On the Diamond

9th seed Texas Tech baseball takes on 8th seed Cincinnati in the Big 12 Tournament at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas. This is a double-elimination tournament and obviously this is the first game for Texas Tech.

MATCHUP: Texas Tech (19-32) vs. Cincinnati (31-23)
DATE: Wednesday, May 21, 2025
TIME: 12:30 p.m.
LOCATION: Globe Life Field (Arlington, Texas)
PITCHING MATCHUP: RHP Mac Heuer (2-3, 6.18 ERA) vs. RHP Nathan Taylor (5-2, 3.65 ERA)

On the Gridiron

Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellinger is at it again (in a good way) and writes about how everyone other than the Big Ten and SEC hates the 4 auto-bids that those two conferences are attempting to negotiate into the College Football Playoff. Here’s an easy solution that those conferences would never agree to, which is the conference champion gets an auto-bid and the rest earn their way. Crazy.

The ACC and Big 12 are not alone in their pushback to the format. Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua, one of 11 members of the CFP governance board with the 10 FBS commissioners, has spoken against the format within meetings, those with knowledge of the discussions tell Yahoo Sports.

Bevacqua declined comment this week from ACC spring meetings.

The coaches did not.

“I think you should earn your way in,” Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi said. “It comes down to the image of the Big Ten and SEC and where they are, and there’s a lack of respect for the ACC. I don’t like it.”

Said North Carolina AD Bubba Cunningham: “I don’t understand why you’d ask for a guaranteed spot other than one automatic for conference champions.”

SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee used a basketball analogy, citing the SEC’s record of 14 teams in the NCAA tournament this past year.

“If we guaranteed spots based on the past … just look at basketball the last five years,” Lashlee said. “Six years ago or so, SEC gets three or four teams in. And now this year they get a record. But if this year’s NCAA tournament was predicted on five years ago, 10 of their schools would have been left out. It’s kind of hard to limit the future based on the past.”

CBS Sports’ Richard Johnson with a good article on this proposed new College Sports Commission, which would be the governing body and the issues with colleges signing an agreement to be penalized if they break the agreement.