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The College Football Playoff selection committee enters its final two weeks of deliberation with a host of consequential decisions thrust on the 13 members. (1) Who are the final at-large selections into the field? (2) Which teams receive a first-round game at home? (3) Which four conference champions receive a first-round bye? The first two are causing plenty of angst. But it is the third stress point that, perhaps, offers the most intriguing debate. The five highest-ranked conference champions earn a bid into the 12-team field, and the top four champions are seeded Nos. 1-4 and receive a bye into the quarterfinals. Many presumed that the champions of the four power leagues would annually get those first-round byes. The CFP selection committee’s last rankings paint a different picture. In , Boise State (10-1) was ahead of all Big 12 teams, paving the way for the Broncos to receive the No. 4 seed and the first-round bye in a Group of Five-over-Power Four leap. Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark said such a decision would be the wrong one. “Based on where we sit today, I see no rationale for the Big 12’s champion not getting a first-round bye,” Yormark told Yahoo Sports. “The winner of our championship should receive a bye. I have a lot of trust in the selection committee and I’m sure they’ll see it that way. Just look at the data. The data doesn’t lie. From a strength-of-schedule standpoint, all four of our schools at the top of the standings are ranked ahead of Boise State.” At the center of the debate is a comparison not only of the individual teams but of the two leagues. The argument is fascinating in an era of college football where the power leagues continue to separate themselves from the five others: the Mountain West, Sun Belt, Conference USA, American and Mid-American. Yormark is loaded with Big 12 data points. His league has 42 wins over teams with a winning record. The Mountain West has 11 (five of those from Boise and UNLV). Nine Big 12 teams are bowl eligible. The Mountain West has five. Boise’s strength of schedule is ranked 81st, 12 spots behind the worst of the Big 12’s top four teams (Iowa State at 69). The two leagues have actually met on the field eight times this season. The Big 12 is 6-2 with an average margin of victory of more than three touchdowns. UNLV holds both of the Mountain West wins (at Houston and Kansas). “Arizona State defeated Wyoming by 41 points. BYU beat them by 20. Boise struggled against Wyoming in a four-point win,” Yormark said. “There is no rationale for us not getting the bye.” In an interview Monday with Yahoo Sports, Boise State coach Spencer Danielson isn’t looking that far ahead — a message he hammers home to his team. "We still have two more games to even continue this conversation,” he said. "That’s where I am with it. We’ve been playing playoff football since the Oregon game. I believe in our schedule. We’ve played well. We played well against Orgon. Are we suited for a bye? That’s up to the committee." Seven of Boise State’s 10 wins have come by at least two scores, including a 21-point victory over a Washington State team that beat Texas Tech by three touchdowns in Week 2 of the season. But Boise State’s strongest arguments are, perhaps, its one loss and its best player. The Broncos led No. 1 Oregon for much of their game on Sept. 7, eventually losing on a last-second field goal. Boise State has the nation’s leading rusher, Heisman Trophy candidate Ashton Jeanty, who has run for nearly 600 yards more than the next best rusher. "There have been multiple teams in the rankings that are no longer in the rankings because they got caught up in this stuff,” Danielson said. “It’s hard for me to lobby on things with two games left. You control what you can control." Mountain West commissioner Gloria Nevarez declined comment aside from gesturing to similar data points for the Broncos, most notably that three-point loss in Eugene. The CFP selection committee meets again early this week before its rankings are revealed Tuesday night on ESPN. Over the weekend, the . Boise State, ranked No. 12 last week, survived that scare from Wyoming. In the , Arizona State was the highest-ranked Big 12 team at No. 14. Boise was No. 11. “What's going on right now isn't fair to the Big 12,” Kansas State coach Chris Klieman told reporters on Monday. “Other teams can lose in other leagues and it’s ‘That league is really good!’ We lose in this league and it’s ‘This league stinks!’ I don’t understand that. As a conference, we need to get together and figure some things out. For a bunch of teams to be 9-2 and we can’t get any (benefits) in the College Football Playoff, then we need to cancel one of these (conference) games and then go to eight games.” The decision from the selection committee related to the first-round bye is not insignificant. The fourth highest-ranked conference champion, the No. 4 seed in the bracket, gets an additional week to rest. The team would play the No. 5-12 seed winner in a bowl site quarterfinal matchup. The fifth highest-ranked conference champion, at least according to how the rankings project, is likely to be seeded No. 12. That means playing a first-round game at the No. 5 seed on the road. The No. 5 seed, for now, projects to be the Big Ten championship game loser, likely Oregon or Ohio State, the two top-ranked teams in the nation. Before any decision from the committee, though, the remaining schedules must be played out. Boise State hosts Oregon State (5-6) and then meets Colorado State or UNLV in the Mountain West championship game, played in Boise. The Big 12, meanwhile, is a lot less certain. Billed as having the most parity of any power league, the 16-team conference is certainly delivering. , with four of them in the best position. BYU (9-2), Iowa State (9-2), Arizona State (9-2) and Colorado (8-3) are tied at 6-2 in the conference atop the standings. All four are favored to win their regular season finale, a result that would put Arizona State and Iowa State in the title game. “I said in July we have great depth and parity and I thought it would play out and it has,” Yormark said. “I said that the month of November would be magical and it has. It’s been made-for-TV viewing.” The debate over the CFP’s final first-round bye is an extension of a long-running tussle between the power leagues and those from the lower-resourced level of the Football Bowl Subdivision. The gaps between the two continue to grow, both from decisions made by power leaders and from the courts. The decisions have accelerated the concept of schools directly compensating athletes — a much more difficult endeavor for Group of Five programs. Their budgets are normally fractions of those schools in power conferences that reap more lucrative television contracts and generate more internal revenue through donations and ticket sales. In fact, the Group of Five is having its most difficulty winning games against the power leagues this season, according to data from ESPN. Group of Five programs - including independents UMass and UConn, as well as Oregon State and Washington State — are 8-87 against power teams. The winning percentage of .084 is believed to be the worst in modern history. The decision to incorporate a fifth conference champion into the field — assuring a Group of Five spot — is a subject that has drawn heated debate and scrutiny over the years from leaders of the power leagues. Craig Thompson, the former Mountain West commissioner, was part of a four-man working group that originally created the current 12-team format. He was the only representative from the G5 ranks. “What’s happening with Boise State possibly getting a bye is not surprising,” Thompson said in a recent interview with Yahoo Sports. “The Group of Five champion, if they have a big year, gets rewarded in the system.” The five auto-bids and the first-round byes were not designated to specific conferences to avoid the scrutiny of congressional lawmakers, who, in the past, skewered the old BCS concept for creating a caste system. This past spring, CFP leaders — the 10 conference commissioners and Notre Dame’s athletic director — re-evaluated the format when they agreed on a new six-year extension that begins with the 2026 playoff. They didn’t settle on a format, instead only agreeing to protections that guarantee (1) the five highest-ranked champions an automatic berth, (2) the field to be 12 or 14 teams in size and (3) Notre Dame to receive an at-large bid if it is ranked inside the top 12 or 14, depending on the field size. During discussions, debate raged over whether to keep the Group of Five’s access spot. Speaking to Yahoo Sports from her conference football media days in July, Nevarez said that power conference leaders “threatened” to remove the G5’s bid in the spring. But, “to their credit, it never came off the table.”Maupay also had a dig at Everton when he departed on loan to Marseille in the summer and his latest taunt has further angered the Premier League club’s supporters. The 28-year-old said on X after Sean Dyche’s side had lost 2-0 to Nottingham Forest at Goodison Park on Sunday: “Whenever I’m having a bad day I just check the Everton score and smile.” Whenever I’m having a bad day I just check the Everton score and smile 🙂 — Neal Maupay (@nealmaupay_) December 29, 2024 Former boxer Tony Bellew was among the Toffees’ supporters who responded to Maupay, with the ex-world cruiserweight champion replying on X with: “P****!” Maupay endured a miserable spell at Everton, scoring just one league goal in 29 appearances after being signed by the Merseysiders for an undisclosed fee in 2022. He departed on a season-long loan to his former club Brentford for the 2023-24 season and left Goodison for a second time in August when Marseille signed him on loan with an obligation to make the deal permanent. After leaving Everton in the summer, Maupay outraged their fans by posting on social media a scene from the film Shawshank Redemption, famous for depicting the main character’s long fight for freedom.
Jimmy Carter: The unlikely 39th president of the United StatesQatar tribune Agencies OpenAI on Friday outlined plans to revamp its structure, saying it would create a public benefit corporation to make it easier to “raise more capital than we’d imagined,” and remove the restrictions imposed on the startup by its current nonprofit parent. The acknowledgement and detailed rationale behind its high-profile restructuring confirmed a Reuters report in September, which sparked debate among corporate watchdogs and tech moguls including Elon Musk. At issue were the implications such a move might have on whether OpenAI would allocate its assets to the nonprofit arm fairly, and how the company would strike a balance between making a profit and generating social and public good as it develops AI.Under the proposed plan, the ChatGPT maker’s existing for-profit arm would become a Delaware-based PBC - a structure designed to consider the interests of society in addition to shareholder value. OpenAI has been looking to make changes to attract further investment, as the expensive pursuit of artificial general intelligence, or AI that surpasses human intelligence, heats up.Its latest $6.6 billion funding round at a valuation of $157 billion was contingent on whether the ChatGPT-maker could upend its corporate structure and remove a profit cap for investors within two years, Reuters reported in October.The nonprofit, meanwhile, will have a “significant interest” in the PBC in the form of shares as determined by independent financial advisers, OpenAI said in a blog post, adding that it would be one of the “best resourced nonprofits in history.” OpenAI started in 2015 as a research-focused nonprofit but created a for-profit unit four years later to secure funding for the high costs of AI development. Its unusual structure gave control of the for-profit unit to the nonprofit and was in focus last year when Sam Altman was fired as CEO only to return days later after employees rebelled. “We once again need to raise more capital than we’d imagined. Investors want to back us but, at this scale of capital, need conventional equity and less structural bespokeness,” the Microsoft-backed startup said on Friday.“The hundreds of billions of dollars that major companies are now investing into AI development show what it will really take for OpenAI to continue pursuing the mission.” Its plans to create a PBC would align the startup with rivals such as Anthropic and the Musk-owned xAI, which use a similar structure and recently raised billions in funding. Copy 30/12/2024 10
It’s no secret that not all noise-cancelling headphones live up to the hype. Most of us have tried headphones that promise to block out the world but still somehow let that distant chatter hum in. Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones change this, At a discount of $122, they would make a great New Year’s gift. These synthetic leather headphones come with two processors and eight microphones to make sure they don’t just reduce background noise and fully erase it. Your own voice is also handled with clarity, thanks to four beamforming microphones and advanced audio processing. All those work calls and Zoom family gatherings are going to be crisp, even if you’re in a noisy setting. The battery is one of the most reliable features of the Sony WH-1000XM5. You’ll enjoy up to 30 hours of listening on a single charge. And for those moments when time is tight, a quick three-minute charge can get you an additional three hours of listening time. If you are looking to use these all day, you will also appreciate the comfort they offer. The lightweight build and soft synthetic leather ear cups are designed to sit gently on your ears without feeling bulky. What makes them even more user-friendly are the touch controls. They allow you to do everything from adjusting the volume, skipping tracks, or pausing music, with just a tap. If you’ve been on the fence about upgrading your headphones, the Sony WH-1000XM5 is worth a closer look. Grab them for $278 after a 30% discount in Black, Midnight Blue, Silver, or Smokey Pink. Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones Make Tech Easier may earn commission on products purchased through our links, which supports the work we do for our readers. Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox Zainab is an Actuarial Sciences graduate from Pakistan with a passion for technology. When she's not busy writing insightful pieces on Windows and the latest tech trends, you'll find her with her nose buried in a productivity book, always on the lookout for ways to optimize her workflow and stay ahead of the curve.NoneReport: Chargers expect WR Ladd McConkey, LB Khalil Mack to play vs. Ravens
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Today, 25th December is a very special day for all of us. Our nation marks the 100th Jayanti of our beloved former Prime Minister, Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ji. He stands tall as a statesman who continues to inspire countless people. Our nation will always be grateful to Atal Ji for architecting India’s transition into the 21st century. When he took oath as PM in 1998 our country had passed through a period of political instability. In about 9 years, we had seen 4 Lok Sabha elections. The people of India were getting impatient and sceptical about governments being able to deliver. It was Atal Ji who turned this tide by providing stable and effective governance. Coming from humble roots, he realised the struggles of the common citizen and the transformative power of effective governance.
Jharkhand Assembly elections: Women’s welfare powered INDIA bloc’s performancePEP GUARDIOLA mounted a passionate defence of Manchester City after Jose Mourinho smeared his six Prem titles. The Special One delivered a withering “I won fairly and cleanly” response to the City boss, who had hailed winning twice as many crowns as his rival. In a reference to the charges of 115 financial rule breaches City face, former Chelsea boss Mourinho said: “I want to win, but I want to win cleanly and fairly. If I can’t win cleanly, I’d rather lose. “Guardiola told me something like this . . . he won six trophies and I won three. “But I won fairly and cleanly. If I lost, I want to congratulate my opponent for being better than me. I don’t want to win by dealing with 150 cases.” But Guardiola hit back: “He is another one on the huge list who want my team at the bottom, in League One or the Conference. I would say to Jose: We are innocent until proven guilty.” City deny all the charges. Mourinho’s titles were won under the ownership of Roman Abramovich in 2005, 2006 and 2015. But Chelsea’s finances are also being investigated by the Prem after the current ownership reported “incomplete financial information” had been submitted during the Russian’s tenure. Guardiola, 53, added: “With both of our teams, we can sit with Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger for the many, many titles we won. “I’m pretty sure soon they will congratulate us.” Fenerbahce coach Mourinho’s blast comes following Guardiola’s “Jose won three and I won six” comment after holding up six fingers to Liverpool fans following City’s 2-0 defeat at Anfield on Sunday. FOOTBALL FREE BETS AND SIGN UP DEALS Six years ago, just before being axed by Manchester United , Mourinho held up three fingers to Reds fans in reference to the three titles he won. Guardiola had said City’s rivals would be “taking the p***” because of his side’s slump. City have only won one game in their last eight in all competitions. After Liverpool’s win, Mo Salah said it might be the last time he faces them at Anfield with his contract running out. It prompted Kop boss Arne Slot to joke: “Maybe Mo knows more about the charges so he doesn’t expect them to be in the Prem next season!” Guardiola responded: “The joke from Arne is his business, not my business. “I’m talking about what I said. If I have offended Jose, I’m so sorry but it was a joke. The fact is he has three and I have six. But the intention was completely fine.” Guardiola, who takes his side to Crystal Palace tomorrow, added: “Normal people don’t talk about results or how many trophies you win.”
The No. 14 Texas A&M Aggies (8-2) meet a fellow SEC opponent when they visit the Auburn Tigers (4-6) on Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024 at Jordan-Hare Stadium. What channel is Texas A&M vs. Auburn on? What time is Texas A&M vs. Auburn? Texas A&M and Auburn play at 7:30 p.m. ET. Texas A&M vs. Auburn betting odds, lines, spread Odds courtesy of BetMGM Texas A&M vs. Auburn recent matchups Texas A&M schedule Auburn schedule This content was created for Gannett using technology provided by Data Skrive.Report: Chargers expect WR Ladd McConkey, LB Khalil Mack to play vs. Ravens
'It was madness': Lions fan who got into heated exchange with Matt LaFleur explains what happenedTotal Energy Services Inc. ( OTCMKTS:TOTZF – Get Free Report ) was the target of a significant increase in short interest in the month of December. As of December 15th, there was short interest totalling 8,400 shares, an increase of 68.0% from the November 30th total of 5,000 shares. Based on an average daily trading volume, of 5,500 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is currently 1.5 days. Total Energy Services Price Performance Shares of TOTZF stock opened at $8.25 on Friday. The stock has a 50-day simple moving average of $7.93 and a 200 day simple moving average of $7.28. Total Energy Services has a fifty-two week low of $5.72 and a fifty-two week high of $8.71. Total Energy Services Company Profile ( Get Free Report ) Read More Receive News & Ratings for Total Energy Services Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Total Energy Services and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter .A U.S. Army soldier has been charged with murder in connection to the killing of another soldier last month at Fort Irwin National Training Center in Southern California. The soldier, Spc. George Cornejo, 26, stands accused in the Oct. 28 slaying of Spc. Andrew P. Smith, the U.S. Army told USA TODAY Monday. The U.S. Army Office of Special Trial Council charged Cornejo with murder on Nov. 20, the Army reported. Cornejo, who is from Fontana, a city in San Bernardino County, is assigned to the 11th Armored Calvary Regiment where he serves as a construction equipment repairer, according to the Army. Smith, 20, was found injured at his home at the National Training Center in San Bernardino County by Fort Irwin Military Police. He was transported to a local hospital where he died, officials reported. The Army did not specify how Smith died or whether both men knew one another. His official cause of death remained under investigation Monday, pending official autopsy results. The training center where Smith lived is in the Mojave Desert in Southern California, about 120 miles northeast of Los Angeles. College killing: 2 Dartmouth frat members, sorority charged in death of student found in Connecticut River George Cornejo ordered into custody day after Smith found injured On Oct, 29, the day after Smith was found injured, Cornejo was taken into custody and ordered into pretrial confinement. Officials said Cornejo was transferred to the Naval Consolidated Brig in Miramar, California where he awaits a preliminary hearing. As of Monday, that court date had not been announced and it was not immediately known if Cornejo had obtained an attorney. Victim Spc. Andrew P. Smith worked as a utilities equipment preparer Smith joined the Army in August 2021 and was a native of Rye, New York. He was assigned to Fort Irwin in March 2022 where he served as a utilities equipment preparer with the 11th Armored Calvary Regiment. 'Loved by many and highly regarded' Fort Irwin posted the news of his death on social media on Oct. 31. At the time, officials reported his death was under investigation. "Spc. Smith was loved by many and highly regarded amongst the team," said Kevin Black, Commander of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. "As we mourn the loss of our teammate, our thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends and fellow troopers." The case remained open and active Monday with the Department of the Army Criminal Investigation Division. No further details were provided by officials. 'Fiercely loyal' soldier leaves behind wife, unborn son According to his obituary , Smith was fiercely loyal, and was always there to lend an ear and a helping hand to anyone in a time of need. An Avid sports fan, he loved the Giants and the Yankees and playing basketball with friends, the his family wrote in obituary. "He was proud to be a husband, and even more so excited to become a father," it continues. "He was eagerly awaiting the arrival of his son, Luca in January." Smith leaves behind his wife, Erika and their unborn son, his mother Christine Santillan, his father, William Smith, and his sister Lauren Smith. Natalie Neysa Alund is a senior reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at nalund@usatoday.com and follow her on X @nataliealund.
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