The Washington Commanders released the first conceptual renderings of their new roofed stadium, which will be a year-round venue for sports, entertainment and community engagement, the team announced.

The design firm HKS, the architect on the project, also designed NFL stadiums such as SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

The stadium, tentatively slated to open in 2030, will be on the site of the old Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, located in southeast Washington, D.C., which was the team’s home for 36 seasons.

The Commanders have played their home games at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland, since 1997.

The capacity of the proposed $3.7 billion stadium is expected to be around 70,000, with a colonnade and an east–west axis in deference to the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument.

‘We are deeply grateful to the District and (Mayor Muriel E. Bowser) for their leadership, collaboration, and continued support, which have been instrumental in bringing this vision to life,’ Commanders team president Mark Clouse said in a statement. ‘We’re designing a stadium that amplifies the energy of football, supports year-round events and becomes a place the community can be proud of. We look forward to hearing feedback from our community as the design continues to evolve.’

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As college basketball fans well know, the only bracket that matters is the official one, and we’re still over two months away from seeing that one on Selection Sunday. That doesn’t stop the analysts and pundits from speculating, of course, so in that spirit we add our collective voice to the chorus with our initial attempt to project the NCAA men’s tournament field.

Arizona currently holds the mantle as the top overall seed. Joining the Wildcats as projected No. 1 regional seeds are a couple of usual suspects, Connecticut and Duke, and a not-so-usual one, Michigan. Iowa State, which just lost Tuesday for the first time all season, and Vanderbilt, which had its first defeat Wednesday, are on the No. 2 seed line along with Purdue, and Gonzaga.

For the moment, the Big Ten leads all conferences with 10 teams in the field, although a couple of them are among the last four in. The SEC is unlikely to match its record 14 tournament berths from a year ago but does have a healthy nine in the field. As usual the power conferences occupy a vast majority of the at-large slots, but Saint Louis of the Atlantic 10 and long-time WCC contender Saint Mary’s have strong cases for inclusion.

Bracketology: NCAA tournament field projection

Last four in

Indiana, New Mexico, Ohio State, TCU.

First four out

UCLA, Baylor, Creighton, Texas.

NCAA tournament bids conference breakdown

Multi-bid leagues: Big Ten (10), SEC (9), Big 12 (8), ACC (8) Big East (4), Mountain West (2), West Coast (2).

The Miami Hurricanes are one game away from winning their first national championship since 2001.
Coach Mario Cristobal and former players emphasize the importance of the Greentree practice fields to the program’s success.
This year’s team is said to embody the intense, competitive practice culture of Miami’s past championship teams.

It’s there off San Amaro Drive, rows of oak trees rustling in the South Florida breeze and paving a path on the pristine Coral Gables campus.

Right into Greentree. 

‘It’s everything,’ Cristobal says.

It’s the foundation of all Miami championship teams of the past, the one undeniable link to this year’s team that’s one game away from winning it all ― and bringing the national title back to Miami for the first time since 2001.

Or as former players proudly declare, when you officially join the club.

“This offseason, I was talking to Mario and he said they were finally practicing like we did,” said former Miami All-American offensive lineman Leon Searcy, who along with Cristobal, were bookend tackles on the Canes’ 1991 national championship team. “I told him, ‘Be careful saying that.’ When we practiced against each other, we tried to kill each other. Good on good, All-American vs. All-American. 

“I told him, ‘You’ve got something if those guys are doing that.’”

And here we are, days from the College Football Playoff national championship game against No. 1 Indiana, and Miami — the program lost in mediocrity for more than two decades — is still standing. Still trading blows, still persevering through a win-or-go-home hole it dug itself in early November. 

Still getting closer and closer to reaching the rare national championship air that five previous Miami teams breathed and bathed in. So many teams since 2001 have talked about winning it all, and reviving the Cane Thing.

None could replicate it. 

All of those coaches who desperately tried to follow Howard Schnellenberger and Jimmy Johnson and Dennis Erickson and Larry Coker. All of those players who talked the Miami talk, who acted like Jerome Brown and Jesse Armstead and Andre Johnson and Jeremy Shockey — and always finished the season in some meaningless bowl game. 

So when Cristobal told Searcy this offseason it looks like the days of old at Greentree, it was like a bolt out of the blue. Especially after the Canes tanked in 2024, losing two of three to finish the season and missing the CFP. 

After Miami wasted an elite talent at quarterback in Cam Ward, and after the failed two-year run of defensive coordinator Lance Guidry — who became the only person who could stop All-World edge Rueben Bain and the rest of the high-level talent on defense. 

If you’re making comparisons to Greentree, it’s about to get serious. And then it did. 

They’re now a game away from ending a 24-year drought for the program that once owned the sport. A near quarter century in the college football hinterlands for the program’s players that once bled for each other in Greentree. 

“It’s all business at Greentree,” says Canes safety Keionte Scott, who arrived in Miami this year after spending three seasons at Auburn. “That was very clear from the moment I stepped on the field.” 

They fight on Greentree, they love on Greentree. They push each other to unheard and unseen limits. 

There was a time, early in his career at Miami, when Canes legend Ed Reed finally realized what Greentree was all about. The team was going through its annual preseason conditioning in the 1999 fall camp, running a timed test of 16 110s .

That’s 110-yard runs, 16 times, with 45 seconds in between runs. And every position had a time limit — or everyone in that group ran again. 

Reed was a sophomore, recruited a year earlier by Butch Davis to help return Miami to its rightful status among the college football elite after NCAA sanctions crippled the program. He and the defensive backs finished one of their 110s, and turned to watch the offensive linemen. 

There was freshman Vernon Carey, who would grow into one of the best linemen in the game, 50 yards shy of completing the 110 and struggling to stay afloat. It was then that the foundational ideal of Greentree hit home.  

The rest of the offensive linemen ran back to Carey, and ran back to the finish line with him — encouraging him to dig deep and find it. 

“That’s Greentree, that (expletive) is real,” Reed said. ‘We aren’t just talking about what we did, we’re telling you how it was. You need to hold yourself accountable for those players who came before you, and what you do now. It’s different when you wear that orange and green, and walk around Miami when you’ve actually done something.”

It should come as no surprise then that Michael Irvin and Ray Lewis — among many other legendary former Canes — have been stalking the sidelines this season. It’s not just about this Miami team, it’s about all the champions of the past and the sweat equity they paid.

“If you want to fit in with the greats,” Searcy said, “You’ve got to be great.”     

They’re one game from the pinnacle moment, one game against white-hot Indiana strolling into Hard Rock Stadium to take what’s rightfully Miami’s. You better believe that’s how these Canes are treating it.

Just like the old Canes would. It’s their home, it’s their party. 

They paid for it on Greentree.

The SEC no longer rules college football’s postseason. This next week will test whether the conference can bend the Big Ten to its will at the negotiating table.
The SEC wants an expanded playoff to include 16 teams. The Big Ten reportedly desires 24. Stalemate!
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey usually gets his way, but Tony Petitti isn’t giving in.

The SEC no longer rules college football’s postseason. This next week will be a litmus test of whether the conference still rules the boardroom to determine the postseason format.

Whatever you might say about the SEC’s performance in the College Football Playoff the past few seasons — and, there are plenty of wisecracks to make — Greg Sankey still garners widespread respect and wields power within the commissioner ranks, while his Big Ten counterpart Tony Petitti occupies the lane of fly in the ointment.

These two commissioners of rival super-conferences each have one hand on the wheel of playoff expansion. They remain divided on the destination.

If the Big Ten and SEC cannot agree on an expanded playoff format by a Jan. 23 deadline, the current 12-team format is set to continue for the 2026 season.

Sankey wants 16 teams. He’s used his bully pulpit to campaign for that landing place.

This will test Sankey’s influence. His playoff preference aligns with that of the ACC and Big 12, for whatever that’s worth, but he cannot expand the playoff to 16 without the Big Ten’s support.

“The move to 16 should be a priority for all of us in conference leadership,” Sankey said in mid-November.

The Big Ten, best we can tell, doesn’t care for 16. Or, at least, it opposes the 5+11 format supported by the SEC, ACC and Big 12.

Can SEC get Big Ten on board with 16-team CFP format?

A 5+11 format would expand the 12-team playoff by adding four at-large bids. The past two seasons, the Big Ten would not have qualified any additional teams, if a 5+11 format had been in place.

Petitti makes fewer public remarks than his Power Four peers, making it more difficult to gauge the Big Ten’s truest and latest desires. The Big Ten’s playoff preferences have shifted so frequently you start to wonder whether Petitti is all that serious about expanding the bracket beyond its current size and shape, or whether he’s just presenting untenable ideas to prolong the current format.

The Big Ten’s current preference? It wants 24 teams, according to multiple reports.

In other words, he wants a pathway for 8-4 Iowa to make the playoff.

Greg Sankey usually gets what he wants

Sankey is accustomed to getting what he wants in playoff talks. The SEC dominated the four-team playoff for a decade, and Sankey staunchly opposed an eight-team playoff proposal loaded up with automatic bids.

Sankey wanted either an eight-team bracket with no auto bids or to grow the field to 12, with the latter creating several more at-large bids for the SEC to chase than an eight-team format that included auto bids would have had.

The playoff went to 12. Sankey served as one of the architects of this format.

After the Big Ten raided the Pac-12 and turned that conference into a husk, Sankey swiftly took a spot at the vanguard of altering the 12-team bracket from its initially approved 6+6 format to 5+7, creating another at-large bid. He got his wish.

He took one look at the 12-team playoff, and, after Boise State and Arizona State received first-round byes last year, Sankey called for structural change, so that the top four teams got byes, regardless of whether they were conference champs.

Once again, he lobbied successfully, although that change did not substantially benefit the SEC this season.

At every turn up, Sankey has achieved his goals. His maneuverings included some upsides for conference peers, too.

The 12-team playoff ensured Group of Five representation. The Big Ten is thriving in this structure. The ACC and Big 12 continue to earn representation, which wouldn’t always have been the case if the playoff had stayed at four teams.

Sankey, since the summer, has tried to advance the ball on a 5+11 model. It’s debatable whether playoff expansion would help the SEC end its national championship drought, but, the past two seasons, four extra at-large bids would’ve meant three additional SEC qualifiers last season, and two extra from the SEC this year.

So, you can see why he’d like 16. Four more at-large spots would grease the wheels for the SEC teams that finish 9-3, a record that could become more common next season after the conference adds a ninth conference game.

Sankey has had a yearslong preference of nine conference games. His conference membership resisted for a while, but Sankey eventually achieved the outcome he desired.

Sankey, in his capacity as SEC commissioner, has earned a reputation as “the person that can get things done,” Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione told me before this season.

That quote wasn’t specific to playoff negotiations, but the shoe fits. Generally, Sankey gets his way, but these latest CFP talks are proving to be one of his toughest negotiations.

Twelve works for the Big Ten. If the SEC won’t bite on 24, there’s no obvious reason for Petitti to suddenly embrace a 5+11 model he’s steadfastly resisted.

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.

The man has accomplished virtually everything imaginable on the basketball court.

He’s an NBA champion, but on this day, he wants to talk about the Texas Rangers’ World Series championship.

He’s a 10-time All-Star and six-time first team All-NBA player, but is reminiscing about the lunch he had one day with Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez.

He’s a two-time Olympic gold medal winner, but is looking forward to the upcoming World Baseball Classic.

He is considered one of the greatest players in basketball history, but worships his three favorite Oakland A’s heroes: Vida Blue, Rickey Henderson and Dave Stewart.

He was a teammate in the Olympics with Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Kevin Garnett, but still is in awe of taking batting practice one afternoon with Mark McGwire when the St. Louis Cardinals came to Phoenix.

He has been the head coach for three NBA franchises, but reveres Baseball Hall of Fame manager Tony LaRussa.

He’s in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, but was thrilled to see Vallejo, California, native CC Sabathia inducted last summer into Baseball’s Hall of Fame.

He is NBA Hall of Famer Jason Kidd, head coach of the Dallas Mavericks.

He’s on the phone Wednesday afternoon, hours before the Mavericks played the Denver Nuggets at home, and is talking all things baseball.

Yes, one of the greatest point guards in NBA history is a fanatical baseball fan.

He can tell you all about Randy Johnson’s Cy Young seasons, Barry Bonds’ home runs and Henderson’s stolen bases.

He was a baseball player himself, right up until college when he snubbed powers like Kentucky and Kansas to enroll at Cal-Berkeley, where he grew up, largely because he was promised he could play basketball and baseball.

“I grew up loving baseball,’’ said Kidd, a catcher and outfielder. “I love it. That’s one of the reasons I came to Cal, because they said I could play baseball after basketball season. I never got the opportunity, though. When I was working out with the guys in basketball, they advised me to pass on baseball in case I got hurt.

“It’s one of the few times I listened.’’

Kidd became a star at Cal, was drafted with the No. 2 pick by the Mavericks, was co-rookie of the year with Grant Hill, and became a superstar in the NBA.

Certainly, he knew he made the right choice picking basketball over baseball, but never lost his passion for baseball.

He is now launching JK Select Baseball, a nationwide youth baseball initiative under the umbrella of the Jason Kidd Foundation.

The program is designed to help create opportunities for kids to receive the best instruction for baseball while receiving mentorship and guidance, whether they want to pursue sports or other careers. Kidd hopes that the baseball initiative builds off the success of the JK Select Girls Basketball program, which has produced more than 45 NCAA Division I athletes.

“Watching the young ladies play basketball, I started wondering if I should participate in youth baseball,’ Kidd said. “I started talking to my wife and others who were in the baseball world. I thought if I could help in women’s youth basketball, I can help in youth baseball. This conversation started getting traction.’’

The baseball initiative will have a three-tiered model for athletes from 7 to 18 years old, emphasizing skill development and education. It will begin in the Dallas area, with hopes of expanding to Washington, California and Pennsylvania.

“I’m in a position to give back and with youth sports,’’ Kidd said, “and sometimes we forget how important coaches are. A lot of us were blessed to have good coaches to help us go where we want to go. That helps create not just athletes, but lawyers and doctors and teachers. If the coaches are better, our youth will be better.’’

Kidd, who played travel baseball himself − although those trips never went further than two hours and not two time zones − also has been reacquainted with youth baseball through his 15-year-old son, Chance. He’s a 6-foot-4, 225-pound catcher who has been drawing attention. He has been invited to MLB’s Dream Series this weekend in Tempe, Arizona, a program designed to help develop minority pitchers and catchers.

“I love watching baseball, it’s just such a great game,’’ Kidd said. “It’s a game of failure. How do you deal with failure? And learning how to deal with failure helps you in all phases of life.’’

Kidd, 52, marvels at the athletes who have been able to have success at both sports. He raves about Kenny Lofton, who led the University of Arizona to the Final Four in 1988, and became a six-time All-Star center fielder who played in the 1995 World Series with Cleveland. He teases Chris Young, the Texas Rangers’ president of baseball operations, saying he should have gone to the NBA. Young was an All-Ivy League center for Princeton’s basketball team before becoming an All-Star pitcher. Sabathia and Jimmy Rollins, who grew up in Oakland, were fabulous multi-sports athletes.

“Growing up in the Bay Area, we were rich in athletes that can play multiple sports,’’ Kidd said. “I’m hoping with our program, we can help kids do whatever they choose. If they don’t want to play sports, helping them become doctors and lawyers and teachers would be great, too.

“I just want to give them the opportunity to grow, not just as players, but as people.’’

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