Croix Bethune’s head-turning rookie season came to an abrupt end when she suffered a torn meniscus while throwing out the first pitch at a Washington Nationals game last week.

The injury will require surgery and will land Bethune on the season-ending injury list, the Washington Spirit said Wednesday.

Spirit coach Jonatan Giráldez said the injury occurred during the ceremonial first pitch.

“She had a problem making the first pitch in the baseball game,” he said, according to the Associated Press. “She is not going to be available this season. It is part of life. You have to keep going.”

Croix Bethune will miss the remainder of the 2024 season with injury.

We are wishing you a healthy recovery, Croix! Sending our love and support your way 🫶https://t.co/6gn2kqiIC1

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— Washington Spirit (@WashSpirit) September 4, 2024

The 23-year-old packed more accomplishments in her first half-year as a professional than many players squeeze into a full career. Bethune was selected third in the 2023 NWSL Draft, with Washington trading defensive anchor Sam Staab to obtain the pick. It paid off swiftly as she became an instant starter in the wake of Ashley Sanchez’s departure via a trade on the same day. Bethune took home NWSL Rookie of the Month honors in March/April, May and June; no other player had previously won the award in back-to-back months, much less three in a row.

The strong form for her club helped her land on the United States women’s national team, first as a training player for Emma Hayes’ first camp in June and making her debut in a July tune-up friendly before being named as an alternate for the 2024 Olympics. An injury to Jaedyn Shaw saw Bethune get promoted to the 18-player squad, where she made one appearance from the bench as the USWNT returned to gold-medal standing.

Despite this knee injury, Bethune still projects as the favorite to take home NWSL Rookie of the Year — if the litany of monthly honors wasn’t enough evidence toward that point — and challenge for a Best XI honor.

In 1,389 regular season minutes, she scored five goals and logged 10 assists. Her 15 goal contributions is tied for 5th in the league as of Sept. 4, 2024. Those 10 assists are far ahead of joint second-ranked Sophia Smith and Temwa Chawinga’s six, and had her tied with USWNT icon Tobin Heath for the NWSL’s single-season record, which Heath set in 2016.

The Spirit will understandably take a cautious approach to Bethune’s rehabilitation. The midfielder suffered three ACL tears during her time in high school and college, a fact that may explain why two teams passed on her in the 2024 Draft. In announcing her injury, Washington clarified that she will remain with the team throughout her recovery, working closely with the Spirit Performance, Medical and Innovation department.

Required reading

(Photo: Tim Nwachukwu / Getty Images)

When USC fans get their first, long-awaited glimpse inside the L.A. Memorial Coliseum on Saturday night, they’ll be greeted by an unfamiliar sight at the back of both of the century-old stadium’s end zones.

An on-field sponsor ad, painted in black over the field’s white apron, urging them to “STREAM TROJAN FOOTBALL” on DirecTV.

That message might not have landed so well last weekend, after Disney pulled access to DirecTV amid a contract dispute, leaving more than 10 million in Southern California unable to stream USC’s season-opening win over Louisiana State on ESPN. But by Saturday, DirecTV will be front and center for all to see in the Coliseum end zone — assuming, of course, you have Big Ten Network.

USC will be among the first in college football to take advantage of the NCAA’s new rules allowing schools to sell on-field sponsorship ads as new means for revenue. Even fewer have sold on-field ad space to a second sponsor like USC, which will display the logo of crypto investment platform, iTrustCapital, along one sideline boundary of the Coliseum’s end zone.

But as athletic departments across the nation brace for revenue sharing and other costly changes to the landscape of college athletics, most stakeholders agree on-field corporate sponsors are just the beginning of college football’s march toward commercialization.

“There’s a lot of pressure to maximize their commercial revenue in a way that hasn’t really existed before,” said Christy Hedgpeth, president of PlayFly Sports Properties, which holds the multimedia rights to USC athletics and many other top college sports programs. “They’re being forced to consider things they might not have otherwise.”

The question, as schools seek out new sponsors and fresh creative revenue streams, is where that line should be drawn.

At USC, that conversation began long before the NCAA changed its rules in June. In 2018, the university struck a 16-year, $69-million deal with United Airlines that would have renamed the stadium the “United Airlines Coliseum”. But that deal came under intense scrutiny, when Janice Hahn, the president of the Coliseum Commission, spoke out fervently against it, suggesting that it “insults the memories of [World War I veterans] the Coliseum was intended to honor.”

The backlash nearly sunk the deal, which USC desperately needed to fund the stadium’s costly renovations. Ultimately, though, the two sides decided on a new alternative. Instead of naming the stadium, USC struck a 10-year deal with United for the naming rights to the field, which has since been named “United Airlines Field at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum”.

“United Airlines Field” has since been displayed prominently on both 25-yard lines, the most valuable on-field real estate that athletic directors can sell. Selling more of that real estate, without overwhelming fans with ads, is a delicate balance that many in the space are still trying to strike.

At USC, with its rich history and deeply entrenched traditions, officials have tried to be especially cognizant of where that line could be. USC football coach Lincoln Riley said Thursday that he’d “battled with” that balance himself.

But even Riley agrees a more commercial approach is inevitable, considering where college football is headed. He called it “an adapt-or-die scenario.”

“We do have so much history and tradition here at USC, and that’s never going to go away,” Riley said. “But we also have to understand that the world around us is changing, and we can’t just sit there and only live on everything that’s happened in the past. It’s on us to find those balances, to honor that, but also not doing anything that would hamper our ability to climb, not just as a football program, but a whole athletic department.”

That approach aligned with DirecTV’s own intentions in the space. Josh Stern, DirecTV’s associate vice president of brand strategy and investments, said the goal was to be “organic” and “non-invasive”, so as to catch fans’ attention, but also not upset them.

There’s no “one-size approach” that fits all schools in determining that balance, Stern says. But he believes that fan tolerance is much higher than it once was.

Still, some schools remain reluctant amid concerns over that tolerance.

“I don’t think schools have carte blanche yet,” Hedgpeth, the president of PlayFly Sports Properties, said. “Old habits die hard, and traditions are really sacred. These college programs, they’re older than most pro teams. You have such fervent loyal, passionate, engaged fans. There’s definitely a segment of fan bases at some schools that have some pause.”

Those holdouts, however, are dwindling, just as athletic departments grow more desperate for new revenue streams. Hedgpeth, who worked with the NBA when it first welcomed corporate logos on jerseys, believes college football isn’t far off from allowing similar jersey patches.

According to valuations released in June from Elevate, a sports business consultancy firm, upper-tier college football programs could command as much as $6 million per year for stitching a corporate logo to their school’s jersey.

That’s no small chunk of change, considering the costs to come in college sports. But at what cost could that come to tradition?

Riley thinks it’s possible to balance both.

“You see it happening in professional sports all over the place, at some of the most storied, successful franchises and organizations,” Riley said. “They’ve been able to have all the history and tradition you want, but also be able to adapt to a new world.”

There’s no ‘I’ in team but there is one in ‘best player in the world’ and that, one and all, is where the Ballon d’Or comes in.

Crowning the number one footballer in the world over the last year may seem like a fool’s errand given the multitude of nuances involved, but that’s what the France Football magazine has been doing since 1956 and, on Wednesday night, the nominees for the 2024 men’s award were announced.

The big names were all there (you’d think so given there are 30 players on the shortlist) and will be voted on by a group of pesky journalists before the winner is named on October 28.

So now that we know the identities of the players who could be named as the sport’s leading light — and, for the first time since 2003, that won’t be one of Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo — we can discuss who was lucky to be included, who was unlucky to miss out, and who seems nailed-on to win it.

Here, four writers from The Athletic critique this year’s Ballon d’Or nominations.

Who was the most surprising inclusion?

Ademola Lookman had the night to remember when he scored a hat-trick in the Europa League final in May. It was a campaign that also saw him help Nigeria to the Africa Cup of Nations final, scoring three goals in the process.

However, Lookman did not set the world alight across the whole season, managing just 55 per cent of Atalanta’s league minutes as he was rotated in and out of Gian Piero Gasperini’s side. His was a strong campaign, sure, but perhaps it’s a surprise to see him in the top 30 players of the year.

Mark Carey

Vitinha. A really good player, no doubt, but what have I missed? Compared with the other midfielders on the shortlist and what they achieved, it is difficult to make an argument in his favour — particularly after Portugal’s disappointing Euro 2024.

Dani Olmo is quite fortunate, too. He deserves to be considered among the best players in the world and he was exceptional in Germany over the summer, but that was form he rarely produced in the Bundesliga or Champions League during 2023-24. In fact, he only started 19 games in those competitions combined.

Seb Stafford-Bloor

Dani Olmo joined Barcelona from RB Leipzig this summer (Alex Caparros/Getty Images)

Dani Olmo had a good Euros and, while that’s important, the award is supposed to reflect the whole of last season, in which case, someone like Riccardo Calafiori, for example, is more deserving as he excelled for Bologna. As a Wolves fan, the heights Vitinha has reached still amaze me. Also, the award is supposed to take good behaviour and fair play into account, so Emi Martinez can count himself lucky (don’t @ me, Aston Villa fans, I’m just joking).

Tim Spiers

GO DEEPER

Vitinha and his curious journey from Wolves bench player to Portugal’s midfield maestro

Honestly, Emiliano Martinez. I think his year was 2022 with the World Cup, but I don’t think his season is worth a Ballon d’Or nomination. He won the Copa America and I see some justification there, but with Aston Villa, even though they had a good season, they ‘only’ qualified for the Champions League. I understand what this means for the club, but I don’t know if he deserves a nomination.

Laia Cervello Herrero

Who was the most unfortunate player to be left off?

If we’re going on pure attacking numbers, Serhou Guirassy could be disappointed that he didn’t make the list. With 28 goals (plus three assists), only six players in Europe’s top five leagues had more goal contributions than Guirassy last season — and five of them made the list (poor Ollie Watkins).

Guirassy’s rate of 1.1 goals per 90 last season was bettered by no other player in Europe. It earned him a move to Borussia Dortmund but sadly was not enough to earn him a place on this shortlist.

Mark Carey

Jamal Musiala was probably the most talented player to be left off, but how about Lukas Hradecky, the Bayer Leverkusen goalkeeper and captain? Leverkusen are well represented with Florian Wirtz, Alex Grimaldo and Granit Xhaka and all three deserve their place, but Hradecky was subtly fundamental to what Xabi Alonso’s side achieved and reached an extremely high level that, previously, many thought he was incapable of.

He was one game away from leading a team to an unbeaten domestic and continental treble, after all.

Seb Stafford-Bloor

Again, if we’re going on form over the whole year, how Mats Hummels is there and Virgil van Dijk isn’t makes little sense. Jamal Musiala was surely in the top 30 players of last season. Also, with 19 goals and 13 assists for his club, plus having won the Premier League and the Copa America, Julian Alvarez deserves a shout.

Most disappointingly of all, especially in an AFCON year, only one African player makes the list and even Ademola Lookman’s inclusion might have more to do with Atalanta than Nigeria.

Had William Troost-Ekong been named best player at the Euros rather than AFCON, he’d have been guaranteed to be on there, ditto James Rodriguez at the Copa America, but this remains a Euro-centric award almost exclusively for players based on the continent. It’s very strange not seeing Lionel Messi on there.

Tim Spiers

Call me old school or romantic, but Leo Messi. Yes, I know he’s not playing in one of the big leagues, but I find it strange to see an award he deserved every year previously without him after… 18 years? I know he has been injured for months and it has not been his best season, but he has also won the Copa America with Argentina, like Martinez.

Laia Cervello Herrero

Lionel Messi has won eight Ballons d’Or — a ninth won’t arrive this year (Buda Mendes/Getty Images)

Who will finish in the top three?

Rodri, Jude Bellingham, Vinicius Junior — in that order.

Mark Carey

Vinicius Jr, Rodri, Erling Haaland.

Seb Stafford-Bloor

Vinicius Junior hasn’t made the top three in the Ballon d’Or vote… yet (Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images)

It’s hard to imagine Rodri or Vinicius Jr not being up there. As for the third player, going on previous voting habits, it’s probably between Dani Carvajal, Erling Haaland, Harry Kane, Lamine Yamal, Jude Bellingham, Kylian Mbappe and maybe Lautaro Martinez. Let’s say Carvajal.

Tim Spiers

I can imagine Rodri and Vinicius Jr in the top three without a doubt and the third is probably Kylian Mbappe.

And I know many will disagree and say it is very hasty because he did not have a full season at Barcelona, but Lamine Yamal, despite his youth and the fact it is his first full season in the elite, also deserves a place because of the weight he had with Spain’s Euro 2024 champions and with a club as big as Barca at 17 years of age. His level was out of the ordinary. Maybe I’m saying this too soon, but I’ll just drop this suggestion here and go.

Laia Cervello Herrero

Who do you think will win — and who should win?

All roads lead to Rodri. He has been the most consistent, dominant, influential player for club and country in the past 12 months. He has his fingerprints on anything his team does well — in and out of possession — with a Premier League and European Championship to show for his efforts.

It is about time more midfielders won this individual trophy. No one would be more deserving.

Mark Carey

Manchester City’s Rodri — a popular choice (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

Vinicius Jr will likely win, but Rodri probably should. It does still feel as if attacking players are overprivileged, as are success and performances in the Champions League. It’s quite interesting that, despite what Manchester City have achieved in his time at the club, Rodri has never so much as made the top three. Understandable in one sense because it can be hard to price his contribution accurately, but also clearly an oversight.

Seb Stafford-Bloor

GO DEEPER

Why Rodri winning the Ballon d’Or would be both good and bad news for Manchester City

Rodri.

Tim Spiers (that’s just my name, I don’t think I should win it)

Rodri. Although there are players like Dani Carvajal who have won all the big trophies like the Champions League, La Liga and the Euros, I think Rodri — although he didn’t win the Champions League — deserves it for what he is bringing to Manchester City, one of the best sides in Europe.

His position is undervalued in the individual awards, but I think he should be the one to win, and I think he will.

Laia Cervello Herrero

The Ballon d’Or shortlist: Jude Bellingham (Real Madrid), Phil Foden (Man City), Ruben Dias (Man City), Federico Valverde (Real Madrid), Emiliano Martinez (Aston Villa), Erling Haaland (Man City), Nicolas Williams (Athletic Bilbao), Granit Xhaka (Bayer Leverkusen), Artem Dovbyk (Roma), Toni Kroos (Real Madrid), Vinicius Jr (Real Madrid), Martin Odegaard (Arsenal), Dani Olmo (Barcelona), Florian Wirtz (Bayer Leverkusen), Mats Hummels (Roma), Rodri (Man City), Declan Rice (Arsenal), Harry Kane (Bayern Munich), Cole Palmer (Chelsea), Vitinha (PSG), Dani Carvajal (Real Madrid), William Saliba (Arsenal), Lamine Yamal (Barcelona), Bukayo Saka (Arsenal), Hakan Calhanoglu (Inter Milan), Antonio Rudiger (Real Madrid), Kylian Mbappe (Real Madrid), Lautaro Martinez (Inter Milan), Ademola Lookman (Atalanta), Alex Grimaldo (Bayer Leverkusen)

(Top photos: Getty Images)