Yahoo Sports AM: The Travis Hunter debate

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🚨 Headlines

🏀 Heat, Mavs stay alive: Night 2 of the NBA Play-In Tournament saw the Heat end the Bulls’ season and the Mavericks eliminate the Kings. Miami will play Atlanta tomorrow for the East’s No. 8 seed, while Dallas will play Memphis for the West’s No. 8 seed.

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🏒 Canadiens clinch: On December 1, Montreal sat 31st (out of 32 teams) in the NHL standings. On Wednesday, they punched the final ticket to the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The 16-team bracket is now set entering the final day of the regular season.

🏈 Commanders coming home? D.C. is nearing a deal to bring the Commanders back to the nation’s capital. The plan is to build a new venue at the RFK Stadium site, which is where the team played from 1961-1996 before moving to Maryland.

⚾️ Benches clear in Pittsburgh: Nationals pitcher Jorge López was ejected from Wednesday’s game against the Pirates after a pitch near Andrew McCutchen’s head led to both benches briefly clearing. The home team got the last laugh, winning 6-1.

🏈 UCLA lands top transfer: QB Nico Iamaleava is reportedly set to transfer to UCLA after parting ways with Tennessee over an alleged compensation dispute. The former five-star recruit led the Volunteers to the CFP last season.

🏈 Travis Hunter: Receiver, corner or both?

With the NFL draft a week away, Travis Hunter’s future as a two-way player remains one of the most intriguing storylines.

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What he’s saying: The 2024 Heisman Trophy winner has made it abundantly clear that he wants to continue playing both wide receiver and cornerback in the NFL — to the point where he said he’d rather quit football than be forced to play only one side of the ball.

What others are saying: The Browns (No. 2 pick) have said they view Hunter primarily as a receiver, while the Giants (No. 3) and Patriots (No. 4) sound more amenable to using him as a true two-way player. Others believe his future lies as a shutdown corner, much like his college coach, Deion Sanders, who dabbled as a receiver in the NFL but mostly lined up on defense.

• Ravens head coach John Harbaugh doesn’t doubt Hunter’s physical ability to play two positions, but he’s skeptical that it can be done full-time due to the mental load required in the NFL, where schemes are more complicated and coaches obsess over details.

• “To say that you’re going to be completely immersed in everything that there is to know on offense and defense … I don’t know if there’s enough hours in the day for a player to be able to do that,” said Harbaugh.

To which Hunter replied: “It’s not as complicated as people may think it is or may make it seem. I’ve been doing it for a long time, so it is super easy for me, super simple,” he told Yahoo Sports on the heels of a historic college season that saw him play 713 offensive snaps and 748 defensive snaps en route to being named the nation’s best wide receiver and defender.

How rare are two-way players? The NFL’s last true 60-minute man was Chuck Bednarik, who retired in 1962. A handful of others have tried since then, but only two — Roy Green in the 1980s and Sanders in the 1990s — had stints playing regularly on both sides. Will Hunter be given the opportunity to join that exclusive group? We’ll find out soon enough.

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Draft Guide: Mock Draft | Big Board | Headlines

⛳️ Rangefinders arrive on the PGA Tour

Golf’s pace of play issue has been brewing for a while. This week in South Carolina, the PGA Tour will try to address the problem by giving pros access to technology typically reserved for weekend warriors like you and me.

Embracing technology: PGA Tour players will be permitted to use distance-measuring devices (aka. rangefinders) during the next six tournaments, beginning with this week’s RBC Heritage. If the trial period is deemed a success, full-time implementation could follow.

What they’re saying: Defending champion Scottie Scheffler doesn’t expect rangefinders to make a big difference this week, and if the PGA Championship — which has allowed them since 2021 — is any indication, the devices will be used sparingly. That said, there are certain situations where they could come in handy, notes Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard:

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Players and caddies anticipate using DMDs when dealing with shots that are well wide of playing corridors and it’s difficult to find a reference point to use a yardage book, as well as a way to confirm yardages on approach shots and tee shots on par 3s.

“I envision Tom [Hoge] standing in the fairway shooting [with a DMD] and I’ll be getting the numbers like we always do,” said James Edmondson, Hoge’s longtime caddie. “I’ll use it when we’re off-line, but we’re still going to use the fronts and the backs and the carries [yardages] in the book. If you don’t do that, I think you’d get your sequence off.”

One important rule: Players may only use the rangefinder’s distance functionality, and must disable all advanced features like course mapping, slope calculation and wind measurement. Long live the art of throwing a blade of grass to check the breeze!

📊 By the numbers

🏀 0 returning players

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All 14 players from Baylor’s 2024-25 men’s basketball roster are now gone. Four graduated, one is turning pro and nine hit the transfer portal. If this can happen to a top-tier program that won a national championship four years ago, it can happen to anyone. The new normal.

⚾️ 500 strikeouts

Braves flamethrower Spencer Strider returned to the mound on Wednesday after a one-year hiatus (elbow surgery) and recorded his 500th career strikeout in his 334th career inning, making him the fastest starting pitcher ever to reach that milestone.

🏀 -190 favorite

Don’t call it an upset if Golden State takes down Houston in the first round of the NBA playoffs. Despite being the No. 7 seed, the Warriors are favored (-190 at BetMGM) to beat the No. 2 seed Rockets, who were the better regular-season team but lack playoff experience.

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💯 6 sports figures

Serena Williams, Jalen Hurts, Simone Biles, Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart (Unrivaled co-founders), and Léon Marchand (French swimmer) made the 2025 TIME100, the magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

🏀 55 opened, 54 closed

There were 55 head coaching vacancies in D-I men’s basketball this cycle. With Florida A&M hiring Charlie Ward (yes, that Charlie Ward), 54 of those jobs have now been filled. The only position currently available: UC Riverside.

⚽️ Stars are great, teams are better

Real Madrid won last year’s Champions League, then signed Kylian Mbappé. The assumption was that, together, they’d win it again. Instead, they struggled all tournament and crashed out after a 5-1 aggregate loss to Arsenal. The lesson: Soccer is not a superstar-driven sport.

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From Yahoo Sports’ Henry Bushnell:

Kylian Mbappé and Vinicius Jr. crept off the field after a sour second leg, or simply stood there, dumbfounded, because on paper, their team was more super than ever before; but in practice, soccer is the ultimate team game.

Madrid had Mbappé and Vini and Jude Bellingham, Luka Modrić and Federico Valverde and Rodrygo; but there were no synchronized movements, no innovative ideas, and no penetration of a resolute Arsenal defense.

Meanwhile, the club Mbappé left, PSG, has built one of the most entertaining teams in Europe in his absence, with 11 ego-less players pressing in unison and flying around fields in France. Unlike Madrid, they’re headed to the Champions League semifinals, where they’ll meet Arsenal — another well-built, albeit wounded, team without a megastar.

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They advanced (along with Barcelona and Inter Milan) because soccer is not a superstar-driven sport. It’s about balance and coordinated ball progression. It’s about attacking patterns and cleverly unlocked space.

It’s about defenders and midfielders and forwards shifting together, and reading one another’s movements, as if on a string. It’s about all sorts of things that Real Madrid, in constructing its superteam, seemingly ignored.

And so, they fell, out of the Champions League. They have fallen out of first place in La Liga. They have failed to meet sky-high expectations in Year 1 of the Mbappé era, because they are less than the sum of their parts — whereas Arsenal and PSG (and Inter Milan) are more.

The Final Four: The Champions League semifinals kick off on April 29, with first-leg matches in England (Arsenal vs. PSG) and Spain (Barcelona vs. Inter Milan). The second legs will be played on May 6 in Italy and May 7 in France, and the final is set for May 31 in Munich.

📺 Watchlist: Gymnasts, assemble!

The NCAA women’s gymnastics championships begin today in Fort Worth, Texas, where eight teams are in contention for the national title.

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Field and format: Oklahoma, Florida, Missouri and Alabama are in the first semifinal (4:30pm ET, ESPN2), while LSU, Utah, UCLA and Michigan State are in the second (9pm, ESPN2). The top two teams from each advance to Saturday’s team final.

More to watch:

• 🏒 NHL: Capitals at Penguins (7pm, ESPN); Flames at Kings (9:30pm, ESPN) … Regular-season finale; all playoff spots and matchups are already set.

• ⚾️ MLB: Royals at Tigers (6:40pm, FS1); Yankees at Rays (7:05pm, Prime) … New York (11-7) and Detroit (10-8) are both in first place.

• ⛳️ PGA: RBC Heritage (8am, ESPN+; 2pm, Golf) … Scottie Scheffler looks to defend his title* at Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head.

• ⛳️ LPGA: LA Championship (6pm, Golf) … Seven of the world’s top 10 golfers tee it up at El Caballero Country Club.

*Fourth time’s the charm? This is already Scheffler’s fourth title defense of the year following his historic 2024 season. He failed to repeat as champion in his first three attempts (Arnold Palmer Invitational, Players Championship, Masters), but perhaps this is the week he breaks through and earns his first victory of 2025.

🏒 NHL trivia

Five Canadian teams are headed to the Stanley Cup Playoffs, tied for the highest total in the past 30 years alongside 2017, 2015, 2004 and 1996.

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Question: Which five teams Canadian are playoff-bound?

Hint: I gave one away in today’s “Headlines” section. That’s all you get!

Answer at the bottom.

⛳️ Sounds of the Masters

If you listen to one thing today, make it the newest episode of the No Laying Up podcast, which will transport you to Augusta National in a way you won’t soon forget.

The gist: The No Laying Up crew roamed the hallowed grounds last week armed with mics, capturing the sounds of the tournament and pulling together a narrative podcast in real time. It’s a brilliant idea, executed to near perfection.

Trivia answer: Jets, Maple Leafs, Oilers, Senators, Canadiens

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