Front Row Seat: SDFC aims to build on success of Year 1
San Diego FC joins the Padres in offseason planning mode. SDSU's football program isn't far behind.
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San Diego FC
San Diego FC loses in MLS Western Conference final, ending Cinderella season - San Diego Union-Tribune
Major League Soccer’s Cinderella had rolled through the season with statistically its youngest roster, and if you figured it was only a matter of time before a backline that starts three rookies turned into a pumpkin, well, it was.
San Diego FC won’t be headed to South Florida to face Lionel Messi and Inter Miami in MLS Cup next weekend. The Vancouver Whitecaps will after a clinical 3-1 victory Saturday night at soldout and stunned Snapdragon Stadium in the Western Conference final.
For really the first time all season, the expansion club looked like one – surrendering three first half goals, then finishing the game with 10 men and a 19-year-old, third-string goalkeeper making his MLS debut.
John Gennaro
Stay or go? San Diego FC, Chucky Lozano have a decision to make - San Diego Union-Tribune
San Diego FC ended its inaugural season with a 3-1 loss against the Vancouver Whitecaps in the Western Conference final and now begins its inaugural offseason. No question looms larger than what happens with its highest paid player and avowed face of the franchise.
Normally, the answer would be simple after finishing first in the Western Conference and coming a game from MLS Cup: He’d be back.
But the 30-year-old winger was left home for the regular-season finale after a locker room “incident,” then didn’t start any of SDFC’s five playoff games despite making $1 million more ($7.6 million) than the combined salaries of the Saturday’s starting lineup.
Tom Krasovic: San Diego FC was outplayed, likely outcoached in sour end to sweet year - San Diego Union-Tribune
The fans never faltered, nor did SDFC’s up-tempo efforts to score twice more.
The lopsided first half was just too much to surmount. The Major League Soccer Western Conference final went to second-seeded Vancouver, a 3-1 decision that will pit the Whitecaps against Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami in the MLS Cup Saturday in Fort Lauderdale.
The soccer nitty-gritty was this: at the outset, the home team was too generous with the ball, mostly due to Vancouver’s timely pressure tactics.
Vancouver turned two steals, one near SDFC’s penalty area, the other at midfield, into counter goals.
San Diego State Aztecs
Aztecs Fall in Double Overtime Thriller at New Mexico, 23-17 - GoAztecs.com
The Aztecs started with the ball in the first overtime session, but Jayden Denegal was picked off by Austin Brawley on the first play.
Lobo (9-3, 6-2 MW) quarterback James Laubstein had consecutive runs to get to the San Diego State 4-yard line, but safety Dwayne McDougle forced a fumble on Laubstein’s next attempt and Owen Chambliss pounced on the loose ball, giving the Aztecs life.
UNM started with the ball in the second overtime and starting quarterback Jack Layne found a streaking Cade Keith, who made a one-handed catch and ran it into the end zone for a 25-yard touchdown. The mandatory 2-point conversion attempt failed, giving SDSU the chance to win the game with a touchdown and successful 2-point attempt.
Denegal came up with a 15-yard run on a third-and-10 to get the visitors to the New Mexico 10. San Diego State, however, quickly got into a fourth-and-30 situation thanks to three pre-snap penalties and two sacks. Denegal’s desperate passing attempt then sailed past wide receiver Jaylon Hawkins, ending the game.
John Gennaro
Mountain West title game won’t include San Diego State, which loses out in computer tiebreaker - San Diego Union-Tribune
San Diego State’s hopes of participating in the 2025 Mountain West championship game were dashed Sunday morning, when the conference announced that Boise State and UNLV will play for the title.
Boise State will host Friday’s conference championship game, which will be played at 5 p.m. PT and broadcast on Fox.
SDSU would have clinched a spot in the title game — and hosted it — if the Aztecs had beaten New Mexico in Friday’s regular-season finale.
John Gennaro
San Diego Padres
Braves Lose Athletic 24-Year-Old Outfielder to Padres - Newsweek
Earlier this week, former Braves Triple-A outfielder Carlos Rodriguez signed a minor-league deal with the Padres, according to the official MLB.com transactions log. The deal officially was signed on Tuesday, but it took a few more days to show up on the log.
Rodriguez, who turns 25 in December, was once a consensus Top 30 prospect in the Milwaukee Brewers system, and he spent the season with the Braves after inking a minor-league deal in late November of last year. He's got a well-rounded skill set, though he's missing the home run ball, and MLB Pipeline currently gives him a grade of 50 or better on the 20-to-80 scale as a runner, fielder, thrower, and contact hitter.
Padres have $60 million reason to trade All-Star versatile infielder - Sporting News
"The versatile infielder signed for $60 million over the next five years," Feinsand writes, "So moving him would give the Padres some much-needed financial flexibility while likely being able to land a solid return."
Cronenworth with be 32 years old at the start of the season, and will be under control through the 2030 season. Any team acquiring Cronenworth would be getting a versatile infielder, at a reasonable cost, coming off a strong season.
While the Padres, in an ideal world, would keep Cronenworth, it's better to trade him for a solid return than to trade a player like Tatis or Xander Bogaerts.
Odds & Ends
Lane Kiffin is many things, but he's certainly no victim in move to LSU - ESPN
As victims go, Lane Kiffin doesn't seem like one.
He could have stayed at Ole Miss, made over $10 million a year, led his 11-1 team into a home playoff game and become an icon at a place he supposedly found personal tranquility. Or he could've left for LSU to make over $10 million a year leading a program that has won three national titles this century.
Fortunate would be one description of such a fork in life's road. The result of endless work and talent would be another.
But apparently no one knows a man's burdens until they've walked a mile in his hot yoga pants.
Lane Kiffin's disastrous exit from Ole Miss spells a much deeper problem in college football - Yahoo Sports
Kiffin leaving the No. 7 team in the country to take a job with another SEC program before the sport’s marquee event is bad for the product, and no other well-run sports league would tolerate it.
Yet in all the years of listening to administrators like Sankey fret about the unsustainability of the current model and wring their hands about how fans will react if college athletes got paid like professionals or the harm done to bowl games when players opt out, have you heard even a whisper of concern about what the adults are doing to wreck the legitimacy of their sport?
Why does anyone in college football accept this as a normal cost of doing business when it crushes a fan base, sabotages a team and devalues your playoff?
The Winners and Losers of the NFL Week 13 - The Ringer
It has been nearly two months since we’ve seen a competitive game on the NFL’s flagship broadcast. The last Sunday Night Football game decided by fewer than eight points was way back in Week 6. The drought is over, thanks to the Broncos and Commanders, who gave us a wild overtime affair that came down to a failed two-point try. Denver’s Nik Bonitto swatted Marcus Mariota’s throw out of the air and secured his team’s 10th win of the season.
Cooper Flagg Makes History Against The Ancient Clippers - Defector
The Dallas Mavericks set a miserable task for No. 1 overall pick Cooper Flagg. They constructed a tall, unwieldy roster without enough shooting or ball-handling, then told a power forward-sized 18-year-old to play the point. For the first fifth of the season, that went about as well as one might expect. Even a player of Flagg's obvious and immense talents looked overmatched, and for reasons beyond him, the Mavericks started the season at 5-15. But in every individual game, Flagg was still playing keen defense and doing lots of cool stuff that eluded the box score. In Saturday's game against the Los Angeles Clippers, he finally broke out on those terms, too: 35 points, eight rebounds, two assists, and just three turnovers while running the offense. Flagg became the youngest player ever to score 35, beating LeBron James to the mark by five days.
NBA First-Quarter Awards: Chaos, Breakouts, and an Obvious MVP - The Ringer
Wemby turns the court’s most coveted patch of land into a house of horror: The Spurs allow just 23.8 points per game in the paint when he’s on the floor—the lowest mark in the league among all players who average at least 30 minutes. Not only does he wall off opportunities, but once someone actually pierces that area, they usually get too flustered to make anything good happen. Teams are shooting a measly 55.8 percent at the rim (99th percentile, according to Cleaning the Glass) with Wemby in the game. That’s a whopping 10.7 percent below league average, and helps contribute to the 4.1 points per 100 possessions that he saves when contesting a shot.
WNBA, players union agree to 6-week extension as CBA negotiations continue - The Athletic
The WNBA and the league’s players union agreed to a six-week extension on Sunday night, pushing back the expiration deadline for the current Collective Bargaining Agreement until Jan. 9, 2026, the league announced Sunday.
Nov. 30 marked the expiration deadline for the 30-day extension that the two sides previously agreed to, creating a need for resolution this past weekend. Even with the Thanksgiving holiday falling near the expiration date, the league and the WNBPA met virtually on Saturday and had multiple conversations on Sunday as well, sources with knowledge of the negotiations told The Athletic.
A warning sign? Tourism in San Diego slows with hotels seeing fewer guests - San Diego Union-Tribune
A recently completed countywide forecast from the San Diego Tourism Authority, in partnership with the research firm Tourism Economics, reflects a marked slowing of growth — or an outright decline — in almost every metric, from overall visitation to hotel room revenue and occupancy rates. By the end of this year, a total of 32.8 million day and overnight visitors will have come to the county. That amounts to less than a 1% increase over 2024 and is still far off the peak visitation of 35.8 million in 2018.
For next year, the Tourism Authority anticipates little change in the number of out-of-town visitors to the county.
Especially distressing to hoteliers — and the businesses that rely on their guests — is the expected 2 percentage-point decline in hotel occupancy for 2025. It’s the first year since 2018, outside of the 2020 start of the pandemic, that the occupancy rate has fallen. The year-end average is expected to dip to 72%, which compares to the 2018 high of 78.5%. For 2026, the rate is forecast to decline further, to 71%.
That’s a marked change from the past few years when hotel stats like room revenue and daily rates were surging by double digits coming out of COVID and then normalizing to more modest increases of 2% to 3%.
Alright, that's going to do it for today's edition of Front Row Seat. I'll be back tomorrow, and every weekday, to try and make it easier for you to follow the news.
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