ON THE SIDELINE at Notre Dame Stadium, USC coach Pete Carroll frantically waved for quarterback Matt Leinart to spike the ball. The Trojans trailed 31-28, inches from the goal line with seven seconds left.

“[Leinart] was to look back at [offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian] on the sidelines, and if we wanted to sneak it, we could sneak it,” Carroll said this week. “And he had to point at him. So, we tell him to sneak it. So, he points at the line, and he looks at the line of scrimmage, and he goes, ‘There’s no way, they’re all jammed up.’ And he looks back at us, and Reggie [Bush] yelled something at him, ‘Go for it. Go for it.'”

Moments earlier, Leinart had fumbled out of bounds inside the 1. The clock mistakenly ran out, and NBC’s Tom Hammond declared, “Notre Dame has won,” as Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis raised his arms and fans stormed the field.

When play resumed, the Trojans would have one last chance to extend their winning streak to 28 games.

Leinart sneaked left from under center, but he was bounced backward into a half spin and into the path of Bush, who famously shoved him across for the winning score.

“It was about as sweet a finish as you could have in a great situation to keep the streak alive and all that, too,” Carroll said.

Twenty years ago, the “Bush Push” would become one of the most unforgettable moments in college football history — and one of its most controversial. In the box score, it was the touchdown that preserved USC’s dynasty and allowed for the Rose Bowl matchup with Texas that became an all-time classic. In the rulebook, though, it was illegal.

Except, it was almost never called. In fact, the rule had become a running joke among officials.

“You were teased if you made the call,” said former NCAA official and current ESPN analyst Matt Austin. “It was such a rare occurrence.”

In the years that followed, an obscure rule became a flashpoint. It was debated, tweaked and, eventually, led to strategic evolution.

THE “HELPING THE Ball Carrier” rule had been part of the NCAA rulebook for decades. Its language was virtually identical in every edition dating back to at least 1950.

“No [teammate] shall grasp, pull, push, lift or charge into him to assist him in forward progress.”

The idea is believed to have originated as a way to differentiate football from rugby. Teammates could block defenders, but once the ball carrier was engaged, the play was meant to be his alone. Anything more — a shove, a tug, a lift — was considered an unfair advantage.

It was almost impossible to enforce in short-yardage piles, where pushes and blocks blur together, especially near the goal line.

Steve Shaw remembers that problem well. Now the NCAA’s national coordinator of officials, Shaw spent more than two decades on the field, and he has seen just about everything. But in the 2000 season, his crew made a rare, yet memorable call.

It happened during a Middle Tennessee–UConn game. Late in the contest, a Middle Tennessee lineman reached out and grabbed his running back, helping drag him toward the end zone. Shaw’s line judge, Mike Taylor, threw the flag.

“At the end of the year, there’s a report listing every penalty called nationally,” Shaw said. “Under aiding the runner, there was one — and it was ours. We gave him a hard time for calling it, but it was the right call.”

The rule technically existed, but almost nobody enforced it. And when it was flagged, it was usually because a player was being pulled, not pushed.

So when Bush shoved Leinart across the goal line in 2005, the officials did what most would have done: They kept the flag in their pockets. In fact, after Leinart’s touchdown, the Pac-10 officiating crew huddled up to discuss the play only to emerge with an unsportsmanlike contact penalty against the Trojans for their celebration after. There was no mention of the legality of the push on the broadcast, either.

It wasn’t until the next day when the conversation shifted from the game’s remarkable ending into a nationwide rules debate that is still built into the game’s lore.

Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen admitted to the Los Angeles Times that his conference’s officiating crew could have called a penalty, but made essentially the same point Shaw did two decades later.

“I just don’t think they ever call it,” Hansen said, adding it would have been different if it was a pull, not a push.

This is where the consensus seemed to land. The play looked like part of the normal chaos that happens at the goal line. By the letter of the law, Bush committed a foul. But by the spirit of the game, he just did what any teammate would do.

RULE CHANGES IN college football often move slowly. Proposals wind through the NCAA Rules Committee, a rotating group of coaches, officials and administrators who meet each offseason.

Most suggestions come after issues are identified over the course of a season. If the committee deems something urgent, it can move quickly. If not, it can linger in discussion until a consensus forms.

Sometimes, a single play can trigger an immediate rewrite. When Pitt quarterback Kenny Pickett faked a slide in the 2021 ACC championship game — beginning to give himself up before resuming his run for a long touchdown — the reaction was instant. Within days, the NCAA issued a memo closing the loophole. The same thing happened last year when Oregon‘s Dan Lanning found a way to shave off game time by using a 12th man on defense.

The Bush Push didn’t work that way.

Despite the fierce public debate — and the way it was officiated — the rule remained unchanged in the years that followed.

It wasn’t until 2013, when the rules committee formally decided to adjust the official wording.

“The rules committee had a good debate about this and they watched much video, including the Bush Push play,” Shaw said. “Overall, they came to the conclusion that it was very difficult to determine when a push was truly a foul.

“There were few guidelines that could be given to make this a consistent call. Examples were pushing a rugby scrum pile vs. pushing the runner specifically, and they felt it was nearly impossible to distinguish between pushing a runner, leaning on a runner, pushing the pile or leaning on the pile. They felt removing the ‘push’ component would be the best course of action.”

When the NCAA released its updated rulebook for the 2013 season, the word “push” was simply deleted, bringing it in line with a similar rule change the NFL made in 2005.

Without realizing it, the committee paved the way for innovation in the sport.

Right away, coaches tried to use the subtle change to their advantage, including former Kansas State coach Bill Snyder, whose Wildcats started running what is now commonly referred to as the tush push later that year.

“It was just a natural thing to do,” Snyder told ESPN’s Kalyn Kahler earlier this year. “We needed to create a way in which we could take the shortest distance to get the short distance we needed to go and not get held up, because everybody put all the people over there, so we wanted to compete against no matter how many people you put there.

“We wanted to be strong enough not to get held up at the line of scrimmage. And we would bring one or two, or on occasion, three backs up right off of the hip of the center, and on the snap of the ball, we would push the center or push the back of the quarterback.”

That small tactical adjustment eventually made its way to the pros. Nearly a decade later, the Philadelphia Eagles adopted a version of the play built around quarterback Jalen Hurts, perfecting it into an almost unstoppable short-yardage weapon. Which, once again, led to a nationwide debate about whether pushing — once outlawed, then ignored and finally embraced — belonged in football at all.

In May, a proposal from the Green Bay Packers to ban the tush push came up two votes shy of the 24 it needed to pass.

At the NCAA level, the play drew some discussion over the offseason, too, but those conversations were more centered on potential injury concerns.

“The NCAA rules committee has looked at it and really up to now have not seen it become an injury, a player safety issue,” Shaw said. “So it really becomes a strategic part. Is that something strategically we want in the game? And so far there’s not been a big driver to try to put together a reason to eliminate it from our game.”

Over the past four seasons, the current rule has been enforced only six times, according to Shaw. Three times in 2022, and just once in 2021, 2023 and 2024.

AS USC RETURNS to Notre Dame this weekend for a top-20 matchup, the Bush Push helps define one of the sport’s most storied rivalries.

Carroll, now the Las Vegas Raiders coach, has very specific memories of that game in South Bend: the high grass, the green Notre Dame jerseys, the legends in the crowd.

“The stories I heard are that they sold out the night before the game at their rally that they had,” Carroll said. “And they brought Joe Montana back, and Rudy [Ruettiger] came back to speak to the crowd and a guy dressed up as Jesus showed up trying to bring home the power. … It was just an incredible setting for college football.”

The push that once went uncalled now defines the rule. Twenty years later, it’s still moving the game forward.

ESPN NFL reporter Ryan McFadden contributed to this story.

Over the past six months, college basketball has once again experienced another offseason full of coaching changes, staff moves, portal action and recruiting gains and losses. As a result, the landscape is stacked with teams that have seemed to master the new Moneyball approach to restructuring teams every spring and summer. There are others who did not make the improvements they may have anticipated, which means there are winners and losers in this conversation.

Our 2025-26 superlatives list attempts to make some sense of what just unfolded and sort the victors from those who might have missed out this offseason.

Best overall offseason

Florida Gators

After winning the national title, Todd Golden lost the best backcourt in America. Departures included the NCAA tournament’s Most Outstanding Player in Walter Clayton Jr. and two more players who were selected in the 2025 NBA draft (Alijah Martin and Will Richard) — but that’s only part of the story. The return of Golden’s frontcourt wasn’t a guarantee as key players flirted with the NBA draft.

But the Gators enter the season with a strong case to be the No. 1 team in the country after securing the returns of Thomas Haugh, Alex Condon and Rueben Chinyelu. They also added former five-star recruit Boogie Fland and all-Ivy League guard Xaivian Lee. In this turbulent climate, few teams have managed to lose the core of a championship squad and bounce back the way this team has ahead of the 2025-26 campaign. Florida won’t look exactly like the title-winning team did, but it will be similarly equipped to chase another ring.

The chemistry the Gators foster over the course of the season will matter the most. Lee and Fland will have to share ballhandling responsibilities. Golden wants Haugh to be an inside-outside threat. And Condon is an SEC Player of the Year candidate who will have to deal with the pressure that comes with that attention. These are all good problems to have because it means Florida has the pieces to be the best team in America again.

Strongest overall transfer class

St. John’s Red Storm

Rick Pitino made New York City fall in love with St. John’s basketball again with a run to the Big East conference and tournament championships last season. The Red Storm shouldn’t lose any ground as a result of Pitino again hitting the reset button in the portal, with a transfer class headlined by Ian Jackson (North Carolina), Bryce Hopkins (Providence), Oziyah Sellers (Stanford) and Joson Sanon (Arizona State) — all of whom averaged double figures at their previous stops.

Now, there are questions. Will Jackson be a consistent presence this season? He demonstrated his ability to impact a game at a high level only in spurts at North Carolina. Will Hopkins stay healthy? He has battled injuries in recent years. Will Sellers and Sanon continue to build on strong seasons a year ago? It certainly seems possible. But the questions don’t supersede the potential for this stacked group of transfer talent to excel under Pitino.

There’s also Dylan Darling — a star at Idaho State who scored 35 combined points between matchups against UCLA and USC last season — could be a hidden gem. And Dillon Mitchell is a veteran at his third school.

Pitino won big with a similar group a year ago. The same thing could happen in 2025-26.

Most impactful transfer commitment

Darrion Williams, NC State

Last year, Will Wade won 28 games at McNeese State and led the Cowboys to the second round of the NCAA tournament before he left for NC State — his first power conference job since being fired by LSU in 2022 as a result of recruiting violation allegations. He hit the ground running in Raleigh by adding some of the best players in the portal, including Williams.

The former Texas Tech star scored 23 points as the Red Raiders nearly knocked off Florida in the Elite Eight. Averaging 15.1 points, 5.5 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.3 steals in 2024-25, Williams is one of America’s most versatile players. His arrival gives Wade a chance to put his team in the NCAA tournament conversation a year after the program won just 12 games.

Biggest transfer portal loss

P.J. Haggerty, from Memphis to Kansas State

Penny Hardaway had his most successful season as coach at Memphis when Haggerty — an Associated Press second-team All-American and AAC Player of the Year — helped the Tigers win 29 games en route to capturing the regular-season and conference tournament championships in 2025-26 while averaging 21.2 PPG.

Haggerty isn’t the only star that the Tigers lost in the portal, but he is the most pivotal prospect who departed. Now a Memphis team that ended last season as a trendy pick to reach the second weekend of the NCAA tournament — until a foot injury that Tyrese Hunter sustained during the AAC tournament changed the Tigers’ outlook — will have to rebuild without one of the country’s top returning players.

Strongest recruiting class

Duke Blue Devils

Cameron Boozer is the obvious headliner for Jon Scheyer’s program, but Duke is stacked with young talent that will once again put the Blue Devils in the Final Four conversation.

Boozer, a 6-foot-9 do-it-all talent, is a two-time Gatorade National Player of the Year who could be the most polished freshman in the country. His twin brother Cayden Boozer could also leave his mark on this program. Nikolas Khamenia, a top-15 prospect, had a great offseason on the USA Basketball circuit. And Dame Sarr is a 6-foot-8 former EuroLeague standout who could be a major addition, too — he was ranked as a lottery pick in ESPN’s latest NBA 2026 mock draft.

With 6-foot-8 Sebastian Wilkins — who reclassified from the 2026 class to the 2025 class — also in the fold, the Blue Devils will have the size and versatility to compete with any team in America. Yes, they are young, but they won’t have talent disparities against most opponents.

Best freshman*

*after top-three recruits AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson and Cameron Boozer

Nate Ament, Tennessee Volunteers

Since 2019, Rick Barnes has coached 11 players who were drafted by NBA teams. He knows talent. And he called five-star freshman Ament, a 6-foot-11 small forward, the “No. 1 player in the class” this past April.

Ament is not as physically ready as the three players ahead of him — Peterson, Dybantsa and Boozer — in ESPN’s latest 2026 NBA mock draft. But Ament’s ceiling is high in a scheme that has produced elite players such as Dalton Knecht, Chaz Lanier and Grant Williams in recent years. Ament is big, can play and guard multiple positions, and will continue to grow throughout the season as he begins to understand this level of basketball. His coach will help him get there.

Barnes has shown a willingness to adapt by allowing his elite players to get the shots they want when they are on the floor, rather than being married to a system. That’s how Knecht earned SEC Player of the Year honors two years ago before he was selected 17th overall by the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2024 draft. Ament could follow the same path.

Most surprising recruiting miss

Darius Acuff Jr. choosing Arkansas over Michigan

The No. 7 recruit in ESPN’s 2025 rankings is the top-rated point guard in the class, and was also a high school superstar in the state of Michigan until he ended his prep career at IMG Academy in Florida. The Detroit native had three great choices for the next chapter of his career, ultimately selecting Arkansas over Kansas and Michigan, in part because John Calipari has produced a fleet of high-level point guards who became standouts in the NBA (John Wall, De’Aaron Fox, Derrick Rose).

Bill Self had already landed Peterson, who is in the running to be the No. 1 pick in the 2026 draft, but Dusty May missed a chance to turn the in-state star into the next great point guard for the Wolverines. Michigan is still a threat to reach the Final Four, of course. With Acuff, however, May’s squad would have been in a different tier entering this season.

Highest-upside coaching hire

Sean Miller, Texas Longhorns

During a 20-year coaching career that includes two stints at Xavier and a stop at Arizona, Sean Miller has won at least 20 games in 15 season (or 75% of his coaching tenure). That consistency over a stretch that includes the most transformative chapter in college basketball history with the introduction of NIL deals, revenue sharing and the transfer portal has demanded consistency that is difficult to attain. Yet, Miller managed to lead three different programs to the Sweet 16 or beyond.

At Texas, Miller’s standards and expectations will remain. While the SEC has been one of the country’s strongest conferences in recent years, Miller has proved that he can elevate the Longhorns to the same heights Arizona once reached under his watch.

MIAMI — It was a little more than a year ago that Gregg Berhalter led the U.S. men’s national team to a historically disappointing Copa America run, becoming the first ever host-nation of the CONMBEBOL tournament to be eliminated in the group stage. The team’s two losses and one win prompted the U.S. Soccer Federation to fire Berhalter, forcing the coach’s second exit from the national team.

As #BerhalterOUT inundated social media, questions about his future in the game naturally began. With a resume that included head coaching stints with the USMNT, Columbus Crew and Hammarby in Sweden, many wondered what, if anything in the coaching realm, was next for him. And, less than four months after his firing, Chicago Fire FC announced Berhalter would become the club’s new head coach and director of football for the 2025 season.

It marked Berhalter’s return to MLS, the league where he won two titles as a player and, in doing so, he was undertaking the task of rebuilding a fallen franchise. The Fire had not qualified for the MLS Cup playoffs since the 2017 season and finished the 2024 campaign in last place of the Eastern Conference.

Berhalter quickly responded to the challenge, transforming the perennial contenders for the Wooden Spoon — the infamous, and unofficial, award for the worst overall record in the MLS regular season — to a team that clinched a 2025 MLS playoff spot with a thrilling 5-3 win over Inter Miami CF and Lionel Messi. Along the way, he has also set a Chicago Fire record for away performances.

Simultaneously, as the Chicago Fire makes history under Berhalter, the U.S. men’s national team continues to struggle under new manager Mauricio Pochettino, having fallen short in both the Gold Cup and the Nations League earlier this year. But Berhalter insists he feels no vindication in seeing the USMNT continue to descend while he reaches new heights with Chicago.

“No, because I never thought it was me,” Berhalter told ESPN. “It’s always a combination of forces. When you look at my record, you know, I think I’m the winningest coach of all time in U.S. soccer history. So, it’s not like I did a poor job.

“It was a young team and we qualified [for the 2022 World Cup], we did well at the World Cup and we were building. But I also understand decisions and I never took it personally. I never needed vindication. For me, it’s about wherever I go trying to be successful and doing my best.”

And he is doing just that with the Fire.

play

Keller: USMNT haven’t improved under Pochettino

Kasey Keller says he can’t see any changes for the USMNT since Mauricio Pochettino has replaced Gregg Berhalter.

A team united in Chicago

Berhalter understood the challenges the Fire posed, but he saw potential in the team’s ownership and the city around him. Having lived in Chicago for six years while coaching the national team, the Fire’s new manager learned to listen to the city’s cry for MLS success and took on the “civic duty” of making that happen.

Despite low expectations, Berhalter faced immense pressure to perform. But instead of shying away from the emerging demands, he channeled his previous experiences in order to prevail.

“Pressure is something that I learned with the national team,” Berhalter said. “The stakes at the national team level are really, really high. When you’re coaching in a World Cup and you’re facing potential elimination, if you lose to England, you have to be able to deal with pressure.”

Before the season, Berhalter created a roadmap to success for the club that included a complete shift in staff and player culture. He hired new staff — including a director of performance and a head of strategy — and recruited players in the winter transfer window who fit into the new identity he wanted for the club.

Though the team previously chased after bigger names like Xherdan Shaqiri and Bastian Schweinsteiger to come in with international experience, Berhalter knew one star player could not reignite the flame of the Fire. Instead of a world-renowned Designated Player, he looked for players who embodied three characteristics Berhalter identified as key: growth, togetherness, and accountability. After working with the national team, Berhalter knew the importance of centering a team around the concept of camaraderie instead of one or headline players.

“Trying to help fit everyone into a team is something I learned from working with top talented players, working with bigger type egos,” said Berhalter.

In his director of football role, Berhalter is not willing to rule out to the arrival of an international sensation, but he would only consider the signing if the player fit the culture he is building.

“We are about the collective — it’s about how our 11 players plus the substitutes that come in can help the team play together. And that’s really the strength of our group. That’s what the whole playing system is now built around,” said Berhalter.

His concept of a collective fight was on full display with that impressive win in Miami to secure their postseason berth. Each of Chicago’s five goals in the 5-3 win was scored by a different player, with D’Avilla Djé, Jonathan Dean, Rominigue Kouamé, Justin Reynolds and Brian Gutiérrez, illustrating Berhalter’s main point: no single player can lead this team. That collective under Berhalter has the Fire standing second in the league for most goals scored with 66, behind only Messi’s Inter Miami (76).

Brian Gutiérrez has been with the Fire since 2020, and he says Berhalter’s approach is more than just talk.

“The most important thing he’s changed is culture, and having a bond with the entire team,” Gutiérrez said. “In recent times we didn’t have that comradery, and now it shows on the field.”

Getting ‘so mad’ and creating a ‘huge shift’

The Chicago Fire concluded 2024 in last place of the Eastern Conference table with just 30 points and seven wins in 34 games. But the season’s disappointments felt familiar, as the team failed again to crack the top 10 of the East — the last time they had done so was in 2019, when the East only had 12 teams. A team that once reached soaring heights — winning the 1998 MLS Cup and multiple U.S. Open Cups in the early 2000s — was nowhere to be found.

Decades of mediocrity plagued Chicago and seemed to extend to any player who arrived at the club. Though players wanted to win and improve, draws and loses especially during away games became an accepted norm, Chicago Fire player Andrew Gutman told ESPN.

“MLS is such a hard league, especially to play away, you know, with the travel and the time change in different climates. There’s a lot of variables that go into it, so the team sometimes just plays for draws away — for whatever reason, that was the mindset,” Gutman said.

Berhalter immediately saw the need to set higher expectations on every level on and off the field.

“We don’t want complacency,” said Berhalter. “No matter who you are, what age you are, you know, we believe you can still improve. So that’s a really important value of ours.”

The Fire kicked off 2025 with a 4-2 loss to the Columbus Crew before enjoying a five-game undefeated streak. The results began to mirror the team’s evolution under Berhalter, slowly approaching a form of consistency. But before the Berhalter could feel like he turned the page into a new chapter for the club, the game against the New York Red Bulls on April 5 at Sports Illustrated Stadium proved a stark reminder of the mediocrity he was trying to overcome.

Though Chicago took the lead early in New Jersey, the Red Bulls rallied to win 2-1. The normally cool-headed coach didn’t hold back, unloading his disappointment onto his players so they understood that the standards of the past were no longer acceptable.

“The one game in particular that I remember was the Red Bull game away from home, and that was one of the moments,” Berhalter told ESPN. “There’s been a few moments in the season where I go to the next level. I’m very even-keeled, but that was one of those moments.

“It was really about expectations because I was trying to communicate to the team about wherever we go, no matter where we go, we should have the expectation to win the game. And I didn’t like that game, it felt it was missing a little. Like we’re okay with two or one draws or a loss. And I was like, guys, ‘It’s not good enough. We can do so much more.’ And so that was a big moment in the group of saying that like, expectations need to be different.”

That game served as a turning point for the Fire, Gutman said. While players previously understood the coach’s philosophy about high expectations and the need for excellence, the defeat provided tangible evidence on the dangers of complacency.

“He was so mad at us because he knew that we were the better team, and he felt like we only lost because of our mentality,” Gutman said. “And so from that game, I felt like there was a huge shift in the players realizing, ‘OK, we’re going to go win, away or wherever it is, we don’t care.’ Every single away game, he always reinforces the fact that we’re here to win, we’re here to get three points. And if we don’t win, it’s unacceptable.”

After that game, the Fire rattled nine away victories this regular season — an all-time Fire record. Chicago’s 41 goals on the road leads the league for most goals scored in away games. With one regular season matchday left, the Fire sit behind only Cincinnati and San Diego (11 each) for the most away wins in MLS. In just one season, Berhalter has propelled Chicago to almost as many away victories as the team had in the previous three seasons combined.

Even when entering the game against Inter Miami at Chase Stadium and facing the likes of Messi, Luis Suárez, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba, Gutman told ESPN the team felt confident due to the confidence Berhalter instilled in them.

“We’re going to need to play Miami away to clinch a playoff spot — like, we didn’t really feel the pressure,” Gutman said afterward. “We almost felt like we should win this game. We felt like we were set up perfectly to do exactly what we did… I was like, ‘Why am I not feeling anxious or something that we’re about to kind of break this playoff streak, you know?’ But it was just like the day-to-day expectations that were put on us — like, ‘We got it.’ “

In just over a year with Berhalter as head coach and director of football, the transformation in Chicago is evident. Now the next challenge awaits: The MLS Cup playoffs.

The Fire have clinched at least a wildcard spot in the East, but depending how this weekend’s Decision Day plays out, the Fire could earn a bye to the first round. Despite struggles in recent years, expectations continue to soar for Chicago and the players are aiming for the MLS Cup.

“I knew it was going to change under Gregg — you could just see as soon as he walked in the room that we had finally got someone within the club that’s going to bring it back to where it was,” said Gutman.

Thanks to a new culture, shift in expectations and a collective mentality, Berhalter is driving Chicago towards a possible first MLS Cup since 1998.