3 Best Survivor picks (BYU!) for the first round of the men's NCAA tournament
3 Best Survivor picks (BYU!) for the first round of the men's NCAA tournament
Tired of filling out bracket? Not content with betting moneylines or spreads? You're in the right spot. We're taking a different approach to March Madness, exploring the teams that are most likely to help you win your Survivor Pool.
The first weekend of the NCAA men's tournament, as everyone knows, is utter chaos. So picking three teams to advance to the Round of 32 is much tougher than it sounds.
For the purposes of these picks, we'll be using the rules for the USA Today Survivor Pool — which you can still join here!
In simple terms: We want to pick teams that are going to win, but are low enough seeds to win your pool. Here's who we're rolling with in the Round of 64.
No. 12 UC San Diego over No. 5 Michigan
The name to know here is Aniwaniwa Tait-Jones. The UCSD guard from New Zealand is averaging nearly 20 points per game and creates some fun mismatches thanks to his 6-foot-6, 200-pound frame. The Tritons haven't lost since January 18, which is partly why they're a popular upset pick this week. The other reason is because UCSD plays stellar defense. Look out, Michigan.
No. 10 Vanderbilt over No. 7 Saint Mary's
There maybe a little SEC bias in this pick, but while Saint Mary's has been a tournament darling for years, the Commodores deserve some respect. Vandy has signature wins over No. 6 Tennessee, No. 9 Kentucky , No. 24 Ole Miss, No. 12 Texas A&M and No. 14 Missouri — the last three of which occurred consecutively.
No. 6 BYU over No. 11 VCU
VCU is another popular upset pick in the Round of 64, but we're going to zig a little bit and stick with BYU. The Big 12 team had a stellar season, taking down No. 23 Kansas, No. 19 Arizona and swept Iowa State. KenPom ranks the Cougars as the 24th-best team in the nation with the No. 11 offense.
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New York Times
17 minutes ago
- New York Times
NASCAR Michigan takeaways: Denny Hamlin's late-career strength, Ty Gibbs' frustration and more
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Then he said actually he'd like to win 61 so he could be in sole possession of 10th. But listen to him now after Sunday's win. 'At least while I'm alive, I want to be in the top 10 for the most wins,' he said. OK, but that's going to take even more than 61, Hamlin figures. 'I've got to count on possibly (Joey) Logano, more than likely (Kyle) Larson overtaking us in wins,' he said. 'You've got to budget for at least a couple of these guys who started so much younger than I did to beat us on the win total.' After Harvick, Kyle Busch is ninth with 63 career wins. Can Hamlin finish with more than Busch, who is still trying to add more himself? That seems like a big ask for someone who might only race for another couple seasons. After all, Hamlin recently passed 700 starts and said he won't be around for 800 (there are 36 races per year). 'I'm going to hate it when I'm not at the level I'm at now,' Hamlin said. 'I certainly will retire very, very quickly after that. 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Denny gets it done at @MISpeedway! — NASCAR (@NASCAR) June 8, 2025 As Hamlin celebrated in victory lane, his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Ty Gibbs was parked just behind the winner's circle backdrop — and in a much less cheerful mode. In fact, Gibbs was outright pissed. He wasn't having any of the consolation talk from his team or family, was uninterested in the moral victory of finishing third and brushed off a rear-end smack from his grandfather, Hall of Fame football coach Joe Gibbs. Gibbs, expected to contend for a playoff spot this year and win his first career race, has had a frustrating season. Michigan was only his second top-five finish, and he felt he was close enough to compete for the victory — especially since his teammate Hamlin was on a similar fuel strategy. 'I would rather go win,' the driver said. 'I don't come here to run third and run half-throttle on the straightaway, but it's what they thought we needed to do.' Gibbs was continuously instructed to save more gas, even when he was tracking down race leaders Hamlin and William Byron with four laps to go; the team urged him to back off just when it looked like he could have made a pass. 'He doesn't know how much we saved or if we were going to run out,' crew chief Tyler Allen said. 'So he's frustrated because he could see it and he was fast enough to go take it. Unfortunately, we weren't going to make it on fuel, and that wouldn't have done any good to our team and our points situation.' Advertisement But Gibbs disagreed, saying he saved enough fuel to go harder and ended the race without having to flip his reserve fuel switch (indicating there was perhaps another lap or so remaining). 'I was told to save more, and it's just frustrating for me,' Gibbs said. 'I would have loved to be more aggressive there.' Carson Hocevar was again a hot topic at Michigan after he led a career-high 32 laps before getting a flat tire while leading the race. 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Before finishing fourth on Sunday to record back-to-back top-six finishes, Wallace had some fun on X when NASCAR released the list of its inaugural in-season tournament competitors last week — in alphabetical order, meaning his name was last. 'Bubbles last like he always is,' Wallace captioned the tournament list in a quote-tweet. 'Bubbles' is just one of the derogatory nicknames used by Wallace's detractors, but he hasn't let go of his trolling nature on social media. After all, he pointed out, even his X header image is a troll post: A cartoon depiction of NASCAR's Mount Rushmore — showing Petty, Earnhardt, Johnson and … Wallace. Wallace said he sticks his shoe in ant hills in real life, and this is no different. 'It's the boomers who are actually pissed off,' he said. 'They're probably just punching air because I beat them to their own comments. So yeah, that brings me joy.' 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UPI
28 minutes ago
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Basketball great Caitlin Clark, now a professional, still could reap a great deal of money from the University of Iowa as a result of the settlement to which the National Collegiate Athletic Association agreed on Friday. File Photo by Corey Sipkin/UPI | License Photo The business of college sports was upended after a federal judge approved a settlement between the National Collegiate Athletic Conference and former college athletes Friday. After a lengthy litigation process, the NCAA has agreed to provide $2.8 billion in back pay to former and current college athletes, while allowing schools to directly pay athletes for the first time. Joshua Lens, whose scholarship centers on the intersection of sports, business and the law, tells the story of this settlement and explains its significance within the rapidly changing world of college sports. What will change for players and schools with this settlement? The terms of the settlement included the following changes: The NCAA and conferences will distribute approximately $2.8 billion in media rights revenue back pay to thousands of athletes who competed since 2016. Universities will have the ability to enter name, image and likeness, or NIL, agreements with student-athletes. So, schools can now, for example, pay them to appear in ads for the school or for public appearances. Each university that opts into the settlement can disburse up to $20.5 million to student-athletes in the 2025-26 academic year, a number that will likely rise in future academic years. Athletes' NIL agreements with certain individuals and entities will be subject to an evaluation that will determine whether the NIL compensation exceeds an acceptable range based on a perceived fair market value, which could result in the athlete having to restructure or forgo the deal. The NCAA's maximum sport program scholarship limits will be replaced with maximum team roster size limits for universities that choose to be part of the settlement. Why did the NCAA agree to settle with, rather than fight, the plaintiffs? In 2020, roughly 14,000 current and former college athletes filed a class action lawsuit, House vs. NCAA, seeking damages for past restrictions on their ability to earn money. For decades, college athletics' primary governing body, the NCAA, permitted universities whose athletics programs compete in Division I to provide their athletes with scholarships that would help cover their educational expenses, such as tuition, room and board, fees and books. By focusing only on educational expenses, the NCAA was able to reinforce the notion that collegiate athletes are amateurs who may not receive pay for participating in athletics, despite making money for their schools. A year later, in 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in a separate case, Alston vs. NCAA, that the NCAA violated antitrust laws by limiting the amount of education-related benefits, such as laptops, books and musical instruments, that universities could provide to their athletes. The ruling challenged the NCAA's amateurism model, while opening the door for future lawsuits tied to athlete compensation. It also burnished the plaintiffs' case in House vs. NCAA, compelling college athletics' governing body to take part in settlement talks. What were some of the key changes that took place in college sports after the Supreme Court's decision in Alston vs. NCAA? Following Alston, the NCAA permitted universities to dole out several thousand dollars in what's called "education benefits pay" to student-athletes. This could include cash bonuses for maintaining a certain grade-point average or simply satisfying NCAA academic eligibility requirements. But contrary to popular belief, the Supreme Court's Alston decision didn't let college athletes be paid via NIL deals. The NCAA continued to maintain that this would violate its principles of amateurism. However, many states, beginning with California, introduced or passed laws that required universities within their borders to allow their athletes to accept NIL compensation. With over a dozen states looking to pass similar laws, the NCAA folded on June 30, 2021, changing its policy so athletes could accept NIL compensation for the first time. Will colleges and universities be able to weather all of these financial commitments? The settlement will result in a windfall for certain current and former collegiate athletes, with some expected to receive several hundred thousands of dollars. Universities and their athletics departments, on the other hand, will have to reallocate resources or cut spending. Some will cut back on travel expenses for some sports, others have paused facility renovations, while other athletic departments may resort to cutting sports whose revenue does not exceed their expenses. As Texas A&M University athletic director Trev Alberts has explained, however, that college sports does not have a revenue problem -- it has a spending problem. Even in the well-resourced Southeastern Conference, for example, many universities' athletics expenses exceed its revenue. Do you see any future conflicts on the horizon? Many observers hope the settlement brings stability to the industry. But there's always a chance that the settlement will be appealed. More potential challenges could involve Title IX, the federal gender equity statute that prohibits discrimination based on sex in schools. What if, for example, a university subject to the statute distributes the vast majority of revenue to male athletes? Such a scenario could violate Title IX. On the other hand, a university that more equitably distributes revenue among male and female athletes could face legal backlash from football athletes who argue that they should be entitled to more revenue, since their games earn the big bucks. And as I pointed out in a recent law review article, an athlete or university may challenge the new enforcement process that will attempt to limit athletes' NIL compensation within an acceptable range that is based on a fair market valuation. The NCAA and the conferences named in the lawsuit have hired the accountancy firm Deloitte to determine whether athletes' compensation from NIL deals fall within an acceptable range based on a fair market valuation, looking to other collegiate and professional athletes to set a benchmark range. If athletes and universities have struck deals that are too generous, both could be penalized, according to the terms of the settlement. Finally, the settlement does not address -- let alone solve -- issues facing international student-athletes who want to earn money via NIL. Most international student-athletes' visas, and the laws regulating them, heavily limit their ability to accept compensation for work, including NIL pay. Some lawmakers have tried to address this issue in the past, but it hasn't been a priority for the NCAA, as it has lobbied Congress for a federal NIL law. Joshua Lens is an associate professor of Instruction of sport & recreation management at the University of Iowa. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The views and opinions in this commentary are solely those of the author.
San Francisco Chronicle
32 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Today in Sports - Manchester City completes Champions League, Premier League, and FA Cup victories
June 10 1890 — The Preakness Stakes is run outside Baltimore, at Morris Park in New York. The race is then suspended for three years, and resumes at the Brooklyn Jockey Club's Gravesend Course from 1894-1908. 1932 — Gene Sarazen leads wire-to-wire to win the British Open by five strokes ahead of Macdonald Smith at Prince's Golf Club in Sandwich, England. Sarazen finishes with a tournament record of 283. 1933 — Johnny Goodman wins the U.S. Open golf title, making him the last amateur to win this event. 1934 — Italy beats Czechoslovakia 2-1 in extra time to win the second FIFA World Cup at the Stadio Flaminio in Rome. Italy trailing 1-0, ties the game at the 80th minute. Angelo Schiavio scores the winning goal in extra time. 1944 — A rare triple dead heat occurs in the Carter Handicap at Aqueduct with Bossuet, Brownie and Wait a Bit crossing the finish line together. 1950 — Sixteen months after near-fatal car accident, Ben Hogan wins the U.S. Open. Hogan beats Lloyd Mangrum and George Fazio in an 18-hole playoff at the Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pa. 1968 — UEFA European Championship Final, Stadio Olimpico, Rome, Italy: Italy beats Yugoslavia, 2-0 in a replay (first game, 1-1). 1973 — Mary Mills shoots a 63 in the final round of the LPGA Championship to beat Betty Burfeindt by one stroke. 1977 — Al Geiberger sets a PGA Championship 18-hole record when he shoots a 59 in the Danny Thomas Classic. 1978 — Affirmed, ridden by Steve Cauthen, wins the Belmont Stakes to capture the Triple Crown in one of the greatest battles in racing history. Affirmed edges Alydar for the third time. 1981 — Pete Rose ties Stan Musial's NL record of 3,630 hits. 1989 — Wayne Gretzky of the Los Angeles Kings is named the NHL's MVP, winning the Hart Trophy for a record ninth time. 1995 — Trainer D. Wayne Lukas wins a record five straight Triple Crown races as Thunder Gulch takes the Belmont Stakes. Lukas is the first trainer to win the Triple Crown races with two different horses. Lukas' Timber Country won the Preakness. 1996 — Colorado's Patrick Roy makes 63 saves before Uwe Krupp scores 4:31 into the third overtime to give the Avalanche a 1-0 victory against the Florida Panthers at Miami Arena and complete a four-game sweep of the Stanley Cup Final. 2000 — Stanley Cup Final, Reunion Arena, Dallas, TX: New Jersey Devils defeat Dallas Stars, 2-1 in double OT for a 4-2 series victory. 2006 — In Atlantic City, N.J., Bernard Hopkins wins a unanimous decision over light heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver, capping an 18-year career with an upset for the ages. 2010 — Southern California is placed on four years probation, receives a two-year bowl ban and a sharp loss of football scholarships. The NCAA cites USC for a lack of institutional control. The NCAA found that Reggie Bush, identified as a 'former football student-athlete,' was ineligible beginning at least by December 2004. The NCAA also orders USC to vacate every victory in which Bush participated while ineligible. USC loses 30 scholarships over a three-year period, 10 annually from 2011-13. 2012 — Shanshan Feng wins the LPGA Championship to become the first Chinese player to win an LPGA Tour title and a major event. 2018 — Rafael Nadal won a record-extending 11th championship at Roland Garros by beating Dominic Thiem 6-4, 6-3, 6-2. Nadal became the second player in tennis history to win 11 singles titles at any Grand Slam tournament after Margaret Court, who claimed 11 Australian Open titles. 2018 — Kristen Gillman led a U.S. singles sweep in the biggest blowout in Curtis Cup history. Gillman, a 20-year-old University of Alabama star, beat 16-year-old Annabell Fuller 5 and 4 to cap a perfect weekend at Quaker Ridge in Scarsdale, N.Y. The Americans won 17-3, breaking the record for margin of victory of 11 set in a 14 1/2-3 1/2 victory at Denver Country Club in 1982. 2023 — UEFA Champions League Final, Ataturk Stadium, Istanbul: Manchester City beats Inter Milan, 1-0 to complete historic Champions League, Premier League & FA Cup trifecta.
