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There’s nothing quite as unsettling as that moment when you bump into an ex.

At the grocery store. The airport. Wherever. Especially if your breakup was dramatic. A soap opera-worthy split that involved name calling and shouts of “I wish we’d never met!” and wound up with lawyers involved. A schism so sensational that people still gossip about it every time you enter a room. What was it that Cady Heron said in “Mean Girls”? “Have you walked up to people and realized they were just talking about you? Have you ever had it happen 60 times in a row?”

Well, what if it happened 80,000 times in a row? What if that uncomfortable encounter with your former loved one, that person whom you so publicly skewered then immediately returned the favor, was nationally televised? With a trophy as a backdrop?

Welcome to college football’s Championship Weekend 2023, the apex of awkwardness. The final, unavoidable culmination at the end of a season when everyone has, for the most part, been able to ignore the pigskin-covered elephant in the room.

Not anymore.

Starting Friday night in Las Vegas, there will be 24 consecutive hours of conference championships won, College Football Playoff berths earned and more uncomfortable handshakes than a Roy family reunion on “Succession.”

Let’s start right there, in the world’s largest Roomba, located adjacent to the Las Vegas Strip. Allegiant Stadium is where Oregon and Washington will fight for the final Pac-12 championship. No matter where the conference goes from here, it will never be the same, as this will most definitely be the last night of the league as we’ve always known it, anchored by the big box schools of Los Angeles, Arizona and the Pacific Northwest.

The loser of that game will immediately start preparing for its next phase of life as a member of the Big Ten. The winner will more than likely get to work on a CFP semifinal matchup.

But first, that champ will have to stand on stage and receive its trophy from the man whom it has openly blamed for its decision to bolt because of its lack of confidence in his inability to ink a lucrative media rights deal: commissioner George Kliavkoff. Meanwhile, Oregon and Washington are also both currently on the other side of a lingering lawsuit to determine control and the cash of the Pac-12 as it moves forward, sitting across the table from archrivals Oregon State and Washington State, while those remaining “2Pac” schools are working with Kliavkoff to figure who and where they might play next season.

This will all make posing for those trophy photos feel like taking your Christmas card photo right after everyone in the family just had a huge fight over what sweaters you should wear.

Awwwwkward.

Now let’s take it 1,200 miles east, to Jerry World in Arlington, Texas. AT&T Stadium is where Texas is favored to defeat Oklahoma State in Saturday’s Big 12 title game. This will also be the Longhorns’ final contest under their conference’s banner, as they will depart next summer, along with fellow current conference headliner Oklahoma, for the SEC. It was their 2021 decision to move deeper south that ignited this current era of conference realignment. It’s all been a Texas-sized multiyear countdown, marching through this season with all sorts of four-letter fare-thee-wells, from an endless sea of Horns Down gestures to Oklahoma State’s Bedlam Bye-Bye win over the Sooners one month ago.

It all peaked — or cratered, depending upon your point of view — last weekend, as Texas crushed Texas Tech in its Big 12 regular-season swan song. That’s when the image and voice of commissioner Brett Yormark appeared on the big screen at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, a clip from his preseason speech to the Red Raider Club kickoff luncheon when he charged Tech to “take care of business” when it came to keeping Texas out of the Big 12 title game.

That sound bite, met with boos and boot scootin’, was followed by a gigantic “SEE Y’ALL IN ARLINGTON” graphic.

If Texas beats Oklahoma State — and the Horns are currently a 15.5-point favorite — then tradition states that Yormark will be the man to hand Texas its fourth and final Big 12 championship trophy.

Cue that emoji of the smiley face showing all its teeth, pressed together like it’s trying to crush a walnut after a root canal.

OK, now let’s travel even further east, to the Queen City of Charlotte, North Carolina. That’s where fourth-ranked Florida State is also favored, albeit by only 2.5 points, over upstart No. 14 Louisville in the ACC championship game at Bank of America Stadium. Now this feud you might have forgotten about, lost amid the much higher profile throwdowns we’ve already mentioned. But it was just last summer, like a scant few months ago, that the folks down in Tallahassee began raising a flame-tipped spear of a stink about their membership in the #goacc, a league that was undoubtedly losing ground to its Power 5 cohorts when it came to all the deck reshuffling and money recounting.

There was an Aug. 15 deadline that came and went while Florida State hired a PR firm to work on its very loud “We hate it here” message and a private equity firm to see if it could come up with the $120 million to break free of Tobacco Road. University president Richard McCullough told ESPN, “I’m not that optimistic that we’ll be able to stay,” as his Seminoles colleagues said they should get a bigger slice of the football TV money pie chart because, well, the rest of the league wasn’t in their league when it comes to gridiron greatness. An angry fellow ACC member said, “It’s so great being in meetings with a school who just spent all summer telling everyone that the rest of us aren’t worthy to be in the same room with them.”

The main focus of FSU’s ire was commissioner Jim Phillips — the same man who will hand the Noles their trophy should they clinch their 16th ACC title on Saturday night.

Someone dial up one of those gifs of Britney Spears looking around like “How awkward is this?”

And finally, let’s take it up to Indianapolis for Michigan vs. Iowa. Do we even need to go over this one? Because it is still so going on. A maize-and-blue mess of such immediacy that it has seemingly dominated the headlines since Halloween. Jim Harbaugh, coach of the Wolverines, will return from punishment purgatory just in time to lead his team to perhaps its third consecutive Big Ten championship and third straight CFP appearance. He has been absent from the sidelines because of a sign-stealing scandal allegedly devised by a since-departed employee.

Harbaugh’s three-game suspension was not handed down by the NCAA but rather the conference office, a decision fueled in no small part by the B1G cries of foul from the other league members. There was legal wrangling, marking the first time anyone can recall that a football team in the midst of winning a conference was also in the midst of suing that conference. Ultimately, the suit was dropped. But the Jim Halpert expression of “Is this really happening right now?” remains.

Speaking of faces, the faces of the Michigan vs. Big Ten fight have always been Harbaugh, naturally, and commissioner Tony Petitti, who has been on the job for all of six months. Now, if ESPN Analytics is to be believed, there is a 92.6% chance Petitti and Harbaugh will be standing shoulder to shoulder on the field of Lucas Oil Stadium on Saturday evening, one greeted with cheers and the other with middle fingers by the fans of the newly crowned “Victors” of the conference. We’ll let you guess which is which.

In the meantime, the rest of us, from the other six conferences (including the quietly drama-free SEC) to our collective couches and recliners, can sit back and watch the football awkwardness unfurl like an angry complaint email accidentally sent to the person you’re angrily complaining about. The same couches and recliners we were in last week, watching our drunk uncles wake up on Black Friday and look over their coffee at the silent faces of everyone in the family, thinking, “Oh damn, what did I say last night when we were watching the Egg Bowl?”

That will be us all this weekend, eyes instinctively shifting left and right as if seeking an escape route and lips and teeth pulled back like we’re suffering brain freeze, so thankful we aren’t on those four stages in those four cities, handing over giant trophies and well-wishes to our would-be and soon-to-be exes.

Awwwwkward.

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Nats seek ‘fresh approach,’ fire Martinez, Rizzo

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Nats seek 'fresh approach,' fire Martinez, Rizzo

The last-place Washington Nationals fired president of baseball operations Mike Rizzo and manager Davey Martinez, the team announced Sunday.

Rizzo, 64, and Martinez, 60, won a World Series with the Nationals in 2019, but the team has floundered in recent years. This season, the Nationals are 37-53 and stuck at the bottom of the National League East after getting swept by the Boston Red Sox this weekend at home. Washington hasn’t finished higher than fourth in the division since winning the World Series.

“On behalf of our family and the Washington Nationals organization, I first and foremost want to thank Mike and Davey for their contributions to our franchise and our city,” principal owner Mark Lerner said in a statement. “Our family is eternally grateful for their years of dedication to the organization, including their roles in bringing a World Series trophy to Washington, D.C.

“While we are appreciative of their past successes, the on-field performance has not been where we or our fans expect it to be. This is a pivotal time for our club, and we believe a fresh approach and new energy is the best course of action for our team moving forward.”

Mike DeBartolo, the club’s senior vice president and assistant general manager, was named interim GM on Sunday night. DeBartolo will oversee all aspects of baseball operations, including the MLB draft. An announcement will be made on the interim manager Monday, a day before the club begins a series against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Rizzo has been the top decision-maker in Washington since 2013, and Martinez has been on board since 2018. Under Rizzo’s leadership, the team made the postseason four times: in 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2019. The latter season was Martinez’s lone playoff appearance.

“When our family assumed control of the team, nearly 20 years ago, Mike was the first hire we made,” Lerner said. “Over two decades, he was with us as we went from a fledging team in a new city to World Series champion. Mike helped make us who we are as an organization, and we’re so thankful to him for his hard work and dedication — not just on the field and in the front office, but in the community as well.”

The Nationals are in the midst of a rebuild that has moved slower than expected, though the team didn’t augment its young core much during the winter. Led by All-Stars James Wood and MacKenzie Gore, Washington has the second-youngest group of hitters in MLB and the sixth-youngest pitching staff.

The team lost 11 straight games in a forgettable stretch last month. And during a 2-10 run in June, Washington averaged just 2.5 runs. Since June 1, the Nationals have scored one run or been shut out seven times. In Sunday’s 6-4 loss to Boston, they left 15 runners on base.

There was industry speculation over the winter that the Nationals would spend money on free agents for the first time in several years, but that never materialized. Instead, the team made minor moves, signing free agents Josh Bell and Michael Soroka, trading for first baseman Nathaniel Lowe and re-signing closer Kyle Finnegan. Now, the hope is a new management team, both on and off the field, can help change the franchise’s fortunes.

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Kershaw gets special ASG invite; no Soto, Betts

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Kershaw gets special ASG invite; no Soto, Betts

The rosters for the 2025 MLB All-Star Game will feature 19 first-timers — and one legend — as the pitchers and reserves were announced Sunday for the July 15 contest at Truist Park in Atlanta.

Los Angeles Dodgers left-hander Clayton Kershaw, a three-time Cy Young Award winner who made his first All-Star team in 2011, was named to his 11th National League roster as a special commissioner’s selection.

Kershaw, who became only the fourth left-hander to amass 3,000 career strikeouts, is 4-0 with a 3.43 ERA in nine starts after beginning the season on the injured list. He joins Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera as a legend choice, after the pair of sluggers were selected in 2022.

Kershaw said he didn’t want to discuss the selection Sunday.

Among the first-time All-Stars announced Sunday: Dodgers teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto; Washington Nationals outfielder James Wood and left-hander MacKenzie Gore; Houston Astros ace Hunter Brown and shortstop Jeremy Pena; and Chicago Cubs 34-year-old left-hander Matthew Boyd.

“It’ll just be cool being around some of the best players in the game,” Wood said.

First-time All-Stars previously elected to start by the fans include Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh, Athletics shortstop Jacob Wilson, Baltimore Orioles designated hitter Ryan O’Hearn and Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong.

Overall, the 19 first-time All-Stars is a drop from the 32 first-time selections on the initial rosters in 2024.

Kershaw would be the sentimental choice to start for the National League, although Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes, who leads NL pitchers in ERA and WAR, might be in line to start his second straight contest. Philadelphia Phillies right-hander Zack Wheeler, a three-time All-Star, is 9-3 with a 2.17 ERA after Sunday’s complete-game victory and also would be a strong candidate to start.

“I think it would be stupid to say no to that. It’s a pretty cool opportunity,” Skenes said about the possibility of being asked to start by Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. “I didn’t make plans over the All-Star break or anything. So, yeah, I’m super stoked.”

Kershaw has made one All-Star start in his career, in 2022 at Dodger Stadium.

Among standout players not selected were New York Mets outfielder Juan Soto, who signed a $765 million contract as a free agent in the offseason, and Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts, who had made eight consecutive All-Star rosters since 2016.

Soto got off to a slow start but was the National League Player of the Month in June and entered Sunday ranked sixth in the NL in WAR among position players while ranking second in OBP, eighth in OPS and third in runs scored.

The players vote for the reserves at each position and selected Wood, Corbin Carroll of the Arizona Diamondbacks and Fernando Tatis Jr. of the San Diego Padres as the backup outfielders. Kyle Stowers also made it as a backup outfielder as the representative for the Miami Marlins.

Unless Soto later is added as an injury replacement, he’ll miss his first All-Star Game since his first full season in 2019.

The Dodgers lead all teams with five representatives: Kershaw, Yamamoto and starters Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Will Smith. The AL-leading Detroit Tigers (57-34) and Mariners have four each.

Tigers ace Tarik Skubal will join AL starters Riley Greene, Gleyber Torres and Javier Baez, while Raleigh, the AL’s starting catcher, will be joined by Seattle teammates Bryan Woo, Andres Munoz and Julio Rodriguez.

Earning his fifth career selection but first since 2021 is Texas Rangers righty Jacob deGrom, who is finally healthy after making only nine starts in his first two seasons with the Rangers and is 9-2 with a 2.13 ERA. He has never started an All-Star Game, although Skubal or Brown would be the favorite to start for the AL.

The hometown Braves will have three All-Stars in Acuna, pitcher Chris Sale (his ninth selection, tied with Freeman for the second most behind Kershaw) and first baseman Matt Olson. The San Francisco Giants had three pitchers selected: Logan Webb, Robbie Ray and reliever Randy Rodriguez.

The slumping New York Yankees ended up with three All-Stars: Aaron Judge, Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Max Fried. The Mets also earned three All-Star selections: Francisco Lindor, Pete Alonso and Edwin Diaz.

“Red carpet, that’s my thing,” Chisholm said. “I do have a ‘fit in mind.”

Rosters are expanded from 26 to 32 for the All-Star Game. They include starters elected by fans, 17 players (five starting pitchers, three relievers and a backup for each position) chosen in a player vote and six players (four pitchers and two position players) selected by league officials. Every club must be represented.

Acuna, Wood and Raleigh are the three All-Stars who have so far committed to participating in the Home Run Derby.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Bellinger rescues Yankees to avoid Subway sweep

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Bellinger rescues Yankees to avoid Subway sweep

NEW YORK — The New York Yankees were seemingly in deep trouble Sunday when Juan Soto cracked a pitch to left field in the seventh inning.

The New York Mets, down two runs, were cooking up a rally with no outs. Francisco Lindor stood at first base, Pete Alonso loomed on deck, and Brandon Nimmo was in the hole. This was the heart of the Mets’ potent lineup. Given the Yankees’ recent woes, fumbling their two-run lead and suffering a Subway Series sweep at the hands of their neighbors — and a seventh straight loss — seemed almost fated.

Then Cody Bellinger charged Soto’s sinking 105 mph line drive, made a shoestring catch and fired a strike to first base for an improbable double play to secure a skid-snapping 6-4 win — and perhaps rescue the Yankees from another dreadful outcome.

“Considering the context of this week and everything,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said, “that’s probably our play of the year so far.”

Soto’s line drive off Mark Leiter Jr. had a 10% catch probability, according to Statcast, but Bellinger, a plus defender at multiple positions who started at first base Saturday, was just able to snatch it before it touched the grass. Certain that he caught it clean, he made an 89.9 mph toss that reached first baseman Paul Goldschmidt on a line, over Lindor, who didn’t slide into the bag.

“I saw it in the air and had a really good beat on it,” said Bellinger, who went 2-for-3 with a double and a walk at the plate.

The Mets challenged the catch, but the call stood.

“That was incredible,” said Yankees right fielder Aaron Judge, who swatted his 33rd home run of the season in the fifth inning. “I’ve never seen something like that on the field.”

For the past week, a stretch Boone described as “terrible” for his ballclub, poor defense has been an issue for the Yankees. Physical errors. Mental lapses. Near disasters. The sloppiness helped sink a depleted pitching staff, more than offsetting the offense’s strong production.

That combination produced the team’s second six-game losing streak in three weeks and a three-game deficit in the American League East standings behind the first-place Toronto Blue Jays.

The surging Blue Jays won again Sunday to extend their winning streak to seven games and keep their division lead at three games, but Bellinger’s glove and arm ensured it didn’t grow to four.

“That was an unbelievable play,” Goldschmidt said. “Amazing catch and absolute cannon to me at first. To make that play was a game-changing play and potentially game-winning play for us today. And we needed it.”

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