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Sup. If you’re about to be the first across the finish line today, go ahead and start celebrating. We’ll all join in with you. North Carolina high school track officials with bad attitudes can’t disqualify us all.

Relatable: What did we think was gonna happen?

I’m not going to argue the nearly unregulated flow of sports gambling (let alone gambling on wars) has been a net positive for society.

I used to enjoy placing a wager or two, but lost all interest over the last few years, since I don’t want to encourage any adolescents with still-developing brains to dive in carelessly. I say this as someone whose brain is expected to develop any day now.

Obviously, I’m also never going to argue athletes should be allowed to bet on their own teams. (Even though it was very cool when Notre Dame’s subjects of glowing hagiography did it.)

Having said all that, I get it:

“In the affidavit, Brendan Sorsby admits to ‘placing small bets on the Indiana football team, typically in amounts between $5 and $50’ in 2022 when he was a member of the Hoosiers. Sorsby was a true freshman at the time and competing on the scout team ‘with several quarterbacks ahead of me on the team’s depth chart and there was no reasonable chance that I would play,’ according to the affidavit.

“Sorsby said the bets were a way to ‘feel more connected to the team’ and that he never used non-public information when deciding what bets to place.

“‘Because the Indiana football team was not a very strong competitor in 2022, I lost most of the bets I placed,’ he said, according to the affidavit.”

That’s from our latest on Sorsby, the Texas Tech quarterback seeking a speedy NCAA resolution. He seems likely to head to the NFL’s supplemental draft in June, rather than ever cashing in his estimated $4 million in Red Raiders money.

Sorsby, 18 at the time of his Indiana bets, was acting like an 18-year-old with a) money and b) friends barely older than him. Does that excuse anything? We’re all great readers here, obviously, so we know I’m not implying anything should be excused.

Again, as someone who did far dumber things that luckily garnered far less publicity, I’m only saying: I get it. It shouldn’t be this easy for teenagers to find themselves throwing money at this stuff.

(Honestly, betting on pre-Cignetti Indiana football is even weirder than the Turkish basketball and Romanian soccer bets Sorsby also got up to. But we’ve all fallen into one pit or another, man.)

Quick Snaps

💎 First, since it’s diamond season:

• How playing basketball for UCLA’s women’s national champs convinced Megan Grant to let herself be great at softball. She’s the new single-season home run queen, after all.
• Texas Tech’s eight-run comeback and a couple big knockouts headlined NCAA softball regionals. On to super regionals, starting Thursday.
• Days before Monday’s baseball selections, the Bruins remain atop our Top 25.

📰 News: 

Expansion: How big should the Playoff be?

As this newsletter discussed last week, if you’re a person who prefers a College Football Playoff of 14 teams or fewer, then you’re standing with ESPN and the SEC … and against the 24-teams coalition of Fox, the Big Ten and other powerful entities whose votes don’t actually count, though I’m sure it’s nice to have friends.

Since only the B1G and SEC have enough power to change the format, the whole thing will come down to whether those two (and/or their corporate masters) can agree. That means the whole thing could come down to SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, who surely doesn’t mind the feeling of being the sport’s single most important person again.

Seth Emerson on what Sankey might do:

“One administrator reached late last week said he thought 24 was more likely. Another administrator said 16 was more likely, adding that things ‘are fluid.’ …

“An expanded Playoff would mean getting rid of the SEC Championship Game, which would mean a loss of a lot of money. Several sources told The Athletic the conference now values the game at around $100 million. …

“Sankey said he told his athletic directors that there isn’t urgency, pointing to the Dec. 1 deadline for a decision on the format for 2027 and beyond.”

A 2027 bracket debate that might keep going until 2026’s bracket is about to be filled in! Hooray!

However, here at the Until Saturday newsletter, I think there’s a person more important than Sankey. That person is you, the reader at home, of course. Take our website’s quick survey on Playoff expansion, and we’ll be back soon with results to parse.

Two other expansion items:

That’s a wrap. Remember to take our quick survey!

Last week’s most-clicked: Scott Dochterman’s look back at the teams that would’ve been edge cases if the 24-team Playoff had been a thing for the previous 30 years shows an expanded tourney is unlikely to add teams with real chances to win it.

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