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🚨 Headlines
🏈 Coaching carousel: UCLA is hiring James Madison head coach Bob Chesney, who will finish out the season with the Dukes (11-1) as they eye a CFP berth; Kentucky is hiring Oregon OC Will Stein; BYU's Kalani Sitake is reportedly "the focus" of Penn State's search.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement🏀 Hoops rankings: Purdue (men) and UConn (women) remain No. 1 in the latest AP polls, but Michigan (men) and LSU (women) sit atop the season's first NET rankings, which will be used by the NCAA selection committees leading up to March Madness.
🇧🇷 College Football Brasil: NC State and Virginia will open the 2026 season in Rio de Janeiro, marking the first college football game ever played in South America.
⚾️ Swapping boroughs: Two-time All-Star reliever Devin Williams is moving from the Bronx to Queens after the closer signed a three-year deal with the Mets worth more than $50 million.
🏀 Dickie V's tournament debut: Dick Vitale and Charles Barkley will team up to call two college basketball games this season, including a First Four NCAA tournament game in March that will mark Vitale's March Madness debut.
🏀 So long, Cinderella?
Last season's chalky Sweet 16 sparked concerns about the growing divide between the haves and have nots in men's college basketball. The opening month of a new season has only fueled those concerns.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementFrom Yahoo Sports' Jeff Eisenberg:
After the opening weekend of last season's historically chalky NCAA tournament, the remaining teams all shared something in common: Every team that advanced to the round of 16 hailed from a power conference. There were no giant-slaying underdogs for TV viewers to fall in love with, no small-conference afterthoughts punching above their weight class.
A Sweet 16 loaded with nothing but big brands stoked growing concerns in college basketball circles that de facto free agency (a.k.a. the transfer portal) was widening the gap between well-heeled power-conference programs and everyone else. For days, debate raged over whether the absence of the usual March magic was a one-year aberration or the start of a troubling trend.
Would the one-two punch of a soaring NIL market and the lack of transfer restrictions turn out to be "the death of mid-major Cinderella runs," as former Duke star and current ESPN analyst Jay Williams argued at the time? Or were scorching hot takes like that a wild overreaction to results from a single NCAA tournament?
Early results: While it's too soon to definitively answer those questions, early evidence suggests that teams from smaller conferences have reason to be worried that they'll struggle to compete in March.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementBesides Gonzaga, not a single team from outside college basketball's power conferences has cracked the AP Top 25 so far this season, and high-majors are swatting aside smaller-conference competition with unprecedented ease.
There were 378 matchups in November between high-majors and non-Gonzaga teams from other conferences. The little guy won just 22 of those games (5.82%), which is by far the lowest winning percentage of the past decade.
Consider this: As recently as three Novembers ago, non-Gonzaga mid- and low-majors beat power-conference foes more than 16% of the time. But now that so much of the sport's talent is concentrated in the Big Ten, SEC, Big 12, ACC and Big East, those early-season upsets almost never happen (1 out of every ~17 meetings).
While the transfer portal does work both ways, mid-major coaches say that it's tougher now than it was five years ago to find power-conference players seeking to drop down a level in search of more playing time. The NIL money available to a SEC or Big Ten benchwarmer often surpasses the market for a SoCon or Horizon League starter.
"In the past, if you did a good job evaluating and a good job recruiting and you found guys who were a notch above your level, they wouldn't leave because they'd have to sit out some place," former Fairleigh Dickinson and Iona coach Tobin Anderson told Yahoo Sports. "Now with the portal and nonstop free agency, a good low-major or mid-major team for the most part is going to lose its best players every year."
Read the full story.
🏈 Is it time to ditch the AP preseason poll?
Here's a crazy stat: 12 of the 25 teams in the preseason AP college football poll finished the regular season unranked.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementFood for thought: Is it time to ditch the preseason poll? That initial Top 25 is a total crapshoot in the transfer era, with so many teams completely remaking their rosters year-to-year. The voters are just guessing.
Teams are ranked at the beginning of the season that shouldn't be, and wins against those teams are inflated all year long.
The opposite is also true: teams are unranked at the beginning of the season that should be ranked, and that can limit how high they climb.
The big picture: While the CFP rankings take precedence midseason, the AP rankings inform the committee's first reveal and are used as a guide in the weeks that follow. So one could argue that the preseason AP poll — which is, again, a total guessing game — has an indirect influence on the playoff field.
What's the solution? The simplest change would be to start the rankings after Week 1, or maybe even later than that (after Week 3?), to give voters a chance to actually watch teams play. In theory, this gives everyone a blank slate and encourages voters to rank teams based solely on the present, rather than letting the previous season (and any other preconceived notions) influence the rankings.
What do you think: Is it time to ditch the preseason AP poll? Is delaying the initial rankings a week (or a few) a good potential solution? Any other ideas?
🇺🇸 Photos across America
Foxborough, Massachusetts — The Patriots cruised to a 33-15 victory over the Giants on "Monday Night Football," winning their 10th straight game to regain control of the AFC's No. 1 seed and the NFL's best record (11-2).
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWild stat: The 2025 Patriots are the first team in NFL history to win 10 straight games in a single season while scoring at least 23 points and allowing 23 or fewer points in every game of the streak.
Fort Lauderdale, Florida — The USWNT closed out 2025 on a high note, picking up a 2-0 victory over Italy in their final match of the year behind a pair of first-half goals from Cat Macario and Jaedyn Shaw.
Year in review: The U.S. went 12-3 this year across a dozen friendlies and the SheBelieves Cup, as head coach Emma Hayes used the lack of major tournaments as an opportunity to expand the player pool for the next World Cup cycle.
Baton Rouge, Louisiana — Lane Kiffin was introduced as LSU's new head coach on Monday, officially accepting "the best job in America" after being lured from Ole Miss by a lucrative deal that was finalized in a private airport hangar in Baton Rouge.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementContract details: Kiffin's seven-year, $91 million contract makes him the nation's second highest-paid coach (Kirby Smart). As part of his deal, Kiffin will receive bonuses based on how far Ole Miss advances in the playoff… and those bonuses will be paid by LSU.
🏀 Déjà vu in Durham
Last season, a Duke freshman (Cooper Flagg) led the team in every major statistic en route to being the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft. Could the same thing happen again this season?
Déjà vu: Highly-touted freshman Cameron Boozer leads the Blue Devils in points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks and minutes, and he's firmly in the mix to be the top selection in June.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementFlagg (2024-25): 19.6 points, 7.5 rebounds, 4.2 assists, 1.6 steals, 1.2 blocks, 30.8 minutes
Boozer (2025-26): 21.1 points, 9.9 rebounds, 4.0 assists, 1.7 steals, 1.3 blocks, 28.0 minutes
Wild stat: Boozer is the only Division I or NBA player in the last 30 seasons to have 175+ points, 75+ rebounds, 25+ assists, 10 or fewer turnovers and an undefeated record over an eight-game span… and he did it in the first eight games of his career.
📺 Watchlist: Tuesday, Dec. 2
🏀 NBA on NBC
We've got ourselves quite the doubleheader tonight, with the Celtics hosting the second-place Knicks (8pm ET) and the Warriors hosting the first-place Thunder (11pm).
Top scorers on display: All four teams have a player among the league's top-13 scorers in OKC's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (32.5 ppg), New York's Jalen Brunson (28.5), Boston's Jaylen Brown (28.4) and Golden State's Steph Curry (27.9).
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement🏀 Men's College Hoops
Just nine men's programs have won at least three national championships, and six of them are playing against each other tonight in a trio of ranked matchups: No. 15 Florida at No. 4 Duke (7:30pm, ESPN), No. 5 UConn at No. 21 Kansas (9pm, ESPN2) and No. 16 UNC at No. 18 Kentucky (9:30pm, ESPN).
The nine three-time winners: UCLA (11 titles), Kentucky (8), UNC (6), UConn (6), Duke (5), Indiana (5), Kansas (4), Florida (3) and Villanova (3).
More to watch:
🏀 NCAAW: No. 1 UConn at South Florida (5pm, ESPN2) … The top-ranked Huskies have won 23 straight games dating back to last season.
🏒 NHL: Lightning at Islanders (7pm, ESPN+) … Tampa Bay (16-7-2) has won seven straight and 15 of 18 to climb to the top of the Eastern Conference.
⚽️ Premier League: Fulham vs. Man City (2:30pm, USA) … Erling Haaland has scored more than half (14) of City's 27 goals this season.
⚽️ La Liga: Barcelona vs. Atlético Madrid (3pm, ESPN+) … First-place Barça hosts fourth-place Atleti.
Today's full slate.
🏎️ F1 trivia
If Max Verstappen wins the Formula 1 championship this weekend in Abu Dhabi, he will become the fourth driver to win at least five F1 titles.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementQuestion: Which three drivers would he join?
Hint: England, Germany, Argentina.
Answer at the bottom.
📸 Photo finish
🇳🇱 Amsterdam, Netherlands — Sunday's match between Ajax and Groningen was abandoned in the sixth minute after Ajax supporters set off copious fireworks in honor of a recently deceased member of the club's ultras group, the F-Side. The match will resume today behind closed doors.
Trivia answer: Lewis Hamilton (7 titles), Michael Schumacher (7), Juan Manuel Fangio (5)
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