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On this episode of The Big Number, Tom Haberstroh and Dan Devine discuss if what happens in Vegas, truly does stay in Vegas. The numbers show that the NBA Cup champions face a very interesting decline in the Cup’s immediate aftermath, and the New York Knicks are the most recent victims of the NBA Las Vegas hangover, losing 4 straight.

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They also look into other teams suffering post-NBA Cup, including the once-seemingly invincible Oklahoma City Thunder and the preseason Eastern darling Orlando Magic. What’s causing this sudden slip for these contenders? Tom and Dan investigate.

Plus, the pair look into Trae Young’s fit as a Washington Wizard and predict next season’s success with the star guard at the helm.

(0:57) The Big Number: NBA Cup hangover

(16:10) Jalen Williams shooting woes

(24:37) Knicks defensive drama

(33:17) Magic struggling without Suggs

(43:17) Does trading Trae to the Wizards make sense?

🖥️ Watch this full episode on the Yahoo Sports NBA YouTube channel

Check out the rest of the Yahoo Sports podcast family at https://apple.co/3zEuTQj or at yahoosports.tv

In two weeks, the National Baseball Hall of Fame will announce its Class of 2026. We already know one member of the class, and we have a pretty good idea about two others. After that, it’s hazy at best.

The past couple of years have had some fairly obvious first-ballot inductees in Ichiro Suzuki (2025) and Adrian Beltré (2024). There are no such players this year. Instead, any inductees will be benefiting from the slow drift of BBWAA votes, through which a player such as Billy Wagner can go from 10.5% voting in his first ballot in 2016 to a triumphant 82.5% in his final year of eligibility last year.

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That’s where the Hall of Fame Ballot Tracker comes in. The helpful spreadsheet is run by the team of Ryan Thibodaux, Anthony Calamis and Adam Dore, who track every publicly available BBWAA ballot (and some privately indulged ones). As of Wednesday, 140 ballots had been tracked out of an estimated total of 424, enough that we can get a pretty solid idea of which way the wind is blowing.

As a reminder, players need to receive at least 75% of the BBWAA vote to be inducted into the Hall. They get 10 years on the ballot to get there but automatically fall off if they ever receive less than 5% of the vote. After that, they can still get in through the Hall’s Era Committees if they don’t make it via BBWAA.

Here’s how all 27 players on the ballot are doing so far, with numbers as of Wednesday.

Already in

Jeff Kent

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Kent was the lone player to emerge from the Contemporary Era Committee’s vote in December, on a ballot that also included Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Carlos Delgado. Kent fell off the BBWAA ballot in 2023, receiving 46.5% of the vote in his final year, but he immediately got in through the committee.

On track for this year

Carlos Beltrán (88.4% of vote, 4th year of eligibility)
Andruw Jones (83.0%, 9th)

Both Beltrán and Jones are accomplished outfielders who are ahead of the pace needed to reach induction, but that doesn’t mean this is over. BBWAA voters who never reveal their ballots tend to be harsher judges than the public ones, which is how Beltrán went from 73.6% of known ballots to 70.3% in the final vote last year.

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Both men also have off-field issues that could come up in voting, notably Jones’ domestic violence arrest in 2012 and Beltrán’s central role in the Astros cheating scandal. Those are obviously very different situations, but both are relevant in a world in which the character clause has become a major deciding factor in these votes.

On track for sometime in the future

Chase Utley (66.7%, 3rd)
Félix Hernández (58.5%, 2nd)
Cole Hamels (32.0%, 1st)

These guys would all need miracles ranging from minor to major to reach Cooperstown this year, but they should still probably expect plaques at some point in their futures. Very few players who get a majority of votes in their first three years on the ballot end up not making it eventually.

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Utley and Hernández both had Hall of Fame primes, then fell off a bit due to age and injury, but the voters don’t seem too worried about what those two did in their 30s. And for Hamels, 32% is a fine starting number in his first year on the ballot.

Could go either way

Andy Pettitte (55.8%, 8th)
Dustin Pedroia (25.2%, 2nd)
David Wright (19.7%, 3rd)

Only Hernández has gained more returning votes than Pettitte so far this cycle, and the southpaw is also doing well with first-time voters, at 70%. Those are encouraging signs. But you have to wonder how much resistance against Pettitte has calcified due to his alleged steroid use. With only two years remaining on the ballot, he needs a lot of people to come around quickly.

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Pedroia and Wright are both one-team infielders who didn’t quite have Hall of Fame longevity but could ultimately get in if future voters look kindly upon them.

Staying alive

Bobby Abreu (38.8%, 7th)
Jimmy Rollins (25.9%, 5th)
Mark Buehrle (22.4%, 6th)
Omar Vizquel (12.9%, 9th)
Francisco Rodriguez (12.9%, 4th)
Torii Hunter (4.8%, 6th)

It’s hard to imagine any of these guys getting the boost they need at this stage of their candidacy, but they will probably make it to the next ballot. Hunter went from 4.8% of public votes last year to 5.1% in the final count, so a similar bump would keep him in the safe zone this time around.

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Vizquel remains a notable case given that he appeared to be a lock for induction at one point, after he reached 52.6% in his third year of eligibility in 2020, but domestic abuse and sexual harassment allegations have since made him a non-candidate.

Alex Rodriguez

Alex Rodriguez (47.6%, 5th)

With Bonds and Clemens both out of Hall of Fame consideration until 2031, the most controversial candidate is now Rodriguez, whose multiple steroid scandals didn’t prevent him from getting a job at Fox Sports but do appear to be a significant barrier for the Hall of Fame.

His 47.6% number is at least a significant jump from where Rodríguez has been hovering in his first four years of eligibility — from 34.3% in 2022 to 27.1% in 2025 — but his lack of progress with first-time voters (46.7% this year) means the tides are not yet turning the way he needs them to.

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It’s over

Manny Ramirez (43.5%, 10th)

With no more ballots after this one, the Boston Red Sox great can start crossing his fingers that the Contemporary Era Committee doesn’t mind his PED use as much as the BBWAA clearly does.

Hello, goodbye

Ryan Braun (2.7%, 1st)
Edwin Encarnacion (1.4%, 1st)
Shin-Soo Choo (0.7%, 1st)
Hunter Pence (0.7%, 1st)
Gio Gonzalez (0%, 1st)
Alex Gordon (0%, 1st)
Matt Kemp (0%, 1st)
Howie Kendrick (0%, 1st)
Nick Markakis (0%, 1st)
Daniel Murphy (0%, 1st)
Rick Porcello (0%, 1st)

It is extremely difficult to make the Hall of Fame. The above players have a combined 1 MVP award, 1 Cy Young Award, 27 All-Star selections, 13 Gold Gloves, 10 Silver Sluggers and 5 World Series rings, but it looks like none of them will get a second look from voters. Braun’s admitted PED use obviously looms largest here.

Football is a team game, yes, but let’s be honest — some team players are more important than others. This week’s Peach Bowl presents a matchup of two of the most significant quarterbacks in the college game — Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza and Oregon’s Dante Moore — and if history is any indication, their stories will be intertwined for years to come.

Marcus Mariota/Jameis Winston, Jared Goff/Carson Wentz and Bryce Young/CJ Stroud comprise just a few of the quarterback duos taken 1-2 in the NFL Draft, duos judged by the success (or lack thereof) of the other for several years after their selections. The Mendoza/Moore duo could well follow in that line, particularly if the Peach Bowl ends up a showcase for both players. Mendoza has the gaudier awards, but Moore has bounced back from a midseason lull to lead the Ducks to two big playoff wins.

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Mendoza finished the year with 3,172 yards passing, and led the FBS in touchdowns (36), yards per attempt (9.6) and passer rating (184.7) … and, of course, he won the Heisman Trophy. Moore, after some significant early-season hype, finished with a more-than-respectable 3,280 yards, 28 touchdowns and 9 interceptions, although he didn’t finish in the top 10 in Heisman voting.

Both players’ head coaches spent time earlier this week touting their quarterbacks’ play — which, granted, is not the most difficult task.

“When you look at a quarterback, obviously he’s gotta have throwing ability and be able to process, but the ability to extend plays, whether it’s with his legs or once he’s out of the pocket with his arm, his eyes downfield, I mean, that’s the key,” Indiana’s Curt Cignetti said of Mendoza. “A guy that cannot extend plays, you really become vulnerable.”

“[The Hoosiers] do a great job of protecting against shots, but I think Dante’s been a really good decision-maker throughout the year,” Oregon head coach Dan Lanning said, “and that’ll be something that’s really important in this game.”

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The two teams met back in October, a grinding 30-20 Indiana victory that was tied with less than seven minutes remaining. Mendoza and Moore ended up with similar stats from that game — Mendoza threw for 215 yards and a touchdown; Moore had 186 and a touchdown. The difference came on the ground and on the margins. Moore threw two interceptions to Mendoza’s one, and Mendoza had 31 yards on the ground to Moore’s minus-27, thanks to the six sacks he suffered.

“Fernando’s ability to make plays with his legs, boy,” Cignetti said. “I can’t even count the number of times in big games this year where his legs have come through and extended drives.” Mendoza would finish the year with 256 yards and six touchdowns on the ground.

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Lanning, unsurprisingly, is applying a little retroactive analysis to that game to help clean up Moore’s numbers.

“You gotta remember when we played earlier in the season, Dante hadn’t played a ton of games,” he said. “As you play an entire season, you get exposed to a lot of different looks, and you learn from those moments, and Dante has certainly learned from a lot of those moments … He’s not the same player as he was earlier this year.”

The closest historical comparison to this year’s scenario might be 2015, when Jameis Winston and Florida State took on a Marcus Mariota-led Oregon in the first-ever College Football Playoff semifinal. The Ducks had no trouble running the Noles right out of the Rose Bowl, 59-20. Mariota (26/36, 338 yards, 2 TDs, 1 interception) and Winston (29/45, 348 yards, 1 TD, 1 interception) had roughly the same numbers, but the game might best be remembered for Winston’s cartoonish fumble in the midst of an Oregon onslaught.

Even so, Winston ended up drafted No. 1 overall a few months later, with Mariota just one slot behind him. Both won Heismans, and both are still in the NFL as spot starters — Winston with the Giants, Mariota with the Commanders.

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In all likelihood, Mendoza will get the draft nod over Moore, but regardless of how this game ends, the Mendoza/Moore dance will continue right on into late April. Yahoo’s draft analysts have been impressed with both players. Nate Tice terms Mendoza “an accurate thrower to all three levels who constantly goes to the right place with the ball.” Charles McDonald, meanwhile, praises Moore as a player with “all the tools to be a high-upside passer as he develops his game.”

“Mendoza’s been my QB1 throughout this entire process,” Tice says. “He’s a high-floor guy, smart, a clean operator, accurate. His game translates every well to the NFL.” Tice pegs Matt Ryan as Mendoza’s high-upside comparison, and believes he’ll be QB1, likely to the Raiders.

“I’ve graded Moore throughout the process as a late first-rounder, early second-rounder that gets bumped up because of QB inflation,” Tice says. “He’s QB2 almost by default.”

Moore actually hasn’t declared yet, which could shift the entire post-Mendoza draft depending on his decision. “In a perfect world, he’d go back to school,” Tice says of Moore. “But he’s looking at $54 million guaranteed from the Jets. You can’t always guarantee that will be there if you wait a year, especially with Arch Manning, (Brendan) Sorsby and other guys.”

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Tice pegs the break-point for a player of Moore’s caliber at around the 22-to-24 spot, meaning it would make more sense to stay if he was drafted that low, but it’s unlikely he would fall that far if he’s available. Then again, so much depends on this Peach Bowl.

“It will have more of an impact on Moore than Mendoza, prospect-wise,” Tice says. “If he goes out against Indiana and has an amazing game, that could affect some teams’ thinking. They’re watching how players perform in these big games at the end of the season.”

Looking ahead, the first three teams picking in this year’s draft — the Raiders, Jets and Cardinals — have definite or likely quarterback needs, depending on what Arizona does with Kyler Murray. The Titans and Giants seem set, but Cleveland at No. 6 is likely as far as Moore or Mendoza could possibly fall.

The Peach Bowl will be a showcase of two of the game’s great quarterbacks. More than that, it could be another early chapter in a long-running narrative between Fernando Mendoza and Dante Moore. Either way, it ought to be a fascinating battle.

The John Harbaugh sweepstakes is underway after the Baltimore Ravens fired their longtime head coach after 18 seasons on Tuesday. There have been many inquiries about his services from teams looking to fill their openings — even reportedly one team that doesn’t currently need a head coach.

Given the amount of interest, it seems very likely Harbaugh will be coaching an NFL team in 2026. That is something his brother Jim, currently preparing his Los Angeles Chargers for Sunday night’s playoff game against the New England Patriots, believes will happen as long as it’s in the other conference.

“He’ll be a head coach next year,” Jim Harbaugh said Wednesday. “We’ll be playing against him in some form or fashion … And as I told him, whatever team he goes to is going to be formidable and I just hope it’s in the NFC.”

John Harbaugh led the Ravens to the playoffs in 12 of his 18 seasons and finished with a losing record just three times. He also was at the helm when the franchise won its second title in Super Bowl XLVII against Jim’s San Francisco 49ers.

“John Harbaugh is the best coach I know, best coach I’ve ever seen. You may say, well I’m his brother so I might be biased,” said Jim, who is 0-3 against his brother in their NFL coaching careers.

The New York Giants emerged as one of the favored landing spots for Harbaugh with the Arizona Cardinals, Atlanta Falcons, Las Vegas Raiders and Tennessee Titans desperate for a new head coach who will inspire changes.

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Harbaugh’s résumé has made him a desirable candidate this coaching cycle and likely put him in a position where no head coaching decisions will be made by teams until he finds his next team.

Wherever John Harbaugh does land, his brother says that organization will be lucky to have him.

“I could tell he will be attacking with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind, [that] next opportunity,” Jim Harbaugh said. “There will be a team that will be a gift, to have the one of the best coaches ever, best coach I know.”

Despite winning three straight division titles prior to the 2025 NFL season, Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles found himself on the hot seat once the year ended. Following an excellent start, in which the Bucs went 6-2 to open the season, Tampa Bay collapsed down the stretch, winning just two of its last nine games and missing out on the playoffs.

While Bowles’ status was initially unclear, the head coach confirmed Wednesday he will be back coaching the Buccaneers in 2026, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

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Bowles, 62, said he met with the Buccaneers’ owners — the Glazer family — Tuesday and was planning to hold interviews with coaches Wednesday. Bowles also told the Tampa Bay Times that while he’ll return in 2026, there will be changes to his coaching staff. Bowles did not elaborate on those changes.

Despite Bowles’ success from 2022-24, the coach was a surprising addition to the list of coaches who could lose their jobs this offseason following the Buccaneers’ collapse. Though the team lost control of the NFC South by the end of the season, it still had a shot to make the playoffs in Week 18.

With a win over the Carolina Panthers, there was a scenario in which the Buccaneers would earn a playoff berth. The Buccaneers got the job done, winning 16-14 over the Panthers. Unfortunately for Tampa Bay, the Atlanta Falcons defeated the Los Angeles Rams in Week 17 and the New Orleans Saints in Week 18, setting up a tie at the top of the division.

With the Bucs, Panthers and Falcons all sitting at 8-9, the Panthers were crowned the NFC South championships after sweeping the Falcons in the regular season.

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Though the Buccaneers have won three NFC South titles under Bowles, the team hasn’t secured those titles in dominant fashion. In Bowles’ four seasons on the job, the Bucs have a 35-33 record.

While things ended terribly for the Bucs this season, there’s reason to believe the team will be better in 2026. Injuries wrecked the team’s offensive line, and some of the team’s biggest playmakers — Mike Evans, Chris Godwin and Bucky Irving — all missed multiple games due to injuries.

Given the rumors and uncertainty surrounding Bowles this time around, the coach will need a more successful year in 2026 if he wants to keep his job. His stint with the Bucs has mostly been successful, but it’s clear ownership has higher expectations.

Pete Golding has guided Ole Miss through the latest of Lane Kiffin’s messy head-coaching departures and piloted a galvanized Rebels program to its first two College Football Playoff victories.

He went from defensive coordinator to head coach on Nov. 30 after Kiffin abruptly ended his six-season run in Oxford to head to Baton Rouge and take the reins at LSU.

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That left a then-11-win Ole Miss team enjoying the best season in school history in the spotlight of one of college football’s most controversial stories, with NIL money, a poorly timed transfer portal window and, of course, poached coaches at the center of the madness.

Golding has been asked about the chaos repeatedly.

He emphasized Wednesday ahead of his sixth-seeded Rebels’ Fiesta Bowl CFP semifinal showdown versus 10th-seeded Miami that he believes every year is pretty chaotic, and that if Kiffin’s departure was going to happen, there actually couldn’t have been a better time.

He challenged the narrative that’s obsessed over Ole Miss’ postseason circumstances, especially when he was asked at his joint news conference with Hurricanes head coach Mario Cristobal if he has a message for Kiffin and Rebels doubters who didn’t think they could make a run at a national title without Kiffin.

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“Yeah, I don’t have a message for anybody else,” Golding said.

“I think our team had a message. They had a message about how they prepared and how they play and that they weren’t tired of playing.”

Golding, who had served as Ole Miss’ defensive coordinator since 2023 leading up to his promotion, said that if he had a message it’d be about the importance of team over everything else.

“I’m replaceable, you’re replaceable, our players are replaceable,” he said. “I think you want to build a program to where it’s heading in the right direction and one person, one player or anything like that’s not going to derail that.

“There’s been too much invested in that, and it’s been aligned correctly that one person is not going to impact something so drastically. If it is, it’s probably not built right. If one coach in any sport can determine the outcome of it, he probably doesn’t have a very good staff. I mean, if one player can determine the outcome of it, we probably didn’t recruit and create the right depth.”

An impassioned Golding continued: “It’s a team game. I mean, there’s so many people that go into it. So the timing of when it happened, in my opinion, it couldn’t happen at a better time for the players because everything was already in place. Everything was on the track. It’s headed the right direction. We got really good players. There was already a culture created. They knew the expectation. The only thing that was different is who’s running them out the tunnel. And to be honest with you, I don’t think the players give a damn who runs them out the tunnel.”

Golding drove home the point that, more than anything, players care about their plan, about being held accountable and about people who care about them.

“I think that’s been the message our players have created,” Golding said. “I don’t have s*** to say to anybody else.”

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Golding has appeared unfazed by his shapeshifting coaching staff, which has featured assistants who are following Kiffin to LSU.

[Get more Rebels football news: Ole Miss team feed]

The 41-year-old Golding started his coaching career at Division II Delta State in Cleveland, Mississippi. Eventually he moved up to the FCS, where he coached at Southeastern Louisiana.

Long before he was coordinating Nick Saban’s defense at Alabama, he was dealing with far fewer resources on much smaller staffs.

“We got six coaches in Division II,” Golding said Wednesday. “You’re the strength and conditioning coach, you’re the academic coordinator, you got to coach.

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“I walk in the offensive room this morning, and there’s nine guys that have been here all year in there, and there’s four more added to it. There’s 13 guys in an offensive staff room. … I think we have enough guys to be able to coach and know the system and do it the right way.”

Golding confirmed that two of four assistants who coached Ole Miss in a Sugar Bowl CFP quarterfinal win over Georgia and are part of Kiffin’s new staff at LSU won’t be with the Rebels in Thursday’s game against Miami. Tight ends coach/co-offensive coordinator Joe Cox and wide receivers coach/passing game coordinator George McDonald will not coach for Ole Miss, whereas offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr. and running backs coach Kevin Smith are still on board.

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Golding explained that there’s been “constant communication,” and that he’s understanding of Cox and McDonald’s competing interests.

“They have another job that is paying them, and they have a responsibility,” Golding said. “And at this time, the way the calendar is now, and I wasn’t going to get into this, but they’re trying to — they have 35 guys that are in the portal, and they have to build a team [at LSU].

“So, obviously, do they want to be here? You’re damn right they do. But again, I mean the situation that it is, right, they’ve got a job to do, and they’ve got to build a team where they’re at. And where the window is right now, we’ve made it when it’s in the semifinals of the national championship.”

Golding later noted: “To answer your question, yes, we’ve got plenty of people.”

The PGA of America will have a new CEO once again this year.

Derek Sprague announced on Wednesday that he will be stepping down as the PGA of America’s CEO this month in order to return to upstate New York and help both his mother and mother-in-law, who he said are needing more care as they get older.

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Sprague will remain in an advisory role to ensure a smooth transition with the next CEO, which the PGA of America said it expects to announce in the coming weeks.

“At my daughter’s wedding last month in upstate New York, it became clear that my family needs me nearby to assist with the care of my mother and mother‑in‑law,” Sprague said in a statement. “Focusing on family has become my priority, and the best decision for me is to step away from my role as CEO and return home to be with them.

“Serving as CEO of the PGA of America over the past year has been an incredible honor, and I will always be grateful for the trust placed in me by the Board and thank them for their understanding. I also want to thank our staff for their tireless dedication. Their passion and commitment inspire me, and I know the Association will continue to thrive as it carries forward the proud mission of serving our members and growing the game.”

The PGA of America is separate from the PGA Tour. It has roughly 30,000 professionals throughout the country, and is in charge of both the Ryder Cup when it is held in the United States and the men’s, women’s and senior PGA Championships each season.

Sprague became a PGA of America member back in 1993, and has held several leadership roles there throughout his time with the organization, including serving as its president from 2014-16. He was selected to replace former Deutsche Bank Americas CEO Seth Waugh as the PGA of America’s CEO last January, which made him the first former president to take that job.

Sprague was also in charge of overseeing the Ryder Cup last fall at Bethpage Black, where the Americans fell to Europe in a rough outing despite a surprising late surge on Sunday. There was plenty of criticism from the Europeans over fan behavior at that event, and Sprague ended up reaching out to Rory McIlroy to apologize for the verbal abuse that he and his wife Erica received throughout the tournament.

“I got a lovely email from Derek Sprague apologizing,” McIlroy said in November, via the BBC. “Erica worked with Derek at the PGA of America back in the day, so we know Derek and his wife pretty well. He couldn’t have been more gracious or apologetic and he wrote us a lovely letter, which we really appreciated.”

Sprague’s resignation marks the second major leadership shakeup in professional golf in recent months. PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan is going to step down at the end of his contract later this year, and the Tour hired former NFL executive Brian Rolapp as the new CEO to take over day-to-day operations.

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The PGA Tour’s season will start next week with the Sony Open at the Wai’alae Country Club in Hawaii.

The attorney for Trinidad Chambliss is making another effort to convince the NCAA to clear the Ole Miss quarterback for a sixth year of eligibility.

The university made a third filing to the NCAA on Wednesday on behalf of Chambliss’ eligibility waiver — a four-page document that was drafted by attorney Tom Mars.

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In the latest filing, Mars pushes back against the NCAA’s original assertion that the school did not provide sufficient medical evidence to meet its standard for granting the waiver, and he suggested the potential for legal action in a Mississippi court.

“To avoid a Mississippi Circuit Court concluding that these dual standards are not unlawfully arbitrary and capricious, the NCAA would have to provide a legitimate reason why its bylaws contain two different standards for medical documentation that deal with the same situation,” Mars wrote. “That might be a tough hill to climb.”

In a story Monday, Yahoo Sports detailed the situation with Chambliss, who is seeking a sixth year of eligibility through the NCAA’s waiver process. He believes that an ailment — respiratory issues tied to an eventual diagnosis of enlarged tonsils and subsequent surgery — prevented him from playing the 2022 season. He is requesting a medical hardship for that year. Chambliss used his redshirt the year before as a freshman at Division II Ferris State.

In his latest letter, Mars says the NCAA’s case manager told an Ole Miss administrator that the statement from Chambliss’ physician was “sufficient proof” of his incapacity to play in 2022 but that the staff was concerned about lack of “contemporaneous medical documentation.”

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Mars reemphasizes that Chambliss’ health condition “was far more serious than just a simple case of tonsillitis” and that it spanned the entire 2022-23 season. He rebuffs the NCAA claim that Ole Miss “failed to meet” the medical documentation standard and that it “would not withstand scrutiny in a court of law.”

Since the Chambliss family retained Mars in mid-December, the attorney and Ole Miss officials have made three filings to the NCAA totaling nearly 100 pages.

In an interesting wrinkle, LSU coach Lane Kiffin, three weeks after leaving Ole Miss, was the one to first contact and convince Mars to help Chambliss in the case. Mars confirmed that news when reached Wednesday. He offered no other comment about Kiffin’s role.

The NCAA originally signaled to Ole Miss that it needed more information to grant Chambliss’ waiver request. The state of the waiver is unclear, and no timeline for a decision exists. The NCAA D-I Academic Eligibility Committee is not scheduled to meet this week, but is slated for two days of in-person meetings next week from the NCAA convention near Washington, D.C.

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Ole Miss, 13-1 and the sixth seed in the College Football Playoff, meets 10th-seeded Miami (12-2) on Thursday night in the semifinals held at the Fiesta Bowl. Earlier this week, Chambliss re-signed with the Rebels in a move contingent on him being granted his sixth year.

His contract is worth in excess of $5 million, according to those with knowledge of the deal, giving the quarterback specific financial damages for a possible legal challenge if the waiver is denied. Mars told Yahoo Sports earlier this week that Chambliss has already suffered financial “damages” because of the NCAA’s delay in its decision.

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Mars mostly stopped representing athletes in eligibility cases about three years ago, shifting his cases to more coaches and athletic administrators. However, he took exception to the merits of Chambliss’ case and is representing the quarterback pro bono.

Trinidad’s case for a sixth year of eligibility hinges on him proving to the NCAA that he was unable to play in 2022 because of the tonsil issue. Ole Miss filed a 91-page document, authored by Mars, to the association on Dec. 22. Mars drafted another document sent to the NCAA on Sunday reemphasizing that the organization has the sufficient evidence needed to grant the waiver based on the association’s own bylaw language.

As part of the 91-page filing, Mars included documents from Dr. Anthony Howard, an ear, nose and throat specialist who treated Trinidad for the condition in December 2022. Ultimately, Howard determined that the quarterback suffered from “enlarged tonsils” and other ailments that limited his ability to play in 2022.

It’s easy to take shots at the leaders of college athletics for letting their industry spiral to the point of all-consuming dysfunction, but give them credit for one thing.

They have managed to come up with arguably the worst business model on earth.

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Here’s how it works:

• Have an open bidding system for coaches and athletes, regulated by no one, that allows them to change jobs at will regardless of the length of their contracts and in fact encourages them to exert their leverage to obtain better deals every year.

• Do not pay the players for their ability to play football because that would make them employees. Rather, pay for their “marketing rights,” which avoids the employment conversation but complicates legal recourse in contractual disputes and ultimately leaves schools more vulnerable to chicanery and broken promises.

• Create a system that supposedly regulates payroll costs and ensures competitive balance by requiring a third-party clearinghouse to approve deals that don’t conform to their rules, only to then instruct said clearinghouse to ignore most of the rules they wrote because they’d probably lose a lawsuit.

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• Ask your most successful and loyal customers, the donors, to continue shoveling money at those players for no real benefit other than the fleeting enjoyment of watching them play, not knowing if they’ll be worth watching play in the first place. Then, after those players decide to play the leverage game again, ask your richest fans to deliver an even bigger pile of money for a new set of players who will be gone in a year.

Take a bow, college sports. This is true brilliance at work.

While the College Football Playoff and March Madness always provide compelling theater, including a highly anticipated set of semifinals Thursday and Friday, the inner workings of college sports have never looked more unpleasant, disorganized and utterly doomed to be an anvil of failure hanging around the neck of those in charge.

We have roughly one-third of college football players in the transfer portal.

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We have quarterbacks commanding $4 million and $5 million deals — essentially the equivalent of an NFL rookie salary for the No. 11 overall pick — that aren’t even guaranteed stars.

We have schools who begged for rules and guardrails to bring sanity and structure to the ecosystem using marketing companies to create financial packages for players, allowing them to exceed the revenue-share cap they negotiated just last year in the House v. NCAA settlement.

We have a situation at Washington where quarterback Demond Williams signed a revenue-sharing agreement to stay at the school, then turned around and announced he wanted to go into the transfer portal because he likely got a whiff of even bigger money somewhere else (cough, LSU, cough). Stay tuned to see how that one gets sorted out!

We have a college basketball product that is wide open for players who were professional athletes playing in the NBA G League or Europe, including former NBA draft picks. Good luck to the NCAA’s attorneys when someone who has signed an NBA contract in the past inevitably wants to come back to college for a big payday and gets denied eligibility because that’s an arbitrary bridge too far.

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We have the NCAA throwing its hands up in the air on most of this stuff, waiting for Congress to pass legislation that gives it legal protection to enforce its rules. Given that the congressional lobbying effort hasn’t borne fruit since former NCAA president Mark Emmert started it more than six years ago, good luck getting that to the finish line now that we’re in another midterm election year and there are various domestic and international crises that will likely command most of their time.

Oh, and as bad as it looks based on stuff that’s public, the environment is so much more chaotic and distrustful behind the scenes.

Here’s an example.

A power conference administrator passed along a document signed on Dec. 3 — national signing day for high school recruits — that looked like an NIL deal between Tennessee’s Volunteer Club and a recruit that had flipped to the Vols that day.

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But the reason the contract had been floating around among outraged administrative types was that the contract offering $85,000 worth of stipends, a paid apartment in Knoxville and $25,000 to pay the agent’s fees — while requiring nothing in return — was allegedly signed by the athlete’s grandmother.

Tennessee’s competitors felt it was a blatant attempt to circumvent the revenue-sharing cap. The document was sent to the NCAA, the SEC and the College Sports Commission, which is now the responsible party for policing this stuff. Nobody knew quite what to make of it.

Sources connected to the deal told Yahoo Sports the document was written in error by an inexperienced agent who didn’t know if a minor was allowed to sign a contract in that state and terminated it later in the day. Yahoo Sports has reviewed copies of the termination letter and a more standard NIL agreement with the player dated Dec. 5.

The point here is not that anybody did anything wrong. But it does provide a look into the inner workings of a business that is so unregulated that it would allow for such a mistake to happen in the first place while at the same time being such a believable story of potential cheating that other schools were actively trying to sic the CSC enforcement staff on Tennessee.

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And, again, it’s worth emphasizing that the entire point of the House settlement and the creation of the CSC was to put entities like the Volunteer Club out of business and prevent these kinds of deals, or at the very least, construct a solid wall between recruiting activity and money flowing through booster-funded collectives.

After millions in legal fees, the power conferences couldn’t even get that part right once the lawyers started pushing back and accusing them of colluding to restrict earnings.

So what do you have now? A system of talent procurement where some people are abiding by the rules, some are finding loopholes to do what they believe they can defend in court and others are completely ignoring the rules while daring a weakened NCAA/CSC to come get them.

And because it’s so vague who’s paying players through revenue share and who’s promising payments through third parties that may or may not entirely be within the rules, coaches and administrators at a lot of schools feel that their only choices are to use the flimsiness of the system to their advantage or be taken advantage of.

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Nobody should want this.

But it is the product of many choices over many years made by university presidents, athletic administrators and NCAA leadership to avoid confronting the reality that they need to tear the amateurism model down to its studs and start over.

It’s now clear they would rather have this chaos than the thorny work of building a system that pays players fairly, treats them as professionals and makes everyone accountable to the contracts they sign through collective bargaining.

It’s just one more choice, and both paths are hard. There would be real challenges trying to build that system for college sports, but as we can plainly see now, there are no magic solutions as things stand.

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Every time they try to fix a leak, six more spring up from the bottom of the boat. So each year they just accept sinking a little deeper into the abyss, hoping for a bottom that never seems within sight.

While Cleveland Browns rookie quarterback Shedeur Sanders was filling in for a concussed Dillon Gabriel and making his regular-season NFL debut on Nov. 16, his Granger Township home was broken into and burglarized.

Three suspects have been arrested, although one is still at large, according to a news release from the Medina County Sheriff’s Office.

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Police say approximately $200,000 in property was stolen from Sanders’ home that night. Three days after the incident, on the day the Browns named Sanders their starting quarterback for Week 12 as Gabriel remained in concussion protocol, the former Colorado star addressed the matter while explaining that he’s in a mental space where not too much can faze him. He also lightheartedly joked that the thieves didn’t get any of his jewelry.

The break-in happened at approximately 6:46 p.m. on Nov. 16, per the police, which reported that surveillance cameras in the residence captured video of the suspects entering and exiting different parts of Sanders’ home.

The footage shows the suspects leaving the residence with stolen items at approximately 6:58 p.m., according to the news release.

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The sheriff’s office has completed its investigation and has an active warrant for the at-large suspect’s arrest. The other three suspects are in custody, per the police.

Sanders struggled in his first regular-season action, completing only 4-of-16 passes and finishing with just 47 passing yards and one interception in a 23-16 home loss to the Baltimore Ravens.

He fared much better in his first career start the following week on the road against the Las Vegas Raiders. That’s when he threw his first touchdown pass and led the Browns to a 24-10 victory.

Even after Gabriel was cleared from the concussion protocol, Sanders remained Cleveland’s starter. He wound up starting the team’s final seven games of the season. The 5-12 Browns went 3-4 with Sanders as their QB1, and two of those four losses were decided by three points or fewer.

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Sanders, though, posted a meager 7:10 touchdown-to-interception ratio and completed only 56.6% of his passes, albeit behind an injury-riddled Browns offensive line down the stretch of the season.

After plummeting to the fifth round in last year’s draft, Sanders had to wait his turn in a crowded Cleveland quarterback room. He eventually got his shot, but now the franchise is hitting the reset button, most notably firing head coach Kevin Stefanski on Monday.

Sanders is confident in his ability, however, he knows the Browns’ decision-makers will make the call on who is starting under center next season.