Ohio State stumbled under pressure during the final week of the regular season and will miss out on the Big Ten championship game. But in the new college football landscape, the Buckeyes still find themselves in prime position for the playoffs.

No. 2 Ohio State lost to unranked and depleted archrival Michigan on Saturday, 13–10, despite entering the game favored by three touchdowns. The Buckeyes—which spent around $20 million in NIL money to secure its roster this season—should take a tumble when the next College Football Playoff Rankings are announced Tuesday. Head coach Ryan Day, the fifth-highest-paid coach in college football, making about $10 million this year, has now lost four straight to the Wolverines. Day is signed until 2028—and a buyout would cost the Buckeyes $37.2 million, according to USA Today. 

However, despite an outraged fan base, the Buckeyes (10–2) are still expected to clinch a spot in the postseason given this year’s expanded 12-team playoff format.

The Athletic projects the Buckeyes as a virtual lock to make the playoffs, alongside Oregon, Texas, Notre Dame, Penn State, Tennessee, Indiana, and Georgia—the last of which needed eight overtime periods to defeat in-state rival Georgia Tech on Friday night to ensure its place in the rankings. SMU, which is 11–1, has more than a 90% chance of making the playoffs based on the projections, meaning there are about three CFP slots up for grabs. 

One of those could go to No. 12 Clemson, the Mustangs’ opponent in the ACC championship game, which looked like it blew its shot after losing to 15th-ranked South Carolina. But the Tigers got a break when Syracuse stunned No. 6 Miami to push the Hurricanes out of the ACC title game in favor of the Tigers. 

If Miami ultimately misses the playoffs, it would be a blow for a school that had a $15 million budget to build this year’s roster, according to On3.

Flag-Planting Fallout

The college football weekend was marred with fights in four different contests stemming from road teams attempting to plant their school’s flag on their rival team’s field after a win.

A brawl broke out between Ohio State and Michigan players in Columbus, and police reportedly used pepper spray to mitigate the situation. Both schools are expected to be fined $100,000 by the Big Ten for violating the league’s sportsmanship policy, according to Yahoo Sports.

The other three rivalry games with flag-planting incidents were Florida State-Florida, NC State-UNC, and Arizona State-Arizona. No fines or penalties have been announced yet.

Thanksgiving, unsurprisingly, delivered the most-watched game of the 2024 regular season—and showed the strength of the Cowboys as a viewership draw, regardless of the team’s overall performance.

The Giants-Cowboys game on Thanksgiving Day, which aired at 4:30 p.m. ET on Fox, drew 38.5 million viewers, over seven million more than the previous season-high of 31.2 million for Chiefs-Bills in Week 11. The record came despite the teams carrying a combined record of 6-16 entering the game. Neither team’s Week 1 starting quarterback played as Dak Prescott suffered a season-ending hamstring injury in Week 9 while Daniel Jones was released on Nov. 22 after being benched.

Despite the big number, subpar seasons for Dallas and New York may have contributed to the game attracting the lowest viewership for a Cowboys game on Thanksgiving since 2020—including an all-time regular-season record of 42.2 million viewers in a 2022 matchup between the same two NFC East rivals. But this year’s mark would still come in as the fourth-highest all-time (though Nielsen began tracking out-of-home viewership in 2020).

The Cowboys have ostensibly been superseded by the Chiefs as the NFL’s biggest draw this season, but the back-to-back Super Bowl champions were not on the Thanksgiving slate. The Chiefs played the Raiders in the NFL’s second Black Friday game, which was streamed exclusively on Amazon Prime Video. Viewership numbers for that game are not yet available, though Prime Video numbers tend to be lower than CBS, NBC, and Fox due to distribution.

The primetime Thanksgiving game between the Packers and Dolphins which kicked off at 8:20 p.m. ET drew 26.6 million viewers across NBC platforms, down slightly from 26.9 million for 49ers-Seahawks last year, but up slightly from the 26 million who watched Patriots-Vikings in 2022.

Viewership numbers for the early Thanksgiving game between the Bears and Lions at 12:30 p.m. ET on CBS have not been reported yet.

Andrew Friedman has spent a decade running the Dodgers’ baseball operations group. In that time, they’ve methodically built an efficient, optimized baseball machine—effectively taking the Moneyball approach introduced by Billy Beane’s A’s and innovated by teams like the Rays, then extending to it every possible benefit. The Dodgers compete in MLB’s second-biggest market, play on a 25-year, $7 billion local TV deal, and draw the league’s highest attendance every year—welcoming nearly 4 million fans this season. They’ve spent plenty but had a reputation for prudence and opportunism. 

Fresh off a World Series victory over the Yankees and following an offseason in which they signed players to contracts worth around $1.2 billion, the franchise is pushing in even more of its proverbial chips.

Starting pitcher Blake Snell came to terms on the first nine-figure deal of this offseason just before Thanksgiving, agreeing to a five-year, $182 million contract with the Dodgers. Shohei Ohtani is expected to return to the mound next year, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow are on expensive deals, and the team also has a few young, promising pitchers. Clayton Kershaw declined a $10 million player option but is expected back in L.A. 

The Dodgers have an embarrassment of riches but have prioritized high-upside players like Glasnow and Snell who can shine in short stints. They added another case study to their approach by signing super-utility player Tommy Edman to a five-year, $74 million deal. Edman is not assured to start the team’s first game at the Tokyo Dome next year, but he has played every position but catcher and first base and was excellent during the playoffs, being named MVP of the NLCS. He was already under contract for next year, but the Dodgers saw an opportunity to lock down a player they liked and used their financial might to do exactly that.

More to Come?

The Snell signing surprised many analysts because the Dodgers are regarded as the favorites to sign Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki when he’s posted early next year. Rumors intensified to the point that Sasaki’s agent, Joel Wolfe, felt he had to deny there was an agreement in place.

The Snell contract also included significant deferred money. This is a tool the Dodgers employ more than any other team, with Ohtani the biggest example, as he deferred $680 million of his $700 million contract. That has allowed them to skirt the highest luxury-tax penalties, and their $240 million payroll calculation was the fifth-highest in 2024 even after dropping a historic sum on free agents. 

They are also among five teams that have reportedly made an offer to 26-year-old outfielder Juan Soto, who may end up with an even bigger contract than Ohtani. MLB’s defending champions have long held enormous resources; we’re seeing those manifest as they try to double down on their current core.