Spotting Matthew McConaughey at a Texas game is like playing ‘Where’s Waldo?’
Georgia football serves up feast in press box before a November home game.
Lee Corso enjoys a memorable hotdog after final ‘College GameDay’ appearance at Ohio State.

There comes a time in every sportswriter’s life when you realize life on the road is not all it’s cracked up to be.

For me, that time occurred several years ago.

After covering a night game at The Swamp and filing a couple of columns from the press box, I returned to my hotel in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, around 3 a.m.

As I entered the hotel room, I realized I was not alone.

A cockroach juicy enough to feed a family of four was waiting for me inside.

He was quick. I was quicker. RIP.

Anyway, I’m pleased to report I made it through this college football season without spotting any hotel room roaches, although I did smash a roach in an SEC press box after it fell from the ceiling and landed atop my work station.

The speedy critter probably could’ve written a better lede than I did that day, but I didn’t give him the chance. Splat! He didn’t make it to kickoff.

Other than a handful of flight delays, my top life-on-the-road complication occurred in Atlanta, where I got sealed out of my hotel room after the SEC championship game. With the door malfunctioning and my possessions trapped inside, a marvelous off-the-clock maintenance man came to my rescue and crowbarred the door open.

Enough about the lowlights, though. Here are my superlatives from my season’s travels that took me to 15 college football games:

Best game day atmosphere

Kyle Field is a college football mecca. It’s worth visiting on any game day. It’s particularly spectacular on a sunny December morning created for playoff football. As “POWER” played on the sound system and flames shot into the sky from the pyro machines, the Aggies ran out of the tunnel behind the south end zone, and the stadium shook.

As I wrote that day: The scene at Kyle Field set a high bar for heaven to clear.

Best pregame sight

Ohio State pregame beer die.

While creeping along the skinny streets toward Ohio Stadium, I soaked up scenes of tailgaters enjoying morning beverages on a gorgeous Week 1 Saturday in Columbus before Texas visited Ohio State. College football was back, and so were cold ones on game day.

As revelers played beer die games on front lawns, it gave me great hope for the future of our country when I saw several college-age students hoist a die high into the air, before it went splish-splash into a plastic cup. Drink!

I would’ve loved to have stopped and played a game, but duty called.

Best Friday hike

Natchez Trace delivers tranquility.

The day before a game, I try to find a scenic hike or walking trail in or around the city where I’m staying. Getting a few miles in on Friday makes me feel ever so slightly better about the calories I’ll pile up in the press box the next day.

One of my favorites to hit on a fall Friday is the Natchez Trace National Scenic Trail, just north of Tupelo, Mississippi. I park at the Chickasaw Village Site and set out from there. I logged more than three miles on a September visit this season, the day before covering LSU-Ole Miss.

Best Friday night out

Pool with Captain Picard.

I found myself in Austin on Halloween on a Friday night before covering Vanderbilt-Texas the next day.

I’m not a huge Halloween guy, and I didn’t pack a costume, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see Austin in action.

I wanted nothing to do with Sixth Street on Halloween, so after enjoying some enchiladas for dinner at El Alma, just south of the Colorado River, I ventured to Frazier’s Long & Low for a beer, served by a bartender dressed as Poison Ivy. A man dressed as Captain Picard from ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ grabbed the barstool next to me and invited me to join him for a game of 8-ball.

We teamed up against another duo. I didn’t let down Captain Picard and sank a few shots. We smoothly cleared our balls off the table without too much trouble, but we failed to pocket the 8-ball, and our opponents stole the victory.

Runner-up finish: A stop at the Blue Canoe in Tupelo is mandatory when covering a Mississippi game. I paid my respects and enjoyed a burger and a brew the night before covering LSU-Ole Miss. As a band’s live music filled the establishment, I watched on TV while Virginia fans stormed the field following a Friday night overtime win against Florida State.

Best press box meal

Georgia serves a feast.

Georgia did it up right for its pregame press box meal before a mid-November game against Texas. The menu that night included roasted turkey with gravy, the best stuffing I’ve ever had, macaroni and cheese and green beans. Facing some tough caloric decisions, I skipped the Hawaiian roll, but I won’t deny grabbing a slice of pumpkin pie for dessert.

Some might say the pregame meal outperformed the game.

Brush with celebrity

Alright, alright, alright.

It’s not unusual to see Matthew McConaughey on the sideline before a Texas game, but I also brushed right past him in a hallway while I motored to the Longhorns’ postgame news conference.

McConaughey was graciously posing for a photo with a young Texas fan celebrating his birthday.

The birthday boy did not ask for a picture with me.

Strange but cool press box sighting

A legend enjoys a dog.

Lee Corso made his final “College GameDay” appearance before Texas-Ohio State, then made a stop at the press box, where I watched him eat a hot dog, including the bun, with a knife and fork. Respect.

As Costanza would say: How do you eat it? With your hands?

Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.

Lindsey Vonn injured her left knee in a crash just before the Milano Cortina Olympics.
Vonn stated on social media that she is consulting with doctors but has not ruled out competing.
The skier has a long history of significant injuries and subsequent comebacks throughout her career.

Lindsey Vonn is better equipped to come back from an injury than pretty much anyone else.

Vonn injured her left knee in a crash during the final downhill before the Milano Cortina Olympics on Jan. 30. She was able to get back up and ski down to the bottom of the course, but stopped several times to rest or check her knee.

In a social media post several hours after the crash, Vonn said she was still consulting with her doctors and having tests but is not ruling out competing at the Olympics. The Milano Cortina Games begin Feb. 6, and the downhill is Feb. 8.

‘This is a very difficult outcome one week before the Olympics … but if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s a comeback,’ Vonn wrote.

Here’s a list of Vonn’s significant injuries throughout her career:

January 2019: Impact injury to peroneal nerve.

November 2018: Torn lateral collateral ligament and meniscus in left knee, three tibial plateau fractures from crash during training at Copper Mountain, Colorado.

November 2016: Fractured humerus in right arm from crash during training at Copper Mountain, Colorado.

August 2015: Broken ankle from crash during training in New Zealand.

February 2016: Multiple fractures in left knee from crash during World Cup super-G in Andorra.

December 2013: MCL sprain in right knee.

November 2013: Torn right ACL from crash in training at Copper Mountain, Colorado.

February 2013: Torn ACL and MCL in right knee and tibial plateau fracture in right leg following crash in super-G at world championships.

February 2010: Broken right pinkie from crash in giant slalom at Vancouver Olympics. (Where she’d previously won the downhill gold.)

December 2009: Microfractures in left forearm after crash during giant slalom in Lienz, Austria.

February 2009: Severed tendon in right thumb cutting open champagne bottle at world championships in Val d’Isère, France.

February 2007: Sprained right ACL after crash during training at the world championships in Åre, Sweden.

A new year will apparently not bring any less chaos to the Minnesota Twins.

Derek Falvey, chief baseball officer since 2016, and the Twins are mutually parting ways, the team announced Jan. 30, the latest twist in a saga that’s seen the club put up for sale, take on additional investors, strip-mine the active roster for parts at the 2025 trade deadline and fire manager Rocco Baldelli.

Falvey, 43, was promoted to president of baseball operations in 2019 and elevated to president of business operations in March 2025. They won three American League Central titles in his tenure, including a 101-win season in 2019, Baldelli’s first as manager.

Yet the Pohlad family, ‘after months of thoughtful consideration,’ announced in October 2024 it was aiming to sell the team. They pulled the club off the market in 2025 and announced they were seeking new investors; in December, the club announced the addition of three limited partners and that Tom Pohlad would take over as both the club’s control person, from his uncle Jim, and as head of their day-today operations from his brother Joe.

Given two months to reflect on these changes, Falvey and Tom Pohlad determined separation was the prudent move.

‘Following a series of thoughtful conversations with Tom that began after the ownership transition and progressed over the past few weeks, we both agreed this was the right time for us to part ways,’ Falvey said in a statement released by the club. ‘Ownership transitions naturally create moments for reflection and honest dialogue about leadership, vision, and how an organization wants to move forward.

‘Over the past several weeks we had those conversations openly and constructively and ultimately reached a shared understanding that this was the right step both for the organization and for me personally.’

Said Tom Pohlad: ‘We reached a shared understanding that the needs of the organization are evolving and that a leadership transition is the best way to move forward. I want to thank Derek for everything he has contributed to this organization. When he joined the Twins nine years ago, it was, in many ways, a watershed moment for this franchise. His leadership was transformational. He helped modernize every aspect of our baseball operations and led with strong values, intention, and purpose.

‘Derek created a culture grounded in learning and in the belief that organizations grow when people grow. Under his leadership, the Twins captured three division titles and made four postseason appearances. We are grateful for his dedication, his integrity, and the impact he made here.’

“While we value our foundation, our commitment to building a championship caliber organization requires decisiveness and urgency. We will immediately begin a search for a President of Business Operations who, along with General Manager Jeremy Zoll, will report to me.”

The Twins collapsed at the end of the 2024 season and failed to defend their Central title, then lost 92 games in 2025. At the trade deadline, the Twins dumped nearly a roster’s worth of salary and talent: Carlos Correa, five relievers, outfielder Harrison Bader, first baseman Ty France and utilityman Willi Castro were all traded.

The Clemson women’s basketball team had a big surprise for one teammate.

Tigers guard Rusne Augustinaite is thousands of miles away from her family in Lithuania. However, seeing one family member in person helped her feel a bit less homesick. Augustinaite was recently surprised by her Clemson teammates with a visit from her mom for her birthday. The moment left the Tigers guard momentarily stunned and speechless. Then, the tears started flowing as the pair hugged and reunited.

With her teammates clapping around her, Augustinaite was visibly overcome with emotion. ‘What?’ she said, seemingly in disbelief. ‘I’m still shaking,’ she said moments later. The Georgia Tech transfer revealed to her teammates that she hadn’t seen her mom during basketball season in seven years. Tigers head coach Shawn Poppie later shared that, with his help, the team started planning the surprise in November of last year and reportedly used NIL money to help coordinate the flight.

‘Obviously, I was dang near in tears at just the idea,’ Poppie said. ‘The hardest part was holding on to the secret that long.’

‘It felt unreal, still till this day. I didn’t expect that at all,’ Augustinaite said, describing the reunion with her mom.

‘They just planned everything so perfectly, and for them [to make] this happen, it’s amazing. I just thank coach [Shawn] Poppie for recruiting those people. Without them, I wouldn’t experience that. It’s a lifelong memory, and it’s just unreal.’

Above Travis Steele’s desk in his office on the Miami University campus in Oxford, Ohio is a three-by-five index card tacked to the wall, right above a picture of his five-year-old whoodle Ryder.

On it is a message written in red ink:

Be obsessed with your trajectory, not your current results.

It’s a mantra Steele is trying to embody in the middle of his fourth season as the RedHawks’ men’s basketball coach. Wins and losses matter, of course, but success is ultimately judged by whether his players and program are getting better on a given day.

This season, though, the results have been too good to overlook — and the rest of the country’s starting to take notice.

As February approaches and the start of the NCAA tournament inches that much closer, there are two remaining undefeated teams in men’s college basketball. There’s No. 1 Arizona, a squad led by a pair of five-star freshmen who are representing one of the most decorated programs in the sport over the past 40 years. The other? Steele’s Miami team, which is 21-0, off to the best start in the history of the Mid-American Conference and ranked in the top 25 for the first time in 27 years.

Along the way, the RedHawks have become one of the biggest stories in the sport, with a long-stagnant program enjoying the kind of attention and acclaim it hasn’t received since a Wally Szczerbiak-led run to the Sweet 16 in 1999.

“It’s really flipped,” Steele said to USA TODAY Sports. “It just shows that anything can be done anywhere in the country. It just takes a lot of people pulling in the same direction and it takes a vision. If you have all the alignment right, man, anything can happen.”

The run hasn’t exactly come from out of nowhere — Miami won a program-record 25 games last season, after all — but it has thrust Steele, his players and the school into a position few could have realistically envisioned even three months ago.

“It’s exciting for me to be doing what I’ve been doing with CBS since 2010 and now have my alma mater so relevant in the national landscape of college basketball,” Szczerbiak said to USA TODAY Sports. “It’s awesome. It’s a dream for me.”

Miami Ohio basketball’s long road back to relevance

Miami’s path to perfection has been hard-earned.

For decades, it was one of the more successful mid-major programs in the sport, crashing the regional semifinals of the NCAA Tournament four times from 1958-99 and serving as a launching pad for future NBA standouts like Szczerbiak and Ron Harper.

Since the turn of the century, though, the RedHawks’ fortunes waned. They’ve made the NCAA Tournament just once since their Sweet 16 appearance in 1999. In many of those years, they haven’t gotten particularly close, either. Over a 15-year stretch, from 2009-24, they finished with a winning record just once — and that was a 12-11 mark during the COVID-19-affected 2020-21 season.

When the university hired Steele after the 2022 season, it was in search of a long-awaited jolt.

“They wanted it, but the fan attendance wasn’t there, the support wasn’t there,” Steele said. “I knew it was going to be a rebuild in a lot of ways when I took it over. I knew we’d have to get more talent and get the culture right. But I probably didn’t realize quite how much the rebuild was going to be because of the disconnect with former players and the current program and the community and the current program. It just wasn’t there.”

At the time, Miami’s new coach was in search of a restart just as much as the program he was inheriting.

In 2018, at 36 years old, Steele was named the head coach at Xavier, where he’d helped lead the Musketeers to a Big East championship and a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament as their top assistant the previous season. His teams never bottomed out, but they had a clearly defined ceiling, never winning more than 19 games and missing out on the NCAA Tournament four years in a row at a program that had made it to March Madness in 26 of 33 seasons before he took over. After going 19-13 in his fourth season at the school with a team that missed the tournament despite a 16-5 start, Steele was fired.

In the days that followed, he mulled his future. He wasn’t burnt out and didn’t feel the need to step away from coaching. While he felt like he didn’t have a purpose being away from a team and a locker room, he also didn’t want to rush back to the sideline for the sake of it. The fit had to be right.

In Miami, he found just that — a school with a strong academic reputation and an idyllic campus that allowed him to stay in southwest Ohio, where his wife, Amanda, was from and where he had lived since 2008. Just 15 days after he was let go at Xavier, he’d accepted a new challenge.

“You live and you learn, right?” Steele said. “I made a lot of mistakes at Xavier. I made some mistakes and you don’t want to make those again. You figure out fit is everything. What are your non-negotiables?”

Miami Ohio’s basketball renaissance

In his early discussions with Miami athletic director David Sayler, Steele warned that his approach may take some time to materialize.

He wasn’t wrong. The RedHawks struggled in their first two seasons under their new coach, going 12-20 in the 2022-23 season and before a modest improvement to 15-17 in 2023-24. 

By Steele’s third season, and with players he brought aboard earlier in his tenure stepping into larger roles, Miami got a long-awaited breakthrough. It went 25-9, its first 20-win season since the 1999 Sweet 16 team, and fell one game short of the NCAA Tournament, losing to Akron 76-74 in the MAC championship game on a layup with two seconds remaining.

Now, a team picked to finish second in the MAC has shattered even the more optimistic expectations that greeted it entering the season. While it’s not rare for a power-conference program to flirt with an undefeated season heading into February, Miami’s only the seventh non-Gonzaga team from a mid-major league to start a season 20-0 since 1990.

“You really just enjoy the moment when you have it because you may never have this again,” freshman guard Justin Kirby said to USA TODAY Sports.

The RedHawks haven’t just gotten to 21-0, but they’ve done so with an unmistakable flair. 

Steele overhauled his style after arriving at Miami, leaving behind his more plodding approach at Xavier for an offense that’s now 46th of 365 Division I teams in tempo, according to KenPom. They’re not just fast, but efficient, ranking fourth nationally in 2-point percentage, 18th in 3-point percentage and 23rd in free-throw percentage while rarely turning the ball over. Six players are averaging at least 10 points per game and six of the team’s top eight scorers are shooting at least 40% from 3 — and the two who aren’t are both at 39.4%. They’ve managed to do that despite playing about half the season without starting point guard and team captain Evan Ipsaro, who tore his ACL in a Dec. 20 win against Ball State.

It’s a free-flowing style, another contrast from Steele’s Xavier tenure. He said he sometimes calls as few as five set plays over the course of a game, preferring for his veteran roster to play in the flow of a contest with the concepts he has taught them.

The 21-0 mark hasn’t come without some fits of anxiety. Miami’s past three wins have come by a combined 11 points, with two of those victories — against Buffalo and at Kent State — coming in overtime. In the Buffalo game, Eian Elmer hit a buzzer-beating 3 to send the game to overtime before Peter Suder broke a tie with a 3 of his own with one second remaining in the extra period. On Tuesday, the RedHawks overcame a 10-point first-half deficit to knock off UMass.

Miami’s unblemished start has been made possible, in part, by a soft non-conference schedule that KenPom ranks as the fourth-easiest in the country. Three of its wins came against non-Division I teams and of the nine Division I squads they faced in non-conference play, only one (Wright State) currently has a winning record.

The RedHawks’ success isn’t a mirage, though. Their strength of record is 20th among all Division I teams, putting them above the likes of No. 18 North Carolina, No. 19 Clemson, No. 20 Louisville, No. 23 St. John’s and No. 25 Iowa.

As their wins mount, interest in the program has, too, with a fan base hungry for national relevance embracing the team that has given it to them. After averaging 2,656 fans per game last season, Miami moved to 8-0 in a Dec. 6 win against Maine in front of a home crowd of 1,349 on hand for the final home contest before the fall semester ended. With students back on campus, Tuesday’s 86-84 victory against UMass attracted 9,223 fans. It was the 10th-largest crowd in the history of 57-year-old Millett Hall, the RedHawks’ home arena, and the largest since 1996.

“The program has just totally taken off,” Szczerbiak said. “Ticket sales are through the roof. The excitement is there. It’s exactly what the program deserves and needs.”

Beyond attendance figures, the storybook start has reconnected generations of Miami fans to the program.

A quarter-century since he last suited up for the RedHawks, Szczerbiak has a daughter who’s a sophomore at Miami who attends all the games. Sophomore guard Luke Skaljac, who stepped in for Ipsaro after his injury, is the son of two Miami graduates and grew up in suburban Cleveland hearing stories from his father about Harper and Szczerbiak’s heroics.

Now, those halcyon days are back.

“It’s definitely surreal for him,” Skaljac said to USA TODAY Sports. “He’s kind of amazed this is happening right now and that I’m a part of it.”

How Miami Ohio built a winning roster — and kept it together

The RedHawks have been an unlikely success story, not only because of their record, but the way they’ve reached it.

During an age when immediate eligibility for transfers can radically reshape rosters at a given school annually, Miami has been a model of continuity. Twelve of the 15 players who have logged at least one minute this season for the RedHawks began their college careers at the school. 

Like virtually anyone else in the sport, Steele has used the transfer portal. Three of Miami’s top six scorers this season — Suder (from Bellarmine), Almar Atlason (Bradley) and Antwone Woolfolk (Rutgers) — transferred in from other Division I programs. It’s been more of a complementary tool, one used to fill in holes rather than build an entire team. For Steele, retention is his No. 1 priority.

At a mid-major like Miami, that’s far easier said than done. Every spring, eager power-conference programs pluck the top scorers and best players of teams from smaller leagues with shallower pockets.

For the most part, the RedHawks have managed to avoid that fate in a sport increasingly designed to make stories like theirs impossible. Though they lost players to Kentucky and Georgia Tech over the offseason, they brought back five of their top six scorers from last season’s 25-win squad, all of whom had remaining eligibility. It’s not just players, either. Four of Steele’s five assistant coaches have been by his side since he took over at Miami.

How’d they do it? Steele and his players credit a close-knit, familial atmosphere that has been fostered over the years, which has been enough to hold on to many standouts at a program that’s reportedly in the middle of the MAC when it comes to name, image and likeness resources.

“You just aren’t going to find a better fit than Miami, especially for a lot of us,” Skaljac said.

Steele said he doesn’t give a breathless recruiting pitch to his players after every season, instead stressing the value of long-term decisions over short-term ones and how staying at Miami and earning a degree from the school benefits them. 

“The grass isn’t always greener. It’s not,” Steele said. “I think those guys know that. They’ve heard stories from friends that are at other places. What we have is special. That doesn’t mean we’re going to be perfect keeping everybody. I’m OK with that. I want guys that want to be here.”

That carryover has allowed the RedHawks to dream at this late stage of the season.

As of right now, Miami figures to be a favorite in each of its 10 remaining regular-season games and it has already beaten the two teams directly behind it in the MAC standings, Akron and Kent State. Some sizable obstacles remain, though, with KenPom giving the RedHawks a 5.1% chance of finishing the regular season unbeaten.

But an undefeated season, while nice, was never the goal for this group. After the gutting loss in last year’s MAC title game, the biggest priority has been getting back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in nearly 20 years. Even with Miami’s hot start, that’s hardly a guaranteed destination, especially coming out of what’s almost always a one-bid league. One ill-timed slip-up or an off shooting night could undo weeks and months of perfection.

That leaves the RedHawks with a straightforward objective – just keep winning. So far, they’ve been pretty good at it.

“The results will take care of themselves if our process is right,” Steele said. “It may not always happen immediately, but eventually it will figure itself out. That’s why our guys have been so loose. We feel no pressure, none. Our guys are enjoying it. We’re having fun on this journey together.”

Miami Ohio basketball 2026 schedule

Here’s who the RedHawks have left on their schedule:

Jan. 31: vs. Northern Illinois, 3:30 p.m. (ESPN+)
Feb. 3: at Buffalo, 6:30 p.m. (ESPN+)
Feb. 7: at Marshall, 4 p.m.
Feb. 13: vs. Ohio, 8 p.m. (ESPNU)
Feb. 17: at UMass, 7 p.m. (ESPN+)
Feb. 21: vs. Bowling Green, 3:30 p.m. (ESPN+)
Feb. 24: at Eastern Michigan, 6:30 p.m. (ESPN+)
Feb. 28: at Western Michigan, 2:30 p.m. (ESPN+)
March 3: vs. Toledo, 7 p.m. (ESPN+)
March 6: at Ohio, 7 p.m. (ESPN+)
March 12-14: MAC Tournament, at Cleveland

Less than five months before the 2026 World Cup, U.S. men’s national soccer coach Mauricio Pochettino indicated that he has better things to do than answer questions about ticket prices, which on some sites are approaching $9,000 per ticket.

“It’s not about us to provide our opinion,” Pochettino said. “Our responsibility is to play and perform on the pitch.”

Pochettino said during a video conference call from FIFA offices in Coral Gables, Florida, that players and coaches have no control over ticket prices and shouldn’t be expected to explain the price of admission for the tournament, which runs from June 11 to July 19.

Pochettino responded to a question about American forward Timothy Weah, who said World Cup tickets were too expensive and that some fans would not be able to afford to attend the games.

“Players need to talk on the pitch playing football. It’s not his duty to evaluate the price of the ticket,’ Pochetinno said about Weah’s comments. ‘My duty is to prepare the team in the best way to perform. We are not politicians; we are sports people. We can talk about our jobs. If FIFA does something or [makes] some decision, they know why and it is their responsibility to explain why.”

Weah had told French outlet Le Dauphiné: ‘Football should still be enjoyed by everyone. It is the most popular sport. This World Cup will be good, but it will be more of a show.’

World soccer’s governing body, FIFA, has repeatedly defended its pricing, and once ticket prices hit the secondary market next week, prices could surge.

“FIFA is doing an amazing job around the world, uniting people,” Pochettino added, stressing he is not a politician. ‘I think for sure you need the media to ask directly to FIFA …

‘We need to be focusing in the sports side and trust in the organization that is in charge of soccer or football around the world that they are going to do the right things.’