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HOUSTON — SEC commissioner Greg Sankey told ESPN he was “disappointed in the acrimony” that ensued following the College Football Playoff selection committee’s controversial final ranking last month, which for the first time excluded an undefeated Power 5 champion in Florida State.

The CFP selection committee chose No. 1 Michigan, No. 2 Washington, No. 3 Texas and No. 4 Alabama at the expense of the undefeated ACC champion and No. 5 FSU. Both Texas and Alabama had one loss and ended the season with a defeat in their respective CFP semifinal games.

Committee members have received significant backlash, including threats, since the group’s most debatable decision in a decade of the CFP and conspiracy theories have run rampant on social media platforms.

“I didn’t need so many incoming emails I received,” Sankey said. “I can only imagine hearing from those on the selection committee who are volunteers what they received. I think some of the statements made in the immediacy of selection were disappointing to me as a colleague, and I would maintain that the strength of our league — sure we lost some games — but as I look at what were the four best teams, I would maintain that we had two of those four.

“But again, the selection committee makes that decision, and we respect the decision.”

Immediately following the reveal, Florida State athletic director Michael Alford released a scathing statement in which he called the committee’s decision “unforgivable.” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips called it “unfathomable,” saying it “calls into question the selection process and whether the Committee’s own guidelines were followed.”

On Sunday, Phillips told ESPN by text that he will continue to defend the conference.

“As the ACC Commissioner, I am absolutely going to support our student-athletes, member schools and our conference at every moment. Period. That was precisely what occurred. This was an historic decision. For the very first time an undefeated, Power Five conference champion was excluded. To be certain, I look very much look forward to working with my colleagues to continue to refine the CFP and shape the future of college football.”

Sankey contributed to the controversy on championship weekend when he appeared on ESPN’s “College GameDay” show and lobbied for his league’s continued representation in the CFP. In reference to other teams competing with Georgia and Alabama for top-four spots, Sankey said, “Let’s go back to like Sesame Street … one of these things is not like the other, and that’s the Southeastern Conference.”

On Saturday, Sankey said he respected the committee’s decision to exclude two-time defending national champion Georgia, which sank from No. 1 to No. 6 after losing to Alabama 27-24 in the SEC title game.

“The morning of selection we had prepared a statement that said we have a different view, but we’re not going to point fingers and cast blame,” he said. “We’re going to focus on how do we improve and prepare for the 12-team playoff? That’s it. … I think three or four times we’ve had the fifth-ranked team. Do I think every decision has been perfect? No, but that the authority we allocated.”

Sankey said he will attend Monday night’s national championship game between No. 1 Michigan and No. 2 Washington even though this is the first time since 2014 — the inaugural season of the four-team playoff — that his conference doesn’t have a team playing.

Sankey and Phillips, along with the other FBS commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, will have their annual meeting Monday morning prior to the title game, but no changes to the selection committee’s protocol are expected to be made at this time. The new 12-team format will begin this fall, which will prevent an undefeated Power 5 conference champion from being excluded.

On Monday, the 11 presidents and chancellors who have the ultimate authority over the playoff could approve the commissioners’ proposal to reward the five highest-ranked conference champions and the next seven highest-ranked teams with spots in the 12-team field.

Still, Sankey wondered if it would become more challenging for the CFP to recruit people to serve on the 13-member committee tasked with choosing the best teams in the country.

“Are people going to want to serve in that capacity given the level of vitriol directed?” he said. “They’re volunteers. They fulfilled their charge. There’s always disagreement, but it shouldn’t sink to the level it has.”

Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said he doesn’t think the aftermath of this selection day will prevent others from serving on the committee.

“At the end of the day people really respect the process and realize how important it is,” he said. “Whether you’re an athletic director or someone who’s played and has been asked to join or may not be a current administrator, I think there’s so much love for the game and how important the job is people will always stand up to do it. It’s our job to make sure those people feel safe and comfortable.”

Petitti said his focus was “respecting how difficult that job is,” and that this season’s controversy further showed that four “isn’t the right number” of teams in the field.

“I say that because I look at Ohio State’s season,” he said. “It’s not just Florida State. We had some pretty good teams that could get on a roll and win a national championship that weren’t included.”

Mountain West Conference commissioner Gloria Nevarez said this year’s controversy prompted her to rethink the “small data set” of a football season, and wondered if there were a better way to determine strength of schedule.

“Right now strength of schedule spits out a number, but you can’t lean on it like you do in basketball because there’s so much less data going into that number,” Nevarez said. “That’s from my mind the core of the issue for the debate that happened this year both with Liberty and Florida State. If we could figure out a way to get a metric that we feel better about — no one is going to agree with it, someone is always going to be upset — but to me that was the weakness in this year’s argument, the ability to feel good about strength of schedule.”

Mid-American Conference commissioner Jon Steinbrecher said this season demonstrated that there are enough teams to legitimately fill a 12-team bracket.

“This proves the point,” he said. “If you didn’t have people upset that they weren’t in the event, I’d question the intensity and interest in the event. When we have 12 teams, we’re going to have people who aren’t happy they’re not in the event. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the decision, I have no doubt in the integrity of the people making those decisions.”

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Stanton won’t blame ailing elbows on torpedo bats

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Stanton won't blame ailing elbows on torpedo bats

NEW YORK — Giancarlo Stanton, one of the first known adopters of the torpedo bat, declined Tuesday to say whether he believes using it last season caused the tendon ailments in both elbows that forced him to begin this season on the injured list.

Last month, Stanton alluded to “bat adjustments” he made last season as a possible reason for the epicondylitis, commonly known as tennis elbow, he’s dealing with.

“You’re not going to get the story you’re looking for,” Stanton said. “So, if that’s what you guys want, that ain’t going to happen.”

Stanton said he will continue using the torpedo bat when he returns from injury. The 35-year-old New York Yankees slugger, who has undergone multiple rounds of platelet-rich plasma injections to treat his elbows, shared during spring training that season-ending surgery on both elbows was a possibility. But he has progressed enough to recently begin hitting off a Trajekt — a pitching robot that simulates any pitcher’s windup, arm angle and arsenal. However, he still wouldn’t define his return as “close.”

He said he will first have to go on a minor league rehab assignment at an unknown date for an unknown period. It won’t start in the next week, he added.

“This is very unique,” Stanton said. “I definitely haven’t missed a full spring before. So, it just depends on my timing, really, how fast I get to feel comfortable in the box versus live pitching.”

While the craze of the torpedo bat (also known as the bowling pin bat) has swept the baseball world since it was revealed Saturday — while the Yankees were blasting nine home runs against the Milwaukee Brewers — that a few members of the Yankees were using one, the modified bat already had quietly spread throughout the majors in 2024. Both Stanton and former Yankees catcher Jose Trevino, now with the Cincinnati Reds, were among players who used the bats last season after being introduced to the concept by Aaron Leanhardt, an MIT-educated physicist and former minor league hitting coordinator for the organization.

Anthony Volpe, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Cody Bellinger, Paul Goldschmidt and Austin Wells were among the Yankees who used torpedo bats during their season-opening sweep of the Brewers.

Stanton explained he has changed bats before. He said he has usually adjusted the length. Sometimes, he opts for lighter bats at the end of the long season. In the past, when knuckleballers were more common in the majors, he’d opt for heavier lumber.

Last year, he said he simply chose his usual bat but with a different barrel after experimenting with a few models.

“I mean, it makes a lot of sense,” Stanton said. “But it’s, like, why hasn’t anyone thought of it in 100-plus years? So, it’s explained simply and then you try it and as long as it’s comfortable in your hands [it works]. We’re creatures of habit, so the bat’s got to feel kind of like a glove or an extension of your arm.”

Stanton went on to lead the majors with an average bat velocity of 81.2 mph — nearly 3 mph ahead of the competition. He had a rebound, but not spectacular, regular season in which he batted .233 with 27 home runs and a .773 OPS before clubbing seven home runs in 14 playoff games.

“It’s not like [it was] unreal all of a sudden for me,” Stanton said.

Yankees manager Aaron Boone described the torpedo bats “as the evolution of equipment” comparable to getting fitted for new golf clubs. He said the organization is not pushing players to use them and insisted the science is more complicated than just picking a bat with a different barrel.

“There’s a lot more to it than, ‘I’ll take the torpedo bat on the shelf over there — 34 [inches], 32 [ounces],'” Boone said. “Our guys are way more invested in it than that. And really personalized, really work with our players in creating this stuff. But it’s equipment evolving.”

As players around the majors order torpedo bats in droves after the Yankees’ barrage over the weekend — they clubbed a record-tying 13 homers in two games against the Brewers — Boone alluded to the notion that, though everyone is aware of the concept, not every organization can optimize its usage.

“You’re trying to just, where you can on the margins, move the needle a little bit,” Boone said. “And that’s really all you’re going to do. I don’t think this is some revelation to where we’re going to be; it’s not related to the weekend that we had, for example. Like, I don’t think it’s that. Maybe in some cases, for some players, it may help them incrementally. That’s how I view it.”

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Rangers’ Eovaldi gets season’s 1st complete game

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Rangers' Eovaldi gets season's 1st complete game

CINCINNATI — Nathan Eovaldi pitched a four-hitter for the majors’ first complete game of the season, and the Texas Rangers blanked the Cincinnati Reds 1-0 on Tuesday night.

Eovaldi struck out eight and walked none in his fifth career complete game. The right-hander threw 99 pitches, 70 for strikes.

It was Eovaldi’s first shutout since April 29, 2023, against the Yankees and just the third of his career. He became the first Ranger with multiple career shutouts with no walks in the past 30 seasons, according to ESPN Research.

“I feel like, by the fifth or sixth inning, that my pitch count was down, and I feel like we had a really good game plan going into it,” Eovaldi said in his on-field postgame interview on Victory+. “I thought [Texas catcher Kyle Higashioka] called a great game. We were on the same page throughout the entire game.”

In the first inning, Wyatt Langford homered for Texas against Carson Spiers (0-1), and that proved to be all Eovaldi needed. A day after Cincinnati collected 14 hits in a 14-3 victory in the series opener, Eovaldi (1-0) silenced the lineup.

“We needed it, these bats are still quiet,” Texas manager Bruce Bochy said of his starter’s outing. “It took a well-pitched game like that. What a game.”

The Reds put the tying run on second with two out in the ninth, but Eovaldi retired Elly De La Cruz on a grounder to first.

“He’s as good as I have seen as far as a pitcher performing under pressure,” Bochy said. “He is so good. He’s a pro out there. He wants to be out there.”

Eovaldi retired his first 12 batters, including five straight strikeouts during one stretch. Gavin Lux hit a leadoff single in the fifth for Cincinnati’s first baserunner.

“I think it was the first-pitch strikes,” Eovaldi said, when asked what made him so efficient. “But also, the off-speed pitches. I was able to get some quick outs, and I didn’t really have many deep counts. … And not walking guys helps.”

Spiers gave up three hits in six innings in his season debut. He struck out five and walked two for the Reds, who fell to 2-3.

The Rangers moved to 4-2, and Langford has been at the center of it all. He now has two home runs in six games to begin the season. In 2024, it took him until the 29th game of the season to homer for the first time. Langford hit 16 homers in 134 games last season during his rookie year.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Source: USC flips Ducks’ Topui, No. 3 DT in 2026

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Source: USC flips Ducks' Topui, No. 3 DT in 2026

USC secured the commitment of former Oregon defensive tackle pledge Tomuhini Topui on Tuesday, a source told ESPN, handing the Trojans their latest recruiting victory in the 2026 cycle over the Big Ten rival Ducks.

Topui, ESPN’s No. 3 defensive tackle and No. 72 overall recruit in the 2026 class, spent five and half months committed to Oregon before pulling his pledge from the program on March 27. Topui attended USC’s initial spring camp practice that afternoon, and seven days later the 6-foot-4, 295-pound defender gave the Trojans his pledge to become the sixth ESPN 300 defender in the program’s 2026 class.

Topui’s commitment gives USC its 10th ESPN 300 pledge this cycle — more than any other program nationally — and pulls a fourth top-100 recruit into the impressive defensive class the Trojans are building this spring. Alongside Topui, USC’s defensive class includes in-state cornerbacks R.J. Sermons (No. 26 in ESPN Junior 300) and Brandon Lockhart (No. 77); four-star outside linebacker Xavier Griffin (No. 27) out of Gainesville, Georgia; and two more defensive line pledges between Jaimeon Winfield (No. 143) and Simote Katoanga (No. 174).

The Trojans are working to reestablish their local recruiting presence in the 2026 class under newly hired general manager Chad Bowden. Topui not only gives the Trojans their 11th in-state commit in the cycle, but his pledge represents a potentially important step toward revamping the program’s pipeline to perennial local powerhouse Mater Dei High School, too.

Topui will enter his senior season this fall at Mater Dei, the program that has produced a long line of USC stars including Matt Leinart, Matt Barkley and Amon-Ra St. Brown. However, if Topui ultimately signs with the program later this year, he’ll mark the Trojans’ first Mater Dei signee since the 2022 cycle, when USC pulled three top-300 prospects — Domani Jackson, Raleek Brown and C.J. Williams — from the high school program based in Santa Ana, California.

Topui’s flip to the Trojans also adds another layer to a recruiting rivalry rekindling between USC and Oregon in the 2026 cycle.

Tuesday’s commitment comes less than two months after coach Lincoln Riley and the Trojans flipped four-star Oregon quarterback pledge Jonas Williams, ESPN’s No. 2 dual-threat quarterback in 2026. USC is expected to continue targeting several Ducks commits this spring, including four-star offensive tackle Kodi Greene, another top prospect out of Mater Dei.

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