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SEATTLE — Texas Rangers shortstop Corey Seager will undergo surgery to repair a sports hernia, ending the All-Star shortstop’s third season with the team, general manager Chris Young said Thursday.

Seager was examined by doctors in Arizona earlier this week and was expected to undergo the procedure Friday, Young said. It’s the second sports hernia surgery for Seager in the past 12 months, this one on the opposite side of his abdomen from where the first surgery was done.

“Obviously a tough decision but with where we are at this point in the season, felt like it was a prudent decision in order for him to make a full recovery, have a strong offseason and be ready for spring training,” Young said ahead of the first of four games against the Mariners.

Seager was put on the 10-day injured list on Sept. 4 because of right hip discomfort that he had been dealing with for about a month.

The reigning World Series MVP sat out almost all of spring training after surgery in January to repair a sports hernia. Last week, Seager said he hoped to play again this season but was also aware he would need a full offseason to get ready for 2025.

“You can’t miss two offseasons,” Seager said. “You’ve got to be healthy and get back into the work and get back into shape. Didn’t really have any buildup last year coming into the season. It’s something that you need to have.”

Seager hit .278 with 30 home runs and 74 RBIs in 123 games. He reached 30 homers for the third season in a row since signing a 10-year, $325 million free agent contract with Texas.

After his brief spring training, Seager had only two homers and eight RBIs in his first 29 regular-season games. But the 30-year-old hit .296 with 27 homers and 66 RBIs since May 3.

“Corey was playing through some discomfort and he’s so important to us and our future, to ask him to continue to play and finish out the season in pain where he could compromise himself or make himself worse, it made no sense,” Young said. “The right decision here was to go ahead and have the operation and make a full recovery.”

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OSU, Texas open as betting faves for ’26 CFP title

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OSU, Texas open as betting faves for '26 CFP title

The top two favorites to win next season’s College Football Playoff will square off in Week 1, when Ohio State hosts Texas on Aug. 30.

The Longhorns and the defending-champion Buckeyes enter the offseason as the favorites to win the 2025-26 College Football Playoff at sportsbooks. Texas, which is poised to begin the Arch Manning era, opened as the national title favorite at +450 at ESPN BET, followed by the Buckeyes (+500) and Georgia (+600). Ohio State is the favorite at other sportsbooks, but those three teams top the early odds across the betting market.

Oregon and Penn State, each at +750, round out the teams with odds shorter than 10-1 in ESPN BET’s opening numbers.

Ohio State held off Notre Dame in Monday’s College Football Playoff National Championship game, capping a dominant postseason run. The Fighting Irish opened at +1500 to win next season’s title at ESPN BET.

Manning is expected to be the Longhorns’ starting quarterback with Quinn Ewers declaring for the NFL draft. FanDuel has Manning as the second favorite to win next season’s Heisman Trophy, behind LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier.

The transfer portal has added to the challenges sportsbooks face when creating odds to win the following season’s national championship.

“We will take our power ratings for 2025 and make the proper adjustments to account for recruiting, returning production and transfer portal changes,” said Joey Feazel, a trader at Caesars Sportsbook. “It is a challenging process at times, but year after year, we are getting better at it.”

The preseason betting favorite to capture the national championship has not won it since Alabama in 2017.

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Irish loss ‘falls on my shoulders,’ Freeman says

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Irish loss 'falls on my shoulders,' Freeman says

ATLANTA — Following his team’s 34-23 loss to Ohio State in Monday night’s College Football Playoff National Championship game, Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman sat in the middle of his two teary-eyed team captains and took ownership for a multitude of mistakes that ultimately were too much to overcome when it mattered most.

With quarterback Riley Leonard sitting to his right and sixth-year senior linebacker Jack Kiser on his left, Freeman said there were uncharacteristic mistakes and breakdowns in communication that put the Irish in a 24-point hole in the third quarter they couldn’t overcome.

“You’re always making mistakes, but those type of detrimental mistakes when you play a really, really good football team cost you points,” Freeman said. “I think that’s probably the biggest thing that has stuck out to me even in between series, the communication. ‘Hey, we’re good, we got it.’ Well, we can’t make mistakes. It falls on my shoulders. And as the head coach, we have to prepare and be better prepared for this moment. These guys gave everything they got.”

Notre Dame, which was seeking its first national title since 1988, had its 13-game winning streak snapped and suffered its first loss since Sept. 7 against Northern Illinois. After opening with an 18-play, 75-yard scoring drive, during which Leonard ran nine times for 34 carries, including the game’s first touchdown, Notre Dame’s offense fell flat.

Leonard completed just one pass longer than 5 yards in the first half, and two of his five completions were thrown at or behind the line of scrimmage. His average completion was just 2.2 yards.

“We couldn’t run Riley every play,” Freeman said. “It’s not right for Riley, and it’s not going to sustain the success we needed offensively. We ran him a whole bunch that first series, and you look at the second series, we had two penalties, which ended up forcing us to punt, and in the third series, we had the miscommunication with the muffed snap, and that’s the end of the half.”

After the game, Leonard apologized “to everybody for the way that I played after that drive in the second quarter because it’s unacceptable.” He finished with two passing touchdowns and one rushing touchdown, becoming the second FBS player this season with 20 passing touchdowns and 15 rushing.

“You see the next three drives after that, penalties and miscommunications,” Leonard said. “And all that stuff is on me. That first drive we just came out and played Notre Dame football, took advantage of our matchups when we had to. We just drove the ball down the field. We had to run the ball a little bit. Everything was just clicking.

“Then the next couple drives maybe I got relaxed a little bit, and I can’t let that happen,” he said. “… These are things that aren’t necessarily physical but just like the mental side of things that I can’t make certain mistakes. I’ve just got to live with that and respond.”

In the first half, 20 of Ohio State’s 33 plays were run in Notre Dame territory (61%). Notre Dame couldn’t get off the field on third down, and Ohio State quarterback Will Howard completed each of his first 13 passes, and he was 11-for-11 in the first half targeting wide receivers.

There was one completion, though, that might be remembered more than the rest. With 2:38 left in the game, Ohio State was facing a third-and-11 from its 34-yard line when Howard connected with freshman phenom Jeremiah Smith for a 56-yard completion. It was the first time Smith was targeted in the second half. The play eventually set up Ohio State’s 33-yard field goal that sealed the win.

“It was do or die,” Freeman said. “It was that type of down. If they run it and they get a first down — we’ve got to get them stopped, and we thought at that moment the best way to get them stopped is to run zero pressure. We have to have faith at some point that we can make a play.

“There was times in the second half that we did in man coverage, but he’s a heck of a player,” Freeman said of Smith. “He’s difficult to cover. You want to play zone, and they’ll find ways to pick you apart. You want to play man, they’ll find ways to get him the ball. It’s a talented offense with that situation right there.”

Kiser, who had a hard time reflecting on his time at Notre Dame without choking up, said in spite of the loss, Notre Dame is heading in the right direction.

“I think when you look at the six years I’ve been here, what I remember is the people,” said Kiser, who got an encouraging pat on his knee from Freeman while he was talking. “From when I was a small underclassman just trying to learn the ways, looking at a Drew White, Bo Bauer, to being a guy running with my boys in JD [Bertrand] and Marist [Liufau], and then this year coming back and feeling like I had a chip on my shoulder and getting to meet amazing guys like Riley coming in and just kind of going on the journey we went on.

“To have Coach Freeman — yeah, it’s about the people,” he said, his voice breaking up. “It’s the people that’s made this place different.”

In the fourth quarter, on fourth-and-goal from the 9-yard line, Freeman opted for a 27-yard field goal instead of keeping the offense on the field. Mitch Jeter‘s kick sailed into the left upright, and the metallic clink of the ricochet could be heard in Mercedes Benz Stadium. Ohio State coach Ryan Day raised his hands in celebration.

Freeman said that had it been a shorter fourth down, he probably would have gone for it. Notre Dame finished this season 4-for-10 on kicks inside the 40, the worst field goal percentage on those kicks in the FBS.

“I just thought instead of being down 16, let’s try to go down 13,” he said. “I know it’s still a two-score game, but you have a better probability of getting 14 points than you do 16 points. If it was a shorter fourth-and-goal situation, I probably would have gone for it, but I just felt fourth-and-9 was not a great chance for us to make that and decided to kick it, and we didn’t make it.”

Still, Freeman said the journey Notre Dame has been on this season and the players in the locker room made him better.

“You sit up here and you listen to these two guys speak and the passion they have for Notre Dame and each other in that locker room. I’m just sitting here listening like this is one of the greatest gifts in life is to be able to be the leader of this program because you have great young people like this that share the blame — share the success when you win and own the blame when you lose. But I’m better because of them,” he said.

“But we just have to be better. I’ve got to make sure we prepare better for this next opportunity that we have in the future.”

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Day, Buckeyes end ‘great story’ with CFP crown

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Day, Buckeyes end 'great story' with CFP crown

ATLANTA — Maybe Ohio State football fans will like coach Ryan Day now.

Fifty-one days after suffering the worst loss of his career, Day guided the No. 8-seeded Buckeyes to their first national championship in 10 years with a 34-23 victory over seventh-seeded Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff National Championship game presented by AT&T on Monday night.

“The story gets to get told now,” Day said. “It’s a great story about a bunch of guys who have overcome some really tough situations. There was a point where there was a lot of people that counted us out, and we just kept swinging and kept fighting.

“It’s the reason you get into coaching, to see guys overcome things, learn life lessons and then reach their dreams. This is what happened tonight.”

The Buckeyes led 31-7 midway through the third quarter, but the Fighting Irish trimmed their deficit to eight points with a little more than four minutes remaining in the contest.

Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard threw a 34-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Jaden Greathouse with 3:03 left in the third and tossed a 2-point conversion to tailback Jeremiyah Love to make it 31-15. After a late defensive stop, Leonard then found Greathouse again for a 30-yard touchdown, and Beaux Collins converted the 2-point attempt on a throw from fellow wideout Jordan Faison to make it 31-23 with 4:15 left.

The Buckeyes finally put away the Irish when quarterback Will Howard threw a deep ball to freshman wide receiver Jeremiah Smith, who beat cornerback Christian Gray for a 56-yard gain to the Irish’s 10-yard line. That led to Jayden Fielding‘s 33-yard field goal, putting the Buckeyes up by 11 points with 26 seconds remaining.

The victory was redemption for Day, whose team fell to rival Michigan, the so-called “School Up North,” for the fourth straight time in a stunning 13-10 defeat at home on Nov. 30. That loss, in which the Buckeyes were 21-point favorites, knocked Ohio State out of the Big Ten championship game.

Day and his players were booed mercilessly as they left the field that day.

“There’s a lot of things that certainly have an effect on you and your family,” Day said. “But you know, when you sign up for this job, that’s what you sign up for. You’ve got to be strong enough to withstand those storms to come out the back end, and now it’s an even better story.”

That defeat didn’t eliminate Ohio State from the first 12-team CFP. The Buckeyes took down No. 9-seeded Tennessee in the first round, top-seeded Oregon in the quarterfinals and 5-seed Texas in the semis before beating Notre Dame in their 16th game of the season.

That was what made Monday night so special for Day and everyone around him.

“Look, our program is never going to be defined by one other program — never,” Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork said. “That doesn’t mean anything about de-emphasizing [the Michigan rivalry]. We will never be defined by somebody else; we take the lead. We’re not going to let others define who we are and what we stand for.”

Ohio State’s players said Day accepted some blame for coming up short against Michigan again. But the shocking defeat might have been what the Buckeyes needed to capture the seventh national title in program history.

“We had to address all the issues we had on the team,” Buckeyes defensive tackle Tyleik Williams said. “Everybody spoke up and just fixed those problems that we had. The leadership on this team is like I’ve never seen. That wouldn’t have happened a couple years ago.”

With a 70-10 record, Day has the second-best winning percentage (87.5) among coaches with at least 80 FBS games. Only Walter Camp, who coached at Stanford and Yale in the late 1800s, had a better winning percentage (90.7).

“I don’t pay attention to [the criticism],” Ohio State offensive coordinator Chip Kelly said. “I don’t know what else you can do besides winning a national championship.”

And with Michigan having claimed the final four-team playoff following the 2023 season, the Big Ten captured consecutive national titles for the first time since 1940 to 1942, when Minnesota won back-to-back championships and Ohio State added a third.

Monday’s game also was redemption for Howard, the Kansas State transfer who struggled in his first start against Michigan. Against Notre Dame, Howard completed 17 of 21 passes for 231 yards with two touchdowns and also ran 16 times for 57 yards.

Buckeyes running back Quinshon Judkins, an Ole Miss transfer, rushed 11 times for 100 yards with three TDs in total. Smith caught five passes for 88 yards and one score.

Leonard led the Irish with 255 yards on 22-for-31 passing with two touchdowns. Greathouse caught six passes for 128 yards and a pair of scores.

This one was especially satisfying for the Big Ten because it came in the SEC’s backyard. The SEC was left out of the CFP title game for the second straight season, which hadn’t happened since 2004 and 2005.

Notre Dame, which was trying to capture its first national championship since 1988, had a 13-game winning streak snapped. It was Ohio State’s seventh straight victory against the Irish.

“We didn’t get it done, and it hurts,” Irish coach Marcus Freeman said. “My job is to figure out why, and I will. But I told these guys, they’ve left this program better. I don’t care if you were here for one year or you’ve been here for six years, our program is in a better place.

“The outlook of Notre Dame football is extremely high. As long as the people in that locker room that come back understand what it takes, the work these guys have put in, there’s a lot of success in our future.”

Ohio State looks loaded under Day, as well. And it seems like he’ll finally have Buckeyes fans behind him — at least until they play Michigan again in 313 days.

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