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ORLANDO, Fla. — Miami athletics director Dan Radakovich said Sunday the College Football Playoff selection committee might need to revisit whether it releases a ranking the week of conference championship games.

Speaking to ESPN at a Pop-Tarts Bowl media event ahead of the Hurricanes’ matchup against Iowa State, Radakovich noted how difficult it was for his players in the days after the Dec. 3 rankings, which had Miami (10-2) behind Alabama (9-3) at No. 12 and on the outside looking in. The situation was compounded when committee chair Warde Manuel said teams that were not playing in conference title games were “locked in” and would not be reevaluated.

“It was a really, really difficult four or five days for the players, both at Alabama, at our place,” Radakovich said. “SMU loses, what are they in the middle of at that point in time? The NCAA basketball tournament, there’s some parallels to it, but you’re either going to be in or you’re going to be out when it’s all unveiled, right? Sometimes, that’s a better way.”

Lt. Gen. Richard Clark, the CFP executive director, said during a Sports Business Journal Intercollegiate Athletics Forum panel last week in Las Vegas that he did not think six rankings were too many — echoing comments Manuel made after the final rankings release.

“I think it’s good for the game. I think it gives people a sense of how we see teams from that eighth week on,” Manuel said.

Radakovich, who served on the first CFP selection committee in 2014 while AD at Clemson, said he has talked to others about revising the rankings release schedule just for the penultimate week.

“They’ll do a ranking before Thanksgiving. You probably just let that stand, and then you have the championship games, and then the committee gets together that weekend and they make their final rankings,” Radakovich said. “Because if you’re close and you aren’t playing, you can’t do anything and if there are other people that you’ve played along the way that are playing, maybe that changes your strength of schedule, it changes some other things. So I think as you get closer to the end, I think that would just be a good idea to say, ‘Maybe we’ll just leave that one off to the side.'”

Radakovich said it was “unusual” that Manuel said teams were locked in after the penultimate rankings release but, “If that’s what they were looking at, that’s why I come back with, ‘Don’t do a ranking.'”

Miami finished No. 13 in the final ranking, behind Alabama and Big 12 champion Arizona State. The Hurricanes will play Iowa State on Dec. 28 in the Pop-Tarts Bowl in Orlando, Fla., with a chance to get to 11 wins for the first time since 2003.

In addition to potentially revisiting the rankings release schedule, Radakovich said he is in favor of expanding the playoff to 16 teams, and that there needed to be further discussions with ACC commissioner Jim Phillips and others within the league on whether it makes sense to play without divisions.

“It needs to be something that we look at,” Radakovich said. “This is our first year we didn’t have divisions. Is it a really good idea? I don’t know. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But I think whether you have divisions or not, brands playing brands is very important. We can’t stay static. Jim and the people associated with the scheduling in the conference are looking to see if there’s other opportunities to make it better.”

Phillips said one key component as it relates to divisions is how the committee will value conference championship games moving forward. SMU (11-2) made it into the playoff ahead of Alabama and Miami despite losing in the ACC championship game to Clemson.

“We have data from one year, but will that be a criteria moving forward?” Phillips said. “Will it not be a criteria? Will the teams that play in a championship game have some kind of protection? I don’t want to read into that. I’d like to hear from the committee after it’s over, about what some of those conversations were, and I think I’m not the only one.”

Though the season ended in disappointment, Radakovich said the Hurricanes feel like they have something left to prove in their final game. That goes for quarterback Cam Ward, who finished fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting Saturday. Ward has given every indication he will play in the game.

“Our players, we talked about the leadership council, the young men who were on that have said, ‘We want to be able to play and finish this season, there’s still things to play for,” Radakovich said. “That 11th win hasn’t happened in a long time. They’re all disappointed we didn’t get the chance to play for a championship in the ACC so this could be an opportunity to do that.”

ESPN’s Heather Dinich contributed to this report.

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Rays’ 8-run comeback largest in MLB this season

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Rays' 8-run comeback largest in MLB this season

TAMPA, Fla. — The Tampa Bay Rays overcame an eight-run deficit to beat the Baltimore Orioles 12-8 on Wednesday night in the largest comeback in the majors this season.

Tampa Bay matched the biggest comeback in franchise history. The Rays also rallied from eight down in a 10-8 victory over the Los Angeles Angels on Aug. 18, 2012, and in a 10-9 win over the Toronto Blue Jays on July 25, 2009.

It tied the Orioles’ largest blown lead over the past 50 seasons. Baltimore last gave away an eight-run lead on April 28, 2017, against the New York Yankees. The Orioles led that game 9-1 entering the bottom of the sixth inning before losing 14-11 in 10 innings.

Baltimore had an eight-run second inning on Wednesday. Colton Cowser smacked a three-run home run, Cedric Mullins added a solo shot, Gunnar Henderson had an RBI single and Ramón Laureano hit a three-run homer.

Tampa Bay’s Christopher Morel hit an RBI double in the third, and Jake Mangum‘s two-run single cut it to 8-3. Curtis Mead hit a two-out triple in the fourth and scored on a Junior Caminero single. Brandon Lowe‘s two-run homer in the fifth made it 8-8. And Jonathan Aranda had a two-run single in the Rays’ four-run seventh.

Lowe has at least a hit and a run in seven consecutive games, the longest active streak of its kind in the majors. He is batting .464 (13-of-28) with two home runs, five RBIs and eight runs during that span.

Caminero had four hits and two RBIs for the Rays.

Entering Wednesday, teams were 0-134 when trailing by eight or more runs at any point this season.

“It’s a tough game,” Orioles manager Tony Mansolino said. “It really hurts. But tomorrow, we’ll have to bounce back and try to figure out how to win a game.”

Three teams came back from eight runs behind last season in the majors. Pittsburgh was the most recent team to rally from more than that, erasing a nine-run deficit in a 13-12 victory over the Cincinnati Reds on Nov. 23, 2023.

ESPN Research and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Yanks finally score, otherwise sputter in latest loss

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Yanks finally score, otherwise sputter in latest loss

NEW YORK — The good news for the Yankees on Wednesday was they scored a run after 30 consecutive scoreless innings. The bad news was they again didn’t score enough to win.

The Yankees fell to the Los Angeles Angels 3-2 to extend their season-high losing streak to six games. The Angels will look to complete a four-game sweep Thursday afternoon at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees, whose lead in the AL East has shrunk to 1½ games, will look to emerge from an offensive funk that has produced seven runs in seven games.

“That’s baseball,” Yankees right fielder Aaron Judge said. “We know what we signed up for. You’re going to play 162. You’re going to hit a little rut like this, but you can’t give up. You can’t mope about it. You just got to show up the next day and you got to be ready to play.”

Jazz Chisholm Jr. ended the Yankees’ scoreless innings streak in the second inning with a moonshot solo home run down the right-field line, giving New York its first run since the ninth inning Saturday against the Boston Red Sox. Two innings later, Cody Bellinger launched another solo shot to give the Yankees their first lead since last Thursday when they defeated the Kansas City Royals 1-0.

But the Yankees mustered only one other hit — a ground ball from Bellinger in the sixth inning that was ruled a single after it bounced off Trent Grisham as he ran to second base for the inning’s second out. Yankees manager Aaron Boone said he believed his team’s at-bats Wednesday were better than they were Tuesday — when he said he noticed his players pressing — and pointed to four walks as progress.

But the Yankees went 0-for-3 with runners in scoring position and are 5-for-48 (.104) with 12 strikeouts, four walks and three RBIs in such situations over their past seven games.

“We just got to break through now like we’re capable of offensively,” Boone said.

Judge, the two-time AL MVP who is a heavy favorite to win a third this season, has gone 1-for-19 with 11 strikeouts, two intentional walks and a home run over the past five games. He went 0-for-4 on Wednesday with two strikeouts, a 94.7 mph groundout and 107.9 mph flyout.

“Guys are pitching, they’re doing their job,” Judge said. “Sometimes we’re faltering on doing our job. But it’s tough to say. I think it just comes down to us not executing, us not doing our job. Maybe a little passive in certain situations. But all we can do is show up tomorrow ready to go.”

The Angels broke through to retake the lead in the eighth inning Wednesday without a hit when, after three walks, shortstop Anthony Volpe mishandled a ground ball on what should’ve been a routine, inning-ending double play. Volpe, a Gold Glove winner in 2023, was charged with his ninth error of the season, the second most among shortstops across the majors.

“Right off the bat, I got to be aggressive, go get the ball, make the play,” Volpe said. “As far as that, that’s all it is. It’s the first read off the bat.”

The lack of execution trickled to the offensive side in the bottom of the inning. The Yankees appeared ready to mount a rally when Jasson Dominguez walked and Oswald Peraza was hit by a pitch to begin the inning. But they were left stranded as Grisham, who was given the green light to swing away with one strike after failing to drop down a bunt, popped out, before Judge flied out and Bellinger popped out to extinguish the threat.

“When we’re not scoring a lot of runs, we got to execute on the highest level on the little things,” Boone said. “And we haven’t done that this week a handful of times when we had some opportunities.”

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Singer defied Dodgers, belted anthem in Spanish

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Singer defied Dodgers, belted anthem in Spanish

Latin singer Nezza said that she is “super proud” of performing the national anthem in Spanish at Dodger Stadium on Saturday night and that she has “no regrets.”

Her surprising 90-second rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ game against the Giants — and a behind-the-scenes video she shared on social media of team representatives discouraging it beforehand — quickly went viral. It has become a flashpoint for Dodgers fans frustrated by the team’s lack of vocal support for immigrant communities impacted by the deportation raids across the U.S., including numerous neighborhoods in and around Los Angeles.

“This is my moment to show everyone that I am with them, that we have a voice and with everything that’s happening it’s not OK,” Nezza, 30, told The Associated Press. “I’m super proud that I did it. No regrets.”

Nezza said she hadn’t yet decided whether to sing in English or Spanish until she walked out onto the field and saw the stands filled with Latino families in Dodger Blue. Before that, as shown in the singer’s TikTok video, a Dodgers employee had told Nezza, “We are going to do the song in English today, so I’m not sure if that wasn’t transferred or if that wasn’t relayed.”

The Spanish-language version Nezza sang, “El Pendón Estrellado,” is the official translation of the national anthem and was commissioned in 1945 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt from Peruvian American composer Clotilde Arias.

Nezza says her manager immediately received a call from an unidentified Dodgers employee saying their clients were not welcome at the stadium again, but the team denied that in a statement to the AP.

“There were no consequences or hard feelings from the Dodgers regarding her performance,” the Dodgers said in the statement. “She was not asked to leave. We would be happy to have her back.”

Despite the Dodgers’ statement, Nezza said she does not think she will return to the stadium but said she hopes her performance will inspire others to use their voice and speak out.

“It’s just shown me, like, how much power there is in the Latin community,” Nezza said. “We’ve got to be the voice right now.”

The Dodgers have not gone on the record regarding the arrests and raids made by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the areas just a short drive from Dodger Stadium, but player Enrique Hernández posted about it on Instagram over the weekend.

“I am saddened and infuriated by what’s happening in our country and our city,” Hernández posted in English and Spanish. “I cannot stand to see our community being violated, profiled, abused and ripped apart. ALL people deserve to be treated with respect, dignity and human rights.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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