Breaking down the college football upset of the year. Plus, NFL Sunday watch guide

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Good morning! Last call for Thanksgiving plate votes. See the options here.

This Is Awkward

Ohio State is college football’s weird reality

“How big is the buyout?” has to be the most Googled Saturday question this year. (Try this one.) No great college football teams + gazillions for coaches = annoyed fans. Every fan base wants to fire its coach. Ask Ohio State. The Buckeyes entered Saturday as 20-point favorites with a spot in the Big Ten Championship on the line, but were stunned by archrival Michigan, with an ugly brawl capping the day. But there’s a twist…

Two things are true for the Buckeyes, and deliver us a fresh lesson about College Football In The Year 2024:

• Their coach will wake up to a local approval rating lower than Congress.
• They are safely a playoff team! 99 percent odds, in fact!

Welcome to 2024! College football coaches who made the old four-team playoff were safe from even the angriest of big-money boosters. Now, it’s uncharted territory. We asked our own Bruce Feldman, who breaks a ton of coaching news across college football, for some help.

The Pulse: Bruce, there are many who think Ryan Day needs to win a title to keep his job, which is a wild sentence to type (for a 66-10 coach). Do you buy it?

Bruce: Well, he’s making over $10 million per year and the school pumped $20 million into its roster in large part because Michigan had surpassed the Buckeyes and won a national title. He’s got better resources than any coach in his league by a wide margin. I think Day is still a really good coach, and I wouldn’t be shocked if they still ended up winning a national title this year. But if they don’t, that intense pressure on him will only get more suffocating. I’ll pose a question: If Day can’t rally the Buckeyes in the Playoff, does he still want this job? Is it worth it to him and his family given how hot the temperature is around there now?

Weird situation. But again: This will happen everywhere. 

The Playoff update

As for that 12-team Playoff field, we grabbed Austin Mock — the man with the projections model — to update us on after a day where, beyond the stunner in Columbus, Miami collapsed, Texas and Notre Dame escaped rivalry games unscathed and Oregon held serve.

NFL Watch Guide: If the Eagles win this one …

Philly can go 10-2 and stay a game back of the 11-1 Lions in the NFC if they win in Baltimore today. Imagine telling Eagles fans in September that Nick Sirianni would have some leverage now.

Noon
Steelers (8-3) at Bengals (4-7) — A loss probably sends Cincinnati careening out of the playoffs, wasting another prime year of Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase, and likely sending Tee Higgins on his merry way to someone else’s WR1 slot. Meanwhile, the Steelers are just a half-game up on Baltimore in the division. Stakes everywhere. TV: CBS

4:25 p.m.
Eagles (9-2) at Ravens (8-4) — This is one of a few plausible Super Bowl matchups we have right now, and from a vibes standpoint, it’s a must-win for Baltimore. Falling 1 1/2 games back with five to play in the AFC North seems unpleasant. This is also just a great regional rivalry, with the teams sitting just over an hour away from each other down I-95. TV: CBS

8:20 p.m.
49ers (5-6) at Bills (9-2) — Well, we thought this was a possible Super Bowl matchup before the season, but now it’s just a sad reminder of how far San Francisco has fallen. Unless … the Niners win and somehow go from last in the division to first with a win here, because that’s extremely possible due to the hardline mediocrity of the NFC West. It will be difficult against a Bills team in full stride. TV: 

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News to Know

Eberflus out
The 4-8 Bears fired coach Matt Eberflus on Friday after he was widely criticized for his clock management in Chicago’s loss — its sixth straight — to the Lions on Thanksgiving. It was a decision set in motion back in Week 8, the start of this losing streak, when the Commanders’ Hail Mary win seemingly broke the Bears. We’ll continue to dissect this move in the days to come, but for now, here’s a timeline of Eberflus’ tenure and a list of potential candidates to replace him.

Luck’s intriguing new role
Former star quarterback Andrew Luck is returning to Stanford’s football program as general manager, a move indicative of college sports’ changing times. Luck, 35, will oversee every aspect of the program — both on and off the field — with the coaching staff reporting to him. He’s expected to work with coach Troy Taylor on recruiting and roster management and with administration on fundraising, alumni relations, sponsorships, student-athlete support and the stadium experience. More details here.

More news

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Robert Prange / Getty Images

Rewind

To close out the holiday weekend, we’ve got some topics to dig into that you may have missed this week:

The fallout from Swiatek’s quiet doping ban

Perhaps slightly lost amid the Thanksgiving fray was Iga Swiatek’s one-month doping suspension. Sounds serious, right? And probably worse than it really is, as Matthew Futterman points out. Testing detected 50 picograms of a banned substance in the world No. 2’s sample on Aug. 12. Swiatek was informed of her ban on Sept. 12, but we didn’t hear about it until Nov. 28. Is it possible the decision to keep things under wraps may have harmed her reputation, and the sport of tennis, more than the positive test itself? Read Futterman’s full take here.

PWHL Year 2 primer

Last year’s inaugural Professional Women’s Hockey League season has largely been heralded as a success, from the skill and physicality level on the ice to attendance and viewership numbers. Season 2 opened last night with many wondering: Can we maintain the momentum? Hailey Salvian went deep on that question. Read that piece as a table-setter today, then follow it with a refresher on rules and other major storylines.

One clear fix for the NBA ASG

We reported last month that the NBA is once again considering changing its All-Star Game format. It’s just the latest attempt to rejuvenate a contest that’s gone stale in recent years. So Marcus Thompson II jumped into the conversation, arguing that any of these new format concepts — whether it be “USA vs. the world” or “old heads vs. the next generation” — would be nothing more than Band-Aids. The real issue, he says: that players simply need to play hard — and the NBA needs to do what it can to encourage them.

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Pulse Picks

We’re two days late here, but it’s still fun and relevant: Andy McCullough came up with one Black Friday free-agent deal for every MLB team.

Go inside Erling Haaland’s mind and you’ll sometimes find … uh … nothing? Here’s why it works.

Thanksgiving is a natural check-in point in the NHL season. Thus, our writers sorted teams into playoff likelihood tiers and labeled them as buyers or sellers.

The WNBA expansion draft is Friday, so bookmark this for the basics, plus our experts’ takes on whom Golden State should select.

Most-clicked in the newsletter Friday: Our news story on Matt Eberflus’ clock-management blunder. Aged well!

Most-read on the website yesterday: Adam Jahns and Dianna Russini’s post-firing intel on the Eberflus situation

Try today’s Connections: Sports Edition beta.

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(Top photo: Adam Cairns / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)