Travis Hunter got hurt, left early and watched his team lose a close one. That’s no reason for anyone who thought the Colorado cornerback/receiver was the best player in college football entering Saturday to think otherwise coming out of Saturday.

But the Heisman Trophy can’t just be about being. It’s about doing, and no one is doing more on a weekly basis to make voters notice than Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty. So as the pool of candidates expands in The Athletic’s Heisman straw poll — to a season-high nine this week — Jeanty also boasts the most points a candidate has earned.

After rushing for 217 yards and a touchdown, plus catching a touchdown, in Boise State’s 28-7 win at Hawaii, Jeanty received 20 first-place votes and 74 points. That’s up from 10 first-place votes and 58 points a week ago. Hunter came in second with six first-place votes and 52 points, after he led the poll with 15 first-place votes and 67 points last week.

The Athletic follows the same voting protocol as that of the Heisman: three points for a first-place vote, two points for a second-place vote, one point for a third-place vote.

Miami quarterback Cam Ward remained in third place with 21 points, again getting a lone first-place vote, after an off week for the Hurricanes. The new name this week is Dillon Gabriel, the Oregon quarterback who came up huge in a top-five battle that lived up to the billing — 341 yards passing and two touchdowns, plus a 27-yard touchdown run, to beat Ohio State 32-31.

He was spectacular, for what is now the No. 2 team in the country, and he has games ahead against Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Washington that can strengthen his case. The case could be made in a potential Big Ten Championship Game rematch with Ohio State, if Gabriel can maintain a high level of play until then and engineer a second win against the Buckeyes.

Ward doesn’t have as much opportunity available in the regular season but has been the more dynamic player, and a potential ACC title game matchup with Clemson could be a big moment for him.

Those two are joined by three other quarterbacks in the straw poll: Vanderbilt’s Diego Pavia, who followed up a shocking upset of No. 1 Alabama by controlling the game in another upset win, at Kentucky; Alabama’s Jalen Milroe, who could give himself a bump this week at Tennessee; and Indiana’s Kurtis Rourke, whose 6-0 Hoosiers have an enormous opportunity at home against Nebraska.

Ohio State freshman receiver Jeremiah Smith got a vote after another splendid performance, nine catches for 100 yards and a touchdown in the dramatic loss at Oregon. He had a late catch that might have led to a winning field goal wiped away for offensive pass interference, but a freshman doing that to a defensive back will still land on a highlight tape.

Iowa running back Kaleb Johnson is a first-time vote-getter after rushing 21 times for 166 yards and two touchdowns in a 40-16 rout of Washington. Johnson is second nationally with 937 rushing yards and 156.2 yards rushing per game. Jeanty leads both of those categories, 1,248 yards and 208.0 per game. He also leads the nation with 17 rushing touchdowns and is averaging a ridiculous 9.9 yards per carry.

As The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel pointed out, Jeanty is on pace to for 2,704 yards if Boise State can reach the Mountain West title game. That would beat Barry Sanders’ FBS record of 2,628 yards, set in 1988. Yes, Sanders did it in just 11 games and against powers such as Oklahoma and Nebraska. But Jeanty shredded Oregon for 192 yards and three touchdowns, and anything close to the record will make him tough to beat. Unless a quarterback has a run of dominance, in terms of individual and team success, from here. Or if Hunter does some great things to remind everyone what a great, and unique, player he is.

(Photo: Marco Garcia / Imagn Images)

In spring 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic upended the country, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert was locked down in her New Jersey home. The league was facing a season on the brink right as its stakeholders felt it had begun to gather momentum.

In conversations with league owners and players, Engelbert sensed in those early weeks of the pandemic the tension over what was at stake. Without a season, the league faced what she later called an “existential” moment about the prospect of going dark for 20 months.

“I don’t know if we would have made it, but I do know we wouldn’t be where we are today without having had that highly competitive 22-game season in the bubble,” Engelbert said.

Four years after the “Wubble,” the league is celebrating the WNBA Finals between the New York Liberty and Minnesota Lynx as a capstone to its most successful year. The WNBA has never been in a better place. Television ratings are up. So is attendance. The league is riding a boom in interest and talent, driven by the steady excellence of longtime stars like A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart, and the arrival of Caitlin Clark. Three expansion teams have already been named and another is expected. A lucrative new media deal is set to start in 2026.

LIBERTY LEVELS UP 🗽

The #WNBAFinals presented by @YouTubeTV is now tied at 1-1! Game 3 is set for Wednesday at 8pm/ET in Minneapolis 🔥 pic.twitter.com/sZOjIZSZZW

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— WNBA (@WNBA) October 13, 2024

The progress has not been without its growing pains. For years, WNBA players pushed for private charter flights for teams traveling between games — a common practice for their peers in the NBA and most other major professional sports leagues — before the league granted them this season. Occasional high-profile games have been moved because of scheduling conflicts, and fans have voiced frustration about merchandise and broadcast accessibility. Engelbert received criticism from players, including an admonishment from the players’ union, last month for what they said was an inadequate public response to the online harassment and abuse many said they’ve received this season. The union has also routinely called for more transparency from the league on its finances and operations.

But the league remains on the ascent, and the choice to play in 2020 has been hailed by team owners as an important springboard. “I think it was one of the best decisions made in the history of this league,” Seattle Storm co-owner Lisa Brummel said.

That decision kept the WNBA in the consciousness of fans and created a strengthened player body. As important, it continued to generate revenue via media rights and corporate partnerships.

A few months after the conclusion of the 2020 season, the WNBA made another choice that significantly affected its trajectory. It began a capital raise that has helped supercharge its reach and popularity. It didn’t have to come in from the shadows to do so. If not for that window of time, stakeholders say, the WNBA might not be where it is now.

Before Engelbert took over as the WNBA’s first official commissioner in 2019 — the league was previously run by presidents — she had to interview with the league’s team owners. As she went around the country, visiting all 12 markets, she heard a similar refrain. After nearly three decades of trying to find its footing, the WNBA’s power brokers had decided it was time to grow. The plan, Engelbert said, was based on a simple idea: “Go big or go home.” The league, they told her, needed more capital.

There was no consensus on how much. Just that it needed more to grow. Engelbert sought perspectives from influential people around her. When she met Kobe Bryant late that year, she said he asked what the WNBA needed. Engelbert passed along the desire for more capital and floated $50 million as a target. That number turned out to be a fraction of what it later received from investors.

In early 2021, the WNBA put out a pitch deck to investors. The process was driven, in part, by the Liberty’s ownership group, which also owns the Brooklyn Nets and Blue Pool Capital, a private equity firm. “At the time, we really needed that infusion of capital,” Liberty co-owner Clara Wu Tsai said.

It was a new approach by the WNBA. The NBA had helped stand up the league over its first two-plus decades in existence, but now it sought money from other sources. The WNBA was short on resources and manpower. It needed investments to put into marketing and brand building, digital innovation and to drive more revenue.

A year later, it closed a $75 million capital raise that came with a $475 million post-money valuation for the WNBA. Michael Dell and Nike were the largest investors, according to one source with knowledge of the raise who was not authorized to speak publicly about the agreement. Nike invested $25 million, according to multiple league and industry sources. Nike declined to comment. Engelbert did not dispute that number when asked but said the sneaker company was a natural partner.

“Nike called and wanted to make a substantial investment because part of their strategy was to double down on women’s sports,” she said.

Investors in the capital raise took a roughly 16 percent stake in the league, with WNBA owners and NBA owners each splitting the rest in half, and took preferred equity. That gives them a priority return on their investment with a 5 percent dividend, said one person with knowledge of the capital raise who was granted anonymity because the person did not have the authority to speak publicly about the league’s financial structure. Though they have non-voting shares in the league, they also have two observers on the Board of Governors.

“I was just intrigued that there was this league where the quality of the players is so great,” Karen Finerman, Metropolitan Capital CEO and a WNBA investor, said. “And yet the league was struggling.”

The WNBA’s financial situation has improved since then, and high-ranking executives and owners point to the raise as a reason. It helped supercharge the league’s growth and put the WNBA in a place where it could take advantage of the surge in popularity since 2020.

Increased globalization was announced as one of the uses of the money. After playing multiple exhibition games in Canada, a Toronto expansion team will begin play in 2026. Engelbert said the league would like to play games on various continents. Last week, she singled out Mexico City for its interest in hosting competition. The WNBA has also undergone a digital transformation after the raise, revamping its app and website. That change also helped with its marketing efforts, as did increases in promotional and paid media campaigns.

Human capital was another area where the money was allocated. When Engelbert took over as commissioner, the WNBA had roughly 12 employees, she said. It still works out of the NBA’s midtown Manhattan offices, but now it has more than 60. It has gone from what Engelbert said was a one-person marketing department to around two dozen employees there. The league hired its first chief marketing officer in December 2020.

“If we weren’t already making incremental progress in our business, then the moment that we’re experiencing right now would not be as big as it is,” Dallas Wings CEO and president Greg Bibb said.

Engelbert believed the capital raise also showed the WNBA could be a growth property. That wasn’t always the case for teams around the league.

When Wu Tsai and her husband, Joe Tsai, bought the Liberty in January 2019, they purchased an organization she said was a distressed asset. James Dolan, the franchise’s first and then-only owner, put the Liberty for sale in November 2017, and moved it out of Madison Square Garden a season later and into Westchester County Center, where they played for two seasons.

“Nobody wanted to touch it,” Wu Tsai said.

Nevertheless, the Tsais found the franchise attractive. They recognized the power of New York as a media market and knew how much the city loved basketball. They believed there was a fan base just waiting to be reinvigorated.

Entering the finals, New York has been re-energized and is viewed around the league as one of the franchises responsible for raising the bar. (Before the WNBA implemented full charter travel this season, the Liberty were fined a league-record $500,000 for chartering their players during the second half of 2021.)

They reshaped the roster and the business, too. In New York’s opener against the Indiana Fever, it recorded $175,000 in merchandise sales, a single-game record for the Liberty and the Nets. Attendance is up to an average of nearly 13,000 fans per Liberty home game, up 64 percent from last year. They have 53 sponsors, up nearly 61 percent year over year, with revenue generated from such partnerships up 68 percent. Wu Tsai said the franchise is heading in the direction of profitability.

“I couldn’t be happier about the demand for tickets for our games, the interest from sponsors and the viewership,” Wu Tsai said.

SOLD OUT DATES 🤩

Huge shoutout to our Libs Fam for showing up and out for a Game 2 win @barclayscenter 🗽 pic.twitter.com/KjNlFBzCWN

— New York Liberty (@nyliberty) October 13, 2024

They aren’t alone, of course. Clark has served as an accelerant in a record-setting year for the Fever (and league more broadly). The Wings rebudgeted their ticket revenue three times this season as a reflection of exploding interest, with signs pointing to another record year next season, Bibb said. They set merchandise records and added more partners, ones who aren’t just local but also national and international brands. They sold two half-percent ownership stakes this summer at a record $208 million valuation.

Transformations in the business also are part of what set the Wings up for a forthcoming move from Arlington to downtown Dallas. They are targeting to begin working in a new practice facility by the start of the 2026 season. The Dallas Memorial Auditorium is undergoing a renovation and will serve as their home arena. “It just changes the game for us,” Bibb said.

The Chicago Sky, led by rookie Angel Reese, have experienced a similar upswing.

“We now have breathing room. Revenue is good. Growing the top line is good. People coming to games and selling out arenas, that’s fantastic,” co-owner and operating chairperson Nadia Rawlinson said. “What has happened over the last 18 months has been nothing short of extraordinary.”

A franchise-specific 40,000-square-foot practice facility is on the way in Chicago. The Sky broke ground on their new facility Oct. 9 with plans to open before the 2026 season. They join Phoenix, Seattle and Las Vegas as franchises that have all recently unveiled new facilities.

“Practice facilities are going to just quickly become table stakes,” Rawlinson said. “I think it will be something most franchises, if not all, will have over the next five years.”

She’s not alone in that belief. Storm co-owner Ginny Gilder said she believes that in five years every franchise will have its own practice facility. If that comes to fruition, it will be one more example of how far the league has come.

“This was a leap (from) many years where people thought, is this going to be sustainable?” said Joe Soper, the governor for the Connecticut Sun. “Are there going to be teams choosing to fold or sell or relocate and just trying to get out because they don’t know if financially it’s going to have the support, even though the talent is there on the court. Now you’re getting this visibility, and everybody gets to see the talent and the growth.”

The WNBA has seen franchise valuations jump, and Engelbert said she thinks they will continue to rise “considerably.” It is a stark difference from a half-decade ago when franchises were sold at values in the single-digit millions. Mark Davis, The Athletic reported in 2022, bought the Las Vegas Aces for a little more than $2 million.

This year, the league drew an all-in fee of $125 million for the expansion franchise in Portland, more than doubling not only what the league sought in expansion fees when it started but also what it cost the Golden State Warriors ownership group to buy in with the Valkyries.

GO DEEPER

How the Golden State Valkyries marketing themselves as the new WNBA expansion franchise

This past season, WNBA games averaged a record 1.19 million viewers on ESPN platforms compared with an average of 1.56 million viewers tuning in to watch NBA regular-season games across ABC, ESPN and TNT. And heading into the finals, the playoffs had been the most viewed in 25 years. The league’s new media deal — worth $2.2 billion over 11 years, and potentially more if it lands additional media partners, as it expects — could help lift valuations even higher. There has been so much positive momentum, Engelbert said, that the league decided to pause the search for its 16th team to reassess where it stands and hire an investment banker to run it. She said 10 to 12 cities are viable options.

It is one of several ways the WNBA has had to reorient itself on the fly.

“It’s interesting to talk today about where we are, but I think it’s changing so rapidly, and everything’s changing in the W,” Engelbert said. “I tell my team, everything’s changed, so don’t base this on last year because everything changed this year and how we should be thinking about what’s next for us.”

The next few years will continue to mold the league. The WNBPA is widely expected to opt out of the current collective bargaining agreement, and there could be a new one in place in 2026, the same year the new media deals kick in. The new CBA will determine what proportion of revenue players and teams get.

Players have pushed for higher salaries at a time when the WNBA has had to deal with criticism that they aren’t being paid enough. Teams, after decades of losing money, are hoping to soon crawl into the black. Valkyries president Jess Smith didn’t dismiss profitability in the franchise’s first season.

Though the WNBA’s new media deal is relatively flush, it won’t all trickle down to the teams in the same way it would in the NBA or NFL, which don’t have outside investors. The income the league distributes will hit teams through a waterfall process, though team owners will get the largest share.

But there is a belief across the league that the WNBA is entering a different stage. Its recent prosperity, its stakeholders say, should become normal.

“This is the new baseline,” Rawlinson said.

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photo: Bruce Bennett/ Getty Images)

By Brendan Marks, Justin Williams and Mark Cooper

For the second consecutive season, Kansas will begin the year as the No. 1 team in men’s college basketball. This time, the Jayhawks hope to stay there.

Kansas received 30 of 60 first-place votes to top the preseason AP Top 25 on Monday, putting it narrowly ahead of No. 2 Alabama (14 first-place votes) and two-time defending champion Connecticut, which was ranked third. The Huskies received 11 first-place votes.

Houston (four first-place votes) and Iowa State rounded out the top five. Gonzaga, which received one first-place vote, was sixth, followed by Duke, Baylor, North Carolina and Arizona.

Kansas, which went 23-11 and lost in the second round of the NCAA Tournament last season, returns three starters — Hunter Dickinson, KJ Adams Jr. and Dajuan Harris Jr. — and added a litany of transfers, including former Wisconsin guard AJ Storr, former Alabama guard Rylan Griffen and former South Dakota State guard Zeke Mayo, the Summit League player of the year. It’s the 13th consecutive year Bill Self’s program has begun the season ranked in the top 10, and the fifth time in KU history that it will open the season No. 1. The Jayhawks trail only North Carolina (10), Duke (nine) and UCLA (eight) for the most since preseason rankings began in 1962.

Five Big 12 teams ranked in the top 10. The SEC led all conferences with nine teams in the Top 25.

Others receiving votes: Illinois 92, St. John’s 91, Xavier 73, Texas Tech 58, Wake Forest 37, Kansas St 30, Michigan State 29, Ohio State 29, Michigan 19, BYU 14, Oregon 12, McNeese State 11, Miami 11, Boise St. 9, Saint Louis 9, Clemson 9, Providence 9, Mississippi State 6, VCU 6, Wisconsin 5, Saint Mary’s 5, Louisville 4, UAB 4, Arkansas Little Rock 3, Grand Canyon 3, Arizona State 2, San Diego State 2, Princeton 2, High Point 1, Maryland 1.

Why Kansas is No. 1

A number of teams have reasonable arguments to be No. 1. Alabama — fresh off its first Final Four appearance in program history — returns All-American guard Mark Sears and added the nation’s second-ranked high school recruiting class. Houston has won 30 games or more three years running, and while point guard Jamal Shead is off to the NBA, the return of forwards Joseph Tugler and Terrance Arceneaux should once again make the Cougars one of America’s deepest teams. Then there’s Gonzaga, which returns four of five starters from last season’s Sweet 16 squad, while also adding multiple new contributors via the transfer portal.

But ultimately, it’s hard to overlook Kansas’ collection of talent, which is why the Jayhawks are a deserving preseason No. 1. Self not only returns a trio of tested starters in Adams, Harris and Dickinson, but went heavy in the transfer portal this spring, too, landing one of the nation’s top transfer classes. Griffen, the former Alabama wing, shot 39.2 percent from 3-point range last season and will be a welcome 3-and-D addition on the perimeter, especially beside relative non-shooters in Adams and Harris. He was No. 7 in The Athletic’s transfer portal rankings. Storr — who led Wisconsin in scoring last season — arrives as another key perimeter piece, and should allow Self a level of lineup versatility he hasn’t had the last two seasons. Then there’s Mayo, whose pull-up shooting will be a boon for a team that sometimes struggled to get a basket last year.

Add in a pair of top-50 freshmen, and Self has another lineup seemingly built to go the distance. — Brendan Marks, staff writer

UConn’s bid for a 3-peat begins at No. 3

Dan Hurley and Connecticut will attempt to do something that no men’s college basketball program has done since John Wooden’s UCLA dynasty: win three consecutive national titles.

The Huskies returned several key pieces last season from Hurley’s first title team in 2022-23, but that’s not the case this year. Four of five starters are gone, and the lone holdover — redshirt junior wing Alex Karaban, who passed on potentially becoming a first-round NBA Draft choice to return to college — will have to assume a much larger role. Still: Hurley’s team has more than earned the benefit of the doubt, which is why UConn opens the year in the top three.

Besides Karaban, UConn has three other rotational players back this season — guards Hassan Diarra and Solomon Ball, plus center Samson Johnson — who will compete for major playing time. But if the Huskies are reasonably going to compete for a third straight title, Hurley will need outsized contributions from Saint Mary’s transfer Aidan Mahaney and five-star freshman Liam McNeeley, arguably his top two additions this offseason. We’ll know a lot about UConn, and its relative chances of three-peating, by the time conference play begins; the Huskies are part of a stacked Maui Invitational field featuring four of the nation’s top 11 teams and then play Texas, Baylor, and Gonzaga all in a row in mid-December. — Marks

Big 12 dominates the top 10

There’s a lot of Big 12 flavor at the top of the poll. The conference has three of the top five and half of the top 10 with Kansas, Houston, Iowa State, Baylor and Arizona. The sixth and final Big 12 team in the Top 25 is Cincinnati at No. 20. It’s the Bearcats’ first appearance in the AP poll since the end of the 2018-19 season, Mick Cronin’s last as head coach of the program.

The new-look, 16-team league features nine programs that made the NCAA Tournament last season, seven of which are returning members, and has been the top-rated conference four of the past six years, according to KenPom metrics. Kansas is the Big 12’s most recent national champion from the 2021-22 season. — Justin Williams, staff writer

A stacked SEC

Nine of the 16 SEC members appear in the preseason poll, led by Alabama at No. 2. The Crimson Tide are the only SEC school in the top 10, followed by Auburn at No. 11. League newcomer Texas clocks in at No. 19. Arkansas, under new head coach John Calipari, opens at No. 16, while his former school Kentucky and head coach Mark Pope are No. 23. — Williams

No love for mid-majors

There are zero mid-major or traditional non-power programs in the Top 25, with Gonzaga the only ranked team from outside the sport’s five major conferences. The closest is McNeese State, which received 11 votes, followed by Boise State and Saint Louis with nine votes each. McNeese is coming off a 30-4 season under head coach Will Wade in which it set the program’s single-season wins record and claimed the Southland Conference regular season and tournament championships. The Cowboys have never appeared in the Top 25 rankings. — Williams

CJ Moore’s ballot

The Athletic’s CJ Moore is a voter in the AP Top 25 this season.

Here’s how his ballot compared:

1. Alabama (actual: No. 2)
2. Gonzaga (actual: No. 6)
3. Houston (actual: No. 4)
4. Kansas (actual: No. 1)
5. Iowa State (actual: No. 5)
6. Duke (actual: No. 7)
7. UConn (actual: No. 3)
8. Tennessee (actual: No. 12)
9. Baylor (actual: No. 8)
10. Arizona (actual: No. 10)
11. Auburn (actual: No. 11)
12. Texas A&M (actual: No. 12)
13. North Carolina (actual: No. 9)
14. Purdue (actual: No. 14)
15. Marquette (actual: No. 18)
16. Florida (actual: No. 21)
17. Texas Tech (actual: NR)
18. Michigan (actual: NR)
19. Indiana (actual: No. 17)
20. Illinois (actual: NR)
21. Cincinnati (actual: No. 20)
22. Xavier (actual: NR)
23. Kentucky (actual: No. 23)
24. St. John’s (actual: NR)
25. UCLA (actual: 22)

(Photo: Chris Gardner / Getty Images)