San Diego FC extends Anders Dreyer through (at least) 2028

SDFC pushes in after Anders Dreyer's incredible first year in MLS, the Padres buy a lottery ticket, SDSU's basketball team is cruising, and a whole bunch more in today's Front Row Seat.

Guess who’s back….back again…..

Padres bring back Bud Black and Wil Myers

San Diego FC

SDFC extends contract of ‘El Paletero,’ MVP finalist Anders Dreyer - Times of San Diego
In what has turned out to be an eventful off-season for San Diego FC, the club announced Wednesday that it has signed 2025 MVP finalist Anders Dreyer to a three-year contract extension.

Dreyer, the MLS Newcomer of the Year winner, also has a club option for the 2029-30 season.

Affectionately nicknamed “El Paletero” by the fans – for the vendors who serve up paletas, or frozen treats – Dreyer finished the regular season with 19 goals, among the top three in MLS. He also led the league with 19 assists.

Hirving Lozano reportedly rules out San Diego FC exit despite club publicly saying he’s no longer part of plan - GOAL
Despite San Diego FC’s sporting director and head coach stating that he no longer fits into the club’s plans - and reported interest from Cruz Azul - Hirving “Chucky” Lozano has no intention of leaving the MLS side. Backed by a long-term contract and a record salary, the Mexican winger reportedly wants to remain with the team and is confident he can earn his place, even as the door appears to be closed.

San Diego Padres

Padres Sign Nick Solak, Omar Cruz To Minor League Deals - MLB Trade Rumors
The Padres have signed infielder/outfielder Nick Solak and left-hander Omar Cruz to minor league deals, according to Matt Eddy of Baseball America. Presumably, both players will be invited to big league camp in spring training.

Solak, 31, was once a prospect of note with the Rangers but he has struggled to hang around as a useful major leaguer. He stepped to the plate 974 times as a Ranger from 2019 to 2022 but produced a tepid .252/.327/.372 batting line. That translated to a 93 wRC+, indicating he was seven percent worse than league average at the plate.

How Friars might fine-tune behind the plate - MLB.com
For the first time, Campusano enters a season out of Minor League options, meaning he would be exposed to waivers if he doesn’t make the roster.

There’s clearly upside with Campusano’s bat. He was one of the best hitters in all of Triple-A last season, batting .336 with a 1.036 OPS. I think Campusano deserves a chance to compete for a bench spot. I just think that, by now, we know what he is defensively. There’s a reason the Padres didn’t use him at all behind the plate in his 10 big league games last year.

San Diego State Aztecs

Aztecs bid farewell to Laramie with a runaway win over Wyoming - San Diego Union-Tribune
Dipping into his bench early and often, Dutchers’ Aztecs looked like they were the team acclimated to 7,220 feet of elevation, literally running past Wyoming for a convincing 74-57 farewell win in the high plains Wednesday night that kept them undefeated in the Mountain West.

By halftime, the Aztecs had a 9-0 advantage in fast-break points – and even that seemed a bit low – and led by 13. BJ Davis added an exclamation point by dribbling the length of the floor with six seconds left, around and through the entire Cowboys defense, for a layup that just beat the halftime buzzer.

SDSU women shoot past New Mexico in front of record-breaking crowd at Viejas Arena - San Diego Union-Tribune
Tying a school record with 14 3-point baskets, SDSU dominated the second and fourth quarters at Viejas Arena on Wednesday afternoon to defeat New Mexico 73-56 before a “Field Trip Game” turnout of 8,054 — the largest crowd ever to see an Aztecs women’s basketball home game.

The Aztecs’ ninth straight victory set up a first-ever Mountain West match between two 7-0 teams as San Diego State visits UNLV on Saturday afternoon.

Odds & Ends

Cooper Flagg Is Trudging Toward Superstardom - The Ringer
No other first-year player is as central to his team’s present or future as Flagg, and it’s not close. Kon Knueppel and V.J. Edgecombe, the two other candidates for Rookie of the Year, are off to great starts, but the breadth of their greatness can’t match Flagg’s. Cooper leads the Mavs in total points, total rebounds, total assists, and total steals. Among all rookies, in what looks like one of the deepest draft classes in recent memory, the youngest man in the NBA stands apart.

Flagg remains a runaway favorite to win the Rookie of the Year award. He has already become the youngest NBA player to ever score 40 points in a game, but he’s much more than just a bucket. He aims to be the most complete player in the NBA.

NCAA asks regulators to suspend collegiate prediction markets - ESPN
The NCAA asked a federal regulatory body Wednesday to stop prediction markets from offering trades on college sports until more safeguards are in place.

In a letter addressed to the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that regulates prediction markets, NCAA president Charlie Baker said the growth of prediction markets poses a threat to the well-being of student-athletes as well as the integrity of competition.

Baker identified several areas where he believes prediction markets need additional safeguards: age restrictions, advertising restrictions, robust integrity monitoring, the involvement of national governing bodies such as the NCAA, restrictions on prop bets, harm reduction resources and anti-harassment measures.

FanDuel Sports Network makes new offers to MLB teams, hinging on the company being sold - The Athletic
The Washington Nationals became the seventh team to join Major League Baseball’s broadcasting arm on Wednesday, an expected move after years of legal disputes with their old television partner. As spring training looms next month, the baseball world now is waiting to see just how many more teams will join the Nats in-house.

In an extreme scenario, half of baseball’s 30 teams could wind up under the league’s television umbrella for 2026.

How the NBA Learned to Love Losing - The Ringer
According to a Nexis search, the terms “NBA” and “tanking” appeared in major U.S. newspapers about 185 times per year in the 1990s—including 213 times in 1997, the year the San Antonio Spurs drafted Tim Duncan with the no. 1 pick, after losing David Robinson to a back injury for most of the season (amid suspicions that the Spurs held him out longer than necessary to boost their lottery odds).

From 2000 to 2009, the average number of tanking references shot up to 361 per year—peaking at 585 in 2007, the year Greg Oden and Kevin Durant topped the draft board. Tanking was still a passing topic, not yet an all-consuming discussion. That was about to change.

There were 463 references in 2013 (the year Hinkie was hired) and 673 references in 2014 (when Wiggins was drafted no. 1). From 2010 to 2019, the average was 486, but it was even higher—593 per year—in the stretch from 2014 to 2019, as tanking became embedded in the discourse. It has held steady at 400-plus references per year from 2000 through 2025, even as U.S. newspapers have withered and reduced coverage.

Giants reportedly finalizing agreement to hire John Harbaugh as next head coach - Yahoo Sports
The Giants are finalizing an agreement with the former Baltimore Ravens head coach and a deal is expected barring a significant setback, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter. The deal is expected to be five years in length and with total value of $100 million — one of the largest contracts in the league — according to NFL reporter Jordan Schultz.

Harbaugh will become the Giants’ fifth head coach (seven counting interims) since Tom Coughlin resigned in Jan. 2016.

Fascists Are Pathetic - Defector
It could only ever be incoherent, and was always going to be brutal. As a farcical re-enactment of the lost foreign wars of the last two decades on American soil, it could not be any other way. For the same reason, it is hard to know when or how it will end. In Trump’s second term, the federal government has intentionally rid itself of the capacity to do anything but make things worse; it has quite literally traded Ph.D scientists and dedicated civil servants for the chance to hastily stand up this expansion team from the waiver wire flotsam of the violence worker community. The public money that was once spent, grudgingly and kludgily, on keeping people alive is now being spent on this mission and others like it, whose only purpose is to hurt those that the state has identified as enemies.