What to know ahead of this week’s House v. NCAA settlement votes
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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 trajectory of major college sports is set to bend this week to give athletes a significantly larger portion of the billions of dollars they help generate for their schools.
The industry’s top leaders will gather in the next few days to vote on the proposed terms of a landmark settlement. The deal would create a new framework for schools to share millions of dollars with their athletes in the future and create a fund of more than $2.7 billion to pay former athletes for past damages.
The settlement would also mark the end of at least three major federal antitrust lawsuits looming as existential threats to the NCAA and its schools, and would resolve the most pressing — and arguably most formidable — legal challenges facing the college sports industry. The deal would not, however, solve all of the NCAA’s problems or even provide clear answers to many crucial questions about how a more professionalized version of major college sports might look in the near future.
Here are some of the details and unsolved questions shaping conversations during what could be a monumental week in the history of college sports.
Terms of the settlement
While several important details are not yet finalized, sources have confirmed the following general structure of an agreement to settle the House v. NCAA case:
The NCAA’s national office would foot the bill for a $2.7 billion payment for past damages over the course of the next 10 years. The NCAA would generate the majority of that money partly by cutting back on the funds that it distributes to Division I schools on an annual basis.
The power conferences would agree to a forward-looking revenue sharing structure that would give schools the ability to spend a maximum of roughly $20 million per year on direct payments to athletes. The $20 million figure could grow larger every few years if school revenue grows. Each school would be left to decide how to allocate that money while remaining compliant with Title IX laws.
The plaintiffs, which could include all current Division I athletes, would give up their right to file future antitrust claims against the NCAA’s rules. This would include dropping two pending antitrust cases (Hubbard v. NCAA and Carter v. NCAA) that also have been filed by plaintiff attorneys Steve Berman and Jeffrey Kessler.
The sides would also agree to renew the class on an annual basis to include new athletes. New athletes — mostly incoming freshmen — would have to declare that they are opting out of the class in order to challenge the NCAA’s restrictions on payments in the future.
This rolling new class of athletes would, in effect, retire the most impactful tool that has been used over the past decade to chip away at the NCAA’s amateurism rules. Previously, Berman and Kessler needed only one athlete to lend his or her name to a case that would aim to remove illegal restrictions for all college athletes. Moving forward, a lawyer pushing to provide more benefits for athletes will first have to organize and gain commitments from a large group of players who opted out of the settlement.
Athletic and university administrators have long argued that their athletes are generally happy with what the schools provide and that the last decade’s lawsuits are the product of agitating lawyers and advocates. A settlement would not close the door on bargaining with athletes in the future, but it would make it less appealing for attorneys to test the legality of the NCAA’s rules without an explicit demand from a large swath of athletes.
While individual athletes could still opt out and sue the NCAA, the damages for a single athlete or small group of athletes would be far smaller. So, in practice, the House case settlement would provide schools with protection from future suits by removing the financial incentives that make these cases — which often takes years to fight — worthwhile for a plaintiffs’ attorney.
Class action cases have been an important tool to date for plaintiff attorneys because organizing college athletes — a busy and transient group of young people — is extremely difficult. (Although there are a number of groups actively attempting to form college players’ associations.) Some sports antitrust experts, such as Baruch College law professor Marc Edelman, say that, by making future class action lawsuits more difficult, this settlement would give schools ample license to collude on restricting payment to players. Edelman said this conflict could give a judge pause when deciding to approve the terms of the settlement.
Who’s in?
Attorneys representing the plaintiff class of all Division I athletes proposed terms to all defendants involved in the lawsuit in late April. To settle the case fully, the NCAA and each of the five power conferences will have to agree to the terms. Leaders from each group are expected to hold votes by Thursday.
The NCAA’s Board of Governors is scheduled to meet Wednesday.
The Big Ten presidents are planning to meet in person and vote this week as part of the league’s regularly scheduled meetings. That league has long been considered the major conference with the least amount of pushback on the vote. ACC presidents, SEC leaders and Big 12 leaders will also vote this week. In an odd twist, the Pac-12’s membership from this past season will gather virtually to vote, as the 10 departing programs will not vote in the conferences they plan to join next year. Since the Pac-12 was part of the suit as a 12-team league, the 12 presidents and chancellors of those schools will vote as a 12-school unit.
While the NCAA and conferences have to opt in, any athletes involved in the class will have an opportunity to opt out once the attorneys hammer out the details of settlement terms. Any athletes who opt out would retain the right to sue the NCAA in the future, but they would miss out on their cut of the $2.7 billion in damages. On the flip side, it’s unlikely that a current athlete who opts out would give up the opportunity to receive the forward-looking revenue share money, according to legal sources.
Next steps
If all parties agree to the broader terms of a settlement of the House case this week, their attorneys will get to work drafting the fine print of an agreement. That process can take weeks, according to attorneys with experience settling complex antitrust cases.
The judge overseeing the case, Judge Claudia Wilken of California’s Northern District, would then hold a preliminary hearing to review the terms of the settlement. If the judge approves, notice would be sent to all athletes providing them with a chance to formally object or opt out. And finally, the agreement would go back to the courthouse where Wilken would consider any arguments presented in objection before deciding whether the settlement meets her approval.
The Fontenot Case
Alex Fontenot is a former Colorado football player who sued the NCAA in late November for restricting athletes from sharing in television rights revenue. He filed his case a few weeks before Berman and Kessler (the two attorneys representing athletes in the current settlement negotiations) filed a similar complaint called Carter v. NCAA.
Both Kessler and the NCAA have argued that the two complaints are similar and should be consolidated into a single case, which would likely lead to the Fontenot case being part of the pending settlement talks. Fontenot’s attorneys do not want to consolidate and will present their argument for why the cases should be separate in a Colorado courtroom this Thursday.
Garrett Broshuis, Fontenot’s attorney, said he has concerns about how the House settlement could make it harder for future athletes to fight for more rights. Broshuis, a former pitcher at Missouri, has spent most of the last decade successfully suing Major League Baseball to help minor leaguers negotiate better working conditions.
The judge in the Fontenot case has not yet made a ruling on whether it should qualify as a class action lawsuit. If the House settlement is finalized, any college athlete would have to opt out of the settlement in order to take part in the Fontenot case. Opt-outs or objections raised during the House settlement hearings could give Judge Wilken additional pause in approving its terms.
Would Fontenot and other athletes who are working with his attorneys on this case opt out of the House settlement in hopes of pursuing a better deal in their own case?
“To the extent we can, we’re monitoring the media reports surrounding the proposed settlement,” Broshuis told ESPN this weekend. “Once the actual terms are available, we’ll closely scrutinize them. We do have concerns about what’s being reported so far, especially when it comes to the ability for future generations of athletes to continue to fight for their rights.”
Scholarship and roster limits
In the sprint to settle, there’s a bevy of details that are going to be left to college sports leaders to work out in coming months.
The inclusion of roster caps could impact college sports on the field. Right now, college sports operate with scholarship limits. For example, Division I football is limited to 85 scholarships, baseball to 11.7, and softball to 12. Meanwhile, Division I football rosters run to nearly 140 players on the high end, while baseball rosters top out around 40 players, and softball averages about 25 players.
Leaders in college sports are considering uniform roster caps instead of scholarship limits, which could be viewed as another collusive restraint on spending. This would give schools the choice to give out 20 baseball scholarships, for example, if they wished.
If rosters are capped at a certain number, the ripple effect could be more scholarships and smaller roster sizes. The viability of walk-ons, especially for rosters with dozens of them, could be at risk.
Sources caution that this won’t be determined for months, as formalizing roster caps are not part of the settlement. Sources have told ESPN that football coaches in particular will be vocal about radical changes, as walk-ons are part of the fabric of the sport. Stetson Bennett (Georgia), Baker Mayfield (Oklahoma) and Hunter Renfrow (Clemson) are all recent examples of transformative walk-ons.
The future of collectives
Multiple sources have told ESPN that some school leaders are hopeful the future revenue sharing model will eliminate or significantly decrease the role that NIL collectives play in the marketplace for athletes.
While an additional $20 million flowing directly from schools to athletes could theoretically satisfy the competitive market for talent and decrease the interest of major donors from contributing to collectives, experts say there is no clear legal mechanism that could be included in a settlement that would eliminate collectives. Those groups — which are independent from schools even if they often operate in a hand-in-glove fashion — could continue to use NIL opportunities to give their schools an edge in recruiting by adding money on top of the revenue share that an athlete might get from his or her school.
For the schools with the deepest pockets or most competitive donors, a $20 million estimated revenue share would be in reality more of a floor than a ceiling for athlete compensation. Most well-established collectives are planning to continue operating outside of their school’s control, according to Russell White, the president of TCA, a trade association of more than 30 different collectives associated with power conference schools.
“It just makes $20 million the new baseline,” White told ESPN. “Their hope is that this tamps down donor fatigue and boosters feel like they won’t have to contribute [to collectives]. But these groups like to win. There’s no chance this will turn off those competitive juices.”
How would the damages money be distributed?
Any athlete who played a Division I sport from 2016 through present day has a claim to some of the roughly $2.7 billion in settlement money. The plaintiffs’ attorneys will also receive a significant portion of the money. The damages represent money athletes might have made through NIL deals if the NCAA’s rules had not restricted them in the past.
It’s not clear if the plaintiffs will disburse the money equally among the whole class or assign different values based on an athlete’s probable earning power during his or her career. Some class action settlements hire specialists to determine each class member’s relative value and how much of the overall payment they should receive. That could be a painfully detailed process in this case, which includes tens of thousands of athletes in the class.
The NCAA also plans to pay that money over the course of the next 10 years, according to sources. It’s not clear if every athlete in the class would get an annual check for the next decade or if each athlete would be paid in one lump sum with some of them waiting years longer than others to receive their cut.
Are there any roadblocks to settlement expected?
In short, the NCAA’s schools and conferences will likely move forward with the agreement this week despite unhappiness in how the NCAA will withhold the revenue from schools to pay the $2.7 billion over the next decade.
There is significant pushback among leagues outside the power leagues on the proposed payment structure. According to a memo the NCAA sent to all 32 Division I conferences this week, the NCAA will use more than $1 billion from reserves, catastrophic insurance, new revenue and budget cuts to help pay the damages, sources told ESPN this week. The memo also states that an additional $1.6 billion would come from reductions in NCAA distributions, 60 percent of which would come from the 27 Division I conferences outside of the so-called power five football leagues. The other 40 percent would come from cuts the power conferences, which are the named defendants with the NCAA in the case.
The basketball-centric Big East is slated to sacrifice between $5.4 million and $6.6 million annually over the next decade, and the similarly basketball-centric West Coast Conference between $3.5 million and $4.3 million annually, according to a source familiar with the memo. The smallest leagues would lose out on just under $2 million annually, which is nearly 20% of what they receive annually from the NCAA.
(The NCAA would withhold money from six funds across Division I leagues — the basketball performance fund via the NCAA tournament, grants-in-aid, the academic enhancement fund, sports sponsorships, conference grants and the academic performance fund.)
In an e-mail obtained by ESPN from Big East commissioner Val Ackerman to her athletic directors and presidents on Saturday morning, she said the Big East has “strong objections” to the damages framework. She wrote that she’s relayed those to NCAA president Charlie Baker.
The 22 conferences that don’t have FBS football — known as the CCA22 — have also been engaged in conversations about their disappointment with the damages proposal, according to sources.
Per a source, some members of the CCA22 are planning on sending a letter to the NCAA requesting the responsibility be flipped — the power conferences contributing to 60 percent of the damages and the other 27 leagues contributing 40 percent. In her message, Ackerman wrote she expects former FBS football players will be “the primary beneficiaries of the NIL ‘back pay’ amounts” — suggesting that the damages may not be shared equally among athletes.
Ackerman’s letter does mention the widely held belief in the industry that it may be tough for any significant change: “At this stage, it is unclear how much time or leverage we will have to alter the plan the NCAA and [power conferences] have orchestrated.”
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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