A “basketball school” just won the CFP title. Will that invite copycats?

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🚨 Headlines

⚾️ Mets land Peralta: The Brewers are sending All-Star ace Freddy Peralta to the Mets in exchange for top prospects Jett Williams and Brandon Sproat. The trade marks the third significant acquisition by New York in the past week.

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⚾️ Bellinger stays in pinstripes: Cody Bellinger has signed a five-year, $162.5 million deal to stay with the Yankees after the former MVP enjoyed a bounce-back season last year in the Bronx.

🏀 Back to college: Former Alabama center Charles Bediako has played for multiple G League teams, including one this season. Now, he’s been granted a temporary order to return to the Crimson Tide and could take the floor as soon as this weekend.

⚽️ Two tickets punched: Arsenal and Bayern Munich have clinched their spots in the Champions League Round of 16 with one match to spare. All 36 teams will take the field next Wednesday to wrap up the league phase.

🏀 WNBA schedule release: The WNBA has released its 2026 schedule amid CBA negotiations. The league’s 30th season will tip off on May 8, the All-Star Game will be held in Chicago on July 25 and the playoffs will begin on Sept. 27.

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🏈 Will Indiana’s title invite copycats?

Now that a “basketball school” has won a college football national title, will others chase that success too?

From Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wolken:

College athletics is, if nothing else, the ultimate copycat industry. Whenever somebody has success doing something unique, dozens of struggling programs will try to beg, borrow and steal whatever they can from that blueprint.

There is no real precedent, however, for how the broader world of college athletics is going to react to Indiana winning a national championship in football. In a sport that has always been tilted toward the pedigreed programs, watching a perennial loser cap a 27-2 two-year stretch with a title is such a one-off that it’s hard to know exactly what the takeaway should be for everyone else.

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Does it mean suddenly anything is possible for the middle and lower class of the sport? Has it ruined the excuses of every program struggling to achieve great things? Are there other Curt Cignettis out there who can build a national champion out of three-star recruits and a few hits in the transfer portal?

Here’s the real answer: Probably not. But that isn’t going to stop a whole lot of similarly situated schools from chasing the idea they can become “the next Indiana.”

Who can blame them after watching Hoosier fans suddenly activated after decades to take over the Rose Bowl, the Peach Bowl and even outnumber Miami fans in their home stadium for the national championship game? What administrator could resist the idea that football success is going to get billionaire alums like Mark Cuban to write big checks to the athletic department for the first time?

Though nobody could have envisioned a national title within two years, Indiana’s administration was not shy about saying that the school needed to invest more and build a winning football program. The subtext of that move, after decades of relative apathy, was that Indiana might be at risk of getting left behind if there was ever a so-called super league of the top 30 or 40 programs that broke away from everyone else.

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Indiana certainly isn’t the only school that has that fear. Fundamentally, though, athletic departments will have to ask themselves whether Indiana is a comet or a blueprint. Because the reality of college sports is that no matter how much anybody invests in a particular sport, there are limits to the number of wins available. And in most cases, particularly in the NIL era, giving money to one sport is probably going to negatively impact another.

That’s where Indiana’s success has been a little bit scary for men’s basketball coaches. When their administrations start to feel the pressure of “If Indiana did it, we can too,” will they continue to feed their other sports or try to double down on football like the Hoosiers?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer here. Every school has a different stadium size, a different donor base and different budgetary pressures. There are one-off places where a sport outside the traditional profit centers of football and men’s basketball really, really matters like LSU baseball, Nebraska women’s volleyball, Minnesota hockey and Utah gymnastics.

Realistically, though, King Football rules all those campuses in terms of dollars and institutional priorities. If anything, Indiana’s title will probably lead to schools throwing a lot of good money after bad, only to find out that it isn’t so easy to pull off anything close to what they just accomplished.

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Read the full story.

🇺🇸 Charted: The politics of pro sports

Using voter file data from 23 states and Washington, D.C., VoteHub collected the party identification on 1,506 athletes across the “Big Four” sports leagues, plus the WNBA. The results are displayed above (with lots more data in the full story).

🏈 Kraft: 18-game season is coming

Every NFL team will go to an 18-game regular-season schedule. And every team, every year, will play an international game.

Says who? That’s the league’s looming future, relayed in unambiguous terms by Patriots owner Robert Kraft during a Tuesday appearance on the team’s flagship radio network.

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From Yahoo Sports’ Charles Robinson:

Speaking in the most assertive tone we’ve heard to date from a league power broker, Kraft married the expected push for an 18th game to the NFL’s quest to expand revenue through international growth.

Kraft’s belief is that the two-pronged push — expansion of the regular season and international slate — will draw more global interest in the league, resulting in more money for everyone.

To date, the NFLPA has pushed back on adding another game, citing health and safety concerns. … Yet, Kraft sounded certain in his confidence that it’s going to happen.

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Read the full story.

💯 Big numbers

🏀 899 wins

St. John’s coach Rick Pitino will go for his 900th career win on Saturday. Standing in his way? Xavier, coached by none other than his son, Richard.

Climbing the leaderboard: Pitino currently ranks fifth all-time in wins among Division I men’s coaches, but should soon pass Bob Knight (902) and Roy Williams (903) for third. He still has a ways to go before catching Jim Boeheim (1,116) and Mike Krzyzewski (1,202).

⛳️ 141 straight weeks

This is Scottie Scheffler’s 141st consecutive week being No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking, which puts him more than halfway to breaking Tiger Woods’ record of 281 straight weeks atop the OWGR, set from June 12, 2005 to Oct. 30, 2010.

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On a related note: Woods also holds the record for total weeks at World No. 1 with 683. With Scheffler at 175, the 29-year-old would need to stay atop the ranking for about another decade to top that.

⚾️ 14 of 50

After Cody Bellinger re-signed with the Yankees, just 14 of our top 50 MLB free agents remain unsigned: LHP Framber Valdez (No. 8), RHP Zac Gallen (12), RHP Lucas Giolito (21), 3B Eugenio Suárez (24), INF Luis Arráez (26), OF Harrison Bader (30), RHP Zack Littell (39), RHP Griffin Canning (40), OF Max Kepler (41), OF/DH Miguel Andújar (42), RHP Chris Bassitt (46), LHP Jose Quintana (47), RHP Justin Verlander (48) and DH Marcell Ozuna (49).

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The countdown is on: There are just 19 days left until pitchers and catchers begin reporting to spring training, 29 days until exhibition games begin and 62 days until the Giants and Yankees meet in San Francisco for Opening Night.

🏀 120-66

Two days after holding a players-only meeting in the midst of a 2-9 slide, the Knicks blew out the Nets, 120-66, on Wednesday for their most lopsided victory in franchise history.

Battle for New York: The Nets won nine straight meetings against the Knicks when Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving were in Brooklyn, but New York has now won 13 straight games against their crosstown rivals.

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📺 Watchlist: Thursday, Jan. 22

⛳️ The American Express

Scottie Scheffler, making his season debut, leads a stacked field that includes eight of the world’s top 13 players at the Pete Dye Stadium Course in La Quinta, California (11:30am ET, ESPN+; 4pm, Golf).

Meanwhile, in Dubai: Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood, Shane Lowry and Viktor Hovland are among those teeing it up at the Hero Dubai Desert Classic (8:30am, Golf).

🏀 NBA on Prime

Cooper Flagg’s Mavericks host Stephen Curry’s Warriors in the first game of tonight’s doubleheader (7:30pm), then the Clippers host the crosstown Lakers in the nightcap (10pm).

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Clippers turnaround: Midway through December, the Clippers were left for dead after starting the season an abysmal 6-21. They’ve gone 13-3 since then, putting themselves squarely in the play-in picture.

More to watch:

• 🏒 NHL: Red Wings at Wild (9:30pm, ESPN) … Detroit (31-16-4) is second in the Atlantic, while Minnesota (28-14-9) is third in the Central.

• 🏀 NCAAW: No. 10 Iowa at No. 15 Maryland (6pm, NBC); No. 11 Kentucky at No. 17 Tennessee (6:30pm, SEC); No. 2 South Carolina at No. 16 Oklahoma (7:30pm, ESPN) … The Gamecocks (19-1) have won 12 straight games.

• 🎾 Australian Open: Third round (7pm, ESPN+; 9pm, ESPN2) … Aryna Sabalenka, Coco Gauff and Carlos Alcaraz headline today’s action in Melbourne.

Today’s full slate.

🏀 WNBA trivia

The expansion Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire will tip off this season as the 14th and 15th WNBA franchises.

Question: Can you name the 13 teams they’ll join?

Answer at the bottom.

📸 Photo finish

🇫🇷 Marseille, France — Marseille fans welcomed Liverpool at Wednesday’s Champions League match with a Beatles-inspired tifo. Unfortunately for the home side, the Fab Four helped power the Reds to a 3-0 victory.

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Trivia answer: Washington Mystics, Connecticut Sun, New York Liberty, Atlanta Dream, Chicago Sky, Indiana Fever, Minnesota Lynx, Los Angeles Sparks, Seattle Storm, Golden State Valkyries, Las Vegas Aces, Phoenix Mercury, Dallas Wings

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