CFB’s age of disruptors is here with Deion Sanders, Lane Kiffin and Curt Cignetti
-
David Hale, ESPN Staff Writer
There was a time, not all that long ago, when watching your favorite show meant planting yourself on your couch at some predetermined time; when hitching a ride with a complete stranger driving a 1993 Honda Civic with an industrial-strength air freshener hanging where the rearview mirror used to be would’ve seemed dangerous; when paying $36 for a guy to bring you a beef-and-cheese burrito and a 48-ounce Mountain Dew Baja Blast was little more than some madman’s fever dream.
But thankfully, times have changed. Brave geniuses have disrupted the marketplace, leveled sacred institutions, upended our expectations of what our lives can be.
And so it is that the age of the disruptors has come for college football, too.
There’s Lane Kiffin, who has been thumbing his nose at the powers-that-be, ruffling feathers and breaking the system since a time when we didn’t call people like him “disruptors.” Kiffin has forced his way into the most sacred corridors of power over the years, but he has done it as much through trolling coaches on social media as he has by actually beating them. But Saturday, Kiffin’s Ole Miss team killed one of the last true giants of the old guard, delivering a withering defensive performance that bruised, battered and confounded Georgia in a 28-10 Rebels win.
There’s Deion Sanders, so often viewed as a sideshow to the staid old guard who believed, like fools, that you had to leave your office to recruit and needed five functional offensive linemen to run an offense. Coach Prime has taken the hollowed-out husk of a program and, in less than two seasons, built Colorado into a legitimate playoff contender, one that held off Texas Tech 41-27 on Saturday to assume a commanding position in the crowded Big 12.
There’s Curt Cignetti, overlooked for years as little more than an FCS coach who has won a few games, a cute story hardly worthy of manning the Big Ten sidelines traversed by legends like Tim Beckman, Chris Ash or Darrell Hazell. In Week 11, Cignetti’s Indiana moved to 10-0, thwarting defending champion Michigan 20-15.
Kiffin, Prime, Cignetti — they’re not supposed to be here. For two decades, from Urban Meyer to Nick Saban to Kirby Smart, the blueprint for success at this level was clear. Coaches who won did it the old-fashioned way, ruling with an iron fist, refusing to give an inch in the quest for greatness, tormenting Jimbo Fisher for laughs. Even the few divergences from that blueprint at least had the roots of their DNA in a classical approach to team building, be it Dabo Swinney’s rah-rah optimism or Jim Harbaugh’s investment in a squirrelly underling wearing a fake mustache to steal signals.
But these guys are showing us a new path forward.
Kiffin has invested in the transfer portal like a tech bro buying crypto, stocking a once talent-bereft roster of upstarts with enough stars that Saturday’s win over Georgia barely registers as an upset. Ole Miss has been as explosive as anyone in college football this year, save a loss to Kentucky that we’re now fairly certain was just something we dreamed after eating some expired ham. Should we be surprised that Jaxson Dart out-dueled a flailing Carson Beck, who has been handing out interceptions like Oprah giving away cars? Is it a shock that the Ole Miss defense contained Georgia’s top skill players like Cash Jones, Dillon Bell and Lawson Luckie? Georgia’s depth chart reads like the cast of a teen drama. Meanwhile, Kiffin’s running wildcat with his 325-pound defensive lineman just because he can.
Kiffin’s disruptive impact on Ole Miss has been so profound that the Rebels’ students have even changed the game for goal-post removal.
They got both of them https://t.co/JmMxUkGqIM
— Oxford Police Dept (@OxfordPolice) November 10, 2024
If Kiffin is the OG of disruptors, however, Coach Prime is running the game today.
When he arrived in Boulder, the premise looked simple: Sanders would coach his two boys, be the center of attention at all turns, and if he won a few games, all the better. When Oregon‘s Dan Lanning lambasted Colorado as a team playing for clicks rather than wins last year, it felt like an appropriate measure of Prime’s priorities. And yet, here are the Buffs at 7-2, a mercenary group of transfers who other coaches dismissed as chasing NIL but who’ve emerged as arguably the hottest team in the country.
Shedeur Sanders threw for 291 yards and three touchdowns in the win over Texas Tech Red Raiders, while Travis Hunter caught nine balls for 99 yards and a touchdown, all with his pants loaded down by tortillas.
Travis Hunter just picked up a Tortilla on the field and put it in his pants 😅
Only in Lubbock 🤣 pic.twitter.com/fBTPLr53HK
— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) November 9, 2024
Never mind that Colorado has little interest in running the football. Put Coach Prime, his son and Hunter on a field, spread the ball around to a deep cast of receivers and offer to repost a clip of the officiating crew’s side project as a barbershop quartet in exchange for a few soft calls, and the recipe comes out perfectly. And speaking of perfect recipes, try grilling a nice carne asada and pairing it with pickled onions and some fresh tortillas from Hunter’s pants.
And perhaps no one has done the impossible better than Cignetti. From 2021 through 2023, Michigan was 26-1 in Big Ten play. In that same time frame, Indiana was 3-24 against Big Ten competition.
But because Cignetti cares not about precedent, the Hoosiers were a 14.5-point favorite Saturday, and while they didn’t cover, they did walk away with a 10-0 record, the first 10-win season in school history. Kurtis Rourke threw for 206 yards and two touchdowns and the defense held Michigan to just 206 yards, the defense had eight pass breakups and the Hoosiers made Michigan look utterly lost (which, to be fair, is not uncommon for Michigan this year).
Indiana is now in position to reach the Big Ten title game and, likely a playoff bid, despite finishing 3-9 last year, starting a QB who transferred from the MAC and a head coach who brought a handful of starters from a Sun Belt team, which begs the question of why Big Ten football looks so hard for Lincoln Riley.
It’s true, of course, that delivery apps rarely turn a profit, and the biggest disruptors are also often megalomaniacs who are more style than substance, so perhaps it’s still a bit early to laud the conquests of college football’s new money.
But that’s the real takeaway from these disruptors — in Week 11, in 2024. Things we didn’t dream of just a few months ago — a 10-0 Indiana, a playoff-bound Colorado, an Ole Miss team capable of delivering a potentially fatal dagger to Georgia — aren’t just possible. They’re reality.
Who knows what comes next? The fate of a college football season, which for so much of the past two decades felt entirely predictable, now has myriad loose threads, dozens of potential realities, countless options for us to see something genuinely new and innovative and different.
Jump to:
Down goes Miami | Who controls the SEC?
Ewers hunts Gators | Oregon handles business
Gamecocks roll | Another FSU loss | Vibe shifts
Impressive turnarounds | Heisman five | Under the radar
In a rematch of last year’s miserable loss to Georgia Tech, the clock finally ran out on Miami’s undefeated season. The Canes fumbled their way through the first three quarters, and the ultimate 28-23 defeat must’ve felt like taking a knee to the gut.
Kneel to your King 👑 🐝 #StingEm pic.twitter.com/aVGsXqAUJz
— Georgia Tech (@GeorgiaTech) November 9, 2024
It’s the second year in a row Georgia Tech has delivered a dagger to Miami, and again, this year’s game turned on a late fumble when the Canes were simply trying to do too much. In this case, Cam Ward engineered one of his patented scrambles, hoping for something to open downfield, only to be caught from behind by Jordan van den Berg, coughing up the football down five with just 1:32 to play. Haynes King then converted a late third down, allowing Georgia Tech to kneel out the clock. Miami’s Mario Cristobal, certain that must be against the rules, challenged the play, but the officials assured him it is perfectly acceptable to take a knee to ensure a win.
Georgia Tech fans then stormed the field and tore down both goalposts, ultimately dumping them into the water, which is different from how this many engineers typically celebrate a big victory — with nachos at Dave & Busters before getting back to the office to code for a while.
#GaTech‘s goal posts have found their resting place.
So did Miami’s hopes of going undefeated pic.twitter.com/fJoOBzvDTA
— The Crowded Booth (@thecrowdedbooth) November 9, 2024
Miami had made a habit of falling behind big this season, but because Ward is a Jedi and the ACC review center is still using a 17-inch Zenith with a bunny ear antenna, the Canes were consistently able to escape trouble and emerge with a win. That luck ran out against the Yellow Jackets, who ran for 271 yards although their top three running backs were out with injuries and chewed up enough clock to keep Ward sidelined for long stretches. The maligned Miami D simply couldn’t get off the field — the Jackets were 9-of-14 on third down — and Ward and the offense couldn’t stay on the field (1-of-4 on fourth-down tries).
Georgia Tech, on the other hand, has made a habit of spoiling seasons for good teams. Since Brent Key became head coach before Week 5 in 2022, he’s 6-5 against AP-ranked foes, the most such wins by any ACC coach in that span (and more than all but nine coaches nationally), all while Georgia Tech was unranked.
By Saturday’s end, the SEC had 11 teams bowl eligible and eight with two or fewer conference losses, making for a massive jumble in the standings and a tight race — both for a trip to the title game and a path to the playoff.
Alabama stated its case in emphatic form, marching past LSU 42-13 behind four touchdown runs (and 185 rushing yards) from Jalen Milroe.
Seeing Brian Kelly, stoic and scowling, staring off into the middle distance amid the driving rain, it looked like a scene from a music video for some overly earnest ’90s Emo band. Kelly has always been the Morrissey of college football, but things are looking particularly bleak for the Bayou Bengals after back-to-back losses.
In fairness, this should’ve been expected once LSU opted to bring in an imposter tiger for Saturday’s game.
Frankly, this is a slap in the face to Mike the Tiger. It’s like when they changed Aunt Viv midway through “Fresh Prince” as if we’d just not notice it’s a completely different actor.
Meanwhile, Tennessee remains in control of its SEC destiny after cruising past Mississippi State. The Bulldogs threw for just 92 yards and tossed a pick in the loss, while Dylan Sampson continued his dominance for the Vols, rushing for 149 yards and a score.
The wild card in the SEC might be Missouri, which erased a late deficit then corralled a scoop-and-score in the final seconds Saturday to upend Oklahoma, 30-23. At halftime, the game’s leading passer was Sooners punter Luke Elzinga, but the two teams found their stride after the break, with Drew Pyne throwing three touchdowns in the win.
4 TDs in the final 200 seconds is a hell of a drug. 🤪 pic.twitter.com/lU6BNRWjMM
— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) November 10, 2024
Missouri is now 4-0 in one-possession games this season, including an overtime win against Vanderbilt, a four-point win against Auburn on a touchdown with 46 seconds to play, and Saturday’s fumble recovery with 22 seconds to go.
Ewers hunts Gators
Texas QB Quinn Ewers put on a clinic in a 49-17 win over Florida on Saturday, throwing for 333 yards and five touchdowns and giving the crowd what it really wanted — a fourth quarter featuring Arch Manning.
Ewers had his best game of the season, averaging better than 12 yards per throw, while the Horns’ ground game rumbled for 210 yards and nearly 7 per touch.
For the Gators, it was a dismal performance that comes just days after head coach Billy Napier was given assurances he’d return in 2025, forcing AD Scott Stricklin to amend his previous support by adding, “Wait, no, you didn’t let us finish. What we were trying to say was Billy will be returning … his office keys, company car and that copy of Tom Petty’s ‘Greatest Hits’ I loaned him,” and indeed the job search begins shortly.
Ducks continue march to Big Ten title game
Since slumbering through the first two weeks of the season, Oregon has since become an unrelenting machine tasked only with delivering misery.
On Saturday, the Ducks demolished Maryland 39-18, as Dillon Gabriel threw three touchdowns and the D scored three takeaways in the win. Oregon is now 7-0 in Big Ten play, putting the Ducks one-quarter of the way to Maryland’s total Big Ten wins since joining the conference in 2014.
Oregon’s remaining schedule includes a trip to Wisconsin and a home game with former Pac-12 rival Washington. Neither figure to be much of an obstacle between the Ducks and their long, angry march toward a conference title. The bigger question may be whether it will be Indiana as the last team standing in their way or if Ohio State will get a rematch after losing by a point last month in Eugene.
Gamecocks roll again
Every guy has that one buddy who exists simply as an agent of chaos. He probably stole a police car in college, brought fireworks to your kid’s baptism and once referred to a hand grenade as “fishing gear.” He is the initiating force between five of your funniest stories and a dozen of your saddest.
In college football, this role is now being played by Shane Beamer.
South Carolina has no certifiable identity in 2024 beyond simply wrecking things. Each week, Beamer’s team is like letting a group of beavers loose in a Hobby Lobby. You have no idea what will happen, but it’s bound to be interesting. One week the Gamecocks are getting trounced by Ole Miss. The next, they’re taking Alabama to the wire. The next, they’re upending a top-10 Texas A&M. And on Saturday, they went to Nashville, became the first program in college football to make Diego Pavia sad, and walked away with a 28-7 win over Vanderbilt.
Is LaNorris Sellers a good quarterback? Who cares? Pass rushers bounce off him like he’s wearing one of those inflatable sumo wrestler suits. So what if the Gamecocks have only one real playmaker at the skill positions. “Rocket” Sanders racked up 178 yards and three touchdowns against Vandy, and if you said he also recorded a country version of “Sandstorm” afterward to celebrate the win, that’d be entirely believable. And the Gamecocks’ defense is so ridiculously frustrating, Hugh Freeze sent it a “thank you” note for trying to convince Pavia not to come back to college football for another year.
South Carolina is bowl eligible now, which surely means some poor team is going to lose the ReliaQuest Bowl after coughing up four safeties and a 98-yard touchdown run by Sellers in which he steamrolls all 11 defenders and two hot-dog vendors en route to the end zone.
South Carolina makes no sense, is palpably dangerous, and is willing to buy Jager shots for everyone who shows up to its Week 14 showdown with Clemson. It’s a thing of beauty.
Notre Dame walloped Florida State 52-3 on Saturday in a game in which the broadcast crew repeatedly used the phrase, “Stop, stop, they’re already dead.”
The Irish threw for 252 yards, ran for 201 yards and sacked FSU quarterbacks eight times. Unfortunately for FSU, those quarterbacks continued to get up and keep playing.
The Seminoles have now gone 12 straight games without topping 21 points, the longest streak by a Power 5 or BCS-conference team in at least 20 years.
Notre Dame is 4-0 against the ACC this year, with a home game against Virginia remaining on the docket. The Irish are now 40-5 against the ACC since the 2017 season. Notre Dame is also well positioned with three games left to make the College Football Playoff, while Florida State remains well positioned to be relegated to whatever conference Bishop Sycamore is in now.
Week 11 vibe check
Each week, big upsets and shocking results reshuffle the top 25, but there are more subtle changes in the college football landscape that we track here.
Trending down: Cyclones’ Big 12 title hopes
Two weeks ago, Iowa State was undefeated and lingering around the top 10. Now, the Cyclones’ Big 12 hopes are on life support, their spot in the top 25 is likely doomed and they’ve slipped into Texas’ old role as the Big 12 favorite who just lost to a bad Kansas team. Somewhere, Charlie Strong is nodding approvingly.
Kansas earned win No. 3 on the season with a 45-36 win over the Cyclones in Week 11 behind 116 yards and two touchdowns by Devin Neal. Kansas led 38-13 late in the third quarter, but Rocco Becht led a furious comeback attempt, finishing with 383 passing yards and three touchdowns, although it was too little, too late.
The Jayhawks, who opened the season in the top 25, started the year 1-5, with four losses by six points or less, but they’ve now won two of three — a two-point loss to Kansas State in between — and get a crack at the top two teams in the conference (BYU in Week 12, Colorado in Week 13) with a chance to be the ultimate spoiler.
Trending down: Multiple drives in a quarter
Army got QB Bryson Daily back from injury for Week 11, and the offense responded by delivering the most undeniably perfect drive of the season.
Up 7-3 midway through the third quarter over North Texas, Army drove 94 yards on 21 plays — 12 of which went for 4 yards or less — that lasted an astonishing 13 minutes, 54 seconds. Including a time out and a penalty, enough time passed before the Knights cashed in the drive for a touchdown that the players on the field for the entirety of the drive actually fulfilled their active duty requirements, and Daily was promoted to master sergeant after converting a third-and-3 early in the fourth quarter.
Baily finished with 36 carries for 153 yards and two touchdowns in the win. For the game, Army held the ball for 41:45, and most of North Texas’ offense left early to grab some BBQ.
Trending down: Gundy apologies
Last week, Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy apologized for calling fans “weak” amid criticism of a winless season in Big 12 play.
This follows a rich history of Gundy apologies that followed lambasting a reporter when he was 40, wearing a Newsmax t-shirt that angered his star tailback and, of course, that time he tried to hunt wild boar inside a Bed, Bath and Beyond.
Unfortunately, scuttling that controversy with a sincerely worded apology inspired by a fortune cookie he had once read wasn’t enough to turn the Pokes’ fortunes on the field. TCU stormed Oklahoma State 38-13, dropping the Cowboys to 0-7 in Big 12 play.
Trending up: Penn State playing mediocre teams
In a game no Penn State fans cared about after last week’s loss to Ohio State, the Nittany Lions ran for 266 yards and four touchdowns in a 35-6 stomping of Washington.
Drew Allar threw for 220 yards and a score, and the Penn State D held the Huskies to just 193 total yards — none of which does anything to change what happened against Ohio State.
Afterward, James Franklin perfected teleportation, saved several kittens stuck in a tree, and convinced the surviving members of Nirvana to go on tour with Taylor Swift on lead vocals, to which Penn State fans eagerly pointed out that he’d lost to Ohio State again this year.
Trending up: Touchdown records
Jeremiah Smith caught six balls for 87 yards in Ohio State’s 45-0 win over Purdue, including a 17-yard touchdown that set the Buckeyes’ TD record for freshmen, topping Cris Carter (and all he did, according to Buddy Ryan, was catch touchdowns).
Record reception 🙌
Jeremiah Smith’s 9️⃣th TD grab of the season breaks a tie with Cris Carter for the most by an @OhioStateFB true freshman.#B1GFootball on @CFBONFOX 📺 pic.twitter.com/s6UDp0l3oS
— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) November 9, 2024
The Buckeyes were dominant, throwing for 260 yards, rushing for 173, holding Purdue to 206 total yards and nabbing two takeaways. Will Howard threw for 260 yards and three touchdowns and ran for a fourth in the win.
The Boilermakers fall to 1-8 and 0-6 in Big Ten play, and it’s the fourth time this season they’ve lost by at least 35 points. In the playoff era, the only other teams with four 35-point losses in their first nine games of the year are 2019 Rutgers and three different Kansas teams (2015, 2016, 2020). The last time a team lost five games in a season by at least 35 points was 2022 Colorado, so the lesson here is clear. All Purdue needs to do is hire Deion Sanders, turn over two-thirds of its roster, sign Travis Hunter and — boom — the Boilers will be above average by 2026.
Trending down: Running the ball
Cal QB Fernando Mendoza completed 30 passes in Saturday’s win against Wake Forest — in the first half! That’s more than 95 different teams have completed in a full game this year. Mendoza finished 40-of-56 for 385 yards and two touchdowns in the 46-36 Bears win, taking advantage of the fact that Wake Forest’s pass defense is actually just two scarecrows in the end zone and a sternly worded email insisting the other team stop throwing so much.
Trending up: Maalik Magic
Duke is now 7-3 after knocking off NC State 29-19 on Saturday behind 245 passing yards and three total touchdowns from QB Maalik Murphy.
The Blue Devils won despite mustering just 31 yards on the ground thanks in large part to another dominant defensive performance by Manny Diaz’s crew. Duke held the Wolfpack to just 268 yards of offense, forced two turnovers, recorded a safety and stifled NC State in the red zone, where six drives inside Duke’s 20 resulted in a touchdown, four field goals and a missed kick.
After the game, Duke students celebrated by learning for the first time that football season was still happening even though Cooper Flagg had already started playing.
Don’t look now, but …
Just because a team ends September riding an ugly losing streak with a highlight tape scored to “Yakety Sax” doesn’t mean it’s incapable of finishing on a high note (unless that team is Florida State). Indeed, a number of schools we wrote off after a rough start have engineered impressive turnarounds as we head into the season’s final stretch.
After a 1-5 start to the season in which the Bruins failed to crack 17 points in any game, DeShaun Foster’s crew embraced its new Big Ten identity and learned how to win without an actual offense. On Friday, UCLA pulled out Brian Ferentz’s old playbook to upend Iowa 20-17 in a game that included six turnovers, a 57-yard field goal and a season-low rushing tally from Kaleb Johnson (49 yards on 18 carries). After winning 19 games while scoring 20 or less in the four-team playoff era, Iowa is now 0-4 when failing to crack 20 this year. The Hawkeyes are like when Eddie Murphy decided in the mid-’80s he was going to be a singer, too, and started doing videos with Rick James and hasn’t been nearly as funny since. Never forget what got you to the top, Iowa.
UCLA, meanwhile, has now won three straight, all against Big Ten teams that entered their matchup with a winning record. It’s the first time in at least 20 years that a team with a losing record before each contest beat three straight Power 5 opponents with a winning record.
Perhaps no coaching job has been less appreciated than what Bronco Mendenhall has managed with the Lobos. Mendenhall had to completely rebuild a roster that added 43 new scholarship players — including 17 after spring ball — and lost its first four games of the year, including the opener to FCS Montana State. But New Mexico has turned a corner and has now won four of six after upending San Diego State 21-16 on Friday night behind 173 yards and two touchdowns from Eli Sanders. The Lobos are still likely a long shot for a bowl bid, but for a program that hasn’t won more than four games in a year since 2016, anything that doesn’t involve the quarterback playing with his hand stuck in a Pringles can feels like a massive step forward.
Rich Rodriguez’s crew opened the year 0-3 but has reeled off six straight victories, including a rollicking 44-37 overtime win against Louisiana Tech on Saturday.
Tre Stewart ran for 166 yards and two touchdowns, Cam Vaughn caught seven passes for 130 yards and two scores, and the Gamecocks moved to 5-0 in Conference USA.
Rodriguez is now 15-6 since JSU moved up to FBS, including an 11-2 mark in conference play. Meanwhile, Michigan just texted him with a “Hey, U Up?” note and is willing to suggest maybe it was as much to blame for their breakup as Rich Rod was.
Last year’s MAC champions opened the year 1-4, with their lone win coming against lowly UMass by 3. But the RedHawks figured things out, and they’ve now won four straight, including a 27-21 victory over Ball State on Tuesday. Miami is again tied atop the MAC (4-1 in conference play), which is enough to warrant overlooking the slow start and the fact that its mascot is using an umbrella and a poncho to avoid getting wet.
— no context college football (@nocontextcfb) November 6, 2024
In fairness, the strange old man who sold Miami the RedHawk costume did warn them not to get it wet or feed it after midnight. Western Kentucky ignored that advice, and now snipers with tranquilizer guns have to monitor Big Red at all times.
Heisman five
It’s largely a four-man race, though Jaxson Dart, Jalen Milroe and Quinn Ewers may be making a late run at things. Still, not much changed in Week 11 in our rankings.
1. Boise State RB Ashton Jeanty
In the past two weeks, Jeanty was held to just 91 yards on 30 carries without a touchdown in the first halves of games, thanks in large part to defenses putting 26 defenders in the box. This week, Jeanty found his groove again, rushing for 93 yards and a touchdown on Boise State’s first two drives. Jeanty finished with 34 carries for 209 yards and three scores. It was his fourth 200-yard rushing performance of the season and his fifth three-touchdown game. Jeanty needs just 266 yards on the ground the rest of the season to crack 2,000 on the year. Assuming Boise State plays for a Mountain West championship and a bowl or playoff game, he would need to average 179 yards per game the rest of the way to top Barry Sanders’ single-season record.
2. Colorado WR/CB Travis Hunter
Hunter caught nine balls for 99 yards, including a nifty touchdown run on a wide receiver screen, while also helping stifle the Texas Tech pass game and running a small Mexican restaurant in his pants. Next week, he’ll be aiming to top 100 receiving yards and while making a nice paella in his helmet.
The Canes’ defense finally cost Miami a game, as Georgia Tech dominated the clock and ran for 271 yards. Still, Miami had a chance to win, but for once, Ward’s magic wore off, and he fumbled deep in his own territory, allowing the Yellow Jackets to secure the game. Still, Ward was solid, throwing for 348 yards and three touchdowns, but as many QBs before him have noted, there is no amount of magic that can overcome Miami doing Miami things.
4. Oregon QB Dillon Gabriel
Gabriel only averaged 5.3 yards-per-pass and yet he still threw for three TDs in a blowout win. Gabriel is clearly positioned well to make a run at the Heisman, but the Big Ten doesn’t seem to be offering him enough of a challenge to really pad out the stats. He should be able to go play a few series for Oklahoma again after he finishes his games, just to make it a bit more fair.
5. Indiana QB Kurtis Rourke
Rourke threw two TD passes in Saturday’s win over Michigan, and through 11 weeks, he’s second in the country in Total QBR (88.6), fourth in completion percentage (71.8%) and he’s one of just two QBs (along with Dart) averaging a first down per throw. He’s also asserted himself as the most successful QB in Indiana program history, passing the previous title holder, a coat rack with a Hoosiers jersey hanging on it.
Under-the-radar play of the week
Prior to Saturday, Cade Klubnik‘s elusiveness had been limited to coming up with increasingly lame excuses for why he couldn’t make it to Dabo Swinney’s weekly “Grey’s Anatomy” watch parties. But against Virginia Tech, Klubnik took it to the next level.
0:29
‘What a time to be alive!’ Clemson’s Cade Klubnik works magic for a TD pass
Cade Klubnik makes an impressive 41-yard touchdown pass to T.J. Moore as Clemson takes the lead over Virginia Tech in the third quarter.
Klubnik finished the game with 241 total yards and three touchdowns as Clemson upended Virginia Tech 24-14, but unless he can convince Swinney that he’s the lead in his theater troupe’s reimagining of “Cats” that night, he’s on the hook to bring a casserole for this week’s episode and should refer to his coach as “Swinney McDreamy” throughout the evening.
Under-the-radar game of the week
Marcus Yarns ran for 174 yards and a touchdown, and FCS Delaware upended Rhode Island 24-21.
Why does this game matter so much? Rhode Island is the country’s smallest state. Delaware is the second smallest. It’s basically like watching Spud Webb and Muggsy Bogues play a game of one-on-one.
Outfielder Jurickson Profar and the Atlanta Braves agreed on a three-year, $42 million contract Thursday, uniting the veteran coming off a career year with a team that has struggled in recent years to find a suitable left fielder.
Profar, 31, was a revelation for the San Diego Padres last year, hitting .280/.380/.459 with a career-high 24 home runs and 85 RBIs. Once the top prospect in all of baseball, Profar made his first All-Star team and won a Silver Slugger — all on a one-year, $1 million deal.
He cashed in with the Braves, who outbid a number of teams interested in Profar’s on-base skills as well as his energy that invigorated Padres supporters and infuriated rival fan bases.
Profar will join center fielder Michael Harris II and right fielder Ronald Acuña Jr., the former National League MVP coming off a torn left ACL just three years after tearing the ligament in his right knee. Without Acuña for most of last season, the Braves’ offense suffered a deep regression from 2023, when they set a single-season team record with a .501 slugging percentage.
The switch-hitting Profar can slot almost anywhere in the lineup, though he figures to begin the season toward the top as Acuña continues to rehab his knee. Beyond Harris and Acuña, Atlanta’s lineup includes All-Star third baseman Austin Riley, second baseman Ozzie Albies and first baseman Matt Olson. Profar will receive $12 million this year and $15 million in 2026 and 2027.
Atlanta is typically one of the most aggressive teams in baseball, striking early in free agency and with trades. After trading slugger Jorge Soler in late October, the Braves dabbled in minor league deals and watched as starter Max Fried went to the New York Yankees, starter Charlie Morton went to the Baltimore Orioles and reliever A.J. Minter went to the New York Mets.
Profar is Atlanta’s first real addition this winter after sneaking into the postseason at 89-73 and promptly getting swept by San Diego. He has spent all 11 years of his major league career in the West divisions, debuting at 19 with the Texas Rangers. Profar never fulfilled his potential there and went to Oakland in 2019 before settling with the Padres, where he became a full-time outfielder. Over 1,119 games in his career, Profar has hit .245/.331/.395 with 111 home runs and 444 RBIs in 4,291 plate appearances.
Sports
Are the Dodgers ruining baseball? Inside the Roki Sasaki signing — and a spending spree that has rocked MLB
SIX YEARS AGO, when the world knew next to nothing of a gangly 17-year-old pitcher in Japan, a Los Angeles Dodgers evaluator sat in the stands at his high school games with a video camera to capture the splendor. Roki Sasaki’s fastball regularly reached 100 mph, his right arm a whirling force of nature. The Dodgers were smitten. Sasaki could eventually be the best pitcher in the world, team officials told one another. And when the time came for his inevitable move to Major League Baseball, they wanted to ensure he felt as strongly about them as they did him.
In the time since, the Dodgers have conquered baseball in nearly every fashion imaginable. Armed with immense wealth from their owners and buoyed by the largest local television contract in the game, the Dodgers have spared no expense in trying to win. Their major league payroll consistently ranks at the top of the game, yes, but other line items are best-in-class, too, from their technology infrastructure to their coaching staff’s compensation to the quality of the food they serve their minor league players.
When this winter arrived and Sasaki, now 23, declared his intentions to come to MLB, the Dodgers didn’t need a sales pitch because the allure for players is obvious: If you covet winning, come join a burgeoning dynasty. Since being sold to the Guggenheim Baseball Management group in 2012 following the disastrous ownership of Frank McCourt that led the team to file for bankruptcy, the Dodgers have remade themselves into conquerors: of the National League West (11 titles in 12 years), their October demons (two World Series championships in five years), and the Japanese baseball market (the signings of Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto for more than $1 billion guaranteed).
Every front office pined for the latest Japanese ace this offseason. Eight teams were granted an audience with Sasaki. Three became finalists. The Dodgers were one. The San Diego Padres, Los Angeles’ chief rival in the NL West and another team whose early scouting of Sasaki won favor, were the second. The third came down to the Toronto Blue Jays, Texas Rangers, Chicago Cubs and New York Yankees — four other teams whose years of work in Japan and history with Japanese players spoke to an understanding of Sasaki and his desires. The rapport built with Toronto’s international scouting apparatus won the Blue Jays the third finalist slot.
Toronto impressed Sasaki with its answer to a burning question: Why had his sizzling fastball lost velocity in 2024? The explanation from Frank Herrmann, a Blue Jays baseball operations staffer who had pitched in the big leagues and was Sasaki’s teammate with the Chiba Lotte Marines, and Sam Greene, the Blue Jays’ assistant pitching coach, blended a discussion of data, mechanics and feel that boosted their pursuit. Sasaki spent multiple days in Toronto, and as he departed, the Blue Jays were confident that whatever advantages the Dodgers might have, they were surmountable.
The visit to San Diego left the Padres similarly assured. Star third baseman Manny Machado held a gathering at his house, where a Japanese chef cooked familiar cuisine. Jackson Merrill, the Padres’ 21-year-old center fielder expected to blossom into a superstar in coming seasons, attended, as did Ethan Salas, the 18-year-old catcher seen as a linchpin in future seasons. And San Diego had an ace in the hole: Yu Darvish, the progenitor of modern Japanese pitching, whom Sasaki regards as a mentor with peerless knowledge.
The successful meetings put that much more pressure on the Dodgers, who hosted Sasaki Jan. 14 at minority owner Peter Guber’s Bel Air home and summoned an array of players, all locked up to long-term deals: superstars Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, catcher Will Smith, and super-utility man Tommy Edman. Ohtani, knowing Sasaki loves dogs, brought his Dutch kooikerhondje, Decoy, to the presentation.
With the international signing period opening Jan. 15 and the window for Sasaki to sign closing Jan. 23, the decision zone arrived and forced action. All three teams lined up trades to acquire more international bonus money to help their pursuit. San Diego was eliminated first. Toronto, attempting to demonstrate its willingness to go above and beyond for Sasaki, struck a deal with Cleveland to take on $11.75 million remaining on center fielder Myles Straw‘s contract along with an additional $2 million in international money even before Sasaki had made his decision.
Soon thereafter, he did — and it wasn’t the Blue Jays. What so many in baseball saw as a fait accompli — to the point MLB did a preemptive investigation into whether Sasaki had any sort of prearranged deal (and determined he didn’t) — played out. While some teams in meetings asked if Sasaki wanted to be Kevin Durant or Michael Jordan — to join a superteam or help build one — the allure of the Dodgers was impossible to ignore. All of their games are broadcast on national TV in Japan. The stores at Nippon Professional Baseball stadiums that include racks of Dodgers gear will now feature jerseys with his name on them. The Dodgers’ plan when they signed Ohtani — “One of our goals is for baseball fans in Japan to convert to Dodger Blue,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said — had borne fruit.
In executing that vision, the team has set off alarms inside the sport. The Dodgers’ signing of Sasaki for $6.5 million — a sum artificially deflated by MLB’s rules on international amateurs that offers Los Angeles hundreds of millions of dollars in surplus value — left front offices and fans alike gobsmacked. Watching the Dodgers pick off free agent after free agent with heavily deferred deals has built a wave of frustration. Seeing them land one of the most valuable contracts in the game — the sort typically reserved for the worst teams via the draft — reinforced something that has become increasingly clear.
The Dodgers are no longer just a team chasing championships. They are a stress test for the game itself.
THE ANGER — from disillusioned fans, from dispirited front offices, from owners made to look as if they don’t care — is very real. And it’s growing to the point that people at the highest levels of Major League Baseball acknowledge it concerns them. Most worrisome is the rhetoric that fans are done with the game. That what L.A. is doing is unfair. That the financial imbalance ruins the sport.
A villain around which people can rally is tolerable; an unbeatable monolith is not. An exemplar for how teams can operate is instructive; an extinguishing of hope is not. With every transaction pushing the Dodgers further from the former and more toward the latter, MLB faces growing cynicism that has reignited calls for a salary cap — and made collective bargaining discussions set to start a year from now, before the current basic agreement expires following the 2026 season, that much more fraught with peril.
Over the past 13 months, the Dodgers have morphed from a large-market, big-money jewel franchise that spent exceptional sums of money and didn’t have much to show for it into a referendum on the state of MLB in 2025. Because baseball is the last of the major North American professional sports leagues without a salary cap or floor, the difference between the Dodgers — who carry a payroll in the $375 million range — and the next-highest team, the Philadelphia Phillies, is nearly $70 million. That’s to say nothing of the gap between the Dodgers and the 30th-ranked Miami Marlins: around $300 million. The $120 million or so the Dodgers are in line to pay in luxury tax penalties on top of their payroll is more than the projected Opening Day payroll of 10 teams.
In the past 411 days, the Dodgers have:
-
Signed Ohtani to a 10-year, $700 million contract, with $680 million deferred
-
Traded for right-hander Tyler Glasnow and signed him to a five-year, $136.5 million contract extension
-
Signed right-hander Yamamoto to a 12-year, $325 million contract
-
Signed Smith to a 10-year, $140 million contract extension, with $50 million deferred
-
Signed two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell to a five-year, $182 million contract, with $66 million deferred
-
Signed Edman, acquired at the 2024 trade deadline, to a five-year, $74 million contract extension, with $25 million deferred
-
Signed outfielder Michael Conforto to a one-year, $17 million contract
-
Signed reliever Blake Treinen to a two-year, $22 million contract
-
Signed outfielder Teoscar Hernández to a pair of deals totaling $89.5 million over four years, with $32 million deferred
-
Signed Korean infielder Hyeseong Kim to a three-year, $12.5 million contract
-
Signed Sasaki
-
Signed closer Tanner Scott to a four-year, $72 million contract, with $21 million deferred
In total, they have guaranteed $1.778 billion — nearly half of it ($874 million) deferred. For a team that already had Betts and Freeman under contract — a team that over its six previous full seasons won at least 100 games five times — to turn over more than half its roster and add nearly a dozen impact players registered as baseball gluttony.
A day after Sasaki’s signing, Chicago Cubs owner Tom Ricketts told 670 AM in Chicago that “it’s really hard to compete” with the Dodgers. Ricketts bought the Cubs for $845 million in 2009. They are worth around $5 billion now, according to a person who values professional sports franchises. The Cubs, according to Forbes, have the third-highest revenue in MLB, behind the Yankees and Dodgers. They are the epitome of a big-market, high-earning franchise. Ricketts said the Cubs attempt to break even every year. Forbes estimates they have earned more than $585 million before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization over the past decade in addition to the more than $4 billion appreciation of the team.
At the time, the Cubs were attempting to sign Scott, among the most coveted relievers this winter. The next day, with a final offer of four years and $66 million — $6 million shy of where the Dodgers landed — they lost. The $18 million-a-year salary Scott received fell in line with those of other elite closers.
This is not a chicken-and-egg situation. Teams like the Cubs and Boston Red Sox — should-be powerhouses — earn reputations quickly among players by not spending. When franchises show they care about winning, players take note. The flocking of talented players to the Dodgers is not a function of a willingness to overpay. The vast majority of the long-term deals handed out by the Dodgers are market price or club-friendly. Betts’, Freeman’s, Smith’s. Ohtani’s deal — with $68 million of his annual $70 million salary deferred for a decade — was proposed by him to the Dodgers as well as to the other teams that pursued him: Toronto, San Francisco and the Los Angeles Angels.
While the Dodgers are among the rare teams that can carry three $300 million-plus deals (and four other nine-figure pacts on top of that) without bleeding money, they also thrive in the middle market. They took advantage of Ricketts’ unwillingness to push — he has limited the Cubs’ budget this winter, even after trading for Kyle Tucker — and won the bidding for Scott. Any team could have pursued Hernández, whose deal this winter was at market value. Every team passed on signing Snell to a long-term deal in the 2023-24 offseason. Edman was widely available at the trade deadline.
Every MLB club, even those with the lowest revenues, can compete for that sort of talent. So many operate with unbending devotion to their computer models, though, that the simple act of spending has become an even greater advantage for the Dodgers. With a history of teams on limited budgets annually performing among the best in the game, those franchises could fare even better stretching themselves financially and investing in winning, at the very least proportionally to those who devote a higher percentage of revenue to payroll. The Dodgers’ willingness to spend in grand sums and success with it should motivate other teams to keep up, not preclude them from doing so.
THREE DECADES AFTER the longest work stoppage in MLB history, the inequity baked into the game’s financial system remains. MLB’s pursuit of a salary cap in 1994 led to the cancellation of the World Series that year. The rekindling of a cap conversation has already begun — particularly by owners peeved by the Dodgers’ spending and the sheer size of Juan Soto‘s 15-year, $765 million, no-deferred-money deal with the New York Mets. Proposing a cap in next year’s CBA negotiations would be tantamount to a declaration of war by MLB — and already those owners are prepared for commissioner Rob Manfred to lock the players out Dec. 1, 2026.
It’s clear, by now, that the punitive elements the most recent collective bargaining agreement put in place — the luxury tax, the qualifying offer system, draft-pick punishment — are anti-spending measures that just don’t apply to some. The Mets have spent exceptional amounts of money and been OK. The Dodgers clearly see money as a competitive advantage they’re willing to flaunt. There is room to incentivize other teams to spend without having to institute a cap and a floor.
For now, though, this is the game. These are the rules. Players overwhelmingly supported the collective bargaining agreement that governs baseball. Owners voted unanimously in favor of it.
The Dodgers are the symptom, not the cause.
Players will point out that a cap is not a panacea. Without one, baseball has found parity on par with or better than capped leagues. In the past quarter-century, the team with the largest payroll in baseball has won the World Series just four times. Over the past 15 years, it’s just twice. No team has captured back-to-back championships since the Yankees won three straight 1998-2000. MLB’s postseason this year featured teams from Kansas City, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore and San Diego. Perhaps most important: The randomness of baseball’s postseason typically serves as an equalizer, keeping even the most talented teams from their most dynastic aspirations.
As the Dodgers exceed the base luxury tax threshold of $241 million by more than 50%, it’s worth remembering that baseball has seen financial disparity like this before. There’s little solace to take in that this year, though, because the team the Dodgers have put together is genuinely great, extraordinarily deep, and prepared to weather injury, ineffectiveness and the other vagaries that would torpedo opponents’ seasons.
For all of the Dodgers’ advantages, it’s worth acknowledging the most overblown element of their approach. The deep misunderstanding of deferred money has painted it as a tool to avoid paying salaries for long periods of time and lessen a team’s luxury tax payroll. Neither of these is true.
Within two years of agreeing to a contract with deferred money, teams must place cash to cover future payments in an account and show statements annually to the league, according to the collective bargaining agreement. Deferrals are regarded by MLB the same way any business in any industry would: accounting for the time value of money. A dollar tomorrow is not worth as much as a dollar today. And a dollar 10 years down the road is worth much less than it is today. While Ohtani’s contract will ultimately pay him $70 million a year, its present-day worth is closer to the $46 million he counts against the luxury tax. This is not a loophole. It’s math. So is the fact that what they pay under luxury tax accounting — which uses the average annual value of a contract — exceeds the cash they’ll spend on payroll this year. The reality: They’re paying more in luxury tax this year.
An actual loophole does exist in the California tax system, incentivizing players who don’t live in the state to defer money and secure large signing bonuses, both of which allow them to skirt state taxes. This is nothing new for professional athletes across sports. Teams in Texas and Florida have been using a lack of state taxes to their advantage for decades. It’s not a particularly significant advantage — except for Ohtani, who California lawmakers said could avoid around $90 million in state taxes as they pursue legislation to fix the law.
What’s undeniable — and undeniably frustrating to fans and owners alike — is that despite the inflated dollar figure, Ohtani’s contract is the team-friendliest free agent deal in baseball history. Between his production and the revenue he helps the Dodgers generate, he is worth well over $100 million annually, not $46 million. And once the Dodgers were able to secure his services for the next decade, the franchise could still turn around and spend more than a billion dollars however it saw fit, perfectly content to pay the luxury tax.
Under McCourt’s ownership, the Dodgers were directionless underachievers. They became a fury-inducing juggernaut when they sought to maximize themselves, and that is the ultimate endgame of the stress test: Have they mastered this system to the point that it must be overhauled?
As the 2025 season unfolds and attempts to answer that question, they will wear the boos and the chirping and all of the nastiness in opposing ballparks. But this is not their fight. It is the commissioner’s and the owners’ and the union’s. Those stakeholders need to find an answer that isn’t just kicking the can down the road for five years but actually, actively changing baseball’s economic structure so players continue to make what they’re worth and fans see a tolerably fair system.
The greatest drug of sports fandom is belief, and right now, belief in baseball is waning. October has always been the great equalizer, a time when hot teams regularly beat more talented teams. If that happens to the Dodgers in 2025, the schadenfreude will be strong enough to part the Red Sea. Should the Dodgers become repeat champions, though, the chorus will grow louder and the distrust deeper. The stress test has arrived, and for all of the game’s resiliency, baseball’s future depends on its ability to navigate a situation of its own making.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports10 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway