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π Y! Sports AM: Law & Order: College Hoops
Another college sports season begins amid an eligibility crisis.
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- π Y! Sports AM: Law & Order: College Hoops
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π¨ Headlines
βΎοΈ Finalists announced:Cubs CF Pete Crow-Armstrong, Astros DH Yordan Alvarez, Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski and Yankees ace Cam Schlittler headlined the list of finalists for MLB's major end-of-season awards, including MVP, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year and more.
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π Flag football turns pro:The NFL's new professional flag football league has a website , a logo and a name: Premier Flag . The competition will launch sometime next summer, one year before the sport makes its Olympic debut at LA 2028.
π No. 0 forever:Russell Westbrook will have his No. 0 jersey retired by the Thunder in February, the team announced Monday. The OKC legend will be just the second player in team history (not including the Sonics) to earn that honor, joining longtime teammate Nick Collison.
π NFL headlines:"Preliminary indications are positive" for Lions LB Jack Campbell as he continues to recover at a hospital following Sunday's scary injury; Gardner Minshew is the new QB1 in Arizona after taking down the Cowboys; The Colts are sticking with Daniel Jones despite his struggles.
ποΈ Wilbon steps away:Longtime ESPN personality Michael Wilbon is stepping away from the network indefinitely due to multiple health issues. "This isn't retirement, but it is a trip to the injured list. Hopefully not an extended one," read the 67-year-old's statement.
π Law & Order: College Hoops
(Mallory Bielecki/Yahoo Sports)
Stop me if you've heard this one before: A new college sports season is being overshadowed by an eligibility crisis. Welcome to Law & Order: NCAA Hoops.
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The year of the asterisk:For months, opportunistic coaches have challenged the NCAA's ability to enforce its own rules by targeting players (mostly men, some women) whose eligibility should have run out. But in the brave new world of college sports, you're never more than one judge's ruling away from adding a potential superstar to your squad.
Jeff Eisenberg, Yahoo Sports:
It was already messy when the legal challenges to NCAA eligibility rules came from overseas and G League professionals who realized they could make far more money playing college basketball. Then the NCAA chose to exclude players from the high school class of 2022 from its June ruling granting current athletes a fifth season of college eligibility, igniting an offseason of endless legal injunctions, appeals and attorney fees.
Players who once would have been content to pursue professional basketball are challenging NCAA eligibility rules in court to gain access to the lucrative NIL payouts top college programs are offering. And college coaches are taking on these dubious cases because they believe the potential payoff outweighs the downside. The result is a sport where the rules of free agency are inconsistently applied and the available talent pool changes by the day … yet we're supposed to pretend a champion will be crowned fairly.
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LSU is (back) in the spotlight:After a similar saga in football , LSU is once again at the center of the eligibility storm, assembling a squad full of players who required an assist from the courts to play this season. That includes 2025 NBA draft pick Saliou Niang, former Croatian pro Michael RuΕΎiΔ and UCLA transfer Donovan Dent, who retired from basketball last May only to unretire when Year 5 suddenly became an option. At one point last month, the Tigers had just four players listed on their roster as eligibility cases played out in court.
Elsewhere:
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Kansas looks like a national title contender thanks to three players who won legal fights for a fifth season, including former Purdue star and 2026 Timberwolves draft pick Trey Kaufman-Renn.
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Top-ranked Florida's backcourt is led by fifth-year guard Denzel Aberdeen, while No. 11 Louisville scored a big win on Friday when star transfers Seth Trimble and LJ Wells learned they'd remain eligible .
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Gonzaga, the preseason favorite in the rebuilt Pac-12, was awarded the services of former G Leaguer and European pro Izan Almansa. Big East contender St. John's could add longtime pro Babacar Sané, depending on the outcome of next week's hearing .
The full scope:Since June, 200 eligibility-related lawsuits have been filed , with 362 men's basketball players — and 62 women's basketball players — in the total plaintiff count. Many cases remain unresolved, and temporary injunctions allowing players to compete could still be reversed on appeal.
What they're saying:"You don't know if guys who will be playing in November will be playing in December. That's where it gets really tricky," explained Minnesota coach Niko Medved. "I just hate what's going on with all this," said Tennessee coach Rick Barnes. "It's going to be a great year in college basketball, and we shouldn't have any of this hovering over it right now."
πΈ Pics du jour
The Bears quieted the crowd at Lumen Field. (Steph Chambers/Getty Images)
Seattle, Washington —The Bears took it to the Seahawks on "Monday Night Football," winning 34-17 behind a hat trick from D'Andre Swift (79 total yards, 3 TD) to improve to 6-2 for their best start since 2012.
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Beware Da Bears: Seattle and its vaunted defense have lost just seven games since the start of last season. The first six losses were by 17 points combined; the Bears loss was by 17 points on its own. Chicago is for real.
Haugh celebrates after hitting a 3-pointer. (Mike Stobe/Getty Images)
Tampa, Florida —Top-ranked Florida came out on top in the biggest matchup of opening day, stifling No. 14 Miami in a 77-67 victory . Senior forward Thomas Haugh, one of four Gators from Florida's 2025 title-winning team, led the way with 19 points, 10 rebounds and 4 assists.
More from opening day: No. 22 UCLA upset No. 5 Arizona, 84-75 , in the only other ranked matchup of the day; No. 16 Michigan opened its title defense with an 84-68 win over Oakland; No. 15 Gonzaga beat Purdue, 78-72 , in its Pac-12 debut; Plus, seven snap judgments from opening night , courtesy of Yahoo Sports' Jeff Eisenberg.
Welcome back, JuJu. (Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Las Vegas, Nevada —No. 3 USC routed UNLV, 100-68, as star guard JuJu Watkins scored 21 points in her long-awaited return from a torn ACL. The last time the Trojans scored 100 points in a season opener? 1985, which is also the last time they reached the Final Four.
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Meanwhile, in Paris: The only ranked women's matchups of the day came across the pond, where No. 1 South Carolina beat No. 20 Maryland, 101-93 , and No. 21 Oklahoma beat No. 12 North Carolina, 91-79 .
SGA before Monday's game against the Cavs. (Jason Miller/Getty Images)
Cleveland, Ohio —All 30 NBA teams played on Monday night ahead of today's league-wide day off for Election Day. No one came up bigger than Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who dropped 43 points and 8 assists in OKC's 117-112 win over the Cavs to snap their two-game slide.
Elsewhere: The Kings won their first game and the Grizzlies lost their first game , meaning there are no more undefeated or winless teams; The 76ers won their fourth straight to improve to 7-1, and the Rockets won again to match them at an NBA-best 7-1; Luka DonΔiΔ had another huge night (42-7-13) in a win over the Heat .
π Must-flee TV: No escaping the NFC East
Eagles running back Saquon Barkley prepares to run onto the field prior to a game against the Cowboys. (Kathryn Riley/Getty Images)
The NFC East is the NFL's worst division… and it's coming to a TV near you.
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Jay Busbee, Yahoo Sports:
Good news for the entirety of the NFL universe that loathes watching the four misbegotten bumblers of the NFC East: Eventually, the season's going to end, and at that point the Eagles, Giants, Cowboys and Commanders can't hurt you anymore. But until then, friends, we've got to slog through a lot of you-know-what.
Because it encompasses two of the nation's most population-dense cities, one of the NFL's old-school bone-deep fandoms, and America's largest (and most inexplicable) bandwagon, the NFC East slithers its way onto national broadcast after national broadcast. There is, quite literally, no escaping it.
10 weeks remain in the NFL regular season, and nine of those already have their television schedules mapped. Over the course of those nine weeks, NFC teams are currently scheduled to appear in an astounding 12 national time slots. 12! Each of these four dogs gets at least two more national games!
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The NFC East's most comparable division, the equally woeful NFC South, only has three games remaining on the national slate. Now that's a quarantine that we can respect! Of course, some of those games could — should — get flexed out, but are networks going to give up on the Cowboys or Giants no matter how bad they are?
π NBA power rankings: Risers and fallers
(Hassan Ahmad/Yahoo Sports)
The Spurs sit atop our first in-season NBA power rankings , courtesy of Yahoo Sports' Kevin O'Connor, up from No. 2 in our previous pecking order. Here's where all 30 teams stand after two weeks of play, with movement from the preseason rankings shown in parentheses.
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Spurs (β²1)
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76ers (β²2)
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Thunder (βΌ3)
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Knicks (βΌ1)
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Timberwolves
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Celtics (β²3)
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Pistons (β²6)
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Rockets (β²4)
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Lakers (βΌ3)
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Nuggets (βΌ2)
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Heat (βΌ4)
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Cavaliers (βΌ1)
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Raptors (βΌ3)
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Mavericks (β²3)
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Grizzlies (β²9)
16-30:Warriors (β²6), Trail Blazers (β²1), Wizards (β²5), Hornets (βΌ3), Hawks (βΌ5), Pacers (βΌ7), Magic (βΌ3), Suns (βΌ3), Jazz (βΌ3), Pelicans (β²2), Nets, Bulls (βΌ2), Clippers, Bucks, Kings
π The most expensive investment in sports
The IPL champions lift the trophy after winning last year's title. (Pankaj Nangia/Getty Images)
As America's bat-and-ball sport (baseball) faces an uncertain near-term future, the world's most popular one (cricket) is attracting investors and experiencing soaring team valuations.
By the numbers:Sportico's debut valuations for the Indian Premier League, cricket's premier club property, estimate the average franchise is worth $1.7 billion, with all 10 teams falling between the Mumbai Indians ($2.1B) and Lucknow Super Giants ($1.5B).
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For context, the average MLB team valuation is $3.2 billion. But here's the catch: the IPL plays only 74 matches in a season. Not per team. Total. (MLB plays 2,430.)
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So, absolute valuation figures don't reflect the investment conviction demonstrated by myriad prolific sports investors who have acquired stakes.
Bowled over:On average, IPL teams are worth 22.9 times their revenue. Saying that's the highest among major sports leagues would brutally understate the Atlantic Ocean-sized gap (ironic given the minimal interest on this side of the pond) to the rest of the field. The next most expensive league is the NBA, where multiples average 14.6X.
This story first appeared in Yahoo Sports Biz , our 3x weekly newsletter exploring the money behind the games… and how it's shaping your favorite teams and leagues. Subscribe for free .
πΊ Watchlist: Tuesday, Nov. 3
What does Connor McDavid have in store for us tonight? (Joshua Sarner/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
π Oilers at Devils
The best hockey player on the planet takes the ice tonight in New Jersey (7:30pm ET, ESPN+/Disney+) , where the Devils are hosting early MVP favorite Connor McDavid and the Western Conference-leading Oilers.
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Triple threat:McDavid is on a historic heater, piling up a league-leading 39 points and reaching 30 assists in just 15 games to break Wayne Gretzky's single-season record. His closest pursuers in the points race? Teammates Leon Draisaitl (28) and Evan Bouchard (26), giving Edmonton the NHL's top three scorers.
β½οΈ Champions League
Two of the five remaining 3-0 teams bring their perfect records on the road today, as PSG visits Villarreal (3pm ET, Paramount+) and Aston Villa visits Barcelona (3pm, Paramount+) to kick off Matchday 4 .
Where it stands:PSG, Aston Villa, Liverpool, Real Madrid and Real Betis sit atop the league phase table at 3-0, with Stuttgart (2-1-0), Arsenal (2-1-0) and Barcelona (2-0-1) rounding out the top eight that would automatically advance to knockouts if they started today.
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More to watch:
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π NCAAF:Ohio at Akron (7pm, ESPN2) ; Buffalo at Miami-Ohio (8pm, ESPN) … The Buckeye State hosts a pair of midweek MACtion games.
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πΎ Tennis:Paris Masters (7:30am, Tennis) … First-round action for Novak Djokovic, Taylor Fritz, Ben Shelton and more in the final ATP 1000 event of the season.
Got plans tonight? Gametime is the best place to score last-minute tickets to the events in your city. Get tickets now!
π GeoSports
On Tuesdays, we play GeoSports . All questions are written by me.
How it works:You'll be asked five questions that combine sports and geography. Tap the spot on the globe where you think the answer is. The closer you are, the more points you get.
We hope you enjoyed this edition of Yahoo Sports AM , our daily newsletter that keeps you up to date on all things sports. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.
