Yogi Berra’s famous quip that “it gets late early out there” was made in a baseball context about the sun setting in late-season games at Yankee Stadium, but it’s highly apt for college football, too, as the fallout of losing is quickly rising around the sport just weeks into the 2025 season. 

UCLA and Virginia Tech each dismissed their head coaches Sunday, with the Bruins and Hokies falling to 0–3 over the weekend, making ugly turns amid seasons that not long ago had much more promise.

The Bruins fired DeShaun Foster, ending a tenure that had just five wins in 15 games and a minus-65 point differential this year as the team continues to struggle in its second year in the Big Ten. That continued losing prompted online trolling from the Big Sky and Pac-12 conferences, as well as similar mocking from both local and national press. The arrival of former Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava in the transfer portal made no difference, as UCLA is also playing this year to increasingly sparse crowds at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. 

Changes Aren’t Cheap

Tim Skipper will be the interim coach for the rest of the season. Foster is owed more than $7 million for the remainder of his five-year contract signed early last year, and that will be honored, barring a settlement or other position offsetting that.

“[Foster] was named to this role at a challenging time of year, on the cusp of a move to a new conference, and he embraced it, putting his heart into moving the program forward,” UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond said.

Virginia Tech, meanwhile, also fired Brent Pry, as school officials called the team’s results “not acceptable” as it fell to 0–3 for the first time since 1987. Pry was in his fourth season with the Hokies, posting a 16–24 record and rising no higher than fourth in any season in the ACC. A home loss Saturday to Old Dominion, a Sun Belt Conference school, was the final straw. Philip Montgomery is now the interim head coach. 

Pry is owed more than $6 million in his buyout, representing another costly coaching separation.

“To our students, alumni, and the rest of Hokie Nation, we understand and share your disappointment with the season so far,” the school said in a statement. 

There could be player ramifications at both schools, as it’s still before the redshirt deadline to retain the year of eligibility. 

Troubles in South Bend

Notre Dame, a finalist in last year’s College Football Playoff before falling to national champion Ohio State, is already facing a highly difficult road back to the tournament after falling to 0–2 to start the 2025 season. 

After losing Saturday to Texas A&M, Notre Dame has no currently ranked opponents left on its schedule, so even running the table would leave the Fighting Irish without a marquee win when the CFP field is determined. After posting double-digit wins in eight of the last 10 seasons, a significant retreat in Notre Dame’s standing this season could have wide-ranging impacts, including viewership in its standalone rights deal with NBC Sports.

Head coach Marcus Freeman, however, is not thought to be on the hot seat. Notre Dame also stayed in the AP Top 25 rankings, barely, falling from No. 8 to No. 24, making the team the first since 1988 to be 0-2 and still ranked.

“We’re 0–2. So what do you control?” Freeman said after the loss to the Aggies. “I can’t sit here and dwell on being 0–2 as much as I need to dwell on how do we find ways to improve.”

The small-market Brewers are the first MLB team to clinch a postseason slot, and manager Pat Murphy has a modern spin on the classic nobody-believed-in-us trope.

After Milwaukee had another dramatic walkoff win Saturday against St. Louis to seal its seventh playoff berth in eight years, Murphy took specific aim at the annual PECOTA, analytics-based projections in the preseason from Baseball Prospectus that had the team with just 80 wins, regressing sharply from last year’s 93 victories.

“PECOTA had us at 80.2 [wins] and everybody else had us [at] 80, 79, 71,” Murphy said, referring to the site’s Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm. “Nobody over .500, so for these guys to pull it together and complete like that is special beyond belief.”

Even after Sunday’s loss to the Cardinals, the Brewers are 91–59 and are MLB’s best team, and while the club has a long history of competing far beyond what their market size would suggest, this year’s results are even more remarkable. 

Small, but Mighty

Milwaukee remains MLB’s smallest media market, at least until the new A’s stadium in Las Vegas is done, with the Wisconsin locale ranking at No. 38 with Nielsen. The Brewers also have just the No. 20 luxury-tax payroll in the league at $141.7 million, an outlay standing increasingly on the wrong side of a fast-growing financial disparity in MLB. 

A particularly fruitful summer, however, that saw a 16–9 record in June, a 17–7 one in July, and 21–9 in August, helped the Brewers reverse from a 25–28 start and vault to an entirely different level. Milwaukee is now targeting a franchise record of 96 regular-season wins, set in 2011 and 2018.

“We have bigger goals and want to have many more celebrations, but from where we were at the beginning of the season, we dug deep and found a way to compete and turn this thing around and play really good baseball,” said designated hitter/outfielder Christian Yelich.

The Phillies followed with their own postseason clinch on Sunday.

Remembering a Legend

The Brewers, meanwhile, also took the occasion of the postseason clinch to again remember iconic broadcaster Bob Uecker, who died in January. In a clubhouse celebration, Murphy read an emotional letter written by Uecker before he succumbed to cancer.

“Never a doubt you would get this invitation,” Uecker wrote. “You did it by believing.”

Las Vegas, of course, is no stranger to big boxing matches, but all sorts of history was still made Saturday in Sin City. 

The Terence Crawford–Canelo Alvarez match at Allegiant Stadium, one in which Crawford claimed the unified super middleweight title, drew an announced attendance of 70,482—representing by far the largest crowd ever to see a boxing match in Las Vegas in the city’s long run as a center for the sport. 

The figure shattered a state record of 29,214 set in 1982 for a Larry Holmes–Gerry Cooney heavyweight match at a temporary outdoor venue at Caesars Palace, and it also represents the biggest crowd to see any event at the five-year-old Allegiant Stadium. 

The gate revenue of $47.2 million was also the third-largest figure in boxing history, trailing only a 2015 bout between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao and a 2017 fight between Mayweather and Conor McGregor.

“It was an incredible weekend for our company and a great weekend for the city,” said UFC president Dana White, who co-promoted the event to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “We brought over 70,000 people to the city this weekend. I’m tired of all the ‘Las Vegas is hurting’ talk. Tonight was incredible.”

Bigger Picture 

Beyond the raw turnout, there are other far-reaching implications. This was the first major boxing card produced by White and Saudi Arabia-based Turki Alalshikh and the Riyadh Season he oversees. The pair, along with UFC parent company TKO Group Holdings, are developing a far more expensive presence in boxing.

The Crawford-Alvarez fight was also another major live event shown on Netflix as the streaming giant continues to expand its sports profile.

Elsewhere at TKO

World Wrestling Entertainment, also within the TKO umbrella along with UFC, said it will bring its signature event, WrestleMania, to Saudi Arabia in 2027. WrestleMania 43 will be staged in Riyadh, marking the first time the event will be held outside of North America.

“We deeply respect the legacy of WrestleMania and the global prestige it holds among wrestling fans around the world,” Alalshikh said. “As part of Riyadh Season in 2027, our vision is to elevate this iconic event to unprecedented heights.”

The sports world continued to recognize last week’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, with most NFL teams on Sunday memorializing him with a moment of silence before their games.

After the league left it up to individual teams playing at home this weekend to decide what to do regarding Kirk for Sunday’s games, most teams exercised that option. The Cowboys, Dolphins, Jets, Saints, Steelers, and Titans all recognized the late Kirk in varying ways in their early-afternoon Sunday games, primarily with pregame tributes, while the Bengals, Lions, and Ravens did not. 

In the late-afternoon window, the Chiefs and Cardinals did have tributes for Kirk, while the Colts did not. The Vikings, who played the Falcons on Sunday Night Football, chose not to.

Some of the recognitions were also combined with those for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. 

Not Just the NFL

Those moments of silence followed a series of others last week held for Kirk, including by MLB’s Yankees and Cubs, the NFL’s Packers for their Thursday Night Football game, and UFC. 

Much like Kirk’s political activism, the decision around whether or not to recognize the Turning Point USA founder has become a lightning-rod issue across sports, with strong feelings existing among fans on both sides of the issue.