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Brees returns to the booth: Drew Brees is joining Fox as an NFL analyst, returning to the booth for the first time since his one-year stint with NBC in 2021. This suggests he’ll replace Mark Sanchez following his felony battery charge.
First loss, first win: The Thunder (8-1) suffered their first defeat of the season on Wednesday, and the Nets (1-7) got their first victory. Every NBA team now has at least one loss and one win.
️ Suárez suspended: Inter Miami will be without star striker Luis Suárez for Saturday’s decisive Game 3 in the first round of the MLS playoffs after he was suspended for kicking Nashville’s Andy Najar in Game 2.
Anisimova ousts Świątek: Amanda Anisimova’s career year leveled up again with a 6-7, 6-4, 6-2 win over Iga Świątek that sent her to the knockout stage of the WTA Finals. For Świątek, it marks the first time in her career she’s lost consecutive matches after winning the first set.
New Spurs arena: Voters in Texas passed a measure enabling the Spurs to develop and build a new $1.3 billion arena, more than half of which will be paid for by Bexar County and the city of San Antonio.
Texas Tech is 8-1, ranked No. 8 in the nation and is about to play its biggest game in two decades. How? A $49 million influx from oil barons, a gregarious Texan leader, and a No. 1 transfer class delivering on the field.
From Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger:
In February, during the grand opening of Texas Tech’s 300,000-square foot, $242 million football facility, athletic director Kirby Hocutt, delivering a speech from behind a pulpit within this goliath of a structure, gestures into the audience before him.
He identifies those responsible for not only this lavish building but the talented new roster that trains within it. In the room of dignitaries and donors, there is gobs of money: at least a half-dozen billionaires and 30 more families worth at least nine figures.
“We couldn’t have done it without you,” Hocutt says to them. But, in a way, the responsible party lies well below this facility, deep within the Earth’s rock: a well of oil the size of the state of Florida.
The Permian Basin, the largest oil field in the United States, produces more than 6 million barrels of oil per day and generates 40% of the country’s oil supply. It fuels something else: the Texas Tech football team.
“It’s why we are so well funded. So many alumni have gone to work around this oil field,” says booster Cody Campbell, a former Tech player who sold his last three oil businesses for a combined $13 billion.
Eight months after the unveiling of that new facility, in the wake of arguably the most lucrative and aggressive recruiting effort from any program in the country, the Texas Tech football team is 8-1, ranked as the eighth-best team in the land and poised for its most momentous game in nearly two decades this Saturday when No. 7 BYU visits in a Big 12 showdown in West Texas.
The Red Raiders are scoring in bunches and stuffing opponents. After all, they are one of only three teams that rank inside the top 10 in both total offense and total defense (the others: Indiana and Oregon). Issues that have plagued this program for years defensive lapses and physicality up front are no longer problems.
They are led by a genuinely gregarious Texan as coach, Joey McGuire, who fits here like a wide-brimmed hat atop the head of a cowboy. And they are funded by some of the richest oil barons in the world, a group that pooled their resources this spring in an effort to elevate this place into a different stratosphere.
They took advantage of the circumstances. This year, the old NIL era and the new revenue-share concept overlapped to create the final uncapped market for college players a last gasp of booster-funded deals before a new enforcement entity arrived July 1.
In all, Tech donors raised a jaw-dropping $49 million from July 2024 to July 2025, much of that front-loaded cash paid to players (of all sports) before this academic year began. And they aren’t afraid to talk about it, either.
Keep reading.
One month into the NHL season, the Eastern Conference has set itself apart from the West thanks to a historic level of parity.
No losing records: For the first time since conferences were established in 1974, all 16 teams in the East are at or above .500 (by points percentage) at the one-month mark.
Beasts of the East: The East’s intra-conference parity is thanks in large part to their dominance over the West. Eastern Conference teams are 54-32-5 against Western Conference teams so far.
Consider this: The last-place team in the East at the moment (Florida) has the fourth-best odds to win the Stanley Cup (+850 at BetMGM). The last-place team!
With nine weeks down and nine weeks to go, how does your favorite team grade out?
Dive in.
Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were shut out of the Hall of Fame on their first go-round due to their alleged steroid use. Next month, they’ll get another shot at Cooperstown.
Class of 2026: Bonds and Clemens are among the eight players on the 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era ballot, which will be voted on next month just before the winter meetings. To be elected, players must receive at least 75% of the vote (12 of 16 voters).
How it works: The Eras Committees vote on players, managers, executives and umpires whose contributions came either before 1980 (Classic Era) or since 1980 (Contemporary). It’s essentially a second chance for those who failed to make it into Cooperstown via the more traditional method of being voted in by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
The Broncos (7-2) have won six straight for their best start since 2015, when they won the Super Bowl in Peyton Manning’s final season. The Raiders (2-6) find themselves in the league’s basement, and after selling at the deadline could be in the hunt for the No. 1 pick in next year’s draft.
Three players are fighting for the last two semifinal spots on the final day of the group stage in Riyadh, where Jessica Pegula faces Jasmine Paolini (9am) and Aryna Sabalenka faces Coco Gauff (10:30am). If Pegula and Sabalenka both win, they’re in. Any other combination of results opens the door for Gauff to make it through via tiebreaker.
More to watch:
Today’s full slate.
Berlin, which will host its first NFL regular season game on Sunday, is the most populous city in Germany (3.6 million).
Question: What’s the second-most populous city?
Hint: It’s not Munich.
Answer at the bottom.
Alex Ovechkin made history on Wednesday when he became the first player in NHL history to reach 900 career goals.
Trivia answer: Hamburg (1.8 million)
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