Two more star Japanese players are set to join Major League Baseball.

Corner infielder Kazuma Okamoto of the Yomiuri Giants and right-handed pitcher Kona Takahashi of the Saitama Seibu Lions have were posted on Nov. 20 by their teams in Nippon Professional Baseball. Their 45-day window in which MLB teams will be able to negotiate with and sign them will open at 5 p.m. ET on Friday.

Okamoto, 29, is a six-time NPB All-Star best known for his power − hitting at least 30 home runs in six consecutive seasons from 2018-2023. He also homered twice in the 2023 World Baseball Classic, including a solo blast in Japan’s 3-2 victory over Team USA in the championship game.

Okamoto played in just 69 games in 2025 due to an elbow injury, but managed to slash .327/.416/.598 with 15 home runs. He can slot in at first or third base.

Meanwhile, the 28-year-old Takahashi posted a 3.04 ERA over 148 innings last season for the Lions. He is not an overpowering pitcher, averaging 5.4 strikeouts per nine innings in 2025. He was much more effective during the 2022 and 2023 seasons, with a combined 2.20 ERA and 1.13 WHIP over 330 2/3 innings.

Okamoto and Takahashi join right-hander Tatsuya Imai and slugger Muneteka Murakami as Japanese players who have been posted this offseason.

Major League Soccer announced its 2026 schedule, which gets underway with a showdown between Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami and Son Heung-min’s LAFC at the Los Angeles Coliseum on the Feb. 21 opening night.

Other highlights include an extended World Cup break and the opening of Inter Miami’s new stadium (April 4), an extended break for the World Cup and the league’s All-Star Game in Charlotte (July 29).

MLS will pause after matches on May 24 and return to action on July 16, three days before the World Cup final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. The league’s season had concluded before the December 2022 World Cup, but MLS went on just a nine-day hiatus in 2018, owing largely to the USMNT’s failure to qualify for that tournament.

Messi and Inter play the inaugural game at their new 25,000-seat Miami Freedom Park against Austin, while the 2026 MLS All-Star Game will be at Bank of America Field against a yet-to-be-determined opponent.

Beginning on Nov. 18, the 2026 MLS Cup Playoffs will be uninterrupted by a FIFA international window, unlike the knockout rounds in 2025.

All 510 MLS regular season matches will be available on Apple TV in 2026.

MLS schedule 2026: When does season start?

The 2026 Major League Soccer season begins on Feb. 21 with Los Angeles FC hosting Inter Miami at the LA Coliseum.

USA TODAY Sports’ 48-page special edition commemorates 30 years of Major League Soccer, from its best players to key milestones and championship dynasties to what exciting steps are next with the World Cup ahead. Order your copy today!

Colorado quarterback Julian Lewis braided his hair after being legally tackled by it in a game against West Virginia.
According to the NCAA, tackling a ballcarrier by their hair is a legal play.
Lewis is a freshman quarterback who is expected to start the final games of the season for the Buffaloes.

Colorado freshman starting quarterback Julian Lewis got yanked down to the turf by his hair in his first career start at West Virginia Nov. 8, leading to questions about grooming decisions and rules about legal football tackles.

Should he cut his long bushy hair if it was going to be liability like this?

Is it even legal to tackle a player by hairpull?

Lewis recently made a strategic response to this by braiding his hair to help keep it out of reach of defenders, according to his coach, Deion Sanders. He is scheduled to make his second career start Nov. 22 at home against Arizona State.

“He’s braided up now, so we won’t have that problem, which I respected,” Colorado coach Deion Sanders said Nov. 19 on his weekly “Coach Prime’s Playbook” show on CBS in Denver. “He understood like, ‘Let me take care of this, because I can’t have this happen.’”

What happened to Julian Lewis to prompt the change?

A West Virginia defender grabbed a fistful of his locks and pulled him down with it, jerking him backward for a sack and a 9-yard loss with 2:00 left in the 29-22 defeat. The TNT game broadcast even showed a small pile or Lewis’ hair still on the field afterward.

After an off weekend last week, Lewis, 18, aims to light a spark for Colorado in Sanders’ third season in Boulder. The Buffaloes are 3-7 this season but are building toward the future by investing in Lewis, who plans to burn his redshirt year this year by starting the final three games of the season, including the loss at West Virginia.

Is tackling by hair legal in college football?

The sack by hair was a legal tackle, which demonstrates the risk taken by ballcarriers who wear their hair long and flowing freely underneath their helmets.

The hair takedown of Lewis was cited in a video tutorial recently by Steve Shaw, the NCAA’s national coordinator of officials in college football.

“Is this a foul?” Shaw asked about the play. “Well, it is clearly not a face-mask foul, as no helmet opening is grabbled. And anatomically, the hair is part of the body, an appendage of the skin. So there’s no foul for grabbing the ballcarrier’s hair and pulling them down.”

It’s different if the player is not carrying the ball but is blocking instead.

“If a player is blocking, he cannot grab an opponent’s hair and hold or pull,” Shaw said on the video. “That would be a foul, but attempting to tackle a ballcarrier, this is not a foul.”

The sack by hair put the Buffaloes in a hole in that game. The Buffs were down 29-19 and had a first down on the West Virginia 27-yard line. But the sack set the Buffs back with 2:00 remaining before they eventually settled for a 38-yard field with 1:16 left.

Follow Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com

USA Today Sports has live coverage of the Bills at Texans in today’s NFL ‘Thursday Night Football.’

The 2024 NFL season featured a close MVP race between two star quarterbacks in the AFC. Buffalo’s Josh Allen emerged as the winner and earned his first MVP award over Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson, a two-time MVP winner.

Allen’s win came by a narrow margin; he earned 27 first-place votes to Jackson’s 22. That margin ensured that Jackson would not be the latest back-to-back NFL MVP. That means the door is open for Allen to do so in 2025.

Only five players in NFL history have won MVP awards in back-to-back seasons: Aaron Rodgers (2020-21), Peyton Manning (2008-09, 2003-04), Brett Favre (1995-97), Joe Montana (1989-90) and Jim Brown (1957-58).

Allen’s Bills kick off Week 12 action in the NFL on the road with a ‘Thursday Night Football’ matchup against the Houston Texans. Buffalo rebounded from a surprising loss to AFC East foe Miami in Week 10 with a convincing victory at home against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 11.

Allen was spectacular in that contest as he scored all of the Bills’ six total touchdowns, three passing and three rushing. He became the first quarterback to run and throw for three scores each since he did so in Week 14 last season. He accounted for 357 of the team’s 414 total yards on offense in an impressive display.

That’s the latest exclamation point in a solid season for the Bills’ franchise quarterback. But can the 29-year-old win back-to-back MVP awards? Here’s what the odds say – and how he can do it.

NFL MVP odds

Allen is right in the mix for this year’s NFL MVP award. Two potential first-time winners have the shortest odds, according to BetMGM’s latest NFL odds, but he’s not far behind. Here’s how the top five look entering Week 12:

5. QB Patrick Mahomes, Kansas City Chiefs (+2000)

Mahomes and the Chiefs’ offense are enjoying a better season in 2025 than a year ago but they don’t have the wins to show for it. Mahomes looks to be a long shot for his third MVP as the Chiefs are on the outside looking in for a division title.

4. RB Jonathan Taylor, Indianapolis Colts (+750)

Indianapolis’ offense has been the surprise of the year with quarterback Daniel Jones and it’s Taylor who leads the charge. His 17 touchdowns from scrimmage (rushing and receiving combined) lead the NFL by a wide margin; Christian McCaffrey and Josh Jacobs are next-best at 11. But it may take a herculean effort for a non-quarterback to win this award even if the Colts earn the No. 1 seed in the AFC playoffs.

3. QB Josh Allen, Buffalo Bills (+450)

Allen won the award last year but is playing better this season by many metrics. Per NFL Next Gen Stats, Allen’s putting up better numbers this year in completion percentage (69.6% to 63.6% in 2024), yards per attempt (8.4 to 7.7), and quarterback rating (105.6 to 101.4). What may hold him back is if the Bills do not win their division. The last MVP winner to not win their division was Manning in 2008 when the Colts were the No. 5 seed and there were no clear contenders for the award.

2. QB Drake Maye, New England Patriots (+175)

Maye’s Patriots may be the main reason Allen doesn’t become the next MVP winner. New England enters Week 12 two games ahead of Buffalo in the win column (9-2 compared to 7-3) and has a win already in a head-to-head matchup. The Patriots also have one of the easiest schedules remaining in the NFL; the only significant challenges are one game against the Bills and one against the Ravens.

1. QB Matthew Stafford, Los Angeles Rams (+135)

Even if Allen’s Bills overtake Maye’s Patriots, Stafford remains a strong challenger for the NFL’s top individual award. He hasn’t thrown an interception in nearly two calendar months and leads the league in touchdown passes entering Week 12 with 27. Los Angeles is firmly in the hunt for the No. 1 seed in the NFC and if they’re a division winner behind Stafford orchestrating one of the best passing offenses in the league, it’ll be hard to deny him the MVP.

How Josh Allen can win another MVP

There’s still plenty of hope for Allen to be the latest consecutive MVP winner. The Bills’ remaining schedule has some tough outings but they’ll play Philadelphia at home in Week 17. A road game against New England in Week 15 looms as a massive showdown between MVP contenders. A win there to finish the season 14-3 could be enough to ensure the Bills potentially win the AFC East.

Allen can continue to play as he did against Tampa Bay and stun the rest of the league. He’s one of the more terrifying quarterbacks in the NFL with what he can do as a passer and rusher. Similar counting statistics to what he did last year and a division title – plus the Rams losing some key games to Seattle or other NFC contenders – could move him into the driver’s seat for the award.

Top games include No. 5 Oregon hosting No. 16 Southern California in the Big Ten.
In the SEC, No. 8 Oklahoma will face No. 21 Missouri.
Other notable contests involve ranked teams like Vanderbilt, BYU, and Georgia Tech.

Week 13 in college football is not entirely a cupcake platter, though admittedly there are a few of those. Fortunately, there are also a number of contests that will challenge our staff panel of pickers.

One of the weekend’s top games is in the western enclave of the Big Ten as No. 5 Oregon hosts No. 16 Southern California. There are actually some meaningful matchups in the SEC as well, most notably No. 8 Oklahoma hosting No. 21 Missouri and No. 13 Vanderbilt taking on a suddenly surging Kentucky squad. The Big 12 headliner features No. 12 Brigham Young heading east to face Cincinnati, and in ACC action No. 16 Georgia Tech entertains Pittsburgh.

Read on to see how our experts think those contests and other games involving the US LBM Coaches Poll Top 25 will go. You can also see how we’ve done thus far throughout the season, though we don’t necessarily recommend that.

Dan Hurley tore up the stat sheet and said his team ‘punked out.’ The UConn men’s basketball coach sat in a postgame interview Wednesday — after his No. 3 Huskies lost 71-67 at home to the No. 4 Arizona Wildcats — frustrated and disappointed with what he called a squandered opportunity to defeat one of the NCAA’s best teams.

‘We got punked,’ Hurley said. ‘It’s going to be a bad film session coming out of here. There’s a street fight going on in the paint and, you know, men can’t watch fights. You can’t stand on the outside when your buddies are in a fight. You get in the fight. You don’t stand on the periphery of the fight. We’ll see a lot of clips where guys were not in the fight with their teammates.’

Both teams entered the night undefeated, with a chance to mar a top-ranked teams’ record. Arizona remains 5-0, while UConn drops to 4-1. The Huskies’ performance was notably affected by the absence of senior center Tarris Reed Jr., who was sidelined due to a sprained ankle and is considered game-to-game. Prior to his injury, Reed Jr. was averaging 20 points and 9.3 rebounds per game before his injury.

At one point during the postgame press conference, a reporter asked Hurley about all the numbers from the game he’d been rattling off from a stat sheet on the table in front of him. Hurley promptly tore the stat sheet in half with a smirk and threw it off the table before answering.

‘Sometime around 2 a.m., 3, 4:30 am, I’m going to wake up and I’m gonna think it was just a nightmare… and then finally when I’m up and just starting to move around but I’m feeling half dead at around 7:30-8, I’m going to realize yea that we just (expletive) blew a chance to beat one of the best teams down two studs. In a game when we were down 13 and wobbling.

‘We got four more of these monsters in non-conference. We got a game on Sunday that we need to take to court with a very high level of rage and pissed off. Our people gotta get our guys healthy and on the court so we can be the team that we’re all really high on. OIt’s just, tonight sucked to lose like that.’

The Huskies next host Bryant at 6 p.m. ET Sunday. Arizona hosts the University of Denver at 10:30 p.m. ET Monday.

The wrongful death lawsuit the family of deceased pitcher Tyler Skaggs filed against the Los Angeles Angels reached a particularly nebulous point Nov. 19, as attorneys for the family and the ballclub aimed to project how much money Skaggs would have earned had he not died in 2019, two weeks before his 28th birthday and in the midst of the most productive season of his career.

Skaggs’ family is seeking $118 million in lost wages in addition to punitive damages. They enlisted the services of Jeff Fannell, a former labor lawyer for the MLB Players’ Association, who testified that Skaggs would have earned between $109 million and $120 million in his career, according to The Athletic.

Skaggs died July 1, 2019 after ingesting oxycodone laced with fentanyl at the team’s Texas hotel. Former Angels public relations staffer Eric Kay is serving a 22-year federal prison sentence after providing Skaggs the pill; Skaggs family attorneys allege the Angels knew or should have known Kay was providing drugs to Skaggs.

For a moment, the details of Skaggs’ death took a backseat to what he could have been as a pitcher.

At one point, Fannell and Angels attorney Jeff Keithly engaged in a torturous back-and-forth based on Fannell’s career comparison between Skaggs and one-time All-Star pitcher Taijuan Walker, who is entering the final year of a four-year, $72 million contract with the Philadelphia Phillies.

Keithly, in testimony recounted by The Athletic, cited a particularly irrelevant data point: Skaggs’ 5.12 ERA in seven starts with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2013, which paled to Walker’s 3.60 mark for the Seattle Mariners – in three starts.

Those absurdly small sample sizes seemed to go unchecked, however, as Keithly and Fannell briefly devolved into an age-old argument on traditional and modern statistics.

‘Quality is not just ERA,’ Fannell said, per The Athletic, citing Fielding Independent Pitching as another, ostensibly fairer metric.

The career arc of pitchers can be particularly difficult to project, given uncertainties with arm health, league environment and the scarcity of supply going forward. Skaggs, though, seemed on an upward arc at the time of his death.

He underwent Tommy John surgery in 2014, and gradually ramped up his innings in the years since. The final start of his career – June 29, 2019 – was his 15th of the season, putting him on track to make 30 starts, a marker of durability for pitchers.

His 4.29 ERA that season came in arguably the most unfriendly environment to pitchers in major league history, when a record 6,776 home runs were hit, more than 600 higher than the previous mark set in 2017.

Within that context, another modern statistic – adjusted ERA, which accounts for ballpark and league environment factors – is particularly germane. Skaggs’ adjusted ERA that season was 108, or 8% better than league average.

Skaggs was due to be a free agent after 2019, and Keithly accused Fannell in court of simply doubling Skaggs’ stats, calling it ‘a fake platform year.’ With that said, several pitchers in Skaggs’ 108 adjusted ERA neighborhood that year went on to significant earnings.

Trevor Bauer, also 28 years old that year, went on to win the 2020 NL Cy Young Award and signed a $105 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2021. He had an adjusted ERA of 105. Zach Eflin, then a third-year right-hander with Philadelphia, posted a 108 adjusted ERA; he signed a three-year, $40 million contract with Tampa Bay after the 2022 season.

And on the high end of Skaggs’ range, Sandy Alcantara produced a 110 adjusted ERA in 2019, his first full major league season, won the 2022 NL Cy Young Award and signed a contract extension that could guarantee him $76 million.

While Skaggs may lack Alcantara’s pedigree, he’s also left-handed, which creates greater scarcity and often ensures greater longevity.

The Angels, The Athletic reported, have enlisted Baltimore and Boston general manager Dan Duquette as their expert witness on future earnings.

Toxicologist Stacey Hail also testified Nov. 19, reiterating much of her testimony from Kay’s criminal trial that Skaggs would have survived but for the fentanyl in his system. The Angels, the Athletic reported, will attempt to illustrate that the oxycodone and alcohol in Skaggs’ system also contributed to his death.

EVANSTON, IL – Pat Ryan Jr. wants to make a statement with Northwestern football’s new Ryan Field.

The $862 million stadium will replace the former Ryan Field and Ryan is willing to bet it will stand out in college and professional football — whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

‘Never seen a stadium like this before. And when they say that one of two things is true,’ Ryan told USA TODAY Sports. ‘Either we’ll be right in making these bold bets. And if we’re right, you’ll see echoes of it in lots of buildings going forward. And if we’re wrong, it’ll be one of a kind, the only one of its kind, you know?’

While Ryan is proud of the investment he, his family and their company Ryan Sports Development are making in Northwestern athletics, college fans elsewhere may wonder why they may invest so much into a program that has historically has struggled. The Wildcats have not been ranked since 2020 and with Indiana’s resurgence, Northwestern has assumed the mantle of FBS’s all-time losingest program.

Here’s what you need to know about why the Ryan family opted to invest nearly one billion dollars in a brand-new stadium for Northwestern:

Why is Ryan family investing $862 million into Northwestern football?

The former Ryan Field opened in 1926. It was expanded in 1949 and 1952, and underwent renovations in 1996. In 1997, the stadium was re-named from Dyche Stadium to Ryan Field, after Patrick Ryan Sr, Ryan’s father.

Since then, the school and the Ryan family determined further renovations to a nearly 100-year-old stadium would prove to be more costly than building a brand-new stadium.

The former stadium was demolished in 2024.

‘If you look at our academic facilities, our performing arts facilities, everything we try to do with the highest order of excellence,’ Ryan said. ‘So, you see that in every type of nanotechnology building, performing arts building, anything. We try to do things to the highest order of excellence.’

Who is the Ryan family?

The Ryan family ― the largest donors in Northwestern University’s history ― are all Northwestern graduates, starting with Patrick Ryan Sr. and his wife Shirley Ryan. Patrick graduated from Northwestern in 1959 with undergraduate degree in business. Shirley graduated in 1961 with a degree in English.

Patrick distinguished himself as one of the most successful entrepreneurs and prominent civic leaders, according to Northwestern’s school website. He served 41 years as CEO of Aon Corporation, the leading global provider of risk management, insurance and reinsurance brokerage, while Shirley was appointed to the National Council on Disability. Ryan Field was named after him in 1997.

The Ryan family is a minority owner of the Chicago Bears and owns a stake in the English Premier League club AFC Bournemouth.

Ryan family committed to Northwestern

While the $862 million commitment to the football stadium ― with the majority coming from the family ― is an obvious investment into the football program, it also goes beyond that in athletics.

‘We’re very proud of the fact of how competitive our other sports are,’ Ryan said. ‘In the last few years, we won women’s golf, and we won the national championship, two field hockey championships, lacrosse national championship, and runner-up last year. We’ve won eight national championships in lacrosse. We’re very proud of all of the sports at Northwestern.’

Belief in David Braun, future of Northwestern football

David Braun took over the Northwestern football head coach role on an interim basis following the firing of Pat Fitzgerald. Braun was in his first year as a defensive coordinator.

In his first year, Braun led the Wildcats to an 8-5 record, including four wins to close out the season, which culminated in a 14-7 win over Utah in the Las Vegas Bowl.

In 2023, Northwestern went 5-8, missing a bowl game for the fourth time in six seasons. The Wildcats were far removed from a 7-2 finish during the 2020-COVID-impacted season, which saw them ranked as high as No. 8 in the College Football Playoff rankings.

However, Braun and the Wildcats have proven the belief in their future during the 2025 season. Following a 1-2 start, Northwestern enters Week 13 and its matchup against Minnesota with a 5-5 overall record and a 3-4 record in Big Ten play, just a single win away from bowl eligibility.

The Wildcats won four straight games over UCLA, Louisiana-Monroe, Penn State and Purdue between Sept. 27 and Oct. 18, which included a Week 7 upset of the Nittany Lions on the road on Oct. 11.

‘The good news there is I know we have the right football coach to get us there,’ athletic director Mark Jackson told USA TODAY Sports in August. ‘I can’t wait to see the progress that we hopefully make this season. So I think we have all the right ingredients, and now it’s time to mix them all and go compete to get in that College Football Playoff.’

New Ryan Field is for Evanston community

For most teams, football season runs from the end of August until late November. The season could extend into January for the teams in the College Football Playoff.

That means the stadium is in use for football for seven to eight Saturdays a year. For Ryan, that’s not nearly enough usage to justify the cost of its construction: He wants the new Ryan Field to be used throughout the year for the community of Evanston.

‘This is going to be an asset that’s used by the Evanston community, by the Chicago community, by youth athletes, by athletes with disabilities, adaptive athletes,’ Ryan said. ‘We’re very seriously committed to making this a year-round asset.

‘Now, it’s not going to be a full stadium year-round, but it’s broken up into all these plazas and spaces and festival grounds. The whole idea there is that you can activate any of these smaller spaces all around the year, as well as do smaller-scale events for non-revenue sports.’

New Ryan Field is Chicago’s Big Ten stadium

According to Ryan, the new Ryan Field is being constructed to become Chicago’s Big Ten stadium. The reasoning is simple: While Northwestern does not have the largest alumni group of the conference, the rest of the conference have plenty of alumni who live in the city.

‘You’ve got to remember Chicago is the home, historic home of the Big Ten,’ Ryan said. ‘It is the largest, for the traditional Big Ten, it is the home to more alumni from Michigan than Detroit, more people from Ohio State than Cleveland or Cincinnati, or even Columbus.

‘So the reality is that Chicago, and then if you look, where do people in the traditional Big Ten travel to for trips and dates? Chicago. So, Chicago is the home of the Big Ten, traditional Big Ten.’

Could Ryan Field be home of Illinois high school championships?

State championships for high school football are rotated between Hancock Stadium on the campus of Illinois State University in Normal and Memorial Stadium at the University of Illinois in Champaign.

Hancock Stadium has the contract to host the state championships from 2023 to 2027. However, Jackson said with the new Ryan Field opening in 2026, Northwestern would also put in a bid to host them.

‘I’ve been in touch with the Evanston athletic director a little bit,’ Jackson said. ‘We haven’t gotten any details, but we’ve talked conceptually about the Illinois Football state championships. … We’d love to be a hub for all of that. We’re not trying to pull events away, but I think we have a great showcase.’