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🚨 Headlines
⛳️ Hideki makes historical past: The PGA Tour season formally kicked off in Hawaii, the place Hideki Matsuyama (-35) gained The Sentry and . He had 33 birdies, 2 eagles and a pair of bogeys. Ridiculous.
🏈 Pats hearth Mayo: Invoice Belichick’s alternative lasted only one season in New England. The Patriots after a 4-13 season. May they’ve their eyes on Mike Vrabel?
🏒 USA wins all of it: Teddy Stiga scored on a breakaway in OT to elevate the U.S. previous Finland, 4-3, on the earth junior hockey championship sport and provides the People their . “Pure pleasure for the blokes,” mentioned coach David Carle. “I am actually proud. They will stroll collectively perpetually.”
🏀 Raised to the rafters: The Bulls subsequent season, elevating his No. 1 jersey to the rafters alongside Michael Jordan (No. 23), Scottie Pippen (No. 33), Jerry Sloan (No. 4) and Bob Love (No. 10).
🏒 Chasing Gretzky: With 9 targets in his final six video games, Alex Ovechkin is now from breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time report of 894. What was as soon as thought not possible is now inevitable.
🏈 Convey on the playoffs
Sunday concluded the 2024 NFL common season, which featured one of many closest MVP races in latest reminiscence, a number of uncommon statistical milestones and a historic end final night time in Detroit.
The playoffs are set: The ultimate two postseason spots , because the Buccaneers and the Broncos lastly .
NFC: The Lions clinched the NFC’s high seed for the primary time ever with a over the Vikings — the primary season finale since 1993 wherein the winner earned the No. 1 seed, and the primary regular-season sport in NFL historical past between 14-win groups.
AFC: The trail to the Tremendous Bowl nonetheless runs via Kansas Metropolis. The Chiefs are in search of their third straight title after incomes the No. 1 seed for the fourth time in seven seasons with Patrick Mahomes beneath middle.
Title odds: The Lions are the favorites to hoist the Lombardi Trophy (+280 at BetMGM), adopted by the Chiefs (+350), Ravens (+600), Payments (+600), Eagles (+700), Vikings (+1600), Packers (+1800), Buccaneers (+3000), Chargers (+3500), Rams (+3500), Commanders (+3500), Broncos (+8000), Texans (+8000) and Steelers (+10000).
An MVP race for the ages: For weeks, it seemed like Josh Allen would run away with the award, however Lamar Jackson has not so quietly made a bid for his third MVP after main the Ravens (12-5) to only one fewer win than Allen’s Payments (13-4).
Jackson: Baltimore’s twin risk QB will not be solely the primary participant with at the very least 4,000 passing (4,172) and 900 speeding yards (915) in a season, but in addition the primary with 40+ TD (41) and fewer than 5 INT (4). He added 4 speeding TDs and posted a career-high 119.6 passer ranking.
Allen: Buffalo’s signal-caller sat Sunday’s sport, ending the 12 months with 3,731 yards, 28 TD and 6 INT, plus 531 speeding yards and 12 scores on the bottom. Whereas Jackson has higher numbers, it is essential to notice that Allen sat roughly 11 quarters this season with the sport (or playoff spot) already in hand.
Honorable point out: Saquon Barkley, who additionally rested on Sunday, grew to become the ninth member of the two,000 yard membership; Joe Burrow led the league in passing yards (4,918) and TD (43).
Season in evaluate:
Rodgers’ final stand? Aaron Rodgers’ future, as each a Jet and within the NFL, is up within the air. If Sunday was his swan music it was fairly a coda: He posted his first 4 TD sport since 2021 and have become the with 500 profession TD passes.
Rookie standouts: Jayden Daniels grew to become the third rookie QB to win 12 video games; Brock Bowers (112 catches) and Malik Nabers (109) each broke the earlier report for receptions by a rookie; Jared Verse is the DROY favourite after incomes the Rams’ solely Professional Bowl spot.
Fantasy soccer awards: Ja’Marr Chase’s (127 catches, 1,708 yards, 17 TD) earned him . Different superlatives embrace Bucs RB Bucky Irving as the perfect waiver add and Jets RB Breece Corridor as the most important bust.
Playoff droughts: Whereas the Broncos are lastly again within the playoffs, the identical cannot be mentioned for the Jets (14 years), Falcons (seven) or Panthers (seven), who now personal the NFL’s longest energetic droughts.
Race to the underside: The Titans (3-13) with their worst season since 2015. The Browns, Giants, Patriots and Jaguars spherical out of the highest 5.
Plus… Loads of gamers earned some additional money this weekend after , together with Mike Evans ($3M for 1,000 yards), Geno Smith ($6M for reaching profession highs in passing yards and completion charge, and profitable 10 video games) and Zach Ertz ($750,000 for attending to 60 catches, 600 yards and 6 TD, all of which he reached on Sunday).
🏀 Wemby at 100 video games: What are we witnessing?
Victor Wembanyama performed his one centesimal NBA sport on Friday and turned 21 on Saturday, offering an ideal alternative for our NBA consultants to .
1. Rating from 0 to 100: What grade would you give Wembanyama on the 100-game mark?
99. Just like the greats, he is exceeded nice expectations. At 7-foot-5 — do not give me that 7-foot-3 nonsense — Wemby warps the sport in methods we have by no means seen at his age. If he is this good at 21, I shudder to suppose what he’ll be at 31. A playoff go to with this roster will bump this as much as a 100.
— Tom Haberstroh
2. What has been his most spectacular feat thus far?
It’s not simply that Wembanyama is the main candidate for DPOY. He’s the perfect defensive participant within the league by a large margin. The numbers again it up. His size adjustments the form of the ground. We will moderately assume he’ll submit the best defensive season ever sooner or later within the close to future, after which hold topping it for the rest of the last decade.
— Ben Rohrbach
3. True or false: He is already a top-10 participant within the NBA.
True. We’re now not in a world the place we will assume Steph, KD and LeBron are routinely put in within the high 10. Maybe they dwell on the again finish, however the transition is right here. Huge Slim is likely to be a top-five participant, knocking on the Jokić/SGA/Luka door as a result of he impacts the sport in so many profound methods.
— Vincent Goodwill
4. What’s Wemby’s final ceiling within the NBA?
The Kareem comparability is one I’ve favored for some time, even when their taking part in kinds differ considerably. The general imprint on a sport is comparable, solely with Wembanyama with the ability to stretch the ground, and thus incorporate himself into the brand new age NBA. The greats are all the time evaluated on profitable, and we’re seeing a participant right here who might win a number of championships, a number of MVPs and lock down DPOY for a decade. We will not draw back from it: His final ceiling is GOAT territory.
— Morten Stig Jensen
🤯 Contemplate this… Wembanyama had extra factors in his first 100 NBA video games than LeBron James, extra threes than Steph Curry, extra rebounds than Anthony Davis and extra blocks than Shaquille O’Neal.
📸 Pics du jour
Washington, D.C. — Magic Johnson was one among 19 folks to on Saturday in a ceremony on the White Home. Among the many different recipients: Inter Miami famous person Lionel Messi and Orioles proprietor David Rubenstein.
Chicago, Illinois — Wrigley Area was an ice rink for this weekend’s “Frozen Confines” occasion, which noticed hundreds of followers to catch a pair of Huge Ten hockey doubleheaders on the iconic ballpark.
Sydney, Australia — The U.S. defeated Poland on Sunday to . Coco Gauff started the day in fashion with a 6-4, 6-4 win over world No. 2 Iga Świątek earlier than Taylor Fritz beat Hubert Hurkacz 6-4, 5-7, 7-6 (7-4) to clinch the title.
London, England — Luke Littler, essentially the most well-known 17-year-old in Britain, can also be now the . He knocked off three-time champ Michael van Gerwen on Friday to hoist the trophy and take house a $620,000 examine.
🌊 Is that this the most important wave ever surfed?
On Christmas Eve, American surfer Alessandro Slebir in Half Moon Bay, California, that was estimated to be 108 toes tall, which might be a world report.
Largest wave ever? If confirmed, Slebir would break the present Guinness World Document of 86 toes, set by German surfer Sebastian Steudtner in Nazaré, Portugal, in 2020. However formally verifying the wave’s peak is not any simple job.
For all of their ferocity, large waves are among the many most ephemeral phenomena in all of sports activities — they’re virtually not possible to exactly rank. Yearly, a “conclave of [experts]” get collectively in a closed room and examine pictures and movies submitted by surfers from world wide in an effort to find out who rode the most important wave captured on movie.
Submissions can come from anyplace, however the most typical spots are Half Moon Bay, house to the mighty break generally known as Mavericks; the North Shore of Maui, house to a crushing wave generally known as Jaws; and Nazaré, the place an underwater canyon funnels enormous winter swells straight onto shore in an in any other case nondescript fishing village.
How do you reliably measure a wave? It took 18 months to finalize Steudtner’s wave peak, and Slebir’s experience will bear a equally meticulous course of that features a detailed measurement of each Slebir (peak when crouched down, and so on) and the wave itself. The place, precisely, does the flat water in entrance of the wave finish and the upward slope start?
The final phrase: Slebir would not appear too involved with information or fame. “For me, I am blissful to have ridden the most important wave of my life,” mentioned the 23-year-old, who grew up about an hour south of Mavericks. “I will let different folks determine what dimension it was.”
✍️ Further factors
🇺🇸 America loves soccer: The NFL accounted for , per Sportico. That is down from 93 final 12 months, however is true according to the 71 spots the league claimed over the past presidential election 12 months (2020).
🤑 Pickleball pays: The typical pay of the ~60 girls within the high two pickleball leagues (which have since merged) was $260,000 in 2024, . That is greater than double the typical NWSL wage and could be the best wage within the WNBA.
🎓 Realignment ridiculousness: Northern Illinois is as a football-only member in 2026. That is proper: A faculty outdoors Chicago will quickly be in the identical league as a faculty in Hawaii. 10-hour flight!
🏈 GIF of the weekend: Bryce “Steph Curry” Younger . I consider that is what the youths name “aura.”
💔 Miss you, Stu: Saturday marked 10 years since Stuart Scott handed away. His voice will perpetually be synonymous with peak ESPN, once we typically discovered outcomes of video games through “SportsCenter” highlights. . Each gone method too quickly…
🔗 Thriller hyperlink: (simply belief me)
📺 Watchlist: FCS title sport
No. 1 Montana State and No. 3 North Dakota State face off tonight (7pm ET, ESPN) in Frisco, Texas, for the FCS nationwide championship.*
Head-to-head: The third-seeded Bison are in search of their report tenth FCS nationwide championship (all since 2011), whereas the top-seeded Bobcats are in search of their second — and first since 1984.
Extra to look at:
🏀 NBA: Suns at 76ers (7pm, NBA); Warmth at Kings (10pm, NBA)
🏀 NCAAM: Wisconsin at Rutgers (7pm, FS1); TCU at No. 14 Houston (9pm, ESPN2)
🏒 NHL: Capitals at Sabres (7pm, NHL)
⚽️ EPL: Wolves vs. Nottingham Forest (3pm, USA)
*Revenge sport: NDSU has knocked Montana State out of the playoffs 4 instances up to now six years, together with beating them within the 2022 title sport. Can the Bobcats get revenge and declare their first title in 40 years, or will we see one other Bison coronation?
🏈 CFP trivia
4 groups stay within the School Soccer Playoff: No. 5 Texas, No. 6 Penn State, No. 7 Notre Dame and No. 8 Ohio State.
Query: Rank these applications by most nationwide championships within the Ballot Period (1936-present).
Reply on the backside.
🍿 Baker’s Dozen: Prime 13 performs of the weekend
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Trivia reply: Notre Dame (8), Ohio State (6), Texas (4), Penn State (2)
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