Napier arrived at SEC Media Days on the hottest seat in a conference where they say “it just means more” — so that makes it the hottest seat in the country.

The vibes around the Gators seem ominous. Napier sounds hopeful.

“I love our team, and I really like what I’ve observed,” he said Wednesday. “I just think we’ve got for the first time, we’ve got some stability. The roster’s kind of stabilized. I think we’ve got competitive depth. There’s credible leadership at the players level.”

Napier was hired away from Louisiana-Lafayette after the 2021 season, taking over after Dan Mullen was fired. He stepped into a program that had fallen behind in recruiting, facilities and staffing.

Napier hired an army of analysts and staffers with a plan to try to stack the type of high school recruiting classes that would give the Gators a team that looked more like Georgia’s and Alabama’s.

It’s not that Napier ignored the transfer portal, but a methodical rebuild can be a tough sell at a program that has won three national titles.

The Gators went 6-7 with future first-round NFL draft pick Anthony Richardson at quarterback in Napier’s first season. In need of signs of progress in 2023 to ease the worries of fans and lock in blue-chip recruits, the Gators regressed to 5-7.

Now, Year 3 seems as if it’s a make-or-break season for Napier, who rattles off stats that support optimism.

Florida returns 17 starters and players who have made 463 career starts and 41,000 career snaps. The Gators rank fourth in the SEC in returning production.

Still, all the talk about Florida this offseason has focused on a daunting schedule and Napier’s job status.

“It was just chatter,” quarterback Graham Mertz said. “That’s exactly what it is. I mean for us, and I always tell my guys every day, I’m like, look we can focus on what people are saying or we can focus on what we are doing.”

Napier sees a team ready to win the close games that have gotten away from the Gators the past two years (six losses by a single possession).

“Change doesn’t happen overnight,” Napier said. “Timing is everything, right? When we took the job, what we inherited, the work that needed to be done. I think we’re on schedule to some degree.”

Year 3 is often when things click for a new coach. See, Texas under Steve Sarkisian.

“I think part of it was our culture. We had to keep building our culture, the things that were important to us, and that takes time. It takes time to learn the schemes,” Sarkisian said. “You bring in coaches and you have an idea of what you want to run, and that’s nothing against a previous staff, but maybe they didn’t recruit the types of players that fit what we wanted to be and how we wanted to play. So that takes time, too.”

The Longhorns had a losing record in his first season, then made a jump to 8-5 in 2022 that left many Texas fans still not quite convinced Sark was the guy.

“But as you continue to stay committed to who you are and you stay committed to your course of action, you stay committed to what you believe in, over time you start to reap the benefits of that,” Sarkisian said.

Last season removed the doubt. The Longhorns made the College Football Playoff for the first time, Sarkisian received a four-year contract extension and Texas will enter this season — its first in the SEC — with national title hopes.

Nobody is expecting the Gators to take that big of a leap, especially against that schedule. The Gators’ schedule looks as if it was made by someone who is holding a grudge against Napier.

Florida faces Georgia, Texas and Mississippi, all top-10 teams in last season’s final AP Top 25. Add Tennessee, LSU and Texas A&M in conference. And then there’s the nonconference schedule of Miami, UCF and Florida State.

“Look, the great thing about our schedule, we don’t have to take this on as individuals. We get to do this as a team,” Napier said.

Napier talks about how the rapidly changing landscape of college football (NIL and loosened transfer rules) made rebuilding Florida more challenging.

“So we already knew that we had a ton of work to do at Florida,” he said. “You know, from a facility standpoint, infrastructure, modernizing the approach, best practices, improving personnel. But then here we go. The evolution of the game starts while we’re doing that.”

Napier said he thinks a lot about how he would have done some things differently and is trying to adapt on the fly.

Napier is Florida’s fourth coach since Urban Meyer left after the 2010 season, having won two national titles.

The instability hasn’t helped Florida get back to championship level. Whether Napier can show enough progress in Year 3 to earn patience will define the Gators’ season.

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As the sport’s attention shifts to the grass of Wimbledon, where play begins Monday, Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, Iga Swiatek and Coco Gauff are the players whose names are on everyone’s lips.

Alcaraz is the defending men’s champion and owner of three Grand Slam titles at the age of 21 after his triumph at the French Open. Sinner, 22, is the top-seeded man at Wimbledon and won the Australian Open in January. Swiatek, 23, is the top-seeded woman and just earned her fourth championship at Roland Garros and fifth major overall. Gauff, the youngest of the bunch at 20, is ranked a career-best No. 2, has reached at least the semifinals at the past three Slam tournaments and won her first such trophy at last year’s U.S. Open.

While Swiatek has entrenched herself at No. 1 in the women’s game, and is now 11-1 against Gauff, neither has been past the quarterfinals at Wimbledon, and there is a much more closely contested and intriguing rivalry developing between Alcaraz and Sinner ( Alcaraz leads 5-4 after winning their semifinal at the French Open in five sets). Then there’s this: For so long, people wondered when the men’s game would evolve from the extended dominance of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, owners of a combined 66 majors, and that trio would cede space to others.

That time, it seems, is now — and Alcaraz and Sinner are beginning to separate themselves from the rest.

“These two guys will win many, many Grand Slams. How many? That’s the question. Of course, they will be the best for 10 years, I imagine — Alcaraz and Sinner. I have no doubt about it,” said Richard Gasquet, a three-time major semifinalist, including twice at Wimbledon. “They will be the future of the game. … The new generation is coming.”

Gasquet, a 38-year-old Frenchman who got to No. 7 in the rankings, knows all too well the difficulties of being a professional tennis player during the era of the so-called Big Three of men’s tennis. The opponents in his three losses in Grand Slam semifinals? Federer, Nadal and Djokovic, once each.

But Federer, now 42, played the last match of his 20-Slam-trophy career in 2021. Nadal, 38, lost in the first round at the French Open — where he claimed 14 of his 22 major championships — and then opted to miss Wimbledon so he could focus on preparing for the Paris Olympics that start in late July; he has dealt with a string of injuries that included a hip operation last year.

And Djokovic? The owner of a men’s-record 24 Grand Slam titles needed to pull out of the French Open before the quarterfinals after tearing the meniscus in his right knee and having surgery. As of Thursday, he still was gauging whether his knee had healed enough for him to compete at the All England Club, where his streak of four consecutive trophies ended last year in a five-set loss to Alcaraz in the final.

Sinner was eliminated by Djokovic at Wimbledon each of the past two years, in the 2022 quarterfinals and 2023 semifinals. But Sinner won their two most recent matchups, at last year’s Davis Cup Finals and in this year’s Australian Open semifinals.

Both Alcaraz and Sinner excel at court coverage and big hitting. Both bring excitement, too, whether it’s Alcaraz’s creative shot-making or Sinner’s all-out dives along the way to his first career grass-court title at Halle, Germany, in June, a rare instance of a man winning his first tournament after making his debut at No. 1.

“No one has ever played like Alcaraz. No chance. And Sinner? The same thing,” said Mats Wilander, a seven-time Slam champ in the 1980s. “They’re like, ‘Whoa! What and where did they come from?’”

Alcaraz and Sinner realize they are well-positioned to take over.

They’re also aware that they’ve only just started down a path to possible greatness.

“We have to see what we do from now on,” Sinner said, “(and) do it year after year after year after year.”

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Going big has been no small part of this breakthrough season — and dominant start to the playoffs — for the Timberwolves. They take a 2-0 lead over Denver into Game 3 of the second-round series Friday night.

“I think when Tim Connelly made that trade, everybody was laughing at him like, ‘What is he doing?’ But he made a great team,” Nuggets center Nikola Jokic said. “I think he deserves the credit for doing that, and of course, the coaching staff are making sure things are working. And I think they are a really dangerous team.”

Jokic and the defending NBA champions knew that well before losing the first two games of this Western Conference semifinal series in humbling fashion to a team, like theirs, that was assembled largely at Connelly’s direction.

Over his nine seasons as general manager, the Nuggets found the three-time league MVP Jokic in the second round of the 2014 draft, made good on first-round picks with Jamal Murray (2016) and Michael Porter Jr. (2018) and acquired ace defender Aaron Gordon in a 2021 trade. Connelly also hired Mike Malone as coach in 2015 and watched with pride last summer when his close friend led the club to the franchise’s first title.

After leaving for a new challenge and a big raise to be the president of basketball operations of the long-languishing Timberwolves, Connelly quickly went to work on a roster that featured a dynamic young guard in Anthony Edwards and an athletic big man in Karl-Anthony Towns.

The pressing goal of becoming a quality defensive team Connelly shared with his inherited head coach Chris Finch led them to Gobert, who was made available by Utah for the steep price of five first-round draft picks and five players.

Never mind that the NBA had become a game driven by athleticism, quickness and long-distance shooting. The Timberwolves were determined to make their pairing of 7-footers work, even after a rough first season for Gobert hampered by the long-term absence of Towns to a severely strained calf muscle.

“I just appreciate him believing in himself and his talent and his mind and building this team out for us to have the best chance to win, trusting that we would make this work,” Towns said.

Though his predecessor Gersson Rosas made the call on Edwards with the first overall pick in the 2020 draft that also yielded defensive stalwart Jaden McDaniels, a year after signing an undrafted Naz Reid, Connelly executed another deal that has been vital in this run by acquiring Mike Conley and Nickeil Alexander-Walker for D’Angelo Russell in a three-team swap.

Gobert just won his fourth Defensive Player of the Year award. While he watched from afar to be with his girlfriend for the birth of their son, the Timberwolves stifled and flummoxed the Nuggets in a 106-80 win in Game 2 on Monday. McDaniels, Edwards and Alexander-Walker swarmed the ailing Murray on the perimeter. Towns and Reid made the paint awfully tough for Jokic.

The whole league was watching.

Former Timberwolves star Kevin Garnett posted on social media that this was the type of defense that could sell tickets, a trail-blazing trait akin to Golden State’s 3-point shooting a decade ago. Jamal Crawford, another former Timberwolves player on the TNT broadcast team, joked during the second quarter that Reid was not supposed to play defense that well as the Sixth Man of the Year award winner.

Just like Connelly and his lieutenants drew it up two years ago?

“I could tell you we have these one, three and five-year plans. It’d be a lie,” Connelly said with a laugh before the series began. “In the NBA, there’s fluidity and things you didn’t expect to happen. You look at Denver, we tried to retain some guys we didn’t keep and got very fortunate with Aaron. Every day, especially around the draft or trade deadline and free agency, things change dramatically. We’re really lucky to have these unbelievable talented core pieces and try to build around them and support them.”

The success in Minnesota clearly affirms the value in being patient and sticking to a process, but as for the perceived win for outside-the-box thinking, well, good luck getting Connelly to acknowledge that.

“It’s just hypothesis. I’m just guessing. You never know. You make a trade, you sign somebody, you draft somebody, you hope it works,” Connelly said. “So I don’t know. Validation would probably give our group too much credit. But we felt pretty convicted that we had the cultural DNA to be a good team. We thought we had the talent. We knew we had an elite coaching staff. Could we grow up a little bit around the edges? Could we not expose ourselves to so many self-faults and unforced errors? And I think we’ve done that for the most part all season.”

—

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Don’t.

“Go ahead and have your burger, have your hot dog, have your couple of slices of pizza,” LaFata said.

LaFata — the director of performance and nutrition for the NBA’s Phoenix Suns — says her advice is simply practical and based on her own appetite. Over the past 20 years, the culinary game across the baseball landscape has exploded, with offerings like The Renegade in Pittsburgh, The 4 Bagger in Atlanta or a Polish Sausage topped with smoked brisket and spicy BBQ sauce in Chicago.

Even glancing at the pictures feels like it can raise cholesterol.

Yes, there are a few health(ier) options, particularly in places like San Francisco, where the Giants have a place called The Garden that highlights “sustainability, urban farming, and healthy eating.” Most parks and arenas have a handful of areas that offer salads, gluten free or vegan offerings if fans are willing to hunt a little.

But the vast majority of people attending baseball games aren’t necessarily looking to eat healthy.

The food offerings reflect those cravings.

Baseball occupies a unique space in the sports food world because of a few factors. For one, the 162-game regular season means each team has 81 home games, so there are lots of opportunities to sell. There’s also the sport’s relatively slow pace, which permits plenty of time to down a hot dog or five.

Juan Villegas Sr. walked through the Chase Field concourse — home of baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks — with a big tray carrying two items called an XL Footlong Sonoran Style Dog and some Korean Pork Belly Nachos.

“Usually, I’m more of a classic guy, you know, like a regular hot dog,” Villegas said. “But me and my son had to give these a try. I’m about to devour them.”

LaFata said she likes to use an 80/20 rule when it comes to a diet, eating healthy 80% of the time while indulguing in some comfort food for the other 20%. The nutritionist said if a person knows they’re going to a sporting event, they should spend the previous few days eating healthy so they can enjoy themselves.

That means plenty of veggies and lean meats like fish.

“This is going to be my 20% day, or my junk food day,” LaFata said. “Thoughout the whole week, you’re eating your 80%, you’re eating clean, you’re eating often, you’re doing all the good things you need to do for your body.”

Most customers aren’t counting calories at the ballpark — and in fact, calorie counts frequently aren’t even posted. Diamondbacks executive chef Stephen Tilder said Chase Field offers a handful of healthy options, but the top five sellers are almost always some variation of hot dogs, chicken tenders, popcorn, soft pretzels and nachos.

“That’ll be 90 percent of your sales at any stadium and arena, because that’s just traditional fare,” he said.

There do seem to be a few exceptions in places like San Francisco, but most cities are more like Milwaukee.

“We had Impossible (Meat) at our taco stands, and we just found that it wasn’t very successful,” said Loren Rue, the executive chef at the Milwaukee Brewers’ ballpark. “We offered it at multiple locations, and the sales just weren’t there to prove that it was worth keeping on.”

Even so, Rue said people don’t have to pack on the pounds when watching the Brewers.

“It’s not that we’re trying to limit those options,” she added. “We still have veggie dogs. We still have veggie burgers. There are options that are available to our guests. It’s just making sure the menu speaks to what the fans want.”

LaFata — the nutrionist — said there are some tips for those who don’t want to pig out while watching a baseball game. Among them, it’s a good idea to walk a few laps around the park, getting an idea of the selection and what options might be better than others.

Healthy options are usually clustered in a few parts of the venue.

She also suggested eating before attending the game, so you’re not starving when staring at a display for an Apple Pie Chimichanga.

Though there are certainly ways to cut caloric corners, LaFata suggests it’s better to quit worrying. Those who have paid to attend a sporting event might as well spend their money on the good stuff.

“Sure, we could do a bunless hot dog, or a bunless burger, and that might save 100, 150 calories if we’re looking to do it that way, or if we’re following a specific paleo or keto type diet and trying to cut the carbs,” LaFata said.

“Or you can just take away the bun to make room for your beer!”

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The week-to-week grind of the PGA Tour has essentially become No Need To See TV, raising serious concerns about what it means for the future of the game.

Now comes the Masters, the first major championship of the year and traditionally a ratings behemoth.

If Augusta National produces its usual stellar numbers, it could be an unmistakable sign that the PGA Tour’s ongoing rift with the upstart LIV circuit is causing more and more casual viewers to tune out.

“It’s certainly one possibility,” Masters chairman Fred Ridley said Wednesday on the eve of the opening round. “Certainly the fact that the best players in the world are not convening very often is not helpful. Whether or not there’s a direct causal effect, I don’t know. But I think that it would be a lot better if they were together more often.”

LIV Golf, armed with the seemingly limitless resources of its Saudi backers, has doled out billions of dollars to lure some of the game’s best players away from the established PGA Tour — an impressive list that includes reigning Masters champion Jon Rahm and five-time major winner Brooks Koepka.

Even though the two sides reached a merger agreement 10 months ago, there is little sign that they are close to working out all the fine print. Which means the best players from each tour only get together a few weeks a year, leaving a pair of watered-down circuits for viewers to chose from the remainder of the year.

Increasingly, it would seem, the ratings show many have decided to tune out altogether.

— The final round of the PGA Tour’s Phoenix Open drew just 2.38 million viewers, a stunning 35% plunge from the previous year, according to Sports Media Watch.

— The Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill was watched by 2.29 million on its closing day, a 30% dip from 2023 and the tournament’s worst fourth-round number in seven years.

— A riveting finish at The Players Championship couldn’t move the needle, its average of 3.53 million viewers representing a 15% slippage from a year earlier. In fact, the ratings for all four rounds of the Players were down from their 2023 levels.

It’s not like all those lost viewers have simply switched the channel to LIV, which is seeking to spice up a staid ol’ sport with 54-hole tournaments, shotgun starts, loud music and a team competition within each event.

The upstart circuit — which so far has failed to land a major TV deal, leaving it far down the dial on The CW — barely registers in the ratings with viewership numbers generally in the low hundreds of thousands.

PGA Tour player Peter Malnati, who won the Valspar Championship three weeks ago, believes all the talk about money in the PGA-LIV showdown has turned off many fans.

“People are just sick of the narrative in golf being about, you know, contracts on LIV, purses on the tour,” he said. “They want to see sport, they want to see people who are the best in the world at what they do, do it at a high level and celebrate that, celebrate the athleticism, celebrate the achievement.”

Malnati said some of his fondest memories growing up were watching Michael Jordan lead the Chicago Bulls to an NBA championship and Tiger Woods’ record-setting victory at the 2000 U.S. Open.

“I didn’t care one iota what Jordan’s contract was,” Malnati said. “I didn’t care one iota what the winner’s check at that U.S. Open was.”

He surmises that nothing has changed with today’s fans.

“Obviously, this is a business, and to the top players who drive a lot of the value in this business, we’ve got to compensate them fairly,” Malnati said. “But I think we’re doing that above and beyond, and the narrative, the storylines, the conversation needs to come back to the product on the course and what we do.

“No kid dreamed when they were watching Jordan dreamed of having his salary,” he went on. “They didn’t care about that. They dreamed of being in that moment, hitting that shot. I think that’s what our fans care about, too, and that’s what they want to see.”

Of course, there’s another issue at work here. While no one doubts the skill of today’s top players, neither tour has a mesmerizing figure such as Jordan or Woods, someone who really moves the needle.

Scottie Scheffler may be the world’s top-ranked player, but he can walk down nearly any street in America without being recognized.

Compounding the issue, the first three months of the PGA Tour season have produced a string of nondescript winners, from Grayson Murray to Austin Eckroat to Stephan Jaeger. Some great storylines, to be sure, but more suited to the hard-core fan than the drop-in viewer.

This is Masters week, however, which has never had any trouble drawing eyeballs to the screen.

All the top players are at Augusta National, and millions will be watching when the green jacket is handed out Sunday evening.

By Monday, when the numbers are calculated, everyone should have a better idea just how much the PGA-LIV feud has contributed to the dwindling viewership all those other weeks.

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In addition to eyeing potential 5-12 upsets and trying to figure out which sleeper to put in the Elite Eight, fans also have to consider more existential questions about college basketball’s future. How will realignment affect the makeup of Division I? How much will football-related decisions affect basketball? How long will the NCAA Tournament stay at 68 teams, and if it changes, what will that mean for the Cinderellas of March?

For now, this event looks pretty much the way it has for a generation. Don’t take it for granted as you fill out your brackets — and if you need some tips, here you go. A Final Four with UConn, Houston, Gonzaga and Michigan State? Let us explain:

EAST REGION
First round winners: UConn, Northwestern, San Diego State, Auburn, BYU, Illinois, Drake, Iowa State.

Yale brings 7-footer Danny Wolf and an experienced supporting cast, but drew a tough first-round matchup against fourth-seeded Auburn. The Tigers are ranked No. 4 in the country by Ken Pomeroy.

Second round winners: UConn, Auburn, Illinois, Iowa State.

The Sweet 16 in this region could include the conference tournament champions of the Big East, SEC, Big Ten and Big 12.

Regional semifinal winners: UConn, Iowa State.

UConn is the betting favorite to win a second straight national title. The Huskies are also ranked No. 1 by Pomeroy, and although we’re used to surprises it’s hard to pick them to exit before the Elite Eight.

Regional champion: UConn. Iowa State had a case for a No. 1 seed, but there’s a gap between the Cyclones and the Huskies.

SOUTH REGION
First Four: Colorado over Boise State.

First round winners: Houston, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Duke, Texas Tech, Kentucky, Florida, Marquette.

James Madison over Wisconsin figures to be a popular first-round upset pick — maybe a little too popular. Same with Vermont over Duke. The chalk holds in this region, for this round anyway.

Second round winners: Houston, Duke, Kentucky, Florida.

Kentucky’s defense should be its undoing eventually, but the Wildcats beat Texas Tech in a clash of styles.

Regional semifinal winners: Houston, Kentucky.

The Sweet 16 and Elite Eight in the South are being held in Dallas, so expect the Cougars to have plenty of support.

Regional champion: Houston. The Cougars should be well prepared after joining the Big 12 and facing a power-conference schedule. It’s on to the Final Four for Kelvin Sampson’s team.

MIDWEST REGION
First Four: Montana State over Grambling State, Colorado State over Virginia.

First round winners: Purdue, TCU, Gonzaga, Samford, Oregon, Creighton, Texas, Saint Peter’s.

“Dickinson” is the key word in this region. Kansas big man Hunter Dickinson didn’t play in the Big 12 Tournament, and his health has been a concern for the Jayhawks. Top-seeded Purdue, meanwhile, needs to avoid being haunted by last year’s loss to 16th-seeded Fairleigh Dickinson.

The Boilermakers advance. The fourth-seeded Jayhawks go down against Samford.

Second round winners: Purdue, Gonzaga, Creighton, Saint Peter’s.

Three times in the past five tournaments, a No. 15 seed has made the Sweet 16, so don’t be afraid to pick one. And hey, Saint Peter’s has done it before from this same seed line.

Regional semifinal winners: Gonzaga, Creighton.

Purdue will be under plenty of pressure to avoid underachieving in the NCAA Tournament again. The Boilermakers get through the first weekend but fall short of an extended run.

Regional champion: Gonzaga. The Zags get a chance to fly under the radar this year, and with a shaky Kansas team near them in the bracket, there’s a favorable path to the Sweet 16. If Gonzaga can get past Purdue, the Final Four is very much in play.

WEST REGION
First Four: Howard over Wagner.

First round winners: North Carolina, Michigan State, Saint Mary’s, Alabama, New Mexico, Baylor, Nevada, Arizona.

Arizona is another team trying to rebound from a first-round loss in 2023, and top-seeded North Carolina returns after missing the tournament entirely last year.

Second round winners: Michigan State, Saint Mary’s, New Mexico, Arizona.

It’s almost a cliche to pick Tom Izzo’s team to overachieve in March, but Michigan State’s Pomeroy rank (18th) suggests the Spartans are dangerous as a No. 9 seed.

Regional semifinal winners: Michigan State, Arizona.

Here’s a question you don’t hear often: Can Michigan State hold its own against Saint Mary’s on the boards? The numbers suggest it would be tough, but the Spartans pull it out with defense.

Regional champion: Michigan State. The Big Ten and SEC aren’t making a lot of friends these days. The Spartans prevent them from getting shut out of the Final Four.

FINAL FOUR
Of the two underdogs in this Final Four, Gonzaga is more likely to advance because it can hurt Houston on the boards, but ultimately UConn and Houston survive to set up a matchup between two former American Athletic Conference teams.

The Huskies are probably the better all-around team, but it’s just too hard to repeat. Houston wins it all.

—

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This is the 50th edition of the PGA Tour’s premier championship, and no one has ever defended his title. Next up is Scottie Scheffler, and the odds are as much in his favor as any of the previous winners.

That includes Woods, who only got one crack at it in 2002, didn’t break 70 and tied for 14th.

“I just think it’s a golf course where you don’t see a lot of repeat winners in general,” Scheffler said. “There’s not a guy that you have seen win on this golf course a bunch.”

Only five players have won twice on the Stadium Course at the TPC Sawgrass. Nicklaus won The Players three times, but that was before it moved permanently to this Pete Dye arena of endless thrills and that one (mostly) island green on the par-3 17th.

Scheffler is the No. 1 player in the world, the first time the defending champion of The Players has been atop the world ranking since Jason Day in 2016. The difference is Scheffler arrived at Sawgrass straight from a dominant performance to win at Bay Hill by five shots.

Already the best from tee-to-green, his putter finally came to life and the rest of golf’s best had every reason to be nervous.

“I’ve personally had some really, really nice ball-striking weeks,” FedEx Cup champion Viktor Hovland said. “But for him to have done that for so long and won so many tournaments that he’s done the last couple years is very, very impressive. Because you get into periods of times where you feel like you can’t miss and you’re hitting it on a string, but then next month it might feel a little bit difficult. He just seems to keep doing what he’s doing.”

Scheffler has been No. 1 for the last 10 months, and it’s not difficult to do the math. Along with three victories in the last year — that includes the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas — he has finished out of the top 10 only three times in 22 tournaments.

How that translates to Sawgrass is yet to be seen, even on a course where a year ago it looked as though he was playing alone. He led by six shots at one point and won by five shots, just as he did at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

History, however, is not on his side. The Stadium Course has a reputation of never favoring a single style of golf, and there is trouble just about everywhere that everyone seems to find at some point over the tournament.

“That’s why I think it’s one of the best places we play on tour, just because it really doesn’t suit one type of player,” Scheffler said. ”Bomb-and-gouge doesn’t really work out here. But then you even have the shorter hitters that plot it around that can struggle here, because you got to hit it exactly where you’re looking or you’re going to be punished pretty severely.”

What has changed is The Players now needs an asterisk, but only if it claims to have the strongest and deepest field in golf. World ranking aside, golf is so divided now because of the defections to LIV Golf that all the best are not at Sawgrass — not Masters champion Jon Rahm or Cameron Smith, who conquered Sawgrass two years ago. Not Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka or Bryson DeChambeau.

And by the sound of PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, there’s not an immediate fix.

“It’s going to take time,” Monahan said of any deal with the Saudis and any solution to the fractured landscape in golf.

The Players gets started on Thursday, and if nothing else, it’s a time to return the focus to inside the ropes, at least for four days.

Xander Schauffele isn’t a fan of Monahan, saying the commissioner has “a long way to go” to regain trust. Rory McIlroy spoke out in favor of Monahan on Wednesday morning, saying he was the right man for the job and the tour was in a stronger position with new money from a group of private investors.

And then there was Scheffler, suggesting any blame for the divide should be on the players who are not at Sawgrass this week because of LIV.

“If the fans are upset, then look at the guys that left,” he said. “We had a tour, we were all together, and the people that left are no longer here. At the end of the day, that’s where the splintering comes from.”

Schauffele perhaps summarized it best.

“I think you would like to have those players playing in an ideal world, but I feel like we’re sort of beating a dead horse in this media room a little bit,” he said.

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James crossed the 40,000-point mark on Saturday night, extending the NBA all-time scoring record that he claimed from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar last season.

James already has added about 1,700 points of distance between himself and Abdul-Jabbar’s total of 38,387. It might be time to add James’ NBA scoring record to the list of “records that never will be broken,” like Cal Ripken’s 2,632 consecutive games played in baseball, Wayne Gretzky’s 2,857 points in the NHL or the UConn women’s basketball team winning 111 consecutive games.

Wilt Chamberlain once averaged 50.4 points in a season in the NBA. Nobody else ever has come close to that. The highest any other player averaged in a full season was Elgin Baylor’s 38.3 per game; if someone averaged that much for an entire career, they would have had to play all 82 games for almost 13 seasons just to get to get to 40,000 points.

“Nobody will ever, ever touch it,” Miami forward Kevin Love, one of James’ former Cleveland teammates, said last year when James broke Abdul-Jabbar’s record.

And remember, James might play another season. Or two. Or more. He easily could reach 43,000 or 44,000 by the time he’s finished. That will only make the record more out of reach.

Some reasons why it’s such a long shot that someone else will reach the milestone:

WHO’S NEXT?

Other than James, there are only seven active players with more than 20,000 points — meaning there are only seven players who are halfway to 40,000.

Kevin Durant is closest to James, about 12,000 points behind the all-time scoring leader. Durant’s career average of 27.3 points per game is actually 0.2 points better than James’ career scoring rate. But Durant — if he keeps that average — would have to play basically every game until the end of the 2028-29 season to reach the 40,000 mark.

He’d be 40 at that time. Durant playing at that age isn’t completely unrealistic. The playing every game for five-plus years part probably is unrealistic; Durant hasn’t appeared in all 82 games of a season since 2009-10, when he was 21.

There are three active players with higher career per-game scoring averages than James. Durant is one, Luka Doncic (28.5) and Joel Embiid (27.8) are the others.

Doncic just turned 25. A reporter asked him last week if he considered turning 25 to be a milestone birthday. “I feel like I’m 40,” Doncic replied. It sure doesn’t seem like Doncic is considering playing 15 more years, based on that answer.

And Embiid is roughly 28,000 points behind James. He’d need to play 1,000 more games, give or take, to reach 40,000. Given his health history and age — Embiid turns 30 later this month — 1,000 more games seems improbable at best.

WHAT WILL IT TAKE?
James got to 40,000 through the combination of excellence and longevity. Only Vince Carter played more NBA seasons than James has, and if James — as expected — comes back for Year 22 next season he’ll tie that record.

Playing seemingly forever, that is what turns a tough task into darn near impossible.

There have been greater scorers, at least in terms of average. Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain both averaged 30.1 points, but James already has appeared in 400-plus more games than either of those icons. Elgin Baylor averaged 27.4 points in his 14 seasons; he appeared in 846 games and would have had to play in 616 more (at that scoring average) to reach 40,000.

Jerry West averaged roughly the same in his career as James. Again, the longevity is what separates them; West played 932 games.

WHAT ABOUT WEMBY?
All talk about things that could happen in the future should include Victor Wembanyama.

He is averaging 20.7 points per game as a rookie. James averaged 20.9 points in his rookie season. Only 20 more years and the same trajectory to go, and Wemby will be right there in the 40,000 club.

At All-Star weekend, Milwaukee guard Damian Lillard said that if he was in charge he’d add a 4-point line to the NBA floor. That would certainly help someone make a run at 40,000.

It’s unlikely that such a move will happen; in fact, given how scoring has risen in recent years, it’s reasonable to think that the NBA will make moves to help out defenses before it gives shooters another way to put up video-game numbers.

LAST WORD
“Records are always meant to be broken. You can never say never, of any record. … For years, people said Kareem’s record would never be broken.” — James, after scoring 40,000.

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Beyoncé broke the internet yet again in a Verizon ad, which was soon followed by a viral music drop. Lionel Messi’s showed off his apparent loyalty to Michelob Ultra. And T-Mobile, e.l.f. cosmetics, Uber Eats and more offered a slew of mini TV show reunions, bringing together cast members from “Suits” to “Friends.”

Despite being an election year in the U.S., there was very little to show for it on Sunday besides an ad by American Values 2024, the super PAC backing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential run. It ran a 30-second, retro-styled spot that attempted to lean into his family’s legacy. Kennedy launched his independent bid for the White House last year.

Airing a Super Bowl commercial is no easy feat. On top of the reported $7 million price tag for a 30-second spot during the game, brands enlist the biggest actors, invest in dazzling special effects and try to put together an ad that more than 100 million expected viewers will like — or at least remember.

“Advertisers this year are doing everything they can to try to break through the clutter,” Northwestern University marketing professor Tim Calkins said. “They’re pulling out all the stops.”

On Sunday, scores of advertisers tapped into light humor and nostalgia to give game breaks a mostly “feel good,” whimsical energy. Still, there were also a few serious and somber moments.

Here’s a rundown of what ad-watchers saw in Super Bowl LVIII.

CELEBRITIES EVERYWHERE
Kris Jenner “twists on it” with Oreo. The face behind Pringles’ iconic mustache is unveiled to be none other than Chris Pratt. And Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez returned for Dunkin’ cameos, while Ice Spice sips on Starry.

In typical Super Bowl fashion, an array of companies’ adverts were adorned by stars — often with numerous celebrities stuffed in a single spot. T-Mobile, for example, showcased big names like Bradley Cooper, Common, Jennifer Hudson, Laura Dern and “Suits” stars Gabriel Macht and Patrick J. Adams all in one ad for its “Magenta Status” customer appreciation program.

And the “Suits” homecoming didn’t stop there. In another ad stuffed with celebrity cameos — including “Judge Judy” Judy Sheindlin — e.l.f. cosmetics brought together Gina Torres, Rick Hoffman and Sarah Rafferty in a courtroom spoof.

NBC sitcoms had quite a few reunion moments during the game. In an Uber Eats ad, which shows people forgetting things so they remember Uber Eats can deliver a wide variety of items, Jennifer Aniston seemingly forgets she ever worked with her “Friends” co-star David Schwimmer. And in an ad for Mtn Dew Baja Blast, Aubrey Plaza says she can have a ‘Blast’ doing anything — including reuniting with her “Parks and Rec” boss Nick Offerman as they fly on dragons.

Although star power in Super Bowl commercials isn’t new, it did feel especially heightened this year.

“It used to be that you’d have a celebrity pop up that would sort of be the spokesperson of the commercial,” said Virginia Commonwealth University Brandcenter’s Jessica D. Collins. “Now you’re seeing collaborations of celebrities… all in the same commercial, even (when) they have absolutely nothing to do with each other.”

Some brands can pull this off in a smart way — such as tapping into pop culture moments and inside jokes. But experts say that overdoing celeb cameos can take away from the impact of the ad. Viewers may remember what stars they saw in a commercial but not the brand name, University of Minnesota associate professor of marketing Linli Xu notes.

CUTENESS AND NOSTALGIA
It wouldn’t be the Super Bowl without some furry friends. Budweiser, for example, brought back familiar characters to its gameday slot — which shows Clydesdales and a Labrador retriever team up to help the beer brand make the delivery. And Hellmann’s featured the “Mayo Cat.”

But the year’s ads weren’t raining dogs and cats, noted Kimberly Whitler, marketing professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.

That didn’t stop advertisers from searching for other ways into viewers’ hearts.

“Everything old is new again,” she said, pointing to successful Super Bowl ads or messages from the past making a return, including ETrade’s talking babies.

The 1980s also made a comeback, Whitler noted, with both T-Mobile and Nerds featuring the theme song from “Flashdance,” while the mullet was at the center of Kawasaki’s spot.

PULLING AT THE HEARTSTRINGS
Both Collins and Calkins said that Google’s spot was among their favorites. The ad followed a blind man as he uses “Guided Frame” — Google’s A.I.-powered accessibility feature for the Pixel camera that uses a combination of audio cues, high-contrast animations and tactile vibrations — to take pictures of the people and places in his life.

The spot was a “perfect balance of emotion and showing off a product benefit,” Collins said, adding that she appreciated how Google spotlighted an audience that isn’t always noticed. “No celebrities, (and it) purely showed what could have been an absolutely real family. Loved it.”

Xu also pointed to Dove’s ad, which focused on how low body-confidence leads to girls quitting sports.

“It’s a powerful message,” she said, in line with Dove’s past campaigns dedicated to body positivity in the past.

SOME SERIOUS MOMENTS
Several other ads took more serious tones. Robert Kraft’s Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, for example, ran an ad featuring Martin Luther King Jr.’s speechwriter Dr. Clarence B. Jones.

“He Gets Us” also returned to the Super Bowl this year. The campaign, which is backed by a group of wealthy Christian donors, aired two ads Sunday night.

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For Marino, Prince’s iconic show was one the greatest moments in the history of halftime shows — which was once viewed as a humdrum intermission featuring college marching bands. But in time, the midway point of the NFL’s championship game has emerged into one of sport’s biggest spectacles with superstar performances from Michael Jackson, Beyoncé, Madonna, Aerosmith and U2.

“The halftime performance has come a long way,” said the Hall of Fame quarterback who played 17 seasons with the Miami Dolphins and competed in the 1985 Super Bowl. As an NFL analyst, Marino’s had a front-row seat to several halftime shows.

“Not a lot of people really watched it,” he continued. “But now, as we head into Super Bowl 58, people love to watch the halftime show.”

In nearly six decades, the halftime festivities have transformed from a family-oriented show with patriotic tunes into entertainment’s biggest stage with top-tier performers, pyrotechnics and superb backup dancers. The 12-to-15 minute performance sometimes attracts more eyeballs than the actual championship game, consistently drawing more than 100 million viewers.

Last year, Rihanna ’s performance became the most-watched in history with over 121 million viewers, barely edging Katy Perry’s 2015 show. The number from Rihanna’s set is about six million more than Fox’s broadcast of the Kansas City Chiefs’ 38-35 victory against the Philadelphia Eagles.

“I think the live element is pretty exciting for people because it’s a massive production and there’s so many moving pieces,” said actor Scarlett Johansson, who doesn’t consider herself a football enthusiast. But she’s intrigued by the unpredictability of the halftime show like Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson ’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction,” Lady Gaga dropping from a stadium roof and Rihanna’s pregnancy reveal.

“You kind of watch with nervous excitement,” Johansson said. “You know at any moment something could maybe go wrong. That’s why it’s so fun to watch it because you’ve got all this anticipation. The production is so huge and so many people have come together to create this one moment. It’s kind of awesome.”

Kris Jenner agrees, calling the halftime show a “giant surprise.”

“The production level and how quickly they put it together as they’re breaking into commercial and come back with this fabulous, epic show,” said Jenner, the matriarch of “The Kardashians” reality television show. “Through all the years and technology, it gets better and better. It’s so exciting to watch and see what they come up with next and who is going to perform. It’s such a big deal.”

Usher — who last year told The Associated Press his appearance with the Black Eyed Peas during the 2011 Super Bowl taught him not to “take the moments for granted because you only get 13 of them” — will headline this year’s show in Las Vegas on Feb. 11.

His show will be vastly different than the NFL’s first Super Bowl halftime show in 1967, which featured marching bands from the University of Arizona and Grambling State University, a historically Black college, along with hundreds of flying pigeons, thousands of balloons and two soaring men wearing jetpacks.

After the inaugural Super Bowl, the NFL kept bringing back other marching bands, drill teams, signed Chubby Checker and Up with People, an organization that stage positive thinking through dance and song performances. However, none of those acts were considered huge draws.

But as the Super Bowl’s popularity soared and game day emerged as an unofficial holiday in the U.S., the NFL wanted the halftime show to grow in the same capacity. The league tapped New Kids on the Block and Gloria Estefan the first two years of the ‘90s. Then it saw a huge breakthrough when Michael Jackson headlined the 1993 show at the Rose Bowl in Southern California, where the King of Pop notoriously moonwalked across the stage and performed hits including “Billie Jean,” “Black or White” and “Heal the World.”

Jackson’s stellar performance opened the door for other stars like the Rolling Stones, Diana Ross, Jennifer Lopez and Shakira who are eager to perform.

“That certainly was the one that changed the course of pop stars and major musicians taking that stage seriously,” said Seth Dudowsky, the head of music at the NFL. He’s the point person for all musical activations for the league and a liaison with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, which has produced the halftime show since 2019.

The NFL handles production costs and expenses for performers — who don’t get paid — but the exposure to hundreds of millions of people worldwide is considered priceless.

Dudowsky recalled when Coldplay frontman Chris Martin said the “Super Bowl of music is the Super Bowl.” He said the halftime show has been able to grow thanks to the NFL’s ability to adjust to the current culture and giving deserving artists the platform to express their artistry.

Some notable examples include U2’s remembrance of the 9/11 victims; Beyoncé’s unapologetic Blackness and political activism through her Black power anthem “Formation”; and the first show to feature hip-hop artists led by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg in 2022.

“We really wanted to start to focus on leading into culture,” said Dudowsky, who has worked at the NFL since 2013 and attended 11 Super Bowls. “Whether that’s the culture of the city, what’s happening in culture at large and then focusing on it so that what we’re doing feels culturally relevant and using that platform for artists to be able to be themselves and show their art on stage. … We want them to feel empowered.”

Dogg praised NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and Jay-Z for pushing the halftime show forward. The league worked with Roc Nation to help its Inspire Change initiative, created by the NFL after an agreement with a coalition of players who demonstrated during the national anthem to protest social and racial injustice in this country.

“Shout out to Jay-Z for changing the climate. Roger Goodell for giving him an opportunity,” Dogg said. “This is music. The music that dictates the world is what’s performing at halftime now. They’re starting to understand that it’s about what those players want to hear, what those fans want to hear, and what’s universally effective. It has no color on it now. Pop used to have a color on it. Now pop is popular. So, the most popular music is the music that we make. It makes sense to put those people on there that make that music.”

Dogg said Usher perfectly “fits the mold to the fullest.

“He looks good. He dances good. He sounds good,” the rapper said. “All the above. And he’s got hit records. You want to see that. You want to see a performer perform. You want to see a real entertainer.”

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