Oregon’s Lanning: Tighten CFP to wrap by Jan. 1
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Adam Rittenberg
LAS VEGAS — Oregon coach Dan Lanning is advocating for college football to adopt an NFL-style schedule with limited open weeks, no long layoffs for playoff teams and a season that wraps on Jan. 1 rather than later in the month.
Lanning told ESPN on Wednesday that “you’d love the rust to be knocked off when you step on the field” for College Football Playoff games. Oregon won the Big Ten in 2024 and was the only FBS team to finish the regular season undefeated, but the Ducks waited 25 days before facing Ohio State in a CFP quarterfinal at the Rose Bowl. Lanning’s team fell behind 34-0 late in the first half and lost 41-21.
Oregon and the three other teams receiving first-round byes all lost their quarterfinal matchups following lengthy layoffs. Ohio State and Notre Dame, which did not play on conference championship weekend but won home first-round games during the weekend of Dec. 20-21, met for the national championship, which the Buckeyes won Jan. 20.
“I’d be in favor of creating our playoff system to mirror every other playoff system in sports,” Lanning told ESPN. “The season’s over, and the playoffs start shortly after. The long break is something I’m not crazy about. I wish we played every single Saturday in college football. I wish college football ended Jan. 1.”
Asked how the layoff before the Rose Bowl affected Oregon, Lanning replied, “We lost. It is what it is, right? But we were a healthy team coming in. … It’s almost a month. That’s a long time.” He credited Ohio State for its postseason success and called Oregon’s loss “a learning opportunity and a great opportunity for growth.”
Lanning noted that an earlier end to the season would create clearer divisions for when teams could focus on games versus personnel and roster construction. Most FBS teams will once again have two open weeks during the 2025 season. The schedule for the 12-team CFP includes games during the weekend before Christmas and keeps Dec. 13 open only for the traditional Army–Navy game.
“January is supposed to be your month that you’re able to go on the road as a coach and recruit,” he said. “Last year’s national championship game was Jan. 20. So when do you go on the road [to] recruit? There’s just some things where I don’t think the season aligns with the calendar in a lot of ways, and I wish I would speed up.”
Lanning would prefer the current Week 0, which this year takes place Aug. 23, as the widespread start to the season. The upcoming Week 0 includes five matchups featuring FBS teams, including Iowa State and Kansas State meeting in Dublin, Ireland.
“I’d love to start Week 0,” Lanning said. “A lot of teams play Week 0 already. I’d love to say Big Ten championship, and then the next Saturday is a playoff game, and then the next Saturday, there’s the next playoff game.”
Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti told ESPN that an NFL-style schedule would be “tricky” to pull off.
“It requires a lot of combining and compressing the regular season,” Petitti said. “It’s tricky to try and get everything done as early as you want. Is it physically possible? Yes, but it requires real compression in how you play. I think it’s partly in trying to wrap the season off so you can get some of the tough portal decisions that we’re facing about where that goes, and you can just complete your season and then get on to building a team for next season.”
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Jorge Castillo
NEW YORK — The Yankees are acquiring third baseman Ryan McMahon from the Rockies in exchange for minor league pitchers Griffin Herring and Josh Grosz, sources confirmed to ESPN on Friday.
The Yankees will assume the remainder of 30-year-old McMahon’s contract, which includes approximately $4.5 million for the remainder of 2025 and $32 million over the next two seasons.
An All-Star last season, McMahon was batting .217 with 16 home runs and a .717 OPS in 100 games for Colorado in 2025. He hit home runs in the first two games after the All-Star break and another on Tuesday and is on pace to keep his four-year 20-homer streak alive.
While the production has resulted in a 92 OPS+, which suggests McMahon has been 8% worse than the average major league hitter this season, he still represents a significant offensive upgrade at third base for New York.
The Yankees have had Oswald Peraza, one of the worst hitters in the majors, manning third base nearly every day since the club decided to release DJ LeMahieu, another former Rockies player, earlier this month and move Jazz Chisholm Jr. to second base. Peraza, while a strong defender, is slashing .147/.208/.237 in 69 games this season. His 24 wRC+ ranks last among the 310 hitters with at least 160 plate appearances this season.
Defensively, McMahon is a Gold Glove-caliber third baseman whose four Outs Above Average is third in the majors this season. He joins a Yankees club that has been marred by sloppy defense, most recently on Wednesday when it committed four errors in a defensive meltdown against the first-place Toronto Blue Jays.
Herring, 22, has recorded a 1.71 ERA in 89⅓ innings across 16 starts between Low- and High-A this season. He was a sixth-round pick out of LSU in the 2024 draft.
Grosz, an 11th-round pick in 2023, had a 4.14 ERA in 87 innings over 16 games (15 starts) for High-A Hudson Valley this season.
With third base addressed, the Yankees will continue to seek to acquire pitchers to bolster both their rotation and bullpen.
MLB.com first reported on the Yankees trading for McMahon.
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Jorge Castillo
The Mets acquired left-handed reliever Gregory Soto from the Orioles on Friday in exchange for two minor leaguers in what could be the first of multiple moves by New York to bolster its bullpen before the trade deadline Thursday.
The trade, which sent Class A right-hander Wellington Aracena and Double-A right-hander Cameron Foster to Baltimore, gives the Mets a hard-throwing left-hander to complement the club’s only lefty on the roster, Brooks Raley, who returned from Tommy John surgery last week.
Soto, who is 30 and was an All-Star with the Detroit Tigers in 2021 and 2022, has posted a 3.96 ERA with a 27.5% strikeout rate in 45 appearances this season. The Mets will be his fourth team since the 2022 season.
On Monday, Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns plainly signaled that upgrading the bullpen for the stretch run is his top priority.
The need is clear. Injuries and overuse have depleted a relief corps that led the majors in bullpen ERA through May 31. Since June 1, the group has posted 4.52 ERA, good for 23rd in the majors.
Aracena, 20, is 1-1 with a 2.38 ERA in 17 games for St. Lucie. The Orioles said he is one of two pitchers in the minors this season to have thrown at least 60 innings without surrendering a home run.
Foster, 26, is 5-2 with two saves and a 2.97 ERA while pitching at the Double-A and Triple-A levels.
BOSTON — Hundreds of Aramark workers at Fenway Park are on strike and planning to stay out for all of a homestand between the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers starting Friday night.
Concession workers had set a deadline of noon Friday for Aramark and Fenway Park to reach an agreement with the Local 26 chapter of the Massachusetts and Rhode Island hotel, casino, airport and food services workers union.
The union went on strike at noon asking for “living wages, guardrails on technology and R-E-S-P-E-C-T!”
With the Red Sox and Dodgers scheduled to start at 7:10 p.m. EDT, union officials had a request for fans attending this homestand with food and beer workers on strike.
“We’re asking you to NOT buy concessions inside the ballpark,” Local 26 wrote on social media. “Tailgate before the games!”
Union workers walked the picket line wearing green T-shirts declaring “FENWAY WORKERS ON STRIKE.” They carried signs in the shape of a baseball proclaiming Local 26.
The Red Sox go out of town Monday with a game that night at Minnesota.
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