The famous boxer was not happy with the soccer star after seeing a video of him celebrating Argentina’s 2–0 win over Mexico on Saturday.
After a video of Argentina’s Lionel Messi moving a Mexican jersey on the floor with his foot became public recently, professional boxer Canelo Álvarez tweeted out a threat to Messi in regard to the soccer star’s “cleaning the floor” with the El Tri jersey.
Since then, it appears that Álvarez misunderstood Messi’s action. Álvarez tweeted an apology on Wednesday to the Argentine superstar.
“In these last few days I got carried away by the passion and love I have for my country and I made some comments that were out of order,” Alvarez said, via Yahoo! Sports’s translation. “I want to apologize to Messi and to all the people of Argentina. Every day we learn something new and this time, it was my turn.”
The video, which can be seen here, shows Messi celebrating with his team in the locker room after they beat Mexico 2–0 on Saturday. As Messi was taking his shoe off, he accidentally moved the jersey he had exchanged with a Mexico player on the floor.
Martino: “I fully assume responsibility for this great failure.”
Following Mexico’s elimination from the World Cup group stage on Wednesday, the team and head coach Gerardo “Tata” Martino have parted ways, Martino revealed in the immediate aftermath of the game. Mexico defeated Saudi Arabia, 2-1, but lost the goal differential tiebreaker with Poland to be the Group C runner-up.
“I am the first responsible for this terrible disappointment and frustration that we have,” Martino told reporters after the game, per ESPN’s Cesar Hernandez. “As the person in charge, it causes a lot of sadness, I fully assume responsibility for this great failure. My contract ended as soon as the referee blew the final whistle and there is nothing more to be done.”
Martino took over the Mexican men’s national team in 2019 following stints as the manager for Barcelona, MLS’s Atlanta United and the Argentinian men’s national team, among many other stops. This year marks the first time that Mexico did not make it out of the group stage of a World Cup for which it qualified since 1978. In the last seven World Cups, Mexico had been eliminated in the round of 16.
Mexico needed a multi-goal victory on Wednesday to have a chance of progression, and it led 2-0 in the second half before conceding a late goal that doomed the team’s hopes of advancing. Before that, it twice had what would have been a third goal ruled out for offside.
“For us, the objective was to score three or four goals. It’s a shame because we tried and we did our best,” goalkeeper and team captain Guillermo Ochoa said. “We created opportunities and I feel like we could have scored more goals today. We weren’t sharp, there were offside calls and it’s a shame.”
After months of delay, a major hurdle looks like it is finally clearing.
The Granddaddy of Them All is falling in line.
The Rose Bowl, after months of delay, has agreed to amend its contract to pave the way for an expansion of the College Football Playoff in two years, sources tell Sports Illustrated. The CFP is expected to soon announce that the Playoff will expand from four to 12 teams starting with the 2024 season.
While there are still logistical hurdles to cross, the bowl game’s delay represented the biggest obstacle in early expansion. In multiple proposals to CFP officials, the Rose Bowl, the oldest active operating bowl, requested guarantees to keep its traditional date and time in future iterations of the Playoff, something the CFP executive board denied. Few, if any, guarantees can be made for the Playoff beyond 2025 because no contract exists.
Several weeks ago, the CFP gave the Rose Bowl an end-of-the-month deadline to decide its own fate, SI reported Monday. In many ways, the Rose Bowl was holding the CFP hostage, at risk of its own stake in future Playoffs.
The Rose was in position to single-handedly delay Playoff expansion. CFP officials needed unanimous agreement from the six CFP bowls to expand the Playoff to 12 teams before the contract with ESPN ends after the 2025 Playoff. Five of the six bowls—Sugar, Orange, Fiesta, Peach and Cotton—were in support of amending the contract to expand early.
The Rose could have cost college football the $450 million in additional revenue of an expanded playoff in 2024 and ’25, as well as 16 extra Playoff spots. A decision to further delay may have torpedoed its legacy and disrupted any goodwill with high-ranking Playoff decision-makers.
The decision launches the sport into a historic moment. For the first time in the history of major college football, an extensive Playoff will decide the champion.
The Rose Bowl, after much consternation, will continue to host College Football playoff games.
Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports
More than two months ago, CFP executives unanimously approved a 12-team expanded Playoff to begin no later than 2026, the first year of what would be a new CFP contract with the six bowls and a broadcasting partner or partners. The format is as follows: (1) the six highest-ranked champs get automatic berths; (2) the next six highest-ranked teams get at-large spots; (3) byes go to the top four conference champs; and (4) first-round games are played at the better seed’s home stadium, and quarterfinals and semifinals are played in a rotation of the six bowls.
The 10 FBS commissioners, as well as Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, have spent the last several weeks focusing not on 2026 and beyond, but on expanding in ’24 or ’25. With each meeting, commissioners have resolved a plethora of issues, most notably the scheduling of eight additional Playoff games, the revenue distribution model and the logistics of hosting the first round on campus sites.
Commissioners have established tentative dates for the expanded CFP’s four rounds, but nothing is concrete.
– The first round will be played the third week of December, likely kicking off on Friday and Saturday.
– The CFP quarterfinals are scheduled around New Year’s Day, with three quarterfinals likely on New Year’s Day and one quarterfinal on either New Year’s Eve or Jan. 2.
– The semifinals are scheduled for about a week later, depending on the year. In 2024, that’d be the weekend of Jan. 10–12. Because of NFL playoff games that weekend, Thursday and Friday might be the best options.
– The championship game is expected to be pushed a week or two from its original schedule and remain on a Monday.
Future iterations of the Playoff, starting in 2026, will likely have a different look—not in format but in schedule. There are serious discussions about the entire regular-season calendar moving up a week, turning Week 0 into Week 1 and sliding conference championship weekend from December to Thanksgiving weekend. That would move rivalry weekend up a week, too. It provides more flexibility for such a tight December window while assuring that the sport doesn’t get too deep into January.
The Rose’s decision ends an 18-month process filled with pettiness, frustrations and animosity among an FBS commissioners group that could not agree on a format. The issues were bad enough that their bosses, the FBS presidents, took control of expansion and approved a plan on Sept. 2 to take effect, at latest, by 2026. They encouraged commissioners to explore expanding by ’24.
The impacts of an expanded Playoff are far and wide. Maybe more importantly, expansion in those two years provides a combined 16 new opportunities in a sport that has struggled to establish parity. The Playoff era has been marked by a parade of the same teams from the same leagues advancing to the postseason.
For instance, over the eight-year CFP era, six teams have accounted for 25 of the 32 playoff spots (78%). Last year, three of the five power conferences were not represented in the Playoff—the second time that’s happened in the CFP’s eight years. The Pac-12 and Big 12 have combined to qualify six teams for the eight Playoffs—the same amount as the Big Ten. The SEC has qualified 10 and the ACC eight.
Expanding doesn’t solve a decades-long parity issue in the sport, but it is expected to at least create more critically important late-season matchups for more programs. Even in late November, as many as 30 teams could still be alive to make the field. Take this year. There are no more than six teams with realistic chances to advance to the Playoff heading into the final weekend. In a 12-team edition, that number would swell to more than 20.
“If there were more teams in the mix, it would be a good thing overall for college football,” Bob Bowlsby, the former Big 12 commissioner who helped create the 12-team model, said in January. “We don’t need the same teams in it all the time. It diminishes interest in the event on a national basis.”
College football’s postseason will now more closely mirror other NCAA sports. A four-team Playoff incorporates only about 3% of college football teams. Most NCAA postseason fields include at least 10% of a sport’s total teams, such as in basketball, baseball and softball.
The Rose Bowl, historically protected by longtime relationships with the Pac-12 and Big Ten, nearly destroyed any hopes of early expansion. In delaying its decision, the Rose sent at least two different proposals outlining its wishes to the CFP board of managers, an 11-member group of FBS presidents governing the Playoff. While working around deadlines set by CFP officials, the Rose at first requested to retain its exclusive Jan. 1 window in future Playoffs, something that CFP executives balked at. In the expanded Playoff format approved by presidents on Sept. 2, the six bowls would host the quarterfinals and semifinals in a rotation. When its Playoff game does not fall on New Year’s Day, the Rose wanted to hold a non-CFP game, pitting teams from the Pac-12 and Big Ten, in an exclusive window at its traditional date and time.
In its latest proposal, the Rose Bowl said it would relinquish the exclusive window in exchange for hosting a semifinal on New Year’s Day in two of its three-year rotation—a demand that CFP presidents also shot down.
Months, if not years, of frustration over the Rose Bowl’s positioning came to a head this week, with one high-ranking CFP executive even suggesting removing the bowl from six-bowl rotation starting in 2026 if it did not agree to early expansion.
“Just human nature, there’s going to be a real discussion that’s got to be had about the future of the Rose Bowl if they weren’t willing to work with us,” says the CFP source. “And it does not have to be unanimous.”
Beckham’s first visit will be in New York as he visits his former team, the Giants. Then, he will travel to Buffalo to visit with the Bills. Finally, Beckham will finish his travels in Dallas to visit the Cowboys on Monday.
All three teams have continued to be talking points surrounding Beckham’s future. The Giants drafted Beckham 12th overall in the 2014 NFL draft, so he could return to where his career began.
Beckham has remained a free agent for the entire 2022 season as he’s been recovering from a torn ACL he suffered during Super Bowl LVI when he played for the Rams. The wide receiver is expected to be ready to go come early December.
A Eufy security camera, from Anker. | Image: Anker/Eufy
Anker has built a remarkable reputation for quality over the past decade, building its phone charger business into an empire spanning all sorts of portable electronics — including the Eufy home security cameras we’ve recommended over the years. Eufy’s commitment to privacy is remarkable: it promises your data will be stored locally, that it “never leaves the safety of your home,” that its footage only gets transmitted with “end-to-end” military-grade encryption, and that it will only send that footage “straight to your phone.”
So you can imagine our surprise to learn you can stream video from a Eufy camera, from the other side of the country, with no encryption at all.
Tony Parker isn’t content to merely collect and enjoy wine, he also wants to make it. The French-American NBA star has been busily investing in projects throughout France since retiring from the San Antonio Spurs in 2019 at the age of 37. On the heels of his 2022 partnership with Château La Mascaronne in Provence and Champagne Jeeper, Parker just announced his purchase of Château St.-Laurent in the Rhône Valley.
“I always knew I wanted to invest in wine, but I wanted to wait until I retired,” Parker told Wine Spectator. “And I’ve always loved the Rhône Valley. Almost all my investments in France are between Lyon and Monaco, through the Alps with my ski resort, and Avignon and Provence with La Mascaronne.” (In 2019, he co-purchased two ski resorts in the southern French Alps).
Situated in southeastern France along the Rhône river in the Côtes du Ventoux appellation, Château St.-Laurent dates back to the 14th century when the papacy relocated from Rome to Avignon. In fact, the property features a six-mile underground passageway that connects the estate to the medieval Palais des Papes, or Popes’ Palace, in the heart of the city.
The 100 acres of vineyard holdings were an equal draw for Parker, who grew up in France in a household where wine was always on the table. “At Château St.-Laurent, we’re lucky to have many plots of very old vines, many up to 80 years old,” he said. Parker is committed to organic viticulture and has begun the process of converting the estate’s farming. Established Rhône vintner Guillaume Valli is in charge of crafting the wines. The limited 3,000-bottle release of his first vintage—a 2022 red blend of Grenache, Cinsault and Syrah—will be available in November 2023.
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While Parker has partnered with others in the past, such as French entrepreneur and Château La Mascaronne owner Michel Reybier, he is going solo on this particular project. “On this Château St.-Laurent adventure, I’m all by myself,” he said.
He has, however, teamed up with fellow NBA star Carmelo Anthony’s Club dVIN for his first release. The NFT wine club will offer 500 tokens for sale this month, each of which give buyers access to six bottles of Château St.-Laurent’s future vintages as well as opportunities to stay at the château. Parker is renovating the 22-room château with the goal of making it “one of the most incredible reception venues in the south of France available for private use,” he said.
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Endlessly doing leg raises, basic planks, and oblique crunches can become redundant if you’re looking for a program that really attacks your abs. It’s easy to fall into the habit of doing abs exercises that are convenient and easy—but we all know that’s the ticket to plateau central.
Because of this, it’s important to change the game and provide an added challenge for the abdominals. These six moves do just that.
