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Patrick Zeng 247 Sports It was a sunny afternoon at Villanova Stadium for homecoming weekend as the Villanova Wildcats welcomed in the 6-1 Elon Phoenix. Last year, the Wildcats defeated Elon 42-7 in North Carolina, however led by a strong freshman class, this Phoenix team was very different. Freshman quarterback Kyle McCloskey was welcomed home for his first career start in front of the Villanova faithful. And while the team performance was not up to par in the 19-14 loss, the freshman signal caller displayed a load of promise. The Wildcats had the ball first and they were sure to establish their gameplan early. Aaron Forbes featured heavily throughout the game with 11 carries for 44 yards as well as another 5 receptions for 74 yards. One of those receptions was a beautifully thrown touch pass from McCloskey on a wheel route down the sideline for a 42 yard score. McCloskey was also able to find the endzone on a 24 yard touchdown pass to star wide receiver Taurus Phillips a...

CBS New York Matt Linder Picking up where my previous article about the 2018 luxury tax situation left off, the Yankees currently have three roster openings: two for starting pitchers and one for a position player. Their payroll for 2018 sits at $137.5, leaving Brian Cashman and the rest of the front office with about $60M to play with. Will the Yankees use up all of that money to fill their three openings? Probably not. However, they certainly should not be cheap in addressing their holes. To fill those pitching spots, I would like to see them bring back CC Sabathia and Masahiro Tanaka. The reinvented CC has proven his ability to anchor the back-end of the rotation and provide veteran leadership and clutch post-season performances. The going rate for one-year deals for veteran pitchers (Ex. Bartolo Colon and RA Dickey) is about $10M. CC is certainly better than those guys, so let’s say he gets 1 year, $13M. And for Tanaka, even after coming off an up and down year, I an...

sports.vice.com Matt Linder The Yankees, having been just one win away from reaching the World Series, have a lot to look forward to next year and the years to come.  They have a young core of extremely exciting and talented building blocks, including Aaron Judge, Luis Severino, Gary Sanchez, Didi Gregorius and Chad Green.  That's not even counting the top prospects on their way to the Bronx in the near future.  Even with all of the young players expected to perform strongly again in 2018, there are still some question marks that the front office needs to answer before the 2018 season gets under way.   Many of these uncertainties stem from ownership's desire to get the team’s payroll under the luxury tax threshold of $197 million.  I will look at the Yankees roster going into next season, where they are set and where they may need to reinforce.  But first, I want to examine the team’s salary situation heading into 2018. Let’s sta...

six managers with varying success signaling the volatility of that franchise." /> Patrick Zeng USA Today For a couple of years now, the Washington Nationals have been the most head scratching team in all of Major League baseball. They have had four 95+ win seasons in the last six years yet only have seven postseason wins in that same period. Most surprisingly, none of those wins have come outside the Division Series. And on Friday, they let Dusty Baker go, a man that had amassed a an average of 96 wins over his two years in charge. In the last ten years, the franchise has had six managers with varying success signaling the volatility of that franchise. So thus another off season of searching has begun for Nationals. Not only searching for a new manager, but for what is the secret to getting over the hump, and why can this team not accomplish that. This past year should have been the one. This was the year where the Nationals were going to have success not just i...

Patrick Zeng USA Today This was not how it was supposed to be. We were supposed to be on our way to Russia, on our way to our eighth consecutive World Cup, and on our way to cementing ourselves as a rising power in international soccer. Last night was supposed to be a night of relief and joy, but instead it ended in anguish and failure. And a lot of that comes down to the phrase I've been using, "supposed to". Alexi Lalas said it best a month ago when he dropped his now famous "soft, tattooed millionaires" line to describe this iteration of the United States National Team. And after what was seen from the first half performance last night, he couldn't have been more right. The U.S. entered halftime down 2-0 to a team that had one win through all of their Hex qualifying. The performance was gutless, heartless and underlined everything wrong with the current U.S. Soccer setup. I have been a large supporter of US skipper Michael Bradley, but last n...

Tyler Kemp We are more than six weeks into the College Football season which means two things: 1) the perennial College Football Playoff contenders are beginning to establish themselves and 2) the legitimate contenders for the Heisman trophy are beginning to make their presence felt on the field and making their case to the voters. Although there are a handful of great players that are worthy of a seat at the Playstation Theater in New York City in December, only a select few will be able to make the flight to the Big Apple. The contenders are the players that have a strong chance of hearing their name called as a potential winner. On the other hand, the pretenders have a solid chance, but are likely to fall somewhere within the 6-10 range on the voter's list. Here's where the top players land: Pretender: Lamar Jackson (QB, Louisville) It's only right that I start with the defending winner from a year ago. Although Jackson is currently 4th in the country in passing...