Yahoo Sports AM: Welcome to October, the best sports month of the year

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🚨 Headlines

🏈 Huge viewership: Saturday’s Alabama-Georgia thriller averaged 12 million viewers, making it the most-watched game on any ESPN network since 2017.

🎓 More realignment: Gonzaga is leaving the WCC to become the revamped Pac-12’s eighth member, and UTEP is leaving C-USA for the Mountain West, Yahoo Sports reports.

⚽️ City match United: Manchester City extended its unbeaten run in the Champions League to 25 games, tying rival Manchester United for the longest streak ever.

🏈 Miller suspended: The NFL has suspended Bills LB Von Miller four games for violating the league’s personal conduct policy, likely stemming from a domestic violence incident last fall.

⚾️ Not pulling any punches: Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick admitted that signing Jordan Montgomery to a lucrative contract ($25 million this season, $22.5 million option for 2025) was a “horrible decision.” The lefty had a 6.23 ERA in 117 innings.

📆 Welcome to October

The best month on the sports calendar is upon us, and October began with a bang on Tuesday, with six playoff games (four baseball, two basketball) running all afternoon and through the night.

Meanwhile, across the pond… Some of the world’s biggest soccer clubs were in action during Champions League play. It was a day full of blowouts, with the seven victorious teams winning by a combined score of 27-1 (!!). There were also two 1-1 draws.

Coming up this month: The MLB and WNBA playoffs continue, with the World Series starting on Oct. 25 and the WNBA Finals ending no later than Oct. 20. We also have more Champions League, NFL, NWSL, some of the best college football games of the season, F1 (U.S. Grand Prix on Oct. 20), MLS playoffs (starting Oct. 23) and NASCAR playoffs (through Round of 8).

Plus, two major sports return:

Looking ahead: There will be a Sports Equinox on Oct. 28, with the NFL (Giants-Steelers), NBA (11 games), NHL (eight games) and MLB (World Series Game 3) all in action on the same day.

🏈 NFL power rankings: Week 5

The undefeated Chiefs and Vikings sit atop our Week 5 power rankings, courtesy of Yahoo Sports’ Frank Schwab. But the top-ranked Chiefs, in particular, face questions regarding the sustainability of their hot start.

Survive and advance: While Minnesota’s scoring differential (+57) is tied with the Saints for the NFL’s best, Kansas City (+20) is ranked seventh thanks to a quartet of wins by a single score.

• That trend would be more concerning for Chiefs Kingdom, though, if it hadn’t already proven successful.

• They’ve won 10 games in a row dating back to last season, and only one came by double digits. That includes, of course, their second straight Super Bowl.

What to watch: It won’t get any easier for the Chiefs, who’ve now lost starting RB Isiah Pacheco (leg) and No. 1 WR Rashee Rice (knee) to injuries and face the high-scoring Saints and 49ers in their next two games.

Risers and fallers…

• Risers: The Buccaneers (+6) shot up the rankings after blowing out the Eagles, followed by the Commanders, Titans, Bengals, Bears and Broncos (+5).

• Fallers: The Jets (-8) plummeted after after their dud against Denver, followed by the Rams (-7), Cardinals (-5), Dolphins (-4) and Browns (-4).

Yahoo Fantasy: How to manage Bye Week Season

⚾️ Are the 2024 White Sox the worst team ever?

Now that the White Sox’s dismal season has mercifully come to an end, it’s worth asking: Was this the worst baseball team ever?

121 losses: The easy answer is yes, as the 2024 White Sox (41-121) set the modern MLB record (since 1901) for most losses in a season. But let’s dig a little deeper.

By the numbers: The South Siders narrowly passed the 1962 Mets (40-120-1) for most losses, but their .253 winning percentage is actually just the fifth-worst in the modern era behind the 1916 A’s (.235), 1935 Braves (.248), those ’62 Mets (.250) and the 1904 Senators (.252).

• Similarly, while their -306 run differential was atrocious, it was 33 runs better than last year’s 112-loss Athletics and just the 16th-worst of the modern era. That’s thanks in part to going 4-10 in extra innings and an MLB-worst 13-29 in one-run games

• They even had a couple bright spots, most notably lefty fireballer Garrett Crochet (3.58 ERA, MLB-best 12.9 K/9), and finished the season on a relative high note with five wins in their final six games.

Yes, but: Watching this team for six months straight was an exercise in masochism, and makes it hard to imagine another club was ever this bad.

• They won more than three consecutive games just once and had losing streaks of 12, 14 and 21 games, the last of which is the second-longest in the modern era.

• Their offense had MLB’s worst AVG (.221), OBP (.278) and SLG (.340), and their position players were worth a combined -6.3 wins above replacement, nearly five times worse than any other team this century and the fourth-worst in the modern era.

• Their bullpen blew an MLB-high 37 saves for an MLB-worst 36.2% save percentage. No other team this year was below 55%, and it’s the worst mark in baseball in the last 75 years.

Wild stat: The AL Central had four teams over .500, yet the division as a whole finished 35 games under .500 thanks to Chicago’s historic ineptitude.

First to worst: The 1962 Mets had a built-in excuse to be terrible: It was their first season as an MLB franchise. But these White Sox won 93 games and a division title just three years ago, with a young core of controllable stars that provided plenty of reason for optimism. Instead, the team became a punch line.

The fall-off was brought on by a combination of institutional rigidity, a barren farm system that failed to restock the big-league roster and a wave of underperformance, natural aging and injuries that chipped away at multiple core pieces.

— Jordan Shusterman and Jake Mintz, Yahoo Sports

So, was this the worst team ever? It’s hard to compare teams across eras, but I say yes. Even the worst clubs should be able to win about a third of their games, yet this roster boasted a mind-boggling 35 players who were worth negative WAR.

Year-in-review: One L of a season

🏈 College Football Playoff picture

It’s never too early to start thinking about the College Football Playoff field. Here’s where things stand after Week 5, based largely on the AP Top 25.

📆 Oct. 2, 2005: The NFL goes abroad

19 years ago today, the Cardinals beat the 49ers, 31-14, at Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca in the NFL’s first regular-season game played outside the U.S.

A long time coming: The seeds of this game were planted as far back as 1950, when the NFL began playing select exhibitions abroad. But the decision to grow the league’s global footprint began in earnest about 40 years ago with the American Bowl and NFL Europe.

• The American Bowl was a series of preseason games played between 1986-2005 in Mexico, Japan, Sweden, Canada and Ireland. The 112,376 fans who watched the 1994 Cowboys-Oilers matchup in Mexico City remains the largest crowd in NFL history.

• NFL Europe, originally called the World League of American Football, was a professional developmental league with 20 teams across seven countries that played on and off from 1991-2007.

Global explosion: Two years after the NFL debuted in Mexico, the league kicked off its “International Series” with annual games in London. Since then, there have been 50 regular-season games in five countries: England (36), Canada (6), Mexico (4), Germany (3) and Brazil (1).

Looking ahead: This is the third straight season with five international games, but that may look pedestrian in the not-too-distant future, when there could be “as many as 16 games [annually] overseas,” per Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt. That’s right: An international game almost every week.

📺 Watchlist: Elimination games

The Wild Card round continues today with four teams facing elimination.

• Tigers (up 1-0) at Astros (2:30pm ET, ABC)

• Royals (up 1-0) at Orioles (4:30pm, ESPN)

• Mets (up 1-0) at Brewers (7:30pm, ESPN)

• Braves (down 1-0) at Padres (8:30pm, ESPN2)

More to watch:

• ⚽️ Champions League: Matchday 2 (12:45-3pm, Paramount+)

• ⚽️ MLS: Columbus vs. Miami* (7:45pm, FS1)

*Supporters’ Shield in sight: If Lionel Messi and Miami win tonight, they’ll clinch their first-ever Supporters’ Shield (best record). And if they win their final three games, they’ll break the 2021 Revolution’s record for most points in an MLS season.

🏈 NFL trivia

Davante Adams, who has reportedly requested to be traded by the Raiders, has 96 receiving touchdowns since his 2014 NFL debut.

Question: Who’s the only player with more in that time?

Hint: His team is currently 3-1.

Answer at the bottom.

⚾️ Crazy but true

Crazy but true: The Diamondbacks scored the most runs in baseball this season (886) and the Mariners allowed the fewest (607)… yet both teams missed the playoffs.

Trivia answer: Mike Evans (97 receiving TDs)

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