The Golden Flashes have already tripled that number in 2025 under interim coach Mark Carney.

Carney doesn’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon, though.

‘I told you all at that time that we had the best damn one,’ athletics director Randale Richmond said Oct. 30 in a video posted to social media. ‘We agreed, and we’re going to remove the interim tag. Welcome your new head coach for Kent State football.’

Carney has clearly won over the locker room, as Kent State’s meeting room erupted in excitement at the announcement. He was met with hugs from players and chants of ‘Carney’ after Richmond broke the news.

‘I am unbelievably humbled, honored, pick something, man,’ Carney said in the video. ‘I haven’t slept in about 48 hours. This is a credit to you guys and what you all have done for this football program. This is not the mission. … This is not what we set out to accomplish. So let’s keep what we set out to accomplish in the front of our minds as we keep progressing.’

Carney took over for Kenni Burns, who went 1-23 as Kent State’s head coach. Burns was fired in April after a school investigation found violations of school conduct.

Carney was the tight ends coach at Kent State in 2023 before he was elevated to offensive coordinator in 2024. He was named interim head coach after Burns was fired.

The former Fordham quarterback has also coached at Fordham, Richmond, Bowling Green and Charlotte, with stints at Division II Virginia State and Division III Baldwin Wallace in between.

Kent State has won two of its last three games, including a 42-6 romp over UMass. The Golden Flashes are coming off a 24-21 win over Bowling Green to move to 2-2 in MAC play.

The Washington Nationals hired the youngest general manager in Major League Baseball to start off an important offseason, and he is on the verge of going even younger with a big hire for the franchise.

Butera previously spent four seasons as manager for the Rays’ Low-A affiliate in Charleston, South Carolina, beginning as a 25-year-old and eventually winning league championships in his final two seasons.

The Nationals fired then-general manager Mike Rizzo and manager Dave Martinez in July, and named 35-year-old Boston Red Sox assistant GM Paul Toboni as their new president of baseball operations.

The youth movement follows a run of underwhelming seasons since Washington dismantled its 2019 World Series champion team. Toboni has tabbed Butera to help steer the team back into contention after finishing last in the NL East with a 66-96 record. But Butera is not the youngest manager in MLB history. There’s a front office legend with Hall of Fame credentials and a World Series championship among the youngest to ever manage an MLB game.

Here’s a breakdown of the youngest managers in MLB history, according to Fangraphs and Baseball Reference (player-managers are not included):

Youngest managers in MLB history

Harvey Watkins, New York Giants (1895): The youngest recorded manager in MLB history was 26 years, 72 days when he began a 35-game run as manager. He finished with an 18-17 record and didn’t manage in the big leagues again.
Horace Fogel, Indianapolis Hoosiers (1887): The former sportswriter was 26 years, 132 days when hired and had a 20-49 record during a rocky tenure in Indianapolis. Fogel stripped Jack Glasscock of his captaincy, fined and suspended other players, accused umpires of “barefaced robbery’ and drank heavily, according to the Society for American Baseball Research. He later spent the beginning of one season as the New York Giants manager in 1902.
Horace Phillips, Troy Trojans (1879): He went 12-34 after being hired at 26 years, 353 days and later managed the Columbus Buckeyes and Pittsburgh Pirates.
Branch Rickey, St. Louis Browns (1913-15): Before he was known as a Hall of Fame executive for the Brooklyn Dodgers credited with signing Jackie Robinson, Rickey became one of the youngest managers in baseball history at 31 years, 272 days at the end of the 1913 season. He managed two more years for the Browns before a successful seven-year stint managing the St. Louis Cardinals preceded his eventual move to the front office.
Dave Bristol, Cincinnati Reds (1966-69): He took over near the end of the 1966 season at 33 years, 22 days and served as the precursor to the Big Red Machine of the 1970s, finishing with records above .500 in each of his three full seasons as Reds manager. Bristol later had stints as a manager with the Milwaukee Brewers (1970-72), Atlanta Braves (1976-77) and San Francisco Giants (1979-80).
Frank Quilici, Minnesota Twins (1972-75): Soon after the end of his playing career, Quilici was named Twins manager halfway through the 1972 season at 33 years, 27 days. He then managed three full seasons in Minnesota, finishing with a 280-287 career record.
Blake Butera, Washington Nationals (2025): He would become the youngest MLB manager since Quilici more than 50 years earlier. Butera turned 33 years old in August 2025.

Eric Wedge, Cleveland (2003-09): He was six years younger than any other MLB manager when hired by Cleveland at 35 years, 65 days. Wedge managed in Cleveland for seven years, including a run to the 2007 AL Championship Series. He also managed the Seattle Mariners for three seasons (2011-13).
A.J. Hinch, Arizona Diamondbacks (2009-10): Before he won a World Series with the Houston Astros, the current Detroit Tigers manager was one of the youngest managers in baseball. Hinch was 35 years, 359 days when he first was hired as a manager at the MLB level and had an 89-123 record in two seasons. It took Hinch five years to get his next shot as a manager in Houston in 2015.

LOS ANGELES — Trey Yesavage has provided a wonderful little reminder to the global baseball community: It’s possible that something special, so historic, so dominant, can remain a secret.

Make no mistake: Word is out now.

Tens of millions of fans from Canada to Tokyo to Sunset Boulevard now know plenty about Yesavage, about the 22-year-old’s crazy arm angle and audacious splitter, his preternatural calm and this historic postseason run that has put the Toronto Blue Jays on the verge of a World Series championship.

A few million more found out Oct. 29, when Yesavage walked into Dodger Stadium and in Game 5 of the World Series brought a lineup filled with Hall of Famers, a roster of defending World Series champions and more than 52,000 fans to their knees with a suffocating performance.

Across seven innings, he struck out a dozen batters, held the great Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman hitless in 11 at-bats, and pitched the Toronto Blue Jays within one win of their first World Series title since 1993 with a 6-1 victory over the Dodgers.

The Blue Jays can win it all with a victory in either Game 6 or Game 7 this weekend in Canada.

And stunningly enough, arguably the most important figure in their playoff run not named Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was just a rumor to his veteran teammates a few months ago.

That’s what happens when you don’t get invited to big league camp. When your platform season in college gets disrupted by a partially collapsed lung. And when your first professional pitch, even as an advanced college draftee, is thrown in low Class A Dunedin, where the Blue Jays’ Florida training facility commences the organizational process of separating the no-ways from the maybes.

Yet there’s one guy who saw this coming.

Perhaps not that Yesavage would climb four rungs of the organizational ladder and reach the big leagues in September. Nor that he’d be their stealth No. 2 playoff starter and smash the postseason record for strikeouts by a rookie, with 39 in 26 often electric innings.

But when center fielder Daulton Varsho commenced a rehab assignment at Dunedin to begin his own climb back from rotator cuff surgery, he saw it.

No, it was not like Game 5 of the World Series. The opponent way back on April 19 was the Lakeland Flying Tigers, not the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the top of the lineup was comprised of Hadeen, Montilla and Fana, not Ohtani, Betts and Freeman.

But stuff is stuff. And dudes are dudes. And Yesavage was definitely both for both.

“It was right away. I knew he was just different,” says Varsho, who had a great view of Yesavage’s Game 5 dominance from his center field perch. “Just by the way he carried himself. His mentality. Just one of those kids you don’t really run into very often.

“And you can tell he’s just different from the get-go.”

Still, despite omnipresent prospect rankings and live streaming and advanced pitch data, to most of the Blue Jays, Yesavage’s exploits were snippets of information crackling across ham radio.  

Max Scherzer, the Blue Jays’ 41-year-old starter, knew the name. Heard right around midseason that he was “striking out everyone in the minors.” Thought Yesavage might be trade deadline fodder, as veterans greedy for late-season reinforcements often believe.

Chris Bassitt, Scherzer’s buddy in Toronto’s rotation, knew the club had drafted Yesavage 20th overall out of East Carolina a year ago. Didn’t see him in spring training – the kid hadn’t yet been invited to varsity camp. And like most 36-year-old veterans, defaulted to skepticism.

“You’re in the minor leagues until you’re not,” says Bassitt. “And then it’s like, how do big league hitters approach you?”

And that’s where the puzzle started to come together: Because big league hitters looked downright stupid against him.

Uptown funk

Yesavage debuted Sept. 15 against the Tampa Bay Rays, made three regular season starts, and eyebrows started to arch.

The stuff was legit. And with Scherzer and Bassitt both on the rebound from injuries, the Blue Jays thought the kid could hold down the fort at least partially due to opponent unfamiliarity.

And then came Oct. 5, AL Division Series Game 2, and perhaps the moment that forever changed Toronto’s franchise.

“When you see MVPs and top players in the league take some of the swings they take at his stuff, that’s a really positive sign,” says closer Jeff Hoffman, who finished Game 5 with a scoreless ninth inning.

“You don’t get these guys to look like that, if your stuff’s not real. He got to see, the stuff is real. You’re playing against the Yankees. And they’re still taking those bad swings.”

And when Yesavage struck out seven of the first 10 Yankees, Rogers Centre roared. This thing was real.

Yet in the Blue Jays dugout, Shane Bieber needed to see one more trip around the lineup to make sure he could believe what he was seeing. Bieber, the former Cy Young Award winner who saved the Blue Jays by winning World Series Game 4, knew the Aaron Judges and Cody Bellingers of the world could be made to look silly. Maybe once.

“He’s got some funk to him,” says Bieber. “A different arm angle and pitch repertoire, but seeing how experienced big league hitters will adapt from at-bat to at-bat is a pretty good indicator how your stuff’s playing, from any given situation day to day.

“Second time through the order against a team, a lineup like that Yankees, the swings he was inducing, definitely inspired some confidence in our club.”

And so Yesavage went out for the fourth inning that day, and struck out Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger and Ben Rice swinging. The Blue Jays had their ace.

Fast forward 24 days, and here was another perennial MVP, Ohtani, swinging so foolishly at a Yesavage splitter in the third inning, his helmet flew off.

And Max Muncy, gifted with one of the greatest batting eyes and plate discipline skills of his era, taking three steps toward first before he was told, come back, catcher Alejandro Kirk held that full-count slider just inside the bottom of the strike zone.

He punched out both Hernandezes, Teoscar and Kiké. Got spot starter Alex Call to offer just enough at a slider in the dirt that the first base umpire punched him out.

He got ‘em all: Twelve strikeouts in all, just the 11th in history to do so and the first since Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez punched out a dozen New York Mets in 2000.

“I think he was extremely convicted tonight,” says Bieber. “Has been through most of his starts. Credit where credit’s due: Kirky called an incredible game tonight, caught the ball extremely well. Got those low pitches, those high pitches for Trey.

“With a guy coming from that arm angle, it’s paramount to get those borderline pitches.”

‘He gets it’

Now, Yesavage has probably thrown his last pitch of 2025. Sure, the Dodgers could win Game 6, and Game 7 could go sideways, and maybe manager John Schneider might call on the kid for an out or two.

But it’s likelier that postseason line will be locked in: 39 strikeouts in 26 innings, a 1.04 WHIP, a .187 batting average.

And, absurdly, five playoff games under his belt, two more than he’s pitched so far in the regular season.

It’s been something of a running joke that Yesavage, in a clubhouse full of well-minted superstars, has hardly received any big league scratch. Just the pro-rated minimum for the two weeks he was up.

Yet the Blue Jays will see to it his playoff share is fair.

“I mean, this playoff paycheck is going to be nice whenever it hits,” says Yesavage.

All kidding aside, the symbiotic relationship between the Blue Jays’ veteran (and oft salty) pitching staff and the newbie who will still be a rookie throughout 2026 can’t be underestimated.

The vets laugh off his occasional rookie obliviousness. The kid appreciates it, and rewards them with ice cold performances on the mound.

 “They have treated me the best I could have ever asked for,” says Yesavage. “So going forward with other rookies that come up, I’m going to remember how I was treated when I got here.

“The poise part, I don’t know, you got to thank my parents.”

Perhaps it’s the water in Boyertown, Pa. Nature, nurture or otherwise, the Blue Jays don’t hesitate to trot out the “built different” trope around Yesavage.

Bassitt has seen plenty in his 11-year career. He recognizes that Dodger Stadium is not the typical environment. The sound system thunders, there’s an MVP in every crevice of the lineup, and a Magic Johnson or a Jason Bateman or a Sandy Koufax might catch the corner of your eye if you look around enough.

And yet Yesavage stood up to it all.

“He’s just completely composed. Which is crazy for how young he is,” says Bassitt. “Hats off to those who coached him, who raised him. Because he’s very, very calm under pressure.”

And Bassitt rejects any notion that Yesavage simply is too young, too inexperienced to realize what he’s doing.

“He’s pretty smart. He gets it,” he says “Some guys are just built different. Mentally built different.

“The fact he has the utmost confidence walking into this place? You come into this place and all of a sudden it’s like, damn, wow.”

In an era when World Series starters are lionized for five-inning bursts, Yesavage did not give up the ball until he completed seven innings. The last time he did that was also his last college start, a 7 1/3-inning gut check against Wake Forest in an NCAA regional, Yesavage just sufficiently recovered from a collapsed lung to make his post.

Sure, that Demon Deacons lineup had three future first-round picks in it, including slam dunk AL Rookie of the Year Nick Kurtz. Barely more than a year later, he put another seven innings in the books, under far different circumstances.

It bears mentioning again: Ohtani, Betts, Freeman. The defending champions, gunning for their third title in six years, pushed to the brink by a 22-year-old.

“When it’s on,” says Scherzer, “he can make anybody in the game look stupid.

“He went out tonight and really showed it.”

And now, there’s no need for second-hand reports, for buzz about the kid punching out wannabes in Dunedin or New Hampshire or Buffalo.

This was the biggest stage. Yesavage owned it. And while he knows exactly what it is he’s done, he’s not yet ready to put it in proper context.

I’m waiting for life to slow down in this off-season,” he says, “and just be able to collect my thoughts and my feelings on this crazy year.

“It’s a crazy world. Crazy world. Hollywood couldn’t have made it this good.”

A trend of fans taking off their shirts and waving them in the air has spread across college football.
The movement began when an Oklahoma State fan was dared by his sister to wave his shirt in an empty section of the stadium.
The trend has served as reminder for people to have fun at college football games, regardless of the result.

Viruses are terrifying. Once it finds a host, it can spread rapidly and infecting all victims anywhere in its path. 

There’s a new virus spreading through college football. In just a few weeks, it’s gone from one stadium to stretching across the country, contaminating nearly every cathedral that houses the sport. The symptoms?

Fans taking off their shirts and waving them in the air in the masses. 

Like most infectious diseases, it can be traced to a starting point. A dare between siblings on Oct. 11 in Stillwater, Oklahoma, led to its birth. In a matter of weeks, it’s taken over college football to produce one of the most mesmerizing sights to behold.  

“It’s not what you expected to happen,” Trent Eaton told USA TODAY Sports.

Is it really an illness? No, even if it appears to be making people mad. 

Is it bad? Far from it, as it has reminded those that started it what college football is all about: having fun. 

How viral Oklahoma State trend began

It’s no secret 2025 has been a bad one for Oklahoma State. Entering that Oct. 11 afternoon, the Cowboys were 1-4 and had fired longtime coach Mike Gundy. Oklahoma State student Luke Schneberger recalled the vibes inside Boone Pickens Stadium “were just not there.”

Through three quarters against Houston, the Cowboys were down 36-10 and headed toward a fifth consecutive loss. The stadium was emptying when Eaton, a lifelong Cowboys fan, was dared by his sister Callista Bradford, a season ticket holder, to go to a lifeless section, take off his shirt and wave it for $10. 

Not ashamed, Eaton walked around the stadium to section 231 and by himself, waved his shirt for the crowd to see. Patient No. 0. 

It takes more than one for a virus to thrive. Luckily, Schneberger’s friends saw Eaton on the jumbotron. They said he should go join him. Schneberger thought it was a good idea.

So, Schneberger walked up to section 231. He and Eaton didn’t know each other, but only a few words were said to connect them.

“Hey man. Mind if I join you?” Schneberger said.

“Yeah, c’mon,” Eaton responded.

Patient No. 1. The two strangers stood together, laughing and waving their shirts as the sun beamed on their torsos. While attempting to boost the mood, neither weren’t sure how long they would last. 

Call it dramatic or silly, but it can get pretty tiring swinging your arm. Eaton said he had enough juice until the end of the third quarter, while Schneberger didn’t know how long he could go.

That’s when a group of guys walked by and Schneberger encouraged them to join. They did, and the group grew.

Before they realized it, the entire section and nearby ones were filled with guys enthusiastically waving their shirts. 

“I didn’t expect as many people as ended up coming up to happen,” Eaton said.

Call it an outbreak. 

The scene went viral as Oklahoma State and college football fans watched in amazement of the “tarps off” scene. There is no real way to describe it other than just guys being dudes. 

“If you looked up guys being dudes in the dictionary, the tarps off sections would probably be in there,” Schneberger said.

Waving shirts spread

Eaton became an instant celebrity in Stillwater, taking photos with admirers when he and his sister went to get food after the game. While it was a cool moment that brought joy to a miserable fan base, Eaton and Bradford figured it would be a one game thing.

That was until later in the week when someone sent Bradford a video from a local high school volleyball game, where a group of boys replicated her brother.

The movement spread out of Boone Pickens Stadium. Next thing they knew, it found its way to other college football stadiums. One week later, it was done at Wisconsin’s Camp Randall Stadium. Also at the Rose Bowl for UCLA’s home game. 

A week later, the virus continued to grow to Virginia Tech, North Carolina and several others. It even made its way to Eugene, Oregon, where even the Oregon Duck mascot did it. Section 231 at Oklahoma State became known as 2-no shirty-1.

“I saw videos all across the states of several college teams doing it,” Bradford said. “I was like, ‘oh man, we started a trend.’”

Why has shirtless movement become popular?

Other than believing it’s some viral infection, there’s no way to explain why this trend has caught on.

“It was just shocking to me how fast it spread,” Schneberger said. “Something that I was a small part in getting that big is just very surreal for me.”

Eaton wasn’t the first person to ever wave their shirt at a sporting event, but it has clearly resonated. He pointed to where this movement took shape. Oklahoma State is in the midst of a struggling season. So are UCLA, Wisconsin and North Carolina. It became a big thing by the time it caught on to good teams like Oregon.

“Most fans realize that their team’s not always going to be great, but they can still go support them and have fun and make something out of not a great season,” Eaton said. 

Schneberger agreed, adding that fans can’t just feel down the entire time and make some fun in even the worst situations. Even though Oklahoma State lost that Houston game by 22 points, it brought some joy to campus. Bradford also noted going to games is about more than the result; the atmosphere and fun are what makes the experience so unique.

“It’s that perfect recipe for it to be for college football,” Schneberger said. “It’s such a fun thing to do. Just get up there with your buddies and, you know, swing your shirt around.”

There’s no telling how long this virus will last. Eaton and Bradford have both been invited back for Oklahoma State’s next home game on Nov. 15 to be recognized, where the shirtless fun can very well continue in Stillwater. We will also have to see if the virus can survive the winter conditions that are on the horizon for the rest of the country.

“You’re not always on top,” Bradford said. “But you can also always have a good time.”

This money madness in college football, the frenzy of firing and hiring coaches no matter the cost, is just the tip of financial stupidity. 

As crazy as it sounds, the first step of money management in college football isn’t for future coaching contracts. It’s aimed at the very group that missed out on the money for the first 150 years: the players.

And it will be a financial bloodbath.

Because one thing is clear in the big money era of college football: Coaches can fail, players can’t. While universities have no problem throwing millions in buyouts at coaches who can’t win, they’re increasing performance-based deals for players in case they don’t meet expectations.

“It’s not just that the sport is changing,” Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz told me this summer. “It’s that it’s changing every day, in every way possible.”

But the inevitable very few saw coming is the once hallowed ground of player accountability.

Forget about the $50 million Penn State paid James Franklin to not coach, or the $53 million LSU just swallowed to make Brian Kelly go away. Or any other coaching buyout that has sucked the very life from the sport over the past month of a wildly competitive (and overlooked) season.

This is about the players, and how a majority of them ― despite the narratives told ― are again at the short end of the financial game. It’s not as simple as sharing media rights revenue with universities, and signing large private NIL deals.

There’s the fine print few see, and all will soon realize. While many players are making significant financial gains, the majority aren’t.

Hundreds are making more annually than the NFL player minimum of $840,000, and all (more than 13,000 FBS players alone) are officially being paid to play. Some ridiculous amounts as single-season mercenary hires (hello, Carson Beck), others paid hundreds of thousands of dollars before they even step on a college field (every blue-chip high school recruit).

For everyone else, it’s a crapshoot of sorts. Those who perform at a high level are paid, those who don’t, aren’t paid for long.

There was a time when the idea of player accountability in the new era of pay-for-play meant dealing with unruly fans stalking them with social media muscles. But the more impactful consequence is universities and boosters clawing back money in performance-based NIL deals. 

Nearly all revenue sharing deals with schools, and private NIL deals, are one-year contracts. If you think patience with coaches is wearing thin among universities and boosters, it’s only a matter of time before it moves to players.

We’re not even a year into the new world of revenue sharing and private NIL deals, and already schools and boosters have moved into preservation mode, structuring as many performance-based deals as possible. The elite of the game — current star players and five-star high school recruits — can demand guaranteed deals.

For everyone else, it’s performance-based earnings. And once it goes bad, universities and booster-backed NIL collectives simply throw money at the next high school recruit, or transfer portal addition.

Or as one college football general manager told USA Today Sports: “Do you realize how much lost money is in the transfer portal every single season?”

That leaves the sport with cyclical turnover sickness, players annually moving (or threatening to move) from team to team, and contract to contract. Some to get a raise, some to make up for lost cash from a previous performance-based deal. Some to get paid for the first time.

When Ohio State spent nearly $20 million on last year’s national championship roster, the majority was spent to retain current players. Giving them enough money in NIL deals to either turn down the NFL, or turn down other schools. 

The advent of revenue sharing this season added another layer to the season-by-season transactional monster. Now it’s not just paying players, but paying by positional, previous and predicted values.

Produce and get paid another season. Struggle, and your number decreases through clawbacks.

It’s impossible to predict how much money annually is spent — and/or promised with performance-based incentives — on player salaries, because deals aren’t public knowledge. But it’s not hard to find the ballpark.

Most schools spend 75% of the available $23 million revenue share money on football. That 75% is $17.25 million, and if 80% of the 68 Power conference schools (54 schools) spend that $17.25 million, that’s nearly a billion dollars annually in player revenue share salaries. 

Just from the Power conferences. 

That number also doesn’t take into account private, performance-based NIL deals, which pushes player salaries to an unthinkable number — with the majority performance-based in one form or another. 

One final dose of fiscal reality: more than 3,400 FBS players entered the 2024-25 transfer portal.

That’s a lot of dead money.  

“There’s no denying it anymore, it’s a business. A big business,” said Maryland coach Mike Locksley.  

And we’ve only reached the tip of overcoming financial stupidity. 

Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.

Four drivers from two teams, Joe Gibbs Racing and Hendrick Motorsports, will compete for the NASCAR Cup Series title.
The championship contenders are Denny Hamlin, Chase Briscoe, Kyle Larson, and William Byron.
This season finale could be the last to use the current one-race, winner-take-all playoff format.

Four drivers, two teams, one championship.

Following 35 races, the NASCAR Cup Series is set to crown a champion in the season finale Nov. 2 in Avondale, Arizona, when Phoenix Raceway hosts the 2025 championship race in what could be the final iteration of the current playoff format.

Two drivers from Joe Gibbs Racing – Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe – and two drivers from Hendrick Motorsports – Kyle Larson and William Byron – will race against each other and a full field of cars with one goal in mind: finish better than the other three contenders and celebrate with the championship trophy.

It’s a format and a situation that is unique to NASCAR. On the one hand, you have two titans of the sport – team owners Joe Gibbs and Rick Hendrick – each with a 50% chance of claiming a title. The owners also happen to be good friends.

‘To get to the Final 4 is just so hard. So now we got one race,’ Gibbs said this week. ‘We know what we’re up against, somebody that’s really, really good. Two cars in there for them. Two for us.’

The drivers, on the other hand, not only have to compete against two racers from another team but also against a teammate to realize their championship dreams.

‘It’s going to be an epic battle,’ said vice chairman of Hendrick Motorsports Jeff Gordon, who won four NASCAR championships as a driver. ‘You got four cars, two organizations, that are going to give it everything. It’s going to be (a) fascinating week of preparation, seeing how it unfolds at the racetrack in Phoenix.’

Final four worthy

The four championship contenders enter the finale with impressive season statistics. Hamlin has the most wins in 2025, Briscoe the most pole positions and top-five finishes, Byron the most laps led and Larson the second-most top 10s and the second-most laps led.

‘Denny, Chase, Kyle are amazing competitors. We’re going to have to do everything we can do (at Phoenix) to win that one, too,’ Byron said after his victory at Martinsville Speedway to clinch his berth in the Championship 4.

Each of the four also brings a unique storyline to the finale.

Larson, 33, is the only driver among the four to have won a Cup Series championship (2021), and a second would put him in elite company. He could join Hall of Famers Gordon (four championships) and Jimmie Johnson (seven) as the third driver to win multiple Cup titles for Hendrick.

The 27-year-old Byron, who drives the No. 24 Chevrolet made famous by Gordon, could become just the sixth driver and the first since Johnson in 2013 to win the Daytona 500 and the NASCAR Cup Series championship in the same year. The others: Hall of Famers Lee Petty, Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough and Gordon.

Briscoe, 30, made the championship in his first year at Joe Gibbs Racing after taking over the No. 19 Toyota following the retirement of 2017 Cup Series champion Martin Truex Jr. Briscoe had an up-and-down first half of the season as he adjusted to a new car and team, but he was arguably the best driver in the second half, recording three wins and 10 top-five finishes and capturing six of his series-high seven poles.

And then there is the veteran, Denny Hamlin, who is seeking to add the one thing missing from his Hall-of-Fame resume: a NASCAR championship. The 44-year-old has won 60 races during his Cup career – tied for 10th on the all-time list – and, despite the fact that he is more than a decade older than any of the other final four drivers, he led the series with six victories in 2025.

Yet, it’s fair to wonder if this is Hamlin’s best and final chance to remove the moniker, ‘Best driver to never win a championship.’

‘Is this my last chance to do it? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,’ Hamlin expressed after earning win No. 60 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. ‘I just know I’m going to do the work, and I hope it works out. If it doesn’t, I’m going to be OK with it. I’ve had a season that far exceeded what I thought it would.’

Change on the horizon?

This also might be the end of the one-race championship and possibly the 10-race playoffs. NASCAR has formed a committee with its stakeholders to examine the current format and explore changes or perhaps a massive overhaul of the system following complaints for years from both drivers and fans.

NASCAR’s goal when it introduced the current format in 2014 was to provide ‘Game 7’ moments comparable to the big team sports. And while there has certainly been plenty of on-track excitement in the past decade as four drivers duked it out for a title each year, the counterargument has been that a winner-take-all race not only dilutes the full 35 races that came before it but even the nine playoff races that precede the championship race.

So, as these drivers seek to etch their name in history with a Cup Series title, one could make history in another way: the last driver to win a championship in this format.

‘A lot of real bright people are thinking about our playoffs and is this the right format for us going forward,’ Gibbs said this week. ‘The one thing I would say, one race, man, it is tough because things can happen to you that are out of your control in that one race.

‘We got two cars in it. This is a thrill when we get here because it is exciting. You got one race to make it happen. That’s the way I look at it, so we got to find a way. I’m sure Rick (Hendrick) is thinking the same thing.’