Tush Push Survives; Purdy Cashes In; CFP Eyes 16; Sellers Skates; Valkyries Surprise

For the last several years, ever since the NFL allowed players to push the quarterback from behind on a short yardage sneak, we've been treated to the Philadelphia Eagles' "tush push," where several players line up behind QB Jalen Hurts to give him a helpful shove into the end zone or to the first down marker.

From this vantage point, the play is a disgrace and has no place in football.

But the league's owners, apparently influenced by a lengthy harangue from Eagles' owner Jeffrey Lurie, voted against banning the tush push at last week's owners' meeting, falling two votes short.

C'mon fellas, it's a joke. Every time the Eagles run it, millions of fans across the nation cringe.

Purdy Signs: Last week quarterback Brock Purdy signed a five-year, $265 million deal with the 49ers. 

As we'd noted previously, it was obvious the Niners were going to have to give him $50M per year or more, based on market rates, and he ended up with an average of 53M.

Not bad for a solid, but non-elite quarterback, who'd been the most underpaid player in the league.

It took a little longer than it should have, but the 49ers did a much better job this time than they did previously with the contracts negotiations of Nick Bosa and Deebo Samuel, both of which dragged on until just a few days before the start of the season and ended up hurting both the player's performance and overall team chemistry.

John Lynch, Paraag Marathe and company also were able to sign tight end George Kittle and linebacker Fred Warner to extensions, making them the highest paid players in the league at their positions in the process.

Well done, boys. Now, with the easiest schedule in the league staring you in the face--and assuming Christian McCaffrey is healthy--let's go out and win 10 or 11 games.

Sweet 16: The geniuses who run college football have found a new way to ruin the College Football Playoff that just expanded to 12 teams last year.

The prevailing model being considered right now by the conference commissioners who will decide the new format beginning in 2026, according to several sources, is for a 16-team playoff.

We're okay with 16 teams, which makes more sense than an unwieldy 14 (which would inevitably lead to 16 at some point), but only if the field includes the top 16 teams in the rankings with no byes. In other words, a straight ahead tournament with eight first-round games, followed by quarter-finals, semis and the championship game, spread over four weeks.

Instead, the BIg Ten and SEC are muscling their way into a guarantee of four teams each, with the Big 12 and ACC getting two each, along with one for the Group of Five conferences. The Big 12 and ACC now are pushing for three guaranteed slots, but that is not a sure thing at this point.

The guarantees essentially make this an invitational, dominated by two conferences that have the power, the TV money and the historical data to intimidate the rest of the group. It's worth noting that the Big Ten and SEC will also get 58% of the revenue from the new playoff deal.

To make matters worse, they're seriously considering giving the top two teams a two-week bye, in which seeds No. 13-16 would compete in "play-in" games the first week, followed by a six-game first round with seeds No. 3-12 matched up against the two play-in winners.

Ludicrous. 

Let's hope cooler heads prevail and the entire guarantee option and first round byes/play-ins are shelved for a straight 16-team seeding.

Sellers Moves Again: Last year Oziyah Sellers was one of the pleasant surprises on the Stanford basketball team. He transferred in from USC, where he had averaged 1.1 points as a freshman and 5.2 as a sophomore.

At Stanford, Sellers blossomed into a solid ACC player, scoring 13.7 points per game, hitting 45% of his shots, 40% from 3-point range and 87% from the foul line.

With star center Maxime Renaud (20.2 points, 10.6 rebounds) and point guard Jaylen Blakes (13.1 points, 4.7 assists) lost to graduation, Stanford coach Kyle Smith was counting on Sellers to be his top scorer and team leader this fall.

But nothing is certain in the land of the transfer portal.

St. John's came after Sellers with a reported $1 million offer to transfer, and he's gone. 

This is the world we live in now, and it ain't pretty. Loyalty, commitment, and any interest in academics are things of the past.

Valkyries Victories: Congrats to the Golden State Valkyries, winners of  two of their first three games right out of the chute.

Life as an expansion team is never easy. This is particularly true in the WNBA, where existing teams can protect six players in the expansion draft and the new team only gets the No. 5 overall pick in the regular draft, rather than No. 1, the way it was done in the old days. 

So the conventional wisdom was that the new kids on the block would struggle through season one, perhaps winning 10 games.

But coach Natalie Nakase, formerly an assistant with the Las Vegas Aces' WNBA championhip 2022 and '23 teams, and her band of rookies and castoffs had other ideas.

After losing their opener to the LA Sparks because of a 37-point effort by Kelsey Plum, the Valkyries have beaten the Washington Mystics and the Sparks in back-to-back upsets. 

I won't attempt to tell you about the top players on the team, because we don't have much to go on at this point, but rookies Carla Leite and Janelle Saluan sparked the win over the Sparks, while Veronica Burton and Kayla Thornton led the way against Washington.

Bravo!