On this Monday edition of SportsWrap with Jason Page, weβre breaking down all the big stories from the weekend in sports:
π NFL Week 4 Reactions
The Chiefs thump the Ravens β are Mahomes & Co. starting to figure things out?
The Eagles move to 4-0 β is their record as good as it looks?
The Bills improve to 4-0, looking like contenders again.
The Cowboys & Packers tie 40-40 β what do we really learn from a tie? Are they good for the NFL?
β³ Ryder Cup Recap
Europe keeps the cup in dominant fashion, but what does another U.S. loss say about the state of golf in America?
π College Football with Bill Bender (Sporting News)
Is Penn State cooked after a loss to Oregon?
Is Alabama back after their road win over Georgia?
βΎ MLB Playoffs Set
Wild Card series begin Tuesday.
The Mets collapse and miss the postseason β Sam Yarnell has strong words about New Yorkβs 2nd-half disaster.
πποΈ Odds & Ends
WNBA playoff drama.
NASCAR Playoff win in Kansas for one of the sportβs most popular drivers.
π Donβt miss todayβs SportsWrap β your daily wrap of the NFL, College Football, MLB, NBA, WNBA, Golf, NASCAR & more!
#nfl #mlb #golf #collegefootball #sports #trending
It’s time for the best coverage of the top stories in sports. The Sports Rap with Jason Paige starts now on a Monday. Great to have you all with us all across America and Canada. Lots to do over the next 60 minutes. I We need to make Mondays like a 2hour show. That’s the only way we’d be able to get it all in. We’ll do the best we can. Don’t worry if if there’s anything we don’t cover in the NFL today, we’ll get to it tomorrow in our weekend leftovers segment. Uh our friend Bill Bender drops in quickly. Uh we’ll just do a segment with him today on the college football. Talk about Penn State, Oregon, Alabama uh in Georgia as well. Also get his thoughts on Florida State being uh beaten by Virginia as well. Um Sammy Arnell is here again. Tons to get to from around the National Football League. By the way, if you’re not tailing Jason Paige right now, you’re missing out. Three of the first four weeks we went three and one uh on my NFL picks. Uh one week we had a one and three. A little blip on the radar, but we’ve been pretty good uh overall. Sam two and two this week. Uh make sure you’re tailing him as well for all sorts of picks uh when it comes to the NFL. You can see his uh screen name there on X at Sam Jarnell. And Sam, we get things started in the NFL and let’s talk about it. um Ravens and Chiefs get to the Eagles as well who remain unbeaten. But start with the Ravens because we all knew this was going to be, you know, a game where somebody came out one and three unless they played to a tie like the Cowboys uh and the Packers did last night. You know, that somebody was going to come out of this one and three. It’s the Ravens and they don’t just come out at one and three. They come out at one and three and they are bruised and battered mentally right now. Yeah. My gosh, man. And I can’t wait cuz you just know this is coming down the line. So, I just got to get out ahead of this as quickly as I possibly can. You just know in 6 to 8 weeks when the Ravens have won a few more games and are probably on the outside looking in at the playoffs that everyone’s going to try and look back at this Chiefs game and discount it uh as bad of a loss as it was for the Ravens because Lamar Jackson missed like what the last quarter of the game. Uh there you that narrative will never be perpetuated. He looked horrible in this game. Uh I got a lot of takeaways from the Baltimore Ravens, but I’m just getting out out ahead of this cuz Ravens fans have a propensity to look back on the past with a little bit of tinted glasses, right? And we are not going to let them say that, oh, this game didn’t matter. Lamar Jackson didn’t play in it. The Ravens are still contenders. Guess what? They’re not. Um, my first reaction and my honest reaction watching this game is, wow. Like, like this is how the John Harbaugh era is going to end. It’s going to end with a midseason firing uh of a guy who was coaching a team with Super Bowl aspirations with a quarterback who should be in contention for an MVP. But my gosh, I I don’t see how you can go on any longer if you’re that franchise with this head coach. Jason, the Ravens are completely lost. And I I don’t know how you have any other takeaway watching what they put on the field yesterday. There is I will I will unequivocally say there is no way they fire him mid-season. They will not disrespect his legacy and what he’s done for that franchise as a head coach midseason. That will not happen. Second, I actually Sam, as crazy as it’s going to sound at 1 and three, when you look at the rest of the AFC, Jacksonville 3-1, are you buying in on Jacksonville yet? I told everybody, by the way, before the season started, the under the radar team, they’ve been really good defensively, but are you ready to buy in on Jacksonville yet? We know what Cincinnati is with Jake Browning at quarterback. The Chiefs are one game better than the Raven than the Ravens are right now. Are you ready to say you’re sold on New England at 2 and two? Denver at 1 and two, Las Vegas at 1 and3, Houston at 1 and three, there are still going to be opportunities for this Ravens team to potentially get into the playoffs. I know I know it looks bleak at 1 and three, but I’m not I’m not ready to uh to throw this team uh to the curb right now and say that they’re not making the playoffs. Sam, not ready to do it. All right. Well, we’ll listen. I mean, listen, it I don’t I don’t have the numbers in front of me on how hard it is for one and three teams to make the playoffs, but but it’s not easy. No. Right. You you’ve gone from you’ve gone from playing in the NFL to now if you’re the Baltimore Ravens, I’m sorry, you’re playing in college football. You can’t lose a game the rest of the season cuz if you do, the hounds are coming for you and you’re probably going to miss the playoffs. You got to play almost a perfect season from here on out. if you’re the Baltimore Ravens cuz you still got to build in for a loss or two. So yeah, their football has to be perfect from here on out and they haven’t played perfect football outside of maybe one and a half quarters all season. So no, I’m not going to buy on that team to all of a sudden turn it around. It’s remarkable to think about where that team was what midway through the fourth quarter of week one and where they are now. It’s it’s a it’s a remarkable thing to look at. Um, talk about the uh from the Chief’s perspective, huge win for them. Mahomes played like Mahomes. Uh, you could see what Xavier Worthy and getting him back. Um, obviously meant to that team. Uh, congratulations to the Chiefs. They have writed their season. They’re two and two. Eagles. Oh, they’ve writed the season. They’ve writed the season. They’re going to be a playoff team. This this RA this is a Ravens defense that has given up what? Let’s just 38. This is the fewest points the Ravens have given up all year. That’s hilarious. Uh, no, I’m not buying back into the Chiefs because they looked like themselves as a playoff not even as a playoff team against a statistically like one of the worst defenses in the NFL right now. They’ll probably make the playoffs like I’ve been saying cuz they’ve got a deal that they made a very long time ago with the Devil, but I don’t think they’re going to win their division. And I certainly don’t think they’re them former they’re their they are their former selves. I’m not buying on the Chiefs yet. Two and two, just a game out uh in that AFC West. Give me a thought on the Eagles now at 4-0. You’ve got two 4-0 teams and we’ll get to the Bills coming up in about uh 15 minutes or so, but the Eagles are 4-0. They win on the road again. They do the fake tush push uh and get a couple of scores that way. And teams are saying, “Hey, we’re going to take away Saquon Barkley and make Jaylen Herz beat us essentially.” And in the second half of yesterday’s game, Jaylen Herz in that passing game, they weren’t beating anybody, Sam, but they managed to get a win on the road against a good, not great football team. A a very, very good Buccaneers team that was very injured. And I think people tended to forget about that at about halftime of that game for the for whatever reason. Real quick, last four quarters for the Eagles passing game uh in terms of passing yards. First half against the Rams -1. Second half against the Rams 203. First half against the Bucks 130. Second half against the Bucks8. Something’s not right in Philadelphia. I’d love to have something not be right and be 4 and0. I would look, everybody’s got their warts. Everybody has their warts. And we’ll get to what I mean about that coming up in about 15 minutes on the show. But we got to talk about the RDER Cup. It was a wild scene in New York this weekend. We’ll get to it next. [Music] Now, there’s not a world where in the month of September, late September, there’s not a world where we’d ever be talking about golf in the BB block segment two of the show, except if it’s the RDER Cup, and especially this RDER Cup. uh with Europe taking down the US 1513 uh in a score that was much closer than what it actually was especially after the first two days uh of this event Sam but I have to tell you yesterday so let me let me set the scene in the Paige household yesterday we’re watching this thing and I don’t know what the odds were on the US to win the RDER Cup at the beginning of the day I know like five or six holes into these matches though it was like plus 5,000 for the US to win. And at some point it actually got down to like plus 200 on the US to win, which tells you just how damn close this thing got. And that the odds makers and the live betting kind of shifted um so dramatically throughout the course of the afternoon. And I’m just sitting there staring at my screen going, “Man, am I going to kill myself for not, you know, um, betting on the US when I saw it at plus 5,000?” Glad I didn’t cuz they didn’t wind up winning. Um, but Sam, your overall thoughts, uh, on the RDER Cup, I’ll let you go first. They never had a chance. Like my gosh, my takeaway from them offering all these plus money prices on the US that were all horrible, 50 to1 was horrible and plus 230 was horrible. You know why? Because all of those sports books that are putting out those lines operate in the United States of America where everybody wants to bet on the United States of America and they can build all those massive beautiful buildings out in your neck of the woods because all of these people that are just so USA foolish. No, the USA never had a chance. And I don’t know why this because Europe came out honestly hung over on Sunday as they should have been after the dominance they put out through the first two days of this tournament. They came out hung over because they knew they were going to win this tournament if they sleepwalked through the final day, which they did and they still won. Uh we’ll get to the crowd thing in a second cuz there definitely is something to be said about that. But from a pure golf perspective, this was never close. And it’s really upsetting to me as as an American and a general fan of American sports that the US Golf Association is going to get away with not having to change too much before the next RDER Cup cuz they were absolutely horrible through the first two days of this Ryder Cup. And again, the only reason they made it as close as it was was because Europe came into the final day knowing they didn’t have to try to retain the cup. So, no surprise. You knew this was going to happen. If you listen to the show, I don’t know what all this hype was about the the US team just cuz they had one good player who by the way didn’t show up in this. Oh my god. Scotty Sheoffller takes the biggest hit of anybody coming out of this thing. Because if you want to look at a 1513 final score, you could look at Scotty Sheoffller and say, “Yeah, you cost us. You cost us.” And if you look at the first two days, Friday and Saturday, he had several opportunities where he hit bad golf shots in big moments. And for all the Scotty Sheffller talk, I don’t want to hear anything about Scotty Sheffler. best of this, best of that because he wet the bed in a big way this weekend. And anyone who That’s the thing, right? Is anyone who came into this tournament thinking that America was going to win, the logic behind it was, well, they’ve got the best player in the world. Don’t care that Europe’s got number 2, 3, 4, 5, uh, 7, 10, 11, and 12. But, you know, US has the best player in the world, so they’re going to win the tournament. That’s not how this kind of thing works. I hope this is a lesson to everybody, but it won’t be because no one’s going to hold the US golf association uh accountable for the mistakes that they made along the way. And a moment for Captain Keegan and the absolute meltdown that was both afternoon sessions, Sunday a little bit better than Saturday, but I mean, they should have fired the guy Saturday afternoon just off the fact that he essentially rerolled the same pairings. Yep. And I’ll tell you another thing and and he took he took he took a little flack from this or gave it to himself. He said, “We set up the course too easy.” That was not the Beth Page Black we know. That was not the Beth Paige Black that we know. Now granted, both guys are playing on the both teams are playing on the same course. So there’s, you know, there’s no excuses in that regard. But if you’re going to play Beth Page Black, play Beth Page Black. Don’t play a watered down version of Beth Page Black. You’re right. I think that for me from Keegan, it was every excuse in the book this weekend because after it was the, “Oh, we didn’t set the course up hard enough.” Well, first of all, you set the course up strategically because you thought that Europe wasn’t going to be able to bomb the ball the way your team was, so you cut down the rough. And oh well, turns out they’ve got Tier Hatton and John Ro who can hit the absolute nuts out of the ball. So anyway, uh the other thing out of Keegan that I couldn’t stand was the whole envelope thing at the end and now they’re you know copious amounts of talking heads of which I am one uh on your TV screen today talking about how this envelope rule has to be revoked and oh my gosh the US lost because Victor Havlin pulled out with an injury and have okay so I got news for you first of all learn ball because this started in the 70s right the envelope rule and in 1991 it helped the US win the RDER Cup. It It is the reason the US won the Ryder Cup, as a matter of fact. So, I’m done with that excuse. And we’ve only got two minutes to get to the the crowd that everybody seems to not be to be talking about on from she sea to shining sea the other way, right? The whole world’s talking about all these people on Long Island and how they treated these international golfers. Wow. Breaking news. Long Island does not offer America’s finest human beings. I I mean, it’s like we’re surprised here. As somebody who spent a large percentage of my life living on Long Island, I can attest probably the worst place to have a Ryder Cup if you’re trying to show the good that a country can have. Um, on the fans thing, let’s not pretend that Europeans at RDER Cups don’t get on US players, too, though. This was to a different degree, and it was bad. And you know, you had players get you had fans getting arrested, fans getting thrown out. It was not a good look. Uh Jason, it’s because they were Met fans. They were mad about the Marlins games. Fair enough. On the Victor Havlin thing, let me just say this though. You got that big a lead. The guy played on Friday and Saturday. Get out there and play on Sunday. That’s that I mean, that’s my point. And then I don’t want to see you laughing and yucking it up and and hiding behind other guys and smiling on the 18th green after your guys win the RDER Cup. I don’t want I don’t want to see that. I don’t want to see that shot. I don’t want to see that video because it only pisses me off more. The US didn’t lose because of it, but it still wasn’t a great look that they went and took that half point when Havlin probably could have been out there um playing on Sunday. I am and and I hope the 1513 final score doesn’t take um Keegan Bradley off the hook because he certainly doesn’t deserve to be taken off the hook. He did a horrible job in this RDER Cup. We’re coming back. [Music] Welcome back to the show and great to have you with us on this Monday. Bill Bender joins us in 10 minutes to talk college football. I was eating steak out on the patio on uh Saturday night Sam Yardell watching Penn State in Oregon. And it started raining. It doesn’t rain in Las Vegas. While I’m eating steak on the patio, it started raining. Had to go run and find cover. I know. It was play the lottery. Exactly. Do you know how what the odds of that are? It rains like twice a year there, doesn’t it? Train a little. It’s We get a little drizzle for shisel once in a while. It’s not uh you know, it’s not it’s not it’s not always it’s not always sunny in Las Vegas. Cut that out of the show. Cut that one out of the show. That one’s got to get left on the cutting room floor. Drizzle faux shizzle. I might I might enhance it now. I might put I might put an echo on it. Um all right, let’s talk about a couple other games from uh from Sunday in the NFL. And again, if we don’t get to your team today, don’t worry. We’re going to get to it tomorrow uh in weekend leftovers. I I’m I’m starting to think about just never booking guests on Tuesdays and just doing NFL straight up because there’s so much to talk about. So, uh Sam, let’s talk about the Bills improving to 4-0. Um it wasn’t it wasn’t anything pretty or glamorous uh against the Saints. And I don’t know what the numbers are and I I’d have to go and look at the the standings. Let me see about New Orleans. Obviously, they’re winless. I wanted to see what their points for. Wow, they’re might they’re a minus 55. One of those has to be from one game though cuz it feels like they’ve played a lot of close games. All right, I’m done talking about the Saints. They’re 0 and4. Uh let’s talk about Buffalo at 4 and0. Sam, they lost by 31 to the Seahawks. So outside of that, right, like three games combined by 20 points, not bad. Like they they have a chance to be a cover machine this year. I’m worried about the Bills. I’m worried about the Bills. You should be. Uh the Bills don’t look good. The Bills, uh I’m not going to say they’re the worst looking 4-0 team in the National Football League. I mean, we just got done talking about the Philadelphia Eagles and the disarray that and we didn’t even talk about the fact that AJ Brown’s out there tweeting after the game, trade me already. Um but but uh but yeah, the Bills the Bills did like the Bills are the opposite of the Eagles, man. It’s so funny. The Eagles are like they’ll put it together decently well at least for like a half at a time uh on the field, but that franchise is just disarray off the field. Like you know that there are countless problems in that locker room. They’re Domandro is putting out fires on a daily basis. There’s the reason there’s a reason they pay that man the way they do in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, the Bills are like the chief Capital Vibes team. Like nobody is going to break the power of friendship that the Buffalo Bills have behind this unicorn superhero quarterback in Josh Allen. Uh but oh by the way they play like a JV football team when anybody hands the ball off to a semi good running back. Like this is the most confusing Super Bowl contender I can remember us seeing in recent memory. Cuz like I’m not going to sit here and say again I’m not going to say they’re the worst 4 and0 team in the NFL. They’re not. But they’re certainly not I’m also not going to say they’re not the best team in the NFL cuz I think there’s an argument that they are. But Jason, my point is this. They’ve got to do something about this run defense if they want to not have what’s happened the last five years happen to this team. I think we are so used to in this league. I think I can I can I can I can I say this to you, Sam? I think you’re spoiled. I think you’re I think you’re spoiled. I think we’re so used to I think we’re so used to somebody especially by the end of week four, which is usually where you could start stamping things. You could start feeling comfortable stamping things after week four. And we’re so used to being able to stamp week four contender, Super Bowl, the top of the heap. And we just can’t do it this year. We just can’t do it. That’s sort of where we are through the first four weeks of this season. and and the expectations, you know, Green Bay through two weeks. You want to crown them, then crown them. We were ready to crown Green Bay after the first two weeks of the season. And now we look after the last two weeks and we’re going, “Huh?” Like, what? What just happened here? Um I just think I think this thing is going to be when we by the time I still think it’s going to crystallize. I just think it’s going to take a little longer. We’re not baking it at 450. We’re baking it at 3:25. It’s a slow bake of whatever’s in the oven in the NFL right now, Sam. That’s sort of the I’m always thinking about food. So, that’s So, that’s where I’ll go with that. Um, Packers, we’re smoking it. You got to leave it out there overnight. You got to put it out there at 6:00 p.m. Check on it. Let it marinate. Let it marinate. If you want to make a good steak, you properly marinate it. Give me give me a thought on on the Packers uh and the Cowboys as well last night because the Cowboys are I’ll tell you we’ve never been more right about a team than we are about the Cowboys though. Uh if we could just do analysis on the Cowboys, we’d be fine because they are exactly what we thought they would be. They are fun on the offensive side and man do they suck on defense and and and hey, let’s go make a trade and trade away Michael Parsons and bring in a guy that can stop the run and then you can’t stop the run all night and you can’t stop anything on these little swing passes uh that the Packers are doing. What a wild football game. And may I just say this? I know they’ll never do it. We got to get rid of ties. I don’t want to see I don’t want to see a game that good end in a tie. And by that good I just mean entertaining. lots of scoring cuz from what I saw last night, neither of these teams are going anywhere. Disagree that tie was exhilarating. Uh and and that’s the thing, ties are exhilarating because they’re so rare and they’re so hard to get. I actually think that like the tie is one of the best parts of the NFL. And not only is it fun in the moment that we’re getting it, right, like watching uh uh Brandon Brandon Mcmanis or was it Brandon Aubrey? one of the Brandon kicking last night kicked that field goal as time expired and then again as time expired in overtime to tie the game. It was electric and now we got to enjoy it in the moment last night. But now come 15 weeks from now, not 15, 13 weeks from now when we’re trying to figure out all this playoff stuff, it just makes it that much more complicated and we have to think that much more like accountants and that’s always fun for all of us in the sports world. Um, the Packers defense is broken. Uh, as fun as it looked through the first week, half of the fir second half of the first week of the season, it’s not the same defense anymore. That’s the thing about defense in the NFL. It’s volatile. It changes like that. The Cowboys offense, it’s fun. Even without CD Lamb. Wow. Hi, George Pickkins. Nice to finally see you again. And I don’t believe in this Packers offense. I still Jordan Love just has a twinge of fraud in him. It was fun watching both those quarterbacks, man. Dak Prescott played a hell of a game. George Pickkins CD who they didn’t need him last night. George Pickkins looked really good. That was one of the encouraging things you take away if you’re the Cowboys. I don’t know what you do on defense if you’re that team. They’re going to give up a,000 points. We’re coming back. [Music] Welcome back to this Monday edition of the show. We’ve gone through the NFL. We’ve done some baseball. Now, let’s talk some college football because if it’s a Monday on the show, it means Bill Bender is here. Does a great job sporting news on all things college football. So, I was enjoying a juicy steak with my partner out on the patio on uh Saturday night and I said, “Hey, I got to turn on that Penn State Oregon game.” Boy, did I turn it on just in the nick of time uh for the late fourth quarter and then the overtime of that game. Bill, you were there. First of all, describe the atmosphere in the white out uh and this matchup between a couple of top 10 teams. Uh it it’s the best atmosphere in college football. Wow. It’s it it really is. It It’s unbelievable how loud it is. I think as Dan Lanning said, it’s worth a touchdown. And I buy that. There was a couple possessions where you thought, “Yeah, the crowd made a difference there.” Now, getting into the overtime, I here’s one thing I’ll say about James Franklin. We’re all reciting the stats about his top 10 losses and his losses to Big 10 teams, but uh I just think it magnifies the criticism. like he punted from his own 39 yd line on fourth and nine. You know what? If he if they miss a field goal, we’ll criticize him. If they go for it and miss, we criticize him. He’s in that unenviable spot where everything in a big game is magnified. Yeah, it certainly is. And um you know, they get away with um you know, they get they get this game into overtime uh and then Allard makes the the late interception in the in the second overtime. What was your overall impression on Allard in this game? I I like Drew Aller. I I think he’s super accountable. He’s a good kid. He’s had to show up for all these top 10 losses and talk about his play. I don’t think they have the guys on the outside for him to have like a Heisman Trophy season. All that said, you can’t make that throw in that spot, right? He tried to get it the the Oregon safety Dylan Theamman made an awesome play, but this just goes to show he struggles in these top 10 games. And there I you can feel it in that stadium, Jason. The frustration, the want to is there. It’s all there. It’s all there and and every time they push it looked like I thought they were going to win. I really did think they were going to win that game, but uh a testament to Dante Moore going in that environment knocking out two touchdowns in the the overtime session. Um the way Franklin handled it after the game basically, you know, I thought, you know, in a day and age where we get a Davos Swinny who gets, you know, ornery when he’s asked certain questions or um you know, uh the guy at LSU, his name is escaping me. BK. Yeah, BK. Um you know, you get Franklin up there and he took it, you know, and I guess you have to when when your record is what his record is against against, you know, top 10 opponents. How did you feel about the way Franklin sort of carried himself after this? I mean, I thought it was fine and and I it’s admirable in some ways and and again, here’s a guy that he’s going to wear the criticism and Drew Aller is going to wear the criticism, but you know, it’s it’s a tough opponent at home and I think one of the things with Penn State, it is a blueb blood program, but they they’ve got to start winning some of those games. Their next opportunity won’t be well, it might be against Indiana before Ohio. you know that Indiana Ohio State, they play these two top 10 games and I think those will be pivotal for the program. I think James Franklin is a very good coach in a very tough spot because they just can’t win those games. But I accept the accountability. I’m accountability. I have accountability for going six and 10 against the spread last week. But I I should be seven and nine. But I blame I can blame Fernando Mendoza for that. All right, let’s talk about Alabama because we all had them dead and buried after basically their first game of the year. Rightly so. Um or maybe not rightly so. I don’t know. But but give me a thought here on on Alabama going into Georgia and and going into Athens and beating uh a team that hasn’t lost at home in a long time. It’s not out of question to consider them the SEC favorite now, which really what we’re doing. I think we can. Um I mean they beat Georgia. They end that 33game win streak. They’ve they’ve got a quarterback with 11 touchdowns and no interceptions. That Florida State loss was out of conference. And uh you know, Kalin for all the the road wos 14-2 in against ranked opponents. That’s the opposite of Franklin. 14-2 since his last two seasons at Washington. Um I think they’re going to take it to Vanderbilt, too. That’s an unpopular take. I I think uh you know the Commodores are very popular around Diego Pavia, but we remember Nick Sabin in the re revenge games. Here’s another kind of barometer for Kellen Dbor to be measured against. Um on a scale of one to five, I didn’t know we’d have this much time. So, so I’m actually kind of happy. On a scale of one to five, your level of shock with Virginia doing what it did against Florida State, three and a half. Okay. Because I I I mean getting out I knew they had a good offense. I didn’t think they’d get out 14- nothing. And then when Florida State evened the game, you’d kind of figure, okay, the Seminals will take over. But credit to Tony Elliot, they kept it on the ground. They kind of exposed a average Florida State run defense, and that’s something I think Miami will take advantage of this week. Here’s one quick thing. The students got to be careful not to get on the field go before that final whistle blows. That was really close. Horrifying. I I I don’t know how the I don’t know how the guys in the end zone didn’t get trampled. Like I I don’t that was that was one of the most surreal things uh that I’ve watched. Uh Arkansas gets dusted by Notre Dame and then there’s all sorts of uh coaching upheaval there. There’s all sorts of uh coaching upheaval over there uh with Bobby Petrino overhauling that staff Bill. Yeah, I I think they’re going to want Red Lashley. That’s going to be the coveted coach, the former Arkansas quarterback who’s done a nice job at SMU. We get to watch Bobby Patrino coach. You want to talk about a surreal world. Bobby Patrino is back on the sideline for Arkansas. He had some success there the first time around before the uh you know the incident that got him fired. I’ll leave it at that. But I mean he took him to a Sugar Bowl. He’s good play caller and it’s just a reminder that life in this SEC this new SEC can be very difficult for some of those middle class programs. Hey, Notre Dame one. What do you know? Uh, Bill Bender, our friend over at the Sporting News, doing a great job as always on college football. Telling you, I still can’t get over all these coaches getting fired uh in college football. Bill, always appreciate you, my man. Have a great week. We’ll do it again next week. Hey, thank you. Appreciate it. We’re back with more Sports Rap on a Monday. [Applause] [Music] Odds and ends wraps it up in 10 minutes. A little bit of NASCAR and a little bit of WNBA. We had to we had to forsake the NASCAR segment that we normally do on Mondays cuz there’s just too much going on. Apologies to Brian Twining. He’s over it though. All right, let’s talk baseball. The playoffs are set. They’ll get on underway on Tuesday. Oh, look at that. Look at that evil maniacal stare from uh Sam Jarnell, ladies and gentlemen. Uh that’s your next meme. All right, Sam. Uh a word on the New York Mets from Sam Yarnell, ladies and gentlemen. Ah, the New York Mets, a baseball club, an organization, a franchise that goes together with baseball in September, the same way one would mix oil and say water. The same way one would mix fall and spring, two things that just don’t go together. They never will. They never have. The same thing that we saw in 2005 and then again in 2007, we saw once again over the weekend in 2025. 20 years and times remains a flat circle for Met fans. The same story, the same type of season, a historic roster, a historic payroll, one of the best free agents we’ve ever seen of all time. And you didn’t even make the expanded playoff. My goodness. And I don’t just say the team, I say the organization, the franchise, dare I say the burrow, dare I say the city. We’ll get to that on a later show. But I say more than just the team cuz it was just more than the team. It wasn’t just the guys on the field or the guys on the bench or the manager in the dugout. It was the guys in the booth. They couldn’t even hold themselves together over the last month of the season. What did they say after that game yesterday? I’m I’m watching the Marlins. They just took a team picture in front of their dugout like they’re going to the postseason. This was their World Series. They took two out of three. Knocked the Mets out of the postseason. We saw the Reds celebrating in Milwaukee. It was their World Series. He’s exactly right. as it should have been because because of this wonderful three-game series to end this beautiful month of September, the Miami Marlins assured themselves of one thing that the New York Mets will be watching the World Series from the very same place they will. Punaana on three, New York, congratulations on Juan Sodto. Very well said, Sam. I wonder if Juan Sodto, remember when he signed with the Mets and everybody lost their minds in New York when he said the reason he went to go play with the Mets was gave him the best chance to win. I wonder how he’s feeling about that on Monday morning. Remember that? He was like going to play with the Mets. Best chance to win. And I have to say, by the way, I’ll take a little bit of a hit because I thought the way the Mets roster was set up that long term, I actually thought he was right. And now after watching what’s transpired here this season, I couldn’t have been more wrong uh about this Mets team that underachieved horrendously. And somebody’s going to have to be offered up as a sacrifice. And it ain’t gonna be Juan Sodto and it ain’t gonna be Francisco Lindor. I don’t know if Alonzo will be back with this team next year or not. He’s probably gone. Um, somebody’s gonna have to be offered up as a sacrifice and it’s not going to be Frank the Tank. It’s probably it’s it’s probably it’s although well, never mind. Uh, I’m not going to say the only Mets fan I like. Frank I know. I know. And he gives us lots of entertainment. He really does. Um, and he was losing his mind yesterday, as you could imagine. He torn his shirt off. He looked like it was beautiful. I loved it. That guy loves ball. Um, but it’s going to probably be Carlos Mendoza. And if it’s not, then the then Mets fans are going to probably storm the gates of City Field. They’re going to storm the gates of City Field. I mean, you can count on it if Carlos Mendoza isn’t out of a job. Um, final thoughts on on the way this whole thing sets up. You’re going to get Yankees Red Sox in the wildard round. Uh, which is kind of crazy unto itself that that’s cinema. It absolutely is. Uh, and you’re going to get Freed versus Crochet in game one at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night. I can’t wait for that. Uh, Tigers Guardians get to reacquaint themselves with each other because they’re meeting up too. Boy, isn’t the wild card round great? We’ve got a bunch of divisional rivals. Uh, Padres’s Cubs should be fantastic. And hey man, say a prayer for the Reds that they that they don’t get absolutely destroyed by the Los Angeles Dodgers uh in that wildard round. Ah, I don’t want to say it. I did I I did place two wagers on the baseball postseason already. Of course you did. No, no, no, no. I I placed a major multiple unit. I’m super confident in this play wager on the Cincinnati or not the Cincinnati Reds, I’m sorry. the National League to win the World Series. You can find it at multiple shops in like the minus 118US 120 range. This is a bet that I’ve made. This will be like the second year in a row. I’m very confident in the National League this year in terms of the talent gap. I took the Cleveland Guardians to win the World Series. Give me the hot team. What number did you to one 22 to1 33 to1 some multiple of 11 to1 and it wasn’t 11. Yankees minus 178 to beat the Red Sox. The Cubs minus 124 to beat the Padres’s. Padres’s plus 106 in that series. Basically dead even. Tigers -12. Guardians – 104 in that series. You can get the Reds at +200. Sam Jarnell, the Dodgers at minus 245. [Music] October baseball, it’s here. We can’t wait. We’ll be talking about it. I can promise you. But you know what we’re talking about coming up in about 10 minutes. No, even less than that. Like four or five minutes by now. We’re get into the WNBA. One series in the conference semifinals left to be decided. NASCAR 2. [Music] All right, we keep things moving on this Monday edition of Sports Rap. Before we wrap things up, get you some odds and ends. Couple of reminders. If you have not done so yet, make sure to subscribe to the Sports Rap with Jason Page podcast. It’s available on all your favorite podcasting platforms. Spotify, Apple Podcast, YouTube Podcasts, iHeart Radio, TuneIn, Odyssey, Amazon. Anywhere you get a podcast, you can listen to this show in fantastic, mostly crystal clear audio. Uh, Monday through Friday, 45 minutes commercial free, planes, trains, automobiles, wherever you want to listen. Make sure to check out the show. You can also watch us on over 270 affiliates around the US and Canada. And that includes all sorts of great regional sports networks around the country. Uh, we love you guys. Always appreciate you watching. But if you also want to consume the show uh and you can’t get to a TV or don’t have the opportunity to to watch it, maybe it gets preempted, there could be live sports on on a given night, you can also watch this show on our YouTube channel, the Sports Rap with Jason Page YouTube channel. It is there for you. Uh clips from the show, sometimes clips not from the show. Sports Rap Shorts are red hot right now. Uh if you are not subscribed to us on YouTube, you’re missing out on Sports Rap Shorts. Make sure to go and check those out as well. And without any further delay on this Monday, Sam Yarnell, time for some odds and ends. Odds and ends, Sam Jarnell. The WNBA playoffs. One half of the WNBA Finals is set. It will be the Phoenix Mercury advancing to the WNBA Finals in a year that was kind of a rebuild year for them where they sort of tore it down. They, you know, they sent Britney Grinder out, Diana Terrasi retired, and all a sudden, you turn around, the Phoenix Mercury, uh, back in the WNBA finals for the first time in a while. Uh, they will take on the winner of the Indiana Fever Las Vegas Aces series, which is going to go to a fifth game, which we’ll get to in a second. But first, a thought on what transpired in this Lynx Mercury series where Nfishia Kier uh was injured on a on a physical play, but I didn’t think it was a dirty play or anything like that. Um you had officiating getting criticized as it has been throughout this entire season, but Phoenix in the WNBA finals and Minnesota’s going home. Yeah. I mean, it was really what was it Friday when Fee hurt left ankle? Thursday or Friday? Yeah. Um, yeah. I mean, it was you don’t ever want to say that that like deflates an entire team because it’s basketball, but like it did. Uh, I think it’s weird that like we’ve had very similar circumstances now in the NBA and WNBA. That was like my immediate thought was obviously the the Tatum thing was a little bit different, but like same round of the playoffs, right? To go with the finals on the line. Um, I don’t know, just a weird moment of discrepancy there in the time space continuum. Uh, but regardless, you know, good good series by the by the Mercury. You know, just cuz FE went down, by no means did it mean the Mercury’s, you know, had the series in their laps, but they went out and they won it for themselves. So, good for them. I’m locked into this Aces Fever series, Jason. I cannot wait to see who the winner of this game five is. Yeah, it’s going to be interesting. And I it I’ll tell you what else is interesting. If Indiana that’s that’s too close. You just backto back it. I stink. Uh Indiana if they wind up in the WNBA finals the the pressure on that team next year and on Caitlyn Clark to not go backwards because people are going to say well I mean you add Caitlyn Clark now. All of this is is fallacy in in a lot of different ways. the idea that you add Caitlyn Clark next year means they should automatically go and be in a WNBA Finals team or something like that. The whole chemistry and composition of the team changes when you insert Caitlyn Clark into it. Now, some may argue if they don’t make the WNBA finals next year with Caitlyn Clark or if they’re not near the WNBA Finals next year with Caitlyn Clark, it will somehow be an indictment on her, which I don’t necessarily think is fair. um Sam. But yeah, game five uh for a trip to the WNBA finals with the Aces uh who are obviously a perennial powerhouse in in Indiana. It should be fun to watch. Yeah. Just real quick on the Clark thing, I think if she does, if there is a world where Indiana makes it to the finals this year and and then they don’t live up to expectations next year, I I know the circumstances are a little bit different, but it feels reminiscent of uh like the Elena Deodon uh situation from when she moved to Chicago to Washington, however many years ago that was. But but yeah, I I mean, listen, the Asia thing is very very very very underrated in terms of a narrative. I think it would be very very cool to see her win MVP and WNBA finals MVP in the same season. I’ll be locked in, man. The W’s got my attention this week. That game will be on Tuesday night in Las Vegas. I might actually have to go to that game Tuesday night. And I have yet to go to a live sporting event other than NASCAR here uh since I moved to Las Vegas a year ago because I just hate crowds. Crazy that that’s the only one you’ve been to. I know. I know. I just I don’t like crowds. I don’t like fighting crowds. Uh, speaking of NASCAR, by the way, Chase Elliott, your winner in overtime on Sunday at Kansas Speedway, came from eighth to win the checkered flag. They had overtime there in that race. My boy Bubba Wallace had a shot uh to win and unfortunately didn’t pick up the victory, but Chase Elliot, your winner, as they get ready to cut it down to eight for NASCAR’s playoffs. That’s going to do it for us on this Monday edition of the show. Send all of your correspondences, uh, those of you in the South to our friend Sam Yardell, Sam_yardell. He will take them on anything you want to talk to him about. It’s going to do it for us. Thanks to Bill Bender. We’ll see you back here tomorrow. And one more note before we go because there just isn’t enough news today. Bob Melvin out as manager for the San Francisco Giants after two seasons. He was 161 and 163. And this was just after Buster Posey, the GM there, gave him a vote of confidence a few months ago. Goes to show you what that is worth. All right, now we are really done. See y’all back here on Tuesday for another edition of Sports Rap. [Music]
