What a possible multibillion-dollar NCAA antitrust settlement means for college sports
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Dan Murphy
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Dan Murphy
ESPN Staff Writer
- Covers the Big Ten
- Joined ESPN.com in 2014
- Graduate of the University of Notre Dame
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Pete Thamel
The NCAA and its schools are considering a proposed solution to one of the largest looming obstacles remaining for a landmark settlement of the association’s antitrust cases, which could shape the future of major collegiate sports in America.
With the college sports industry aiming to avoid future antitrust lawsuits, the terms of a settlement would establish an annual process giving new players a chance to opt in or object to revenue-sharing terms currently being negotiated as part of the emerging framework for the future business model of the NCAA’s top schools.
The NCAA and its most powerful conferences are in the thick of working toward settling the House v. NCAA case this month, with sources saying leagues are planning to vote on a proposed deal by May 23. ESPN spoke to more than a dozen legal and industry experts in college sports this week to better understand the ongoing negotiations.
The tentative terms of the settlement include the NCAA paying more than $2.7 billion in past damages as well as setting up a system for its most powerful conferences to share a portion of their revenue with athletes moving forward. One major obstacle to reaching a settlement has been finding a way for the NCAA and its schools to protect themselves from future lawsuits, including potential claims they would be colluding to cap player compensation without using a collective bargaining agreement.
Steve Berman, the co-lead counsel representing athletes in the House case, told ESPN he and his team have proposed a solution that would extend the class-action settlement on an annual basis. In this scenario, athletes would receive a notice each year providing them with the opportunity to object to the terms of the revenue-share agreement. Berman said those athletes would then have the chance to attend a hearing and persuade the judge that the revenue-share arrangement was unfair in order to push for a change.
“Each year we would have a hearing where any new athlete who wasn’t previously bound [by the settlement] can come and object,” Berman said. “They would have to come and say, ‘I don’t think this is fair.’ That would be a hard burden to prove.”
An NCAA spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Some athlete organizers say they are skeptical a rolling annual opt-in mechanism would be enough to dissuade future players from filing lawsuits to push for a bigger share of money in future years.
Sources say revenue sharing with athletes would begin, at the earliest, in the summer of 2025. The settlement would also serve to resolve three other active antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA.
The details of a settlement and their implications on how schools spend their money remain in flux. But with leagues expected to vote within the next two weeks, details are growing more clear as leaders in the industry weigh their options and sort through several remaining questions about how a future business model will work.
Why would an annual hearing be necessary?
In professional sports, the amount of revenue a league shares with its players is typically negotiated through a collective bargaining agreement between the league and a players’ union. Collective bargaining agreements completed with a certified union are exempt from antitrust challenges in court. That legal protection would not apply, however, in college sports if athletes are not deemed to be employees when schools start sharing their revenue.
The NCAA and its schools have been firmly opposed to a model where athletes are viewed as employees.
There are multiple pending cases in front of the National Labor Relations Board where athletes and their advocates are arguing that players should be employees and have the right to unionize, but those cases could take years to reach a conclusion. Others such as the College Football Players Association — one of several groups seeking to organize college athletes — have proposed asking Congress to create a special status for college athletes that would allow them to collectively bargain without being employees. But again, Congress has been slow to reach consensus on any federal legislation that could help chart a course forward for college sports despite several years of requested help from the NCAA.
The current House case is a class-action lawsuit that applies to all current Division I college athletes. That means future college athletes would not be bound by the terms of a settlement reached this year. Berman and his colleagues are hoping that giving each incoming group of new players an option to join the class will provide the schools with enough confidence that their agreement will be hard to challenge with future litigation.
What are the chances of a settlement happening?
There are so many moving parts that nothing is definitive, but sources from both sides of the case appear to be optimistic they are making substantial progress toward a settlement.
The NCAA has worked furiously toward settling, including agreeing to pick up the more than $2.7 billion in past damages over the next 10 years. If the case goes to trial and a judge rules against the NCAA, the association and its schools could be on the hook for more than $4 billion in damages.
Sources told ESPN that NCAA president Charlie Baker was in Washington, D.C., on Thursday meeting with more than a half-dozen Senators, a previously scheduled trip where he’s staying engaged with current Senate leaders about potential future legislation.
The belief in the industry is that all the power conferences have the majority votes to settle, which will be up to their schools’ top administrators. There are a few individual schools that are skeptical of settling — some of those overlap with the schools that supported the idea of forming a new “super league” that would radically reshape the entire structure of college athletics. While some believe a more complete overhaul is needed, sources told ESPN there’s essentially zero chance of a super league emerging in the near future.
To the majority, the idea of a league deciding to battle Berman and fellow lead attorney Jeffrey Kessler in court and face billions in damages isn’t too appetizing — especially with the NCAA paying the back damages.
Here’s the breakdown of the landscape, according to multiple industry sources: The Big Ten is generally on board with settling. The SEC has some detractors of settling but is trending to a majority. The Big 12 is expected to follow along. There’s some dissension in the ACC, which has amplified why Florida State and Clemson are suing to leave the league, but sources say it’s unlikely the ACC will end up voting against it.
It’s also important to note here that a vote for settling doesn’t mean all of the key details will have been ironed out. The notion of capping the size of a team’s roster as part of this new business model, for example, has generated buzz in athletic director and coaching circles. But details like what a football roster would be capped at — and the fate of walk-ons — are not expected to be decided until after the vote, per sources.
“It’s so early in that conversation, it’s hard to speculate,” a source said. “There’s a lot more work there. You want to build consensus across multiple conferences.”
Also, any potential help from Congress that Baker is courting wouldn’t come until well after the settlement.
“It gives us a better hand to play with Congress,” an industry source said. “They were looking for something from us. This injects a lot in that conversation. This is a good start.”
How much money will schools be spending on future payments to athletes?
Sources told ESPN that while terms could change, the current proposal would create a spending cap for each power-conference school based on 22% of the average media rights, ticket sales and sponsorship revenue of each power-conference school. Sources say they expect that cap number to be nearly $20 million per school. Schools would not be required to spend that much money on their athletes but would have the option to share up to that $20 million figure with them.
The cap number could change every few years to reflect changes in the overall revenue of schools. It’s not clear whether some money the schools already provide to their athletes — such as an academic reward of roughly $6,000 commonly referred to as Alston payments — would count toward that cap. Multiple sources did tell ESPN that donations from boosters are not included in the revenue formula.
How will they divide that money among their athletes?
There are no specific provisions in the proposed settlement that spell out how schools should distribute money to athletes, according to sources. Each individual school would be responsible for deciding which athletes to pay and sorting through the uncertainty around how that money would apply to Title IX regulations, per multiple sources.
Title IX requires colleges to provide equal opportunities for men and women to compete in varsity sports and provide equitable benefits to those athletes. The law, written long before athletes were earning money beyond their scholarships, does not clearly state how the federal government views direct payments to athletes. Does equitable treatment require a school to give the same dollar amount to men and women athletes in the new revenue-share model? Or would the payments be viewed more as a benefit that could be proportional to the money generated by each sport? Would scholarship dollars and additional revenue-share dollars be considered in the same financial category when balancing the Title IX ledgers?
“The truth is, no one knows,” a source told ESPN on Friday.
While the Department of Education or Congress could provide answers proactively, neither has demonstrated any urgency to do so at this point. Specific interpretations of Title IX often come through litigation, and in this instance, a group of athletes might need to file a lawsuit about how their school is handling these direct payments to establish clarity.
Until then, the most conservative approach for schools to ensure Title IX compliance would mean evenly splitting the new revenue-share dollars between men and women athletes. Sources say some schools might try to balance the overall spending by increasing scholarship opportunities on their women’s teams, but it remains unclear whether that would satisfy Title IX regulations. Others might seek a competitive advantage in football recruiting, for example, by arguing that equitable treatment for athletes in the case of revenue sharing should be based on the revenue their sports generate.
Sources also said the settlement won’t require schools to share money with all athletes or share it evenly among athletes — leaving those decisions up to individual athletic departments as well.
What happens to collectives and NIL payments?
According to a source, the settlement does not include any provision that would put an end to the booster collectives that currently serve as the main vehicle for paying athletes. School officials hope a settlement will create a way to strengthen the NCAA’s ability to enforce its rules, including its rule that requires NIL payments to be for a player’s market value as opposed to the current system, which frequently serves as a workaround for “pay-for-play” arrangements. However, drawing a distinction between those two types of payments would remain a difficult, nebulous task. Any attempt to completely eliminate the NIL collective market would take a substantial change in federal law provided by Congress.
The NCAA has created new rules this spring that allow schools to be more directly involved in finding NIL deals for their athletes. New state laws are also opening doors for the schools to use their own money to pay for an athlete’s NIL rights as opposed to those funds coming from a third party. The extent to which each school continues to be involved in finding NIL opportunities for its athletes in a future with revenue sharing could vary significantly.
“The feeling in the industry is that collectives are going to be forced to stay outside the universities, and it will become more of a discrepancy of the haves and have-nots,” said an industry source. “If you bring collectives in, any money raised would count toward the cap. But schools can hit the cap and still have collectives as third parties. That’s the fear, and why there needs to be regulation.”
What does this mean for major college basketball and leagues outside power conferences?
It’s still relatively uncertain how this would impact major college basketball schools outside of the power conferences.
Schools in the Big East, which is the most prominent basketball-forward league in the country, haven’t been given any formal guidance on how a settlement would trickle down to their level.
The prevailing sentiment is that leagues outside the power conferences named in the lawsuit, including basketball-forward leagues, will have the opportunity to opt into the same 22% revenue-share formula, which would be applied to their specific revenue.
The most expensive men’s college basketball rosters heading into next season are commanding $5 million to $7 million in NIL payments, per sources. It’s too early to determine whether leagues outside the power football conferences will be able to pay that much through revenue sharing.
The uncertainty about how the power conferences will settle the antitrust claims is leaving many administrators outside those leagues in what they describe as a difficult situation.
“All of the Group of 5 is in a wait-and-see mode, which is a precarious situation,” one source told ESPN. “It is extremely tough to lead athletic departments, universities and conferences and plan for the future — whether that be facilities, NIL, etc. — when you have no seat at the table to make the rules that will impact you.”
The Chicago White Sox are struggling in 2024. In September, the White Sox tied the 2003 Detroit Tigers for the third-most losses in a season in MLB history. Chicago is on track to break the modern major league record for most losses — by the expansion 1962 New York Mets.
Check out the historical rundown below:
Worst Records, MLB History
(Min. 150 Games Played; W-L, Win Pct)
1899 Cleveland Spiders: 20-134, .130
1916 Philadelphia A’s: 36-117, .235
1935 Boston Braves: 38-115, .248
1962 New York Mets: 40-120, .250
1904 Washington Senators: 38-113, .252
Most Losses in a Season, MLB History
(W-L, Win Pct)
1899 Cleveland Spiders: 20-134, .130
1962 New York Mets: 40-120, .250
2003 Detroit Tigers: 43-119, .265
1916 Philadelphia A’s: 36-117, .235
2018 Baltimore Orioles: 47-115, .290
1935 Boston Braves : 38-115, .248
For more MLB coverage, check out the ESPN hub page for breaking news, rankings, recaps, stats, standings, scores, schedules, and more.
Sports
‘You have to have a sense of humor’: How baseball’s all-time worst squad is coping with defeat
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Jeff Passan, ESPN
CHICAGO — Last week, hours after the Chicago White Sox‘s latest attempt to win a baseball game fell apart in typically absurd fashion, Davis Martin could only chuckle. Every White Sox player has found a coping mechanism to endure the 2024 season, and Martin’s is laughter. Unlike much of the sports world, he’s not snickering at the team, but rather at how every day seems to invite something more farcical than the previous.
Martin was the starting pitcher in that game, looking to secure Chicago’s first win at Guaranteed Rate Field in a month. Going winless at home for so long is almost impossible for a Major League Baseball team. The White Sox seem to specialize in acts of futility: Sometime in the next 10 days, they could lose their 121st game and pass the 1962 New York Mets for the most losses in an MLB season since the dawn of the 20th century. Never in baseball’s modern history has the game witnessed a team like the 2024 White Sox, whose commitment to the bit of playing a positively wretched brand of baseball has not waned even as the season has.
In only the past month, they offered third baseman Miguel Vargas running into outfielder Andrew Benintendi, and infielder Lenyn Sosa not knowing a between-innings throw from a catcher was coming to second base and wearing the ball off his face, and Andrew Vaughn hitting what looked like a walk-off home run only for Texas outfielder Travis Jankowski to reach over the fence and yank it back for what may be the catch of the year. In Martin’s start, a 6-4 loss, the Cleveland Guardians twice scored a pair of runs on infield singles, a laughable way for Chicago to drop its 15th straight game at home.
“You have to have a sense of humor,” Martin said. “You walk that fine line of being on the edge of losing your mind — always on that razor’s edge. We’re just watching it all, and we’re like, oh my gosh, this happens and this happens. Truly, it’s so many things.”
For 5½ months now, the White Sox have redefined losing in sports. Five NFL teams have ended a season winless, and in the NBA the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers went 9-73, and two years later the NHL’s Washington Capitals won eight of the 80 games they played, but nothing compares to the march of doom that is a cursed baseball season: 162 opportunities to plumb the reaches of ineptitude. These White Sox are not powerful, and they are not fast, and they field poorly, and they throw recklessly, and they pitch inconsistently, and they bungle fundamentals. They are a bad baseball team. They have earned their 36-115 record. They know this. They have tried to remedy it. They have failed.
So they do what they can to avoid the vortex of losing, the inertia of it all, poisoning their futures. What it’s doing to their present, on the other hand, is surprising. Over two games with the team last week, the clubhouse of perhaps the losingest team ever was not dour or depressed — not like one might expect from a group transcending baseball notoriety and permeating the grander sporting consciousness. White Sox players were shockingly well adjusted. Angry at the results but not brooding. Embarrassed by the losses but refusing to roll over. Handling their misfortune in a reasonable, healthy, mature fashion and not like losers who would cast blame and fight one another, as have past White Sox teams.
“We’ve talked about like, ‘Oh, we’re having a good time.’ We are,” said Martin, a 27-year-old right-hander who’s thankful to be back after he missed last season rehabilitating from Tommy John surgery. “Really, these are a great group of guys. And I think if there was any other group of guys in here, it would be the most miserable existence ever. People are like, ‘Oh, how are you not losing your mind?’ We’re a bunch of young idiots just trying to make sure we have a job next year.”
Plenty of them will return, the consequence of a thin farm system and a team planning to devote its financial resources not to free agents who could heal some of the on-field wounds but toward fixing internal systems long ignored by ownership. Even with a surfeit of talent, the chances of the White Sox being this bad again are minimal. It is a generational sort of bad, the kind that has forced players to ask themselves: Where, in this cascade of awfulness, can they find some good?
LOSING AT ANYTHING takes a toll. It irradiates self-worth. It evaporates motivation. Athletes in particular spend their entire lives building up psyches strong enough to spare them from the vagaries of failure. Every major league player has been felled and gotten back up. Anyone who reaches the big leagues has inherently won. Which makes this all so particularly diabolical. The night before Martin’s start, Sean Burke, a big, talented right-hander, made his major league debut in relief. He allowed one unearned run over three innings, but the loss still gnawed at him.
“I’ve been all around winning teams my whole life,” Burke said. “I won when I was 9 years old in Little League. I won when I was in high school. I won when I was in college. This is kind of the first time I’ve been on a team that hasn’t been winning a ton.”
The White Sox have lost a ton. They started their season 3-22, then won 11 of their next 19 games and offered a sliver of hope. It soon vanished. They lost 14 consecutive games between the end of May and beginning of June. They one-upped themselves with a 21-game skid that started before the All-Star break and ended after the trade deadline. Another 12-game losing streak bridged August and September. At one point, the White Sox lost 45 of 50 games, the second-worst stretch ever behind the 1916 Philadelphia A’s, who went 36-117-1.
Before the game Martin pitched, left-hander Garrett Crochet — the leader of the staff and the lone White Sox All-Star, making him a likely trade candidate amid this rebuild — was talking with nearby locker neighbor Jonathan Cannon, a 24-year-old rookie who had started the night before and pitched well, only for Chicago’s offense to get shut out for the 17th time this season.
Cannon and Crochet started going back and forth about the season, and what came of it wasn’t just an examination of the White Sox but a treatise on the slow-burning devastation of losing.
Cannon: “When you’re having a season like this, it feels like nothing’s going your way. When we played the game the other day against the Orioles [an 8-1 win Sept. 4], it just felt like balls are falling, line drives are going to people when we’re on the mound. It’s like, ‘Wow, this is great.'”
Crochet: “It seems like once an inning, we will give up the flare single and then every time that we hit the flare on offense and it’s like, ‘Oh, that one’s falling,’ someone dives and catches it.”
Cannon: “Even yesterday, the first inning, you get the first guy and then a little flare over the shortstop and it’s like, ‘Oh, not the cheap hit again.'”
Crochet: “Then we had a guy in scoring position and [Bryan] Ramos hits a ball 106 and [Guardians third baseman Jose] Ramirez falls down catching it. It’s like, ‘F—, man.'”
Cannon: “The peak of that was when Jankowski robbed Vaughn’s walk-off homer.”
Crochet: “Yeah!”
Cannon: “Just the feeling in the dugout — I can’t even describe what it was. I think we stared at each other for 30 minutes after and then we come back and it’s all over Instagram and everything, and it was arguably, because of the situation, maybe the best catch I’ve ever seen. And of course he just got put in the game for that inning.”
Crochet: “It was just an overwhelming feeling of ‘What the f—?'”
WHEN THAT FEELING is at its most overwhelming, Grady Sizemore tries to minimize it. Sizemore is the White Sox’s manager, appointed to the job in early August after the team fired Pedro Grifol, who over his 1½ seasons on the job won 89 games and lost 190. Before this season, Sizemore had never coached, but he made a strong enough impression as one of Chicago’s five major league coaches over the first four months that White Sox general manager Chris Getz, himself in his first full season, did not hesitate hiring him in an interim role. Over the last 45 games of the season, Getz wanted a different sort of approach than the intensity with which Grifol led — something more relaxed and nurturing.
Sizemore is 42 but could pass for 30. He is the only manager in MLB who wears a mullet — and he pulls it off with aplomb, framing a face that 20 years ago made him the most eligible bachelor in Cleveland. No manager in baseball can match Sizemore’s talent when he played for Cleveland in the mid-2000s. He made three All-Star Games by the time he turned 25 and looked destined for greatness before injuries waylaid his career. He retired at 32.
“I’ve kind of been in every scenario,” Sizemore said. “I’ve come up as a rookie, I’ve had some success. I’ve been a veteran who’s been more of a leader, and I’ve kind of been a guy who’s struggled with injuries and seen his play decline. I’ve gone through the whole gauntlet of what a player could go through. So I feel like I can understand where all the guys are at mentally and what they’re thinking.
“And then I took time away, too, had a family. I had to go through all of that, what it’s like to be a parent. It teaches you a lot of patience, and it teaches you how sometimes you have to say things over and over again. As a parent, it’s very hard. Even after you’ve figured it out, you haven’t figured it out. So I think the best part about where I’m at is I know that I haven’t figured anything out and that every day is a new day to learn something new and to get better.”
Sizemore’s approach reflects the revamp taking place at the top of the organization.
When owner Jerry Reinsdorf promoted Getz to GM after firing longtime executive vice president Kenny Williams and GM Rick Hahn last August, Getz hired an array of outsiders, an unfamiliar approach for an organization that was as insular as any at the behest of Reinsdorf, whose loyalty to employees has been a hallmark as well as a detriment. Brian Bannister, Getz’s former teammate in Kansas City and a longtime pitching guru, took control of the system’s arms. Josh Barfield and Paul Janish, both former big leaguers, are central in player-acquisition and player-development roles. And Brian Mahler — a former Harvard lacrosse player who went on to become a Marine and Navy SEAL before earning a law degree from Georgetown — joined the White Sox as director of leadership, culture and continuing education.
Mahler, who came into the organization having never worked in baseball, is at the heart of the overhaul in Chicago’s front office, and a committee headed by Mahler is expected to recommend a suite of changes for the organization to institute in the coming years. It’s a multiyear project with a focus, sources said, on optimizing resources, scaling processes and connecting departments. And Reinsdorf, who is 88, is backing it after years of wanting to win now.
He understands that doing so with the sort of roster that Chicago currently has is simply untenable unless he wants to spend heavily in free agency — something he has railed against for decades and never himself done as an owner. In a rare public statement last week, Reinsdorf said: “Everyone in this organization is extremely unhappy with the results of this season, that goes without saying. This year has been very painful for all, especially our fans. We did not arrive here overnight, and solutions won’t happen overnight either. Going back to last year, we have made difficult decisions and changes to begin building a foundation for future success. What has impressed me is how our players and staff have continued to work and bring a professional attitude to the ballpark each day despite a historically difficult season. No one is happy with the results, but I commend the continued effort.”
Fans appalled by the degradation of the White Sox in the two decades since their 2005 World Series title focus their discontent on Reinsdorf. The White Sox hold a unique place in Chicago’s sporting landscape. Being a Chicago sports fan imputes a particular sort of pain; being a Chicago sports fan who roots for the White Sox is a special subset of masochism. Their fan base is fiercely loyal and protective — of a history with ugliness (the 1919 Black Sox) and oddity (Disco Demolition Night and the myriad ideas of Bill Veeck) and richness (Hall of Famers Eddie Collins and Ed Walsh and Luke Appling and Nellie Fox and Minnie Miñoso and Frank Thomas). The White Sox’s drought before 2005 dated back 88 years, and yet their wait and championship were overshadowed by the Cubs’.
Now they can’t even tank like the Cubs did. New rules instituted in the last collective bargaining agreement penalize large-market teams like the White Sox by keeping them from receiving a draft lottery pick in consecutive seasons. Consequently, following what could be the worst season in baseball history, the highest Chicago can select in the draft next year is 10th. Embracing awfulness doesn’t even pay anymore.
Which is why Sizemore’s desire to build up these players and prepare them to win appeals to the White Sox front office. They’ve got some minor league talent — 19-year-old Noah Schultz is the best left-handed pitching prospect in baseball, and Hagen Smith, taken with the fifth pick in this year’s draft, isn’t far behind — but with money that otherwise would have gone to payroll helping fund the recommendations of the Mahler-led committee, the players here now will comprise a majority of the roster next season.
“We were very intentional on wanting to create an atmosphere that remained healthy for players to show up every day even though we’re faced with challenges,” Getz said. “These guys have shown up every day looking to compete knowing each game may be an uphill battle. There aren’t a lot of wins in our record. We’re looking to find wins in development, and the best way to do that is to have the best attitude possible about where we’re growing and what we’re learning.”
That falls on Sizemore. He enjoys managing, really enjoys it, even amid all the losses. When he walks through the clubhouse after games and pats players on the back, they appreciate his demeanor. He is positive without sounding fake, simultaneously thoughtful and supportive. In the offseason, as Getz chooses a new full-time manager, Sizemore’s efforts over the season’s final two months are almost certain to earn him serious consideration.
“You can focus on the negative all day,” Sizemore said. “And I know we’ve done our share of that too, but at the end of the day, I think this team lost a lot of confidence. We’ve been told for so long that they’re not doing this right. They’re not doing that right. And I just think that this game is too hard to play if you don’t have confidence. So all I’ve tried to do is try to restore some of that with the guys by being positive.
“We’ve had some tough losses and I’m like, ‘Don’t put your head down. Turn the music up. That was a good effort. I don’t care that we lost, we still played hard and we fought. I know mistakes are going to happen. Let’s try to limit the mental ones and the physical ones are going to happen, but let’s get better at playing together, communicating and trying to just be the best version of ourselves that day.'”
THE BEST VERSION of the 2024 Chicago White Sox showed up over the weekend. They finally won a home game after 16 straight losses, and then, for the first time in 2½ months, they won consecutive games, beating the Oakland Athletics, who themselves have known the feeling of ineptitude in recent years. On Monday, they extended their winning streak to three — one shy of their season’s best — with an 8-4 shellacking of the Los Angeles Angels. After wins, Nicky Lopez, the veteran infielder and a leader of the position players, assumes his clubhouse DJ role, cranks the music and relishes what victories mean when they’re in such short supply.
“We obviously cherish ’em a little bit more,” Lopez said. “The general public doesn’t know how hard it is to win a big league baseball game. The NFL, the NBA — it is hard to win a game, let alone consistently win games. But these ones are a little bit better. They’re hard to come by right now. And it always seems like there’s that one inning or that one play or that one moment just kind of gets away from us. When we put it together and get a win, we celebrate a little bit more.”
In the cascade of awfulness, this is where they find the good. In the positivity of Sizemore. In Benintendi, the veteran outfielder, winning Saturday’s game with a walk-off home run. In Fraser Ellard, the 26-year-old rookie reliever, recording his first major league save to close out Sunday’s victory and secure the win for Burke, who looked like an honest-to-goodness major league starter.
Five days earlier, Burke, 24, called his debut “the best day of my life” — a reminder that failure as a team and success for an individual are not mutually exclusive. Another awful day for the White Sox can be the best day of Burke’s life, and another loss for the White Sox can be another day that Lopez, a native of Naperville, a Chicago suburb, gets to play for his hometown team. There have been those moments for all 62 players who have worn a White Sox uniform this season, and as much as the world will remember 120 or 121 or 125 or however many losses Chicago ultimately books, the players themselves are not wired that way.
“I know what our record is, but we still expect to win,” Crochet said. “It’s not an overwhelming thing like, ‘Oh my god, we finally won a game.’ It’s not like that. We go into every game expecting to win. It’s just a matter of actually executing that.”
For at least a small stretch in September, that’s exactly what they’re doing. Suddenly their winning percentage has crept up to .238, better than the 1916 A’s. It’s the manifestation of Sizemore’s words. It can’t be this bad every year, won’t be this bad next year, even if the White Sox trade Crochet and center fielder Luis Robert Jr. and don’t spend any money this winter and waltz into 2025 with a roster even worse on paper than this season’s.
“Everything we’re learning this season is going to pay huge dividends for the young core,” Martin said. “It has to. Because otherwise, what’s the point?”
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Max Olson, ESPN Staff Writer
AUSTIN, Texas — Arch Manning arrived in rather modest style.
Texas‘ team buses pulled up right on schedule outside Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium at 4:40 p.m. Saturday. Manning stepped onto San Jacinto Boulevard in a navy suit paired with a white shirt and a brown striped tie. On his shoulders, he carried a black backpack as well as the modest weight of Texas fans’ hopes and dreams.
Unlike most of his Longhorns teammates, though, Manning did not wear headphones. On the team’s traditional Stadium Stampede walk into the stadium, lined with fans cheering while holding phones and horns up, the young quarterback took it all in.
“You need some time to just appreciate the opportunity,” Manning said later. “I’m blessed to be in this situation. I don’t take it for granted.”
The fifth-largest crowd in school history packed into DKR to catch a glimpse of the future of Texas football, an extended preview of how a five-star talent with a legendary pedigree will lead this program a year from now.
What those 102,850 folks witnessed during No. 1 Texas’ 51-3 blowout of UL Monroe on Saturday night was a bit more reasonable than their wildest expectations. Manning’s performance in his first college start reminded everyone he’s right on schedule, right where he’s supposed to be in his developmental process.
The redshirt freshman played a lot like a redshirt freshman: Great and not great, with a healthy mix of highlights plays and helpful lessons. He gave himself a C-plus for the night after completing 15 of 29 passes for 258 yards with two touchdowns and two interceptions.
Manning might have the potential for greatness in Steve Sarkisian’s offense, but he has still played in only five college games. Six and a half hours after he first arrived at the stadium, he was feeling the difference.
“The games feel long when you’re in there for the majority of it,” Manning joked. “They’re a lot longer than high school. That was most surprising.”
The Longhorns losing starting QB Quinn Ewers to an oblique injury last week against UTSA opened the door for Manning to wow the college football world. He came in cold off the bench, delivered five touchdowns and made everything look a little too easy. It was a stunning display from a kid with 11 career pass attempts at the college level, a backup with a ton of fame but not much film.
For a week, Manning got to be QB1 while Ewers focused on getting healthy. The sharp uptick in Longhorns fans donning Manning’s No. 16 jersey was easy to spot around campus on Saturday afternoon. Inside the stadium team shop, authentic Ewers and Manning jerseys were going for $149.99. There were plenty of Ewers jerseys on the rack three hours before kickoff, but the Manning threads were long gone. The shop produced another run of his jerseys this week in anticipation of demand, but they went fast.
Brian and Jessica McCreary both donned No. 16 jerseys as they awaited the team’s arrival on Bevo Boulevard. They bought theirs last year. They have Ewers jerseys at home, too. The husband and wife were eager to see more from Manning, but Brian sees the big picture as clearly as Texas’ head coach.
“If you know football,” he said, “you know Quinn is our quarterback.”
Ewers didn’t enjoy missing a game but stayed upbeat on Texas’ sideline. The 25-game starter, wearing his No. 3 jersey over a jacket, had an earpiece in his left ear to hear playcalls and chatted with Manning throughout. But the assignment for the night wasn’t to coach him up. Ewers needed to get Manning to relax.
“We talked about him doing his best to keep it light with Arch,” Sarkisian said. “Because when Arch keeps it light, he’s really, really good. We try to not let him get too, too focused.”
Manning needed that encouragement early. His opening drive ended abruptly when he forced a throw under pressure on second-and-4 that was picked off. He knew he should’ve thrown it away. Rookie mistake. On the bench, left tackle Kelvin Banks Jr. and center Jake Majors talked him down.
“It’s gonna happen, bro,” Banks said he told him. “Keep pushing.”
“Just keep being you,” Majors said.
“He holds himself to a high standard, which is good,” Banks said afterward, “so he definitely can have his moments where he gets real hard on himself.”
Sarkisian demands that next-play mentality to operate his system. The message in the week leading up to Manning’s first start: Don’t overanalyze, just execute. The game plan called for deep shots on ULM’s secondary. Manning hit quite a few, picking up 210 of his passing yards on eight completions.
The tradeoff? “When you get in that mode, sometimes you can start to get a little bit greedy,” Sarkisian said. Ask Manning what throws he’d like back and he can think of a few overthrows and underthrows in the second half that could’ve been checkdowns to easier completions.
“He was going to have some lessons learned,” Sarkisian said, “and I think that’s what tonight was about.”
It was never going to be about a quarterback controversy. Sarkisian made sure to set the record straight Thursday. It’s not just that Ewers is his quarterback. He foresees Ewers leading a national title run, going to New York for the Heisman Trophy ceremony and proving he’s a top-five draft pick. All of those goals are still on the table.
You won’t hear many head coaches publicly put that out there, but it speaks to Sarkisian’s confidence. Colt McCoy, back in town to be inducted into the Texas Athletics Hall of Honor, has lived with those expectations.
The last quarterback to lead Texas to a national title game sees greatness in both. McCoy knows Manning getting these reps will ultimately be beneficial for the entire team over the long haul of a 12-team College Football Playoff and the deep run this team is trying to make. And the Longhorns legend knows better than anyone what it takes to carry that weight.
“There’s a lot of pressure playing quarterback at the University of Texas, there’s a lot of expectations, everything that goes along with sort of being the guy,” McCoy said. “For them, I would just say you have a wonderful team around you.
“I mean, this team is built to win a championship. Just go out there and execute and stay focused and lean on each other.”
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