Ralph D. Russo
@ralphDrussoATH
Senior College Sports Writer for The Athletic. Formerly AP. I like to tweet about the Mets, but college football is my thing. Reach me: [email protected]
Time to bust this out: The reason why college football is so great is because there are times when all involved have no idea what they are doing.
Legit felt bad for my fellow Fordham alum Ray Montgomery (while also celebrating the K. 🫣)
Strike 1. Strike 2. Strike 3. Manager ejected.
Best wishes for a speedy recovery to Miss Reveille, Texas A&M's very good girl. president.tamu.edu/messages/revei…
Story on what this notable Congressional progress means for college sports, along with mounting public pushback: nytimes.com/athletic/65112…
Tough to watch this version of Mike Trout considering what he once was. Though happy he hasn’t found the fountain of youth in Queens so far.
This will be the first time I vote after years of administering the poll. AP employees don’t vote. So can’t speak from experience. I can surmise some probably communicate but considering panel is spread out over the country and most vote late Sat/early Sun, I’d guess not much.
Question from Ralph for us simpletons. Do ap voters ever talk thru or debate votes with each other?
The latest on the dispute over how the College Sports Commission planned to vet NIL deals between collectives and athletes. In short, the collectives are happy. nytimes.com/athletic/65098…
Good news for those who run collectives.
I can confirm that the College Sports Commission has reached a deal with House attorneys, and collectives will now be treated the same as any other business by NIL Go. Their deals will still be subject to "range of compensation." First reported by @RossDellenger.
Full story on Tony Petitti's comments today pitching his CFP format with 4 AQ berths and play-in games. "The Big Ten has been consistent in its strong preference for a Playoff system that allocates spots based on conference standings." nytimes.com/athletic/65092…
RIP, legend. The timing is jarring.
BREAKING: Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath lead singer and the godfather of heavy metal, dies at 76 just weeks after farewell show. apnews.com/article/ozzy-o…
Ie: adding at-large bids.
Tony Petitti: "To be clear, any (CFP) format that increases the discretion and role of the CFP selection committee will have a difficult time getting support from the Big Ten."
Don't want to sound like I'm talking out of both sides, but trust me, the retro love for the BCS #onhere I think is way overblown. People forget that by the end it was essentially just using two human polls with computers as a tiebreaker.
Respectfully disagree - The BCS system put far too much stock into when a team vs who they lost to
I used to go back and forth with Tim Brando on this. LSU-Bama was last straw, but momentum was building for change. Aside from champ game, BCS was producing increasingly uninteresting bowls. It's probably semantics, but change was coming and Ok State getting in was not saving it.
The BCS’ demise was the rematch btw LSU vs Alabama National Championship it gave us, however if there were a 12 team playoff in 2011 instead of just two teams, then it would still be the system we use today
There is also merit to the argument that the BCS's problem wasn't the selection process but the number of teams selected and if they just expanded earlier people wouldn't have hated it so much.
The BCS formula was great I think. It was a nice blend of hard data and human judgement. There was never a need to use anything other than that. Just adjust the cutoff for whatever the current formula is.
That's an interesting position from a coach whose team got the benefit of the doubt from the committee.
Rhett Lashlee is advocating pretty hard for the removal of the College Football Playoff field being determined by a committee because of the human bias which comes into it.
As college sports continue to look and act more like the pros, here's a question: How much would Ohio State football sell for? What about Texas? Texas Tech? We used real pro franchise transactions as a guideline for every P4 CFB team. What we came up with: nytimes.com/athletic/65005…
This popped up in @SlangsOnSports timeline. I will never forget this game. I was working at AP. It was very late and obviously a very weird way for a game to end. But more notable, not long after this happened, there was a call to the desk alerting us Mickey Mantle had died.
What about this one from 1995? Maybe more “rules violation” than direct interference despite what MLB labeled the video as? m.youtube.com/watch?v=O5_TOP…
Baseball!!!
The Phillies!!! The second walk-off catcher’s interference in at least the divisional era (1969), joining: 8/1/71 LAD With Johnny Bench behind the plate for the Reds
Former Memphis and VTech head coach and TCU assistant.
welcome back Justin Fuente! Fuente has been added to the TCU radio squad and will serve as the lead color analyst for @TCUFootball beginning this fall gofrogs.co/46me9Ap
✍️ Sources: Memphis has tried to SMU its way into the Big 12, proposing to take no money, plus provide upwards of $200 million in sponsorships with Memphis partners like FedEx and Lowe's. But it hasn't garnered enough interest. More: nytimes.com/athletic/65056…