This is For The Win’s daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Did a friend recommend or forward this to you? If so, subscribe here. Have feedback? Leave your questions, comments and concerns through this brief reader survey! Now, here’s Michelle Martinelli with a new idea to help the College Football Playoff selection committee.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the CFP committee backed itself into a corner AGAIN with its weekly rankings and subsequent explanations, some of which don’t make sense. Why would you not reevaluate teams idle during conference championship weekend when conference title games could make idle teams look better or worse? That pretty much guaranteed idle teams ranked lower than Alabama (e.g. South Carolina) last week couldn’t move up.
Even when the committee shares its reasoning, it’s often inconsistent, illogical and biased, which is why so many fans were bracing themselves for Alabama getting in over SMU. Thankfully, the committee made the right call there and didn’t punish the Mustangs for losing a close conference championship matchup.
But as recently as Saturday’s SEC title game, the committee was still getting criticized for botching last year’s four-team playoff with Florida State. The committee messed its rhetoric and criteria up so much this year that it has some of us feeling sorry for the SEC’s overlooked teams, like SOUTH CAROLINA.
An easy fix would be to only do playoff rankings the week going into conference championship weekend and then on Selection Sunday. That would keep the committee from setting arbitrary rules that then have to be followed for the rest of the rankings and limit how many explanations they offer and later contradict.
“My personal opinion is we come out with the rankings too early,” said Bob Bowlsby, the former Big 12 commissioner and architect of the 12-team format, via Yahoo Sports. “Doing it every week is hard on the chair and the committee. Two polls, one midseason and one at the end, would be better. But ESPN would flip out.”
Bowlsby is spot-on all around. No one complains about not getting March Madness rankings in early February, and the CFP committee could follow suit and offer indicators and hints without late-season weekly rankings.
If the committee wanted to help itself, it’d listen to Bowlsby’s and many others’ suggestions for improvement. Maybe it will when it comes to auto-bids and first-round byes, but we’re banking on the status quo for weekly rankings and ESPN’s show.
Juan Soto must’ve hated the Yankees
That’s the only reasonable conclusion I can come up with after seeing the difference between his new deal with the Mets and what he was offered from the Yankees, Mike Sykes writes.
Soto signed the biggest contract in the history of professional sports. Fifteen years and $765 million. No deferred money. The Mets ponied up for this one and got their guy.
THE DETAILS: Everything you need to know about Juan Soto’s megadeal
But what’s wild is that the deal Soto signed was reportedly only $5 million more than the Yankees offered him. The Yankees deal also included an extra year, according to Jon Heyman. Soto basically took an extra $5 million to move across town.
Yankees bid $760M for 16 years. Soto is a Met.
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) December 9, 2024
Now, let’s be honest. Any of us would do the same for $5 million without the context of the extra $760 million on the table. But for this contract? That’s nothing. The difference is negligible.
On one hand, you can say the Yankees should’ve gone bigger. Lots of folks out there are arguing that today. But, on the other, if $5 million made that big of a difference? It doesn’t sound like Soto wanted to be a Yankee for very long, anyway.
The Simpsons are saving Monday Night Football
Because the only way we were all tuning in to watch a terrible Cowboys team play a middling Bengals team is if you dropped the game in the middle of Springfield.
Bengals-Cowboys will be played on The Simpsons-themed alt-cast for Monday Night Football, similar to the Toy Story game from last season.
Here’s Cory Woodroof with more on how it’ll work:
“The alternative broadcast will air on ESPN+ and Disney+ via streaming and NFL+ via mobile, with Bart Simpson representing the Bengals and Homer Simpson representing the Cowboys.
“Each Bengals and Cowboys player will appear as a motion-enabled, animated player for the special primetime matchup,” a Disney release reads.
“Through state-of-the-art tracking technology enabled by NFL’s Next Gen Stats, Sony’s Beyond Sports, combined with Sony’s Hawk-Eye Innovations’ optical tracking, fans enjoying The Simpsons Funday Football will see every snap, run, pass, score, and more from the real-life Bengals and Cowboys matchup at AT&T Stadium as it happens.”
This will be the only reason I tune in tonight. Well, this and the fact that I desperately need Tee Higgins to catch six touchdowns so I can win my fantasy matchup.
Quick hits: Josh Allen is your MVP … Kirk Cousins was never real … and more
— Josh Allen was so good against the Rams, Prince Grimes writes, that he probably just locked up the MVP award.
— Here’s Christian D’Andrea on everything we learned from Week 14 in the NFL, including how much of a mirage Kirk Cousins is.
— Here’s Meg Hall with 12 photos of South Carolina absolutely whooping TCU, including Ashlyn Watkins’ incredible dunk.
— The Raiders and Giants are moving up (or down?) the tank ladder. Here’s Charles Curtis with the latest NFL draft order.
— The Chiefs can’t keep getting away with this. Or, well, maybe they can. Idk anymore.
— Juan Soto FaceTimed Donovan Mitchell after signing his new deal with the Mets. What a moment. Mary Clarke has more.
That’s a wrap, folks. Thanks so much for rocking with us today. We appreciate you. Have a fantastic Monday. Peace.
– Michelle & Sykes ✌️