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New York Yankees captain Aaron Judge readily admitted that it was "brutal" to wait on his team to make some transactions this offseason.

The three-time and reigning American League Most Valuable Player had his first media availability of spring training Monday in Tampa.

"It was brutal. I'm like, 'I see a lot of free agents out there,'" Judge said. "I'm like, 'Let's sign these guys right now and start adding more pieces,' because I've seen other teams around the league get better.

"Early on, it was pretty tough to watch. I'm like, 'Man, we're the New York Yankees. Let's go out there and get the right people, get the right pieces to go out there and finish this thing off.'"

Judge was asked whether he expressed his view to the team, and he grinned and said, "Yeah, oh, yeah."

In the end, New York mostly brought back the same roster from 2025 that finished 94-68, lost the AL East title to the Toronto Blue Jays in a tiebreaker and then fell to Toronto in the AL Division Series.

Center fielder Trent Grisham accepted a qualifying offer last November, after which it was all quiet for a franchise known as one of the major leagues' biggest spenders. At one point in the winter, the Yankees were the only team in baseball that had not yet added a new player.

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That changed when the Yankees traded four prospects for Miami Marlins left-handed pitcher Ryan Weathers. But the biggest names they signed were brought back from the 2025 roster -- outfielder Cody Bellinger landed a five-year, $162.5 million deal last month and veteran first baseman Paul Goldschmidt came back on a one-year, $4 million pact.

That was enough for Judge.

"We're right where we need to be," Judge told reporters. "I love it. I don't know, people might have their opinions on (running it back) because we didn't win it all last year and fell short in the Division Series."

Judge also said his right elbow is at full strength after his flexor strain last summer did not fully heal. Manager Aaron Boone recently said Judge would play in four or five of the Yankees' first nine Grapefruit League games as he gets back to throwing at game speed.

Judge said he was "definitely concerned" after the postseason ended and didn't know whether he'd need surgery until the team doctors assuaged his concerns.

"They ran all the checks again and did all the tests and they said, 'You're good to go,'" Judge said. "And I said, 'All right, when can we start throwing?' So it was good. It was great. It was great to hear those words so that now I can go into the offseason and just prepare the way I need to be in the best shape to start the year."

--Field Level Media

Say this for the Big Ten's quest to expand theCollege Football Playoff: It doesn't become fixated with any particular idea.

While theSECremains stuck on a 5+11 playoff plan theBig Tenrefuses to accept, Tony Petitti's idea-du-jour playoff think tank has devised yet another proposal.

Thislatest idea from Big Ten landwould have made four-loss Iowa a playoff qualifier.

Before you laugh, remember what those four-loss Hawkeyesdid to 10-win Vanderbilt in the ReliaQuest Bowl.

More specifically, the Big Ten reportedly wants a 24-team playoff in place by the 2029 season. In this newest idea from the B1G think tank, 23 bids would be assigned via at-large selection, with one automatic bid for the Group of Five. ESPNfirst reportedon the plan last week.

How serious is the Big Ten about this plan? Hard telling, because its mood consistently shifts.

At one point last year, Petitti became obsessed with play-in games. He once liked the idea of a 16-team playoff — so long as he couldrig it with multiple automatic bids. Then, theBig Ten graduated to a 24-team playoff, but it maintained a preference for multiple AQs.

Now, in this proposal, it's to heck with AQs, to heck with conference championship games, and to heck with 16 teams.

One thing we know for sure: The Big Ten really, really doesn't want the 5+11 plan the SEC really, really does want.

This 24-team idea hatched by the Big Ten will be a test of the SEC's anguish. Just how desperate is the SEC for playoff expansion, after getting shut out of the national championship game for three straight years and getting stiff-armed in its quest to create a 16-team playoff? Desperate enough to accept a 24-team plan the Big Ten (and its television partner) wants?

The Big Ten is calling this latest 24-team plan a "compromise," but it's not really compromise. It's bait designed to lure the SEC off the idea of 16 and toward the idea of 24.

Here are three things I like, and three things I don't like, about this 24-team playoff proposal:

What I like about Big Ten's 24-team CFP plan

1. It would get rid of conference championship games.

Conference championships were built for 12-team conferences divided into divisions, in a landscape with no playoff. Years later, conference championships became an important data point in selection for the four-team playoff.

They've outlived their utility.

Consider last season. Georgia thumped Alabama in the SEC Championship. Neither team moved even one spot in the ensuing playoff rankings. Duke won the ACC championship but didn't represent the conference in the playoff.

Conference championships persist purely for dollars. Dumping them requires a new revenue stream. Insert a 24-team playoff, with new inventory that can be sold to TV partners. By eliminating antiquated conference championships, the playoff could start the first weekend of December.

2. It would nix past idea of multiple AQs per conference.

Unlike past Big Ten plans that included a bevy of automatic bids preassigned to conferences based on prestige and clout, this 24-team format would be more of a meritocracy.

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Why should any conference be guaranteed four bids? Earn it on the field.

Putting so much responsibility on the playoff committee's shoulders would create extra controversy and the difficulty of determining between two 9-3 teams from different conferences. That's better than rigging the bracket before the season starts with a lopsided number of AQs.

3. More playoff games on college campuses.

College football belongs on college campuses. The debut of first-round playoff games played in college towns became an undeniable upside of the 12-team playoff.

The 24-team playoff would result in 16 playoff games on campus sites, with eight in the first round and eight more in the second round, before shifting to neutral sites for the quarterfinals and beyond.

A 24-team playoff could have served up Texas at Texas Tech in a second-round game in Lubbock. Holy tortilla shells, that would've been good theater.

What I don't like about 24-team CFP plan

1. In-season attention will shift away from best teams.

A smaller playoff keeps the focus on the best teams. In the 12-team playoff, attention fixes on the top 15 or 20 teams that are in the playoff hunt.

Double the playoff's size to 24 teams, and much of the spotlight will shift toward the cavalcade of three- and four-loss bubble teams battling for the final bids.

Regular-season results become less consequential, too, the bigger the bracket is. In 2024, Alabama would've coasted into a 24-team playoff despite a pair of losses to teams that finished 6-6.

In essence, the regular season would be devalued.

2. Playoff exclusivity is sacrificed for playoff revenue.

The 12-team playoff achieves a healthy balance between exclusivity and access. This past season, six conferences were represented. The 12-team bracket is exclusive enough that 10-2 Notre Dame, 10-2 Vanderbilt and 9-3 Texas did not earn entry, but accessible enough that Oregon, Mississippi and Texas A&M were not omitted just because they lost once to a good opponent.

The Ducks, Rebels and Aggies were the types of good teams that would not have earned playoff selection in the four-team CFP era. Four is too small.

But, in a 24-team playoff, the Michigan team that got creamed by Oklahoma, Southern Cal and Ohio State would become a playoff qualifier. Once you create an abundance of accessibility and degrade the playoff's exclusivity, the sport shifts to talking heads debating which 8-4 team got "snubbed" by the committee.

3. Playoff becomes overloaded with postseason roadkill.

In this past playoff, James Madison and Tulane had no shot to win it all and little chance of winning even one game. In a 24-team playoff, the playoff roadkill multiplies. Half the field would have little to no chance at winning the national championship.

Teams like Iowa and Houston that finished their seasons with celebratory bowl triumphs against SEC teams would get rerouted into a playoff from which they have no hope of emerging victorious.

Our verdict

This 24-team playoff has the benefit of being better than some of the Big Ten's worst ideas that preceded it. That doesn't make it a good plan, or one the SEC should embrace.

Blake Toppmeyeris the USA TODAY Network's senior national college football columnist. Email him atBToppmeyer@gannett.comand follow him on X@btoppmeyer.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:24-team College Football Playoff plan offers upsides — but not enough

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza is now starting to shift his mindset toward the NFL, which really was his goal when he transferred to Indiana.

APTOPIX CFP National Championship Football

Mendoza and the Hoosiers just happened to have a perfect season together that ended with animprobable national championship.

"It's been a whirlwind. I think now it's finally settled in and the dust has started to settle," Mendoza said Monday night before receiving the Davey O'Brien Award as the nation's top college quarterback. "The national championship, and then boom, next thing you know you're on a new chapter."

The latest award ceremony for Mendoza, the transfer from Cal who grew up a few miles from Miami's campus, came exactly four weeks after Indiana won its first national championship 27-21 over the Hurricanes in their home stadium. It was also a week before the NFL combine, and just over two months from the opening night of the NFL draft on April 23, when Mendoza very wellcould be the No. 1 overall pickby the Las Vegas Raiders andtheir new coach.

"I'd be blessed and honored to play for the Raiders, or I'd be blessed to play for any team. Any NFL team that drafts me, I'd be ecstatic," he said. "I know at the draft, I'll probably shed a tear or two just because it's such a full-circle moment for me. ... The goal of transferring to Indiana was to make the NFL. It wasn't to be a great college player. It was to try to develop into being an NFL quarterback one day."

Mendoza threw for 3,535 yards and an FBS-leading 41 touchdowns while completing 273 of 379 passes (72%) with only six interceptions. He had 4,712 yards passing and 30 TDs in 20 games over two seasons at Cal, which gave him a late scholarship offer after he had been prepared out of high school to "put myself into student debt" to play football at Yale — since no athletic scholarships are offered in the Ivy League — because he loved the game so much.

Now the 22-year-old QB is preparing to move on to the highest level, knowing that college success won't automatically translate to the pros.

"College is great, but that part's behind me," he said. "I feel like I've been satisfied with my college career. However, now I'm on to the NFL career. It requires a new skill set. It's a grown man's league."

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His Heisman Trophy

When Mendozaaccepted the Heisman Trophyin December, his intention was to keep the trophy in Bloomington forever, where he felt it belonged.

It wasn't until a couple of weeks later, when the Heisman Trophy was in a case on the Indiana campus, that he realized he also got one of his own to keep.

"Then I took it back home, and so it's in my living room, which is great," he said. "Think about that decoration."

He even took his trophy to St. Paul Catholic Center in Bloomington, where he regularly attended Mass, to share with the church leaders around Christmas. He also hopes to take the trophy to his high school in Miami.

Mendoza's heir apparent

The ceremony for the Davey O'Brien Award, named for the former TCU quarterback and 1938 Heisman winner, is held only a few miles from the TCU campus. That is also where the quarterback who likely will replace Mendoza was a starter the past three seasons.

Josh Hoover threw for 9,629 yards and 71 touchdowns over 36 games for the Horned Frogs before leaving in the portal for Indiana even before the national championship game.

Mendoza said he hadn't had the opportunity to speak with Hoover, and said any advice he would have for his successor would be given in person.

Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign uphere. AP college football:https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-pollandhttps://apnews.com/hub/college-football

GENEVA (AP) — Delegations from Moscow and Kyiv were in Geneva on Tuesday for another round ofU.S.-brokered peace talks, a week before the fourth anniversary ofRussia's full-scale invasionof its neighbor.

Russia Ukraine War

However, expectations for any breakthroughs in Geneva were low, with neither side apparently ready to budge from its positions on key territorial issues and future security guarantees, despite the United States setting aJune deadlinefor a settlement.

Ukrainian PresidentVolodymyr Zelenskyysaid his government's delegation was in Switzerland and Russian state news agency Tass said the Russian delegation had also arrived. Talks, to be held over two days, were expected to start later in the day.

Discussions on the future of Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory are expected to be particularly tough as U.S. President Donald Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, and son-in-law Jared Kushner, sit down with the delegations. That's according to a person familiar with the talks who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to talk to reporters.

Russa is still insisting that Ukraine cede control of its eastern Donbas region.

Also in Geneva will be American, Russian and Ukrainian military chiefs, who will discuss how a ceasefire monitoring might work after any peace deal, and what's needed to implement it, the person said.

Duringprevious talks in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, military leaders looked at how a demilitarized zone could be arranged and how everyone's militaries could talk to one another, the person added.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov cautioned against expecting developments on the first day of talks as they were set to continue on Wednesday. Moscow has provided few details of previous talks.

Ukraine's short-handed army is locked in a war of attrition with Russia's bigger forces along the roughly 1,250-kilometer (750-mile)front line. Ukrainian civilians are enduring Russian aerial barrages that repeatedlyknock out poweranddestroy homes.

The future of the almost 20% of Ukrainian land that Russia occupies or still covets is a central question in the talks, as are Kyiv's demands for postwar security guarantees with a U.S. backstop to deter Moscow from invading again.

Trump described the Geneva meeting as "big talks."

"Ukraine better come to the table fast," he told reporters late Monday as he flew back to Washington from his home in Florida.

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It wasn't immediately clear what Trump was referring to in his comment about Ukraine, which has committed to and taken part in negotiations in the hope of ending Russia's devastating onslaught.

Complex talks as the war presses on

The Russian delegation is headed by Russian President Vladimir Putin's adviser Vladimir Medinsky, who headed Moscow's team of negotiators in the first direct peace talks with Ukraine in Istanbul in March 2022 and has forcefully pushed Putin's war goals. Medinsky has written several history books that claim to expose Western plots against Russia and berate Ukraine.

The commander of the U.S. military — and NATO forces — in Europe, Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, and Secretary of the U.S. Army Dan Driscoll will attend the meeting in Geneva on behalf of the U.S. military and meet with their Russian and Ukrainian counterparts, Col. Martin O'Donnell, a spokesman for the U.S. commander said.

Overnight, Russia used almost 400 long-range drones and 29 missiles of various types to strike 12 regions of Ukraine, injuring nine people, including children, according to the Ukrainian president.

Zelenskyy said tens of thousands of residents were left without heating and running water in the southern port city of Odesa.

Zelenskyy said Moscow should be "held accountable" for the relentless attacks, which he said undermine the U.S. push for peace.

"The more this evil comes from Russia, the harder it will be for everyone to reach any agreements with them. Partners must understand this. First and foremost, this concerns the United States," the Ukrainian leader said on social media late Monday.

"We agreed to all realistic proposals from the United States, starting with the proposal for an unconditional and long-term ceasefire," Zelenskyy noted.

The talks in Geneva took place as U.S. officials also held indirecttalks with Iranin the Swiss city.

Burrows reported from London. Associated Press writer Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.

Follow AP's coverage of the war in Ukraine athttps://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

BEIRUT (AP) — Protesters blocked main roads in and around Beirut on Tuesday after Lebanon's Cabinet approved new taxes that raise fuel prices and other products to fund public pay hikes.

Lebanon Tax Protests

The Cabinet approved a tax of 300,000 Lebanese pounds (about $3.30) on every 20 liters (5.3 gallons) of gasoline on Monday. Diesel fuel was exempted from the new tax, as most in Lebanon depend on itto run private generatorsto make up for severe shortages in state electricity.

The government also agreed to increase the value-added tax on all products already subject to the levy from 11 to 12%, which the parliament still has to approve.

The tax increases are to support raises and pension boosts of public employees, after wages lost value in the 2019 currency collapse, giving them the equivalent of an additional six months' salary. Information Minister Paul Morcos said the pay increases were estimated to cost about $800 million.

Though the Mediterranean country sits on one of the largest gold reserves in the Middle East, it suffers ongoinginflationand widespread corruption.The cash-strapped countryalso suffered about $11 billion in damages in the 2024 war between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group.

Anger over fuel hike

Ghayath Saadeh, one of a group of taxi drivers who blocked a main road leading into downtown Beirut, said the country's leaders "consider us taxi drivers to be garbage."

"Everything is getting more expensive, food and drinks, and Ramadan is coming," he said. "We will block all the roads, God willing, if they don't respond to us."

When the Lebanese government proposed new taxes in 2019, including a $6 monthly fee for using internet calls through services such as WhatsApp, mass protests broke out that paralyzed the country for months. Demonstrators called for the country's leaders to step down over widespread corruption, government paralysis and failing infrastructure, and for an end to the country's sectarian power-sharing system.

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Lebanon has been under international pressure to make financial reforms for years, but has so far made little progress.

Weapons plan discussed

Also Monday, the cabinet received a report from the Lebanese army on its progress on a plan to disarm non-state militant groups in the country, including Hezbollah.

Last month, the army announced it had completed the first phase of the plan, covering the area south of the Litani River, near the border with Israel. The second phase of the plan will cover segments of southern Lebanon between the Litani and the Awali rivers, which includes the port city of Sidon.

Morcos, the information minister, said following the cabinet session that the second stage is expected to take four months but could be extended "depending on the available resources, the continuation of Israeli attacks and the obstacles on the ground."

The disarmament plan comes after aU.S.-brokered ceasefirenominally ended a war between Hezbollah and Israel in November 2024. Since then, Israel has accused Hezbollah of rebuilding and has continued to launch near-daily strikes in Lebanon and to occupy several hilltop points on the Lebanese side of the border.

Hezbollah has insisted that the ceasefire deal only requires it to disarm south of the Litani and that it will not discuss disarming in the rest of the country until Israel stops its strikes and withdraws from all Lebanese territory.

Associated Press writer Hussein Malla contributed to this report.

After losing four decades of his life serving time for a murder he maintains he did not commit, a gray-haired Subramanyam "Subu" Vedam prepared to step out of a Pennsylvania prison last October as a free man.

Instead, a day after his charges were dropped, Vedam was swept up by ICE on a decades-old deportation order, his attorney said. The 64-year-old, who came to the US from India when he was an infant, was suddenly thrown into another painstaking legal battle.

Now, a federal immigration judge on Tuesday will decide whether to release Vedam on bond while he fights his deportation.

The hearing follows a ruling last week by the US Board of Immigration Appeals – the highest administrative body for interpreting and applying immigration laws – which determined Vedam's case is an "exceptional situation" that warrants re-opening his immigration case, according to his attorney, Ava Benach.

The original deportation order, which was thrown out by the Board of Immigration Appeals, was based on Vedam's now-vacated murder conviction and a related drug charge, Benach said.

After decades of maintaining his innocence, Vedam's conviction was thrown out by a judge in August after it was revealed that prosecutors had withheld potentially critical ballistics evidence during his two trials.

While Vedam's family is "very hopeful" they will be reunited with him on Tuesday, they are aware of how challenging it is to navigate immigration cases during the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign, Benach said.

The Department of Homeland Security is continuing to fight Vedam's release, saying in a statement Monday that the vacation of his conviction will not deter its efforts. Though DHS called Vedam a "criminal illegal alien," his attorney said he is a permanent legal resident.

"Having a single conviction vacated will not stop ICE's enforcement of the federal immigration law," a DHS spokesperson said. "Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, if you break the law, you will face the consequences."

A long-awaited reversal

After two trials in the 1980s, Vedam was sentenced to life without parole for the murder of his friend and former roommate, 19-year-old college student Thomas Kinser.

Though Vedam fought the conviction for decades, almost 40 years passed before a team of attorneys discovered prosecutors may have withheld evidence that could have impacted the jury's decision in his case.

On the day of Kinser's disappearance in December 1980, Vedam had asked him for a ride to a nearby town to buy drugs, according toThe Associated Press.

Nine months later, Kinser's remains were found in a sinkhole with a bullet hole in his skull, according to court documents. Though no weapon was found, a .25 caliber bullet was found inside Kinser's shirt.

Vedam'ssupporters believeinvestigators fixated on him as the lone suspect at the expense of other legitimate leads, arguing that his ethnicity played a role in how authorities homed in on him in the early days of the case and at trial.

Vedam was initially detained on drug charges while police investigated and was eventually charged with Kinser's murder. In the drug case, he pleaded no contest to four counts of selling LSD and a theft charge, the AP reported.

Prosecutors argued to jurors that Vedam shot his friend with a .25 caliber gun that he had purchased before Kinser's disappearance.

Vedam's defense attorneys repeatedly questioned ballistics evidence during the trial, casting doubt on the size of the hole in Kinser's skull compared to a .25 caliber bullet and whether the bullet that killed Kinser could have been shot from Vedam's gun.

While the jury heard testimony that Vedam bought a .25-caliber gun, they were never shown an FBI report that suggested Kinser's bullet wound was too small to have been inflicted by that gun. Though prosecutors knew of the specific measurements of the wound, they excluded them from the report given to Vedam's defense attorneys, court records show.

In August 2025, a judge concluded that Vedam had not been given a fair trial due to prosecutors' efforts to suppress evidence. The judgevacated his convictionand ruled Vedam was entitled to a new trial.

The Centre County District Attorney's Office announced on October 2 it would not seek a new trial and would drop the charges against Vedam.

The next day, Vedam was transferred to ICE custody, beginning a new phase of his tangled legal saga.

His sister, Saraswathi Vedam, told the AP in October that she was saddened by the latest delay, but said her brother remains patient.

"He, more than anybody else, knows that sometimes things don't make sense," she said. "You have to just stay the course and keep hoping that truth and justice and compassion and kindness will win."

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