Robert spent time during the winter working out with baseball’s current leader in W/SO — Soto.

“It’s no secret that one of the reasons why he’s one of the best players in the game is that he’s quite disciplined,” Robert said. “And that’s one of the things I want to improve.”

That’s easier said than done, and for his part, Soto said the workouts were mostly just that — workouts, though they were conducted with Robert’s hitting coach on hand. As with everyone else, it’s the sheer talent that exudes from Robert that caught Soto’s eye.

“Tremendous baseball player and tremendous athlete,” Soto told ESPN’s Jorge Castillo in Spanish. “He showed me a lot of his abilities that I didn’t know he had. That guy has tremendous strength, tremendous power. And he really surprised me a lot in everything we did.”

In this year’s Cactus League, Robert produced a .300/.386/.500 slash line, with four homers.

“If I’m able to carry on the work that I did during spring training, I’m going to have a good season,” Robert said. “Especially in that aspect of my vision of the whole plate. I know I can do it.”

Getz — who will have to determine if and when to pull the trigger on a Robert deal — lauded Robert’s efforts during the spring.

“Luis Robert is in an excellent spot,” Getz said. “The amount of three-ball counts that he had in spring training was by far the most he has had as a professional player. So that just speaks to his determination and focus to put together quality at-bats.”

It’s a bittersweet situation. The remaining vestige of the last good White Sox team remains the club’s most talented player. He’s in his age-27 season, often the apex of a hitter’s career. Yet if he reaches that apex, it’s only going to smooth his way out of town.

For the White Sox, all they can do is make sure Robert can stay focused on the field, while tuning out the trade chatter that isn’t going away.

“We’re going to support Luis,” Getz said. “I know that oftentimes he gets asked questions whether he’s going to be traded, but I’ve been really impressed with how he’s been able to remain focused on his craft. He’s very motivated to show the baseball world what he’s capable of doing.”

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Sources: South Alabama QB Lopez to enter portal

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Sources: South Alabama QB Lopez to enter portal

South Alabama quarterback Gio Lopez is expected to enter the NCAA transfer portal, sources told ESPN on Monday.

Lopez, who recorded 2,559 passing yards and 25 total touchdowns as a redshirt freshman last fall, immediately emerges as one of the top available quarterbacks in the spring portal window, which runs from April 16 through April 25.

Sources told ESPN that North Carolina stands as the expected leader to land Lopez, who has not yet entered the transfer portal.

The 6-foot, 220-pound dual-threat quarterback produced a breakout campaign in 2024, completing 66% of his passes and tossing 18 touchdowns in 11 starts with 465 rushing yards and another seven scores on the ground. After initially considering a move in the winter portal window, Lopez opted to remain at South Alabama earlier in the offseason and was set to return as one of the Group of 5’s top quarterbacks this fall.

A former three-star recruit out of Madison, Alabama, Lopez signed as the third-ranked member of the Jaguars’ 2023 recruiting class. He appeared in five games in his true freshman season in 2023, highlighted by an MVP performance against Eastern Michigan in the 68 Ventures Bowl.

Lopez won the South Alabama starting job as a redshirt freshman and led the Jaguars to a 7-6 finish in coach Major Applewhite’s first season as head coach. He set the program’s single-game record for total offense with 494 yards in South Alabama’s Week 1 loss to North Texas last fall.

Lopez would enter the portal as one of the few available quarterbacks with previous starting experience, joining fellow passers Brendan Sullivan (Iowa) and Zach Gibson (Georgia State).

Sources told ESPN that North Carolina and Wake Forest are two schools that Lopez has already been in contact with this spring. Georgia, LSU and Ohio State previously expressed interest in Lopez earlier this offseason.

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VP Vance fumbles Buckeyes’ championship trophy

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VP Vance fumbles Buckeyes' championship trophy

WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance ended the Ohio State football team’s visit to the White House on Monday by fumbling the team’s national championship trophy.

After laudatory speeches by President Donald Trump, Buckeyes coach Ryan Day and Vance on the South Lawn, the vice president — an Ohio State graduate — tried to hoist aloft the trophy.

He didn’t count on the trophy’s golden top being designed to separate from its black base. After some struggling, the vice president lost his grip on the two pieces. OSU running back TreVeyon Henderson, standing behind Vance, grabbed the football-shaped top of the trophy. But the base fell to the ground, forcing Vance to grasp around as it rolled a short distance.

Some of the players around the vice president winced. The United States Marine Corps Band, which performs at presidential events, had to compete with audible gasps from the players and crowd as it played “We Are the Champions.”

Henderson and Day helped Vance reassemble the trophy, and the vice president later held just the top, cradling it in his arms while the players around him chuckled.

As pictures and videos of Vance’s fumble rocketed across the internet, the vice president tried to explain away the gaffe with self-deprecation: “I didn’t want anyone after Ohio State to get the trophy so I decided to break it,” he wrote on X.

Trump credited the Ohio State team with winning the 2024 college football championship despite “adversity,” including the team’s upset loss to unranked Michigan at home in November.

Trump said he hesitated to mention OSU’s fourth consecutive defeat to “the team up north — we won’t talk about it.”

Before fumbling the trophy, Vance also used part of his speech to mention the Buckeyes’ biggest rival — singling out an audience member in a Michigan hat.

“I don’t know who let the guy over in the corner here, in a Michigan hat, into this celebration,” Vance said. “But I’m about to tell the Secret Service, ‘You’ve got a dangerous weapon, sir.'”

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