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Good morning! Field a punt today.
While You Were Sleeping: A title-winning punt
One of the best college football games of the season ended on a punt. Just watch:
North Dakota State wins the FCS national championship and it ends on a punt pic.twitter.com/Sihr2VqUAM
— CJ Fogler 🫡 (@cjzero) January 7, 2025
With the successful downed punt last night, North Dakota State beat previously undefeated Montana State 35-32 to win the program’s 10th FCS title in the last 15 years. It was a brutal ending for the Bobcats, who have been eliminated by these Bison in the FCS playoffs four times since 2018.
Montana State roared all the way back from a 21-3 third-quarter deficit, then went all out to try and block that final punt. And it ends on a ball rolling to a standstill.
Read our full story here. FBS playoff games resume Thursday with Penn State-Notre Dame. Let’s keep moving:
Wheeeeeeee! Are you dizzy yet?
Each year, the NFL coaching carousel has funny timing. We start with a blitz on Black Monday, as firings — or retentions — come out rapidly. It is dizzying. Then most of the proverbial dust settles, though it isn’t over yet.
So we should exercise patience for a little while, as teams sort through departing coaches and line up interviews with new ones — which mostly consist of coaches still with playoff teams. Again, a wait.
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So consider this a table-setter of what we know right now about the five teams with jobs currently open, plus one that had to decide whether to join them:Â
- Action:Â Fired coach Matt Eberflus midseason.
- Intrigue: The team has requested to interview Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy, whose contract expires in a week. Expect Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson and former Titans coach Mike Vrabel to be among the leading candidates, too.
- Action:Â Fired coach Doug Pederson yesterday, but kept general manager Trent Baalke.
- Intrigue: People around the league were shocked that Baalke kept his job, per numerous reports, which may not bode well for the organization’s attractiveness to HC candidates. Still, having an established QB, Trevor Lawrence, will assure some interest.
- Action: Fired coach Jerod Mayo on Sunday, and owner Robert Kraft took blame for the bad season. Refreshing.
- Intrigue: Despite a meh roster, this will be a coveted job due to quarterback Drake Maye. Former Patriots linebacker Vrabel is the main name here, and other considerations include Vikings DC Brian Flores, another member of the Bill Belichick tree.
- Action:Â Fired coach Dennis Allen midseason.
- Intrigue:Â My beleaguered Saints have requested to interview Eagles OC Kellen Moore, Bills offensive coordinator Joe Brady and Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn. Brady helped win a title at nearby LSU, and Glenn has multiple connections to the franchise.
- Action:Â Elected to keep both coach Brian Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen after a 3-14 season.
- Intrigue: Heading into next year, consider both their seats ablaze, as team owner John Mara said yesterday he is nearly out of patience with this regime. It feels like a disaster already.
There is plenty of other carousel news in our live blog, including some attention-worthy coordinator firings.
News to Know
Disney buys Fubo
On its face, the move might sound like a boring press release. But Disney’s purchase of Fubo has sweeping implications for how we all view sports TV going forward, especially in a fraught landscape filled with old stalwarts (linear networks, ESPN, etc.) and massive streamers entering the fray (Amazon and Netflix). For one, as Andrew Marchand wrote, Disney/ESPN can now fill a role at every price point of your viewing experience. See their game plan here. (Disclaimer: Fubo is a commercial partner of The Athletic.)
More news:Â
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The Money, It Calls: Deion and Shedeur together again?
You may have noticed last week’s sports media predictions from Richard Deitsch went pretty viral in our universe. We thought it was high time for more predictions.
Thus I welcomed Dan Shanoff, one of The Athletic’s newest editors and the author of our upcoming sports business newsletter MoneyCall, for some sizzling takes. Dan has a list of 2025 predictions publishing tomorrow for MoneyCall’s launch. I wrangled some early access so we could, ahem, debate.
Let’s go mild to spicy:
🫑 The NCAA announces an increase from 68 to 72 teams in the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, starting with the 2025-26 season. (Via Joe Rexrode)
Another small increase to the tournament sounds tame, but some might worry this would diminish the talent of the field even more. Dan has more thoughts:
💬 As the CFP is showing, more is better with college sports inclusion. Ignore the anti-expansion cranks — they would have argued expanding to 64 was a horrible idea in the mid-1980s.
🌶️🌶️ Paige Bueckers will forgo the 2025 WNBA Draft to return to UConn for a $4 million NIL deal.
Oh man. I did a cartoonish eye-bulge upon reading this, yet it’s a legitimate possibility, as Sabreena Merchant wrote last month. Bueckers has so much power over her next move. Dan?
💬 By staying put, Paige can make more money than she could in the WNBA, be seen by more fans AND avoid playing for a Dallas Wings franchise she doesn’t seem to be energized by. (So let’s amend this: IF Dallas trades the pick to the Sparks or Mystics, Paige goes pro.)
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Deion Sanders and Shedeur Sanders are a package deal: Shedeur will be taken No. 1 in the NFL Draft (not by the Patriots), and Deion will be that team’s new head coach.
HOT OIL SPLASHING OFF THE STOVE. Shedeur will almost certainly be a top-10 pick, although there hasn’t been much of an indication that Deion is leaving Colorado any time soon. This dovetails with the coaching carousel being right now, so I wonder about the timing here with the draft still months away. Explain yourself, Dan:
💬 I’ll confess to wishcasting an amazing scene in, say, Dallas, but confidently say that at some point in Shedeur’s NFL career, he will be coached by his dad.
Dan rounded up plenty more predictions in tomorrow’s MoneyCall debut. Sign up here.
Watch and Play
đź“ş NBA: Lakers at Mavericks
7:30 p.m. on TNT
L.A. is back on the upswing, but LeBron James & Co. will miss old friends Kyrie Irving and Luka DonÄŤić. It’s another good test of how the deepest Mavs roster of the DonÄŤić era fares without its superstar.Â
đź“ş NCAAM: No. 1 Tennessee at No. 8 Florida
7 p.m. ET on ESPN 2
Two of the country’s best teams in — gasp — arguably its best conference provide some Tuesday TV watching tonight. The Volunteers are undefeated.Â
Get tickets to games like these here.
Pulse Picks
Hall of Fame ballots are a touchy subject in baseball, so I thought Ken Rosenthal’s column on why he voted for CC Sabathia — and not Andy Pettitte — to make Cooperstown was well-written. Read his case here.
Ilona Maher, maybe the world’s most famous women’s rugby player, has enraptured Bristol, England, where she made her debut for the Bristol Bears. I loved Caiohme O’Neil’s report from the ground.
The Wizards hosted a dog night Sunday, and the story — and the pictures, of course — is great. See the pups here.
A shocker: The Dodgers are loading up again, as Fabian Ardaya explains.Â
Brody Miller emptied his golf notebook from Hawaii, which I found insightful, particularly the story about Collin Morikawa and his caddie.Â
Also on the links: Gabby Herzig has a helpful explainer about TGL, the new golf simulator league with the sport’s biggest stars, which premieres tonight.Â
Most-clicked in the newsletter yesterday: NFL playoff matchups and TV times. Still relevant.Â
Most-read on the website yesterday: Our NFL playoff projections, with odds for each team to win the Super Bowl.
(Top photo: Courtney Culbreath / Getty Images)
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