Sports
Mandel’s Final Thoughts: Don’t blame Playoff committee for first round getting out of hand

And now, 12 Final Thoughts from the first weekend of the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff.
1. The first on-campus Playoff game kicked off at 8:10 p.m. ET in front of 77,622 roaring fans at Notre Dame Stadium. You didn’t have to be in the 25-degree South Bend weather to get the chills. Anyone watching on TV could appreciate the magnitude of this moment for a sport that has only ever played its postseason at bowl games and neutral sites.
The honeymoon lasted about 40 minutes, until Indiana fell behind Notre Dame 14-0 and the first wave of complaints began. The wrong team(s) got in. The game(s) were boring. Twelve teams was too many. Or too few.
Twenty-seven hours later, Ohio State completed the fourth home blowout of the first round, an anticlimactic ending to such an anticipated weekend. Maybe the committee did a bad job. Maybe it was the weather. Or … maybe Notre Dame, Penn State, Texas and Ohio State are really good teams.
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2. The eighth-seeded Buckeyes were the biggest wild cards coming into the weekend. Who knew where their heads would be three weeks removed from their Michigan nightmare? Many of the fans who booed them off the field that day apparently stayed home for this one, as tens of thousands of orange-clad Tennessee fans infiltrated the Horseshoe.
Well, those concerns went out the window before the end of the first quarter. Ohio State raced to a 21-0 lead en route to a 42-17 demolition of the ninth-seeded Vols. The Buckeyes’ star-studded offense did whatever it wanted, starting with quarterback Will Howard’s best performance of the season: 24 of 29 for 311 yards, two touchdowns and one interception. Tennessee’s cornerbacks had no answers for receivers Jeremiah Smith (six catches, 103 yards, two TDs) and Emeka Egbuka (five catches, 81 yards), and running back TreVeyon Henderson (14 touches, 134 yards, two TDs) was electrifying.
Only head coach Ryan Day and offensive coordinator Chip Kelly can say why Ohio State’s offense has so rarely played to its potential, or why it flat-out no-showed against Michigan. But this version could win a national championship.
3. How would you like to be No. 1 seed Oregon watching that game? The Ducks went undefeated, including beating Ohio State at home in a classic — and now they’ve got to go play the Buckeyes again in the quarterfinals? While Penn State gets Boise State? Seems like a bug.
But it’s going to make for a fantastic Rose Bowl — and a classic Big Ten-Pac-12 matchup, no less. Dillon Gabriel and the Ducks get my benefit of the doubt because they’ve been more consistent all season and they’ll be well-rested. But remember, Ohio State was on the verge of winning their first meeting before that back-breaking offensive pass interference call on Smith. And Howard will be out for revenge after his last-second clock miscue cost the Buckeyes their last shot.

Texas racked up 292 rushing yards vs. Clemson. (Tim Warner / Getty Images)
4. No. 5 seed Texas has been at its best this season when the running game gets cranked up, and that’s exactly what happened in Saturday’s 38-24 win over No. 12 seed Clemson. Tailbacks Jaydon Blue (14 carries, 146 yards, two long touchdowns) and Quintrevion Wisner (15 carries, 110 yards, two TDs) became the first Longhorns tandem since 2022 to both go over 100 yards. Texas advances to the Peach Bowl, where it will meet Big 12 champion Arizona State and will be expected to win. The Sun Devils got much better as the season went on, and star running back Cam Skattebo finished fifth in the Heisman voting, but man, Texas’ defense is really good. And this time it’s not playing Georgia in Atlanta.

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5. Clemson finished with four losses for the second straight season, but quarterback Cade Klubnik gives the Tigers hope for 2025. After falling behind 31-10 in the third quarter, Klubnik got Clemson back within one score despite the Tigers being down their top two running backs. Klubnik finished 26 of 43 for 336 yards, three touchdowns and an interception and had more rushing attempts (13) than his teammates (11), but he got no help from Clemson’s defense. Two plays after Clemson cut it to 31-24, Texas’ Blue dashed 77 yards for the dagger touchdown.
Dabo Swinney recently signed his first-ever defensive player out of the transfer portal, Purdue end Will Heldt. Now he just needs a few more.
6. Penn State’s 38-10 rout of SMU must have been cathartic for the 100,000-plus in Beaver Stadium, even if it meant becoming popsicles for four hours. Nittany Lions fans have spent much of the past eight years getting let down in big games, but this performance was emphatic. Two pick sixes in the first 17 minutes got the crowd roaring, and it soon became apparent that SMU’s offense stood no chance against Kobe King, Abdul Carter, Dominic DeLuca and Dani Dennis-Sutton. Penn State’s own offense was hardly overpowering (5 yards per play), but it didn’t need to be. Mustangs quarterback Kevin Jennings (20 of 36, 195 yards, one touchdown, three interceptions) struggled badly against the best defense he’s faced, while SMU managed just 58 rushing yards on 36 attempts.

Penn State’s defense overwhelmed SMU in a 38-10 rout. (Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)
7. Penn State now heads to the Fiesta Bowl, where its rushing defense gets a next-level challenge in No. 3 seed Boise State and Heisman runner-up Ashton Jeanty, who has 2,497 yards and 29 TDs on the ground this season. James Franklin’s team will likely be a heavy favorite for a second straight game. (It opened as a 10.5-point favorite, per BetMGM.) Thanks to this tournament’s funky seeding, the Nittany Lions managed to draw the committee’s No. 9 (Boise) and No. 10 (SMU) teams in their first two games. Top seeds Oregon (against No. 6 Ohio State) and Georgia (against No. 5 Notre Dame) have tougher quarterfinal draws than Penn State, which has the second-best odds to make the title game (40 percent), according to The Athletic’s model.
It’s a golden opportunity for Franklin’s team in its biggest postseason game since the 2017 Rose Bowl against USC.
8. If you thought the bickering from three weeks ago over the final spots in the bracket would be rendered moot once the games started … you must be new here. Just like in the BCS and the four-team CFP, every lopsided postseason game becomes a retroactive rallying cry for the team(s) left out. Even Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin, still miffed his 9-3 team didn’t get in (while pretending that home loss to 4-8 Kentucky never happened), took some shots at the committee during both the Notre Dame-Indiana and Penn State-SMU games. (He was noticeably silent during the Ohio State-Tennessee game.)
Look, SMU got embarrassed. But the committee boxed itself in when chairman Warde Manuel declared after their penultimate rankings that teams whose seasons had ended would not be reevaluated after the conference championship games. At that point, the story became whether SMU would get “punished” if it lost to Clemson (which it did). Given a truly blank slate, maybe the committee would have given someone like 10-2 BYU a second look. As it was, it faced considerable pressure to avoid “knocking SMU out” for playing a 13th game. And then the Mustangs lost on a 56-yard field goal. They had to be in.

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9. No. 7 seed Notre Dame finally got its first BCS/CFP win, dominating No. 10 seed Indiana (the final score was 27-17, but it was 27-3 with two minutes to go) to set up a fascinating Sugar Bowl quarterfinal against No. 2 seed Georgia. In some ways the Irish and Bulldogs are mirror images: Both teams are physical on offense but with the ability to be explosive (see Jeremiyah Love’s 98-yard touchdown run Friday), and both have filthy defenses. Adding to the intrigue, Georgia is expected to be without injured quarterback Carson Beck, meaning backup Gunner Stockton will make his first career start against the nation’s top-rated pass defense.
But we may find out just how important those first-round byes can be. Whereas Georgia will have had 24 days of rest come Jan. 1, Notre Dame saw several key players suffer injuries 11 days out. Standout defensive tackle Rylie Mills went down clutching his knee after a sack and did not return. And starting right guard Rocco Spindler spent the second half in street clothes. The severity of those injuries is not yet known, though Marcus Freeman told ESPN that Mills’ injury was “not season-ending.”

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10. Curt Cignetti’s Indiana was one of the best stories of the 2024 season, but boy did it end with a dud. It wasn’t just that the Hoosiers got blown out. The brash Cignetti, who just hours earlier on “College GameDay” proclaimed, “We don’t just beat Top 25 teams, we beat the s— out of them,” could not have coached more conservatively as IU punted from the Notre Dame 37 in the first quarter, settled for a field goal from the Irish 16 already down 14-0 and bafflingly punted down 20-3 in the fourth quarter.
Just like against Ohio State on Nov. 23, Indiana (11-2) was completely overmatched in the trenches, and quarterback Kurtis Rourke (20 of 33, 215 yards, two TDs, one interception) misfired to several open receivers. A disappointing ending to the program’s best season in a half-century.

Notre Dame beat Indiana in their first matchup since 1991. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
11. With the game out of reach in the final minutes, ESPN’s Sean McDonough was not shy about questioning why Indiana, with its weak schedule, was included in the CFP in the first place. Kirk Herbstreit went in for more the next morning. In general, I agree with them that the committee needs to be more discerning about schedule strength in this age of 16/17/18-team conferences. Indiana will not be the last Big Ten or SEC team to win 11 games against empty calories.
But there was nobody else worth going to the mat for this season instead. The alternatives either lacked their own big wins (Miami), lost to bad teams (Alabama and Ole Miss) or lost to multiple other teams on the bubble (South Carolina).
It was only a few years ago people were complaining that the four-team CFP was mostly the same teams every year. I personally enjoyed the novelty of watching Indiana in a Playoff game. At least until that punt.

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12. That’s not to say I have no beefs with the new format. Reserving the first-round byes for conference champions was well-intended, but it had a profoundly unfair effect on the seeding this first year. The No. 3 (Boise State) and No. 4 (Arizona State) seeds, both champions, are double-digit underdogs in their quarterfinals to the Big Ten (Penn State) and SEC (Texas) runners-up. That’s not how a bracket is supposed to work.
And there’s one other flaw worth considering, now that we’ve experienced our first on-campus games: The top four seeds don’t get to hold their own. I myself love a trip to Pasadena, but I bet even Oregon fans would trade their Disneyland trip in exchange for Ohio State having to come back to Autzen Stadium.
But that’s not going to change in the next 10 days.
(Photo: Jason Miller / Getty Images)

Sports
Chaos ensues at FIFA Club World Cup game including PETA protesters invading field, smoke flares

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The FIFA Club World Cup is underway, where some of professional soccer’s best teams from around the world are competing to see who’s at the top of the heap.
But, the craziness of foreign soccer fans has hit the United States, with chaos ensuing in Philadelphia on Wednesday afternoon.
Manchester City of the Premier League in England and Wydad AC, who compete in Botola of Morocco, took the pitch at Lincoln Financial Field on Wednesday – but the players weren’t the only people, or objects, on the field.
A protestor invaded the field, and fans released smoke flares during Wednesday’s Club World Cup game in Philadelphia. (AP; IMAGN)
During the game, protesters invaded the field. The pitch invaders took the field with a sign that said “Morocco! Stop shooting dogs and cats.”
He ran for a few seconds before he was tackled by security workers and escorted out of the stadium. One of the protesters’ shirt and sign included the logo of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).
According to PETA, “homeless cats and dogs in Morocco are being shot, poisoned, and left to die in cages without food or water.” The government has expanded a “Trap, Neuter, Vaccinate and Return” program for stray animals, but activists have claimed that animals are being killed rather than neutered.
PETA wrote about the incident on X.
“Activists stormed the @FIFACWC field to expose Morocco’s mass shooting, poisoning, and burning alive of dogs and cats ahead of the 2030 FIFA World Cup in order to make the country’s streets look presentable,” PETA wrote.
“Call on the Moroccan government to end the slaughter of homeless animals and tell FIFA to stop standing by while animals die.”
Morocco is among the hosts of the 2030 World Cup.

A pitch invader is taken down by security during the Club World Cup group G soccer match between Manchester City and Wydad AC in Philadelphia, Wednesday, Jun. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Chris Szagola)
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Later on, the atmosphere at the game became potentially dangerous, as Wydad fans threw smoke flares onto the field. Fire crackers were reportedly being thrown onto the pitch as well. A flare thrown behind Manchester City goalie Ederson caused a brief stoppage in the second half.
Manchester City’s Phil Foden scored two minutes into the match and later had an assist to lead the Premier League powerhouse to a 2-0 victory.
In the 88th minute, Rico Lewis was shown a red card after a hard foul on Samuel Obeng, leaving City with 10 men on the field.

Wydad Casablanca fans with flares in the stands during a group stage match of the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup at Lincoln Financial Field. (Brian Snyder-Reuters via Imagn Images)
Manchester City leads Group G and will face Al-Ain on Sunday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. Wydad remains in Philadelphia, where it will face another tough opponent in Juventus.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Sports
Caitlin Clark pushed to ground, and does some shoving of her own, during testy win over Sun

Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark got hit in the eye and knocked to the ground, while also doing some shoving of her own, during a testy and physical game against the Connecticut Sun on Monday night in Indianapolis.
The Fever emerged with an 88-71 win after a game that featured a pair of skirmishes, including a fight in the final minute that led to three ejections.
Speaking to reporters after the game, Indiana coach Stephanie White blamed “bad officiating,” which she said is a league-wide issue.
“This is what happens,” White said. “You’ve got competitive women who are the best in the world at what they do, right? And when you allow them to play physical and you allow these things to happen, they’re going to compete. And they’re going to have their teammates’ backs. It’s exactly what you expect out of fierce competition.
“So I started talking to the officials in the first quarter. And we knew this was going to happen. You could tell it was gonna happen. So they’ve got to get control of it. They’ve got to be better.”
Things appeared to be chippy between Clark and Connecticut’s Jacy Sheldon throughout the game, with ESPN cameras showing Clark giving Sheldon a bit of a shove as the two were exchanging words during the second quarter.
Then, during a play midway through the third quarter, Clark got poked in the eye by Sheldon and responded by giving the Sun star another shove. Connecticut’s Tina Charles stepped in and wagged her finger toward Clark, then the Sun’s Marina Mabrey pushed Clark to the ground.
Sheldon was called for a flagrant 1 foul, while Clark, Mabrey and Tina Charles each received a technical foul. When Clark was asked about the technical foul during the postgame news conference, White jumped in and said she’d handle questions about the officiating.
Clark and Charles each led their teams with 20 points apiece.
Later, with less than a minute left in the game and the Fever up by 17, Sheldon made a steal and was taken down hard by Indiana’s Sophie Cunningham. A scuffle ensued, with Cunningham, Sheldon and Connecticut’s Lindsay Allen eventually being ejected.
After the game, Sun coach Rachid Meziane said Cunningham’s foul on Sheldon was “disrespectful.”
“When you are winning a game by 17 points, and you doing this … for me, [it’s] a stupid foul,” Meziane said.
Asked about the same play, White said, “It was a flagrant foul.” When pressed on whether Cunningham might have made the move in defense of Clark or the team, White simply repeated, “It was a flagrant foul.”
With the win, the Fever earned a spot in the Commissioner’s Cup championship game against the Minnesota Lynx on July 1.
Sports
Rafael Devers embraces new role with Giants after shocking Red Sox trade

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Rafael Devers is starting his tenure with the San Francisco Giants on the right foot, and it began with him saying all the right things at his first news conference.
Devers, putting on his new jersey for the first time since shockingly being traded by the Boston Red Sox, was introduced to Bay Area media Tuesday ahead of his first game.
Devers was in the lineup as the team’s designated hitter, and the one big question about his new MLB chapter was where the Giants planned on playing him.
Matt Chapman, a Gold Glover, is cemented at third base, Devers’ natural position.
The San Francisco Giants’ Rafael Devers warms up before a game against the Cleveland Guardians in San Francisco Tuesday, June 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
But Devers doesn’t mind where he plays with his new squad.
“I’m here to give my 100%,” he said through an interpreter Tuesday. “I don’t put any buts. They’re the men in charge.
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“I am here to play wherever they want me to play.”
This is a different tone than Devers took all season with the Red Sox, which began when they signed Alex Bregman, another Gold Glove third baseman, to presumably start the year at the hot corner.
That’s exactly what happened for Alex Cora’s team after Devers publicly said he wasn’t going to give up third base to Bregman in spring training. After conversations with Cora and the front office, he changed his tune. But it went escalated again when Triston Casas, the team’s starting first baseman, was lost for the remainder of the year.

The San Francisco Giants’ Rafael Devers speaks at a news conference before a game against the Cleveland Guardians in San Francisco Tuesday, June 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Devers publicly revealed he wouldn’t be playing first base, preferring to remain the full-time designated hitter.
While there was a rift between Devers and the front office, he reportedly did not want to be traded. Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow spoke to the media Monday after the blockbuster deal, saying the team “had a different vision for him going forward than he had.”
“We couldn’t get there, what we felt we needed from him, that would be in the best interest of the ball club,” Breslow said.
Devers signed a 10-year deal worth $313.5 million in January 2023 to be a Red Sox cornerstone.

The San Francisco Giants’ Rafael Devers smiles at a news conference before a game between the Giants and the Cleveland Guardians in San Francisco Tuesday, June 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
But the Giants, who assume all financial responsibilities for the remainder of that deal, are excited to see what Devers can bring in a loaded NL West.
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