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Predicting the USMNT’s starting lineup at the World Cup: What previous tournaments tell us
I’m old. In fact, I’m old enough to remember when the U.S. men’s national team crashed out against Mexico in the Gold Cup final without much of a fight.
I’m old enough to remember when, earlier in that same tournament, a succession of wins from a mostly MLS-based roster had some commentators wondering whether these players just wanted it more than their fancy teammates over in the Champions League. I’m old enough to remember when those same players got annihilated by Turkey and Switzerland just a few weeks earlier.
I’m old enough to remember when every former U.S. member with a podcast melted down because a handful of Europe-based players declined a call-up for the Gold Cup. I’m old enough to remember when, a couple months before that, the fan base melted down after the U.S. was eliminated by Panama in the Nations League after winning three straight Nations Leagues under the previous managerial regime.
And I’m old enough to remember when the majority of those U.S. fans rejoiced when the program replaced Gregg Berhalter with a proven world-class coach like Mauricio Pochettino.
All of that happened … within the past year and a half. As did this week’s 5-1 win over Uruguay, which was powered by absolutely ridiculous finishing, fortuitous bounces and some poor goalkeeping:
With seven months until the World Cup, it might not seem like there’s much time left. But the U.S. fan base has lived multiple lifetimes over the past 18 months.
From now until the summer, someone is going to get injured, someone is going to emerge out of nowhere, someone is going to stop playing for his club team, and the U.S. will either win or lose games that don’t reflect the true quality of the team. A lot is still going to happen.
In order to look forward — and stay safe from the results-based whiplash — we can actually look backward. What can the previous three World Cup cycles tell us about who might be on the field when the U.S. kicks things off at SoFi Stadium on June 12, 2026?
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Who starts World Cups for the USMNT?
Let’s start in 2010.
In the Americans’ opening match against England, they had Tim Howard in goal. At the back: Steve Cherundolo at right back, Jay Demerit and Oguchi Onyewu in the center and Carlos Bocanegra bumped out to the left. At the base of midfield was the pair of Michael Bradley and Ricardo Clark, and then ahead of them, as a pair of attacking midfielders, were the two stars: Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey. And up top, it was Jozy Altidore and Robbie Findley.
Seven of those names were unsurprising: Howard, Onyewu, Bocanegra, Bradley, Donovan, Dempsey and Altidore all played over 1,000 minutes for the U.S. the previous year. Cherundolo wasn’t much of a surprise, either. He’d only played 500-ish minutes the prior year thanks to a number of lower body injuries and the emergence of West Ham’s Jonathan Spector, but he was the captain at Bundesliga club Hannover and he was fully healthy come South Africa.
Both Clark and Demerit played around 500 minutes, too, and they fit into what we’ll call the “potential starter” tier. There weren’t obviously better options than either of them. And then there was the one shocker: Robbie Findley, who played zero minutes for the U.S. in 2009 but emerged after a car accident that seriously injured Charlie Davies opened up a spot for him to play alongside Altidore.
In 2009, Davies played 750 minutes for the U.S., but he was never the same after the accident. Among nonstarters in South Africa, only Jonathan Bornstein played more minutes (900-plus), but he lost his spot once Bob Bradley moved Bocanegra to fullback. And after Davies, the two most-used players in 2009 were Spector and midfielder Benny Feilhaber, who played heavy minutes off the bench in 2010.
So that’s seven obvious starters, one more obvious returnee from injury, two maybes, and one out-of-nowhere.
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What to make of USMNT’s 5-1 win over Uruguay
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Let’s move on to 2014.
Howard was in goal again. At the back, it was Fabian Johnson at right back and Damarcus Beasley on the left, with Geoff Cameron and Matt Besler in between. Manager Jurgen Klinsmann opted for a diamond midfield with Kyle Beckerman at the base and three shuttlers (Jermaine Jones, Bradley and Alejandro Bedoya). Up top, Dempsey played behind Altidore.
In 2013, Howard, Beasley and Altidore all played 1,000-plus minutes, while Dempsey, Bradley, Jones, Cameron and Besler all played at least 900. Bedoya clocked in around 820, while Beckerman played 680 and Johnson 580.
That feels similar to the breakdown four years earlier. Howard, Beasley, Altidore, Dempsey, Bradley and Jones were all shoe-ins, while two of Besler, Cameron and Omar González (who played over 1,000 minutes in 2013) were expected to play in the center of the defense. If we say it was all but guaranteed that one of Besler and Cameron would start, then that lands us at seven clear starters once again.
Johnson fills the “Cherundolo role” — he was arguably the most talented player in the pool and he’d just recently filed his one-time switch from Germany to the U.S. And then Bedoya and Beckerman fill the “maybe” quota.
There was no Findley type on the field against Ghana in 2014, but there was, shockingly, no Landon Donovan, who played 800-plus minutes the year before. There was also no Eddie Johnson, who played 900-plus minutes in 2013 and seemed like a potential starter, and no Clarence Goodson, who featured in 880 minutes. The Jurgen Klinsmann era was, um, interesting.
From 2010 to 2014, the U.S. carried over four starters: Howard, Bradley, Dempsey and Altidore. Unfortunately, we can’t trace the lineage to 2018 because the U.S. didn’t qualify. We must fast-forward to 2022.
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So, let’s look at 2022 and the lineup for the opening match with Wales.
In goal: Matt Turner. At the back: Sergiño Dest on the right, Antonee Robinson on the left, with Walker Zimmerman and Tim Ream in the center. There was a three-man midfield for the first time: Tyler Adams, Weston McKennie and Yunus Musah. And same goes for the front three: Christian Pulisic on the left, Timothy Weah out right and Josh Sargent in the center.
The year prior, Turner was the only starter to feature in at least 1,000 minutes, which says less about the surprising nature of the lineup and more about the changing state of the player pool. In other words: a lot more guys in Europe, who wouldn’t be on any of the MLS-based rosters. Two other guys broke 700 minutes (Robinson and Adams), while three more went beyond 600 (McKennie, Zimmerman and Dest). Pulisic and Musah both played more than 500 minutes, while Weah, Sargent and Ream were all below it.
I think we can say that Turner, Adams, Robinson, McKennie, Zimmerman and Dest were penciled-in starters at this time in 2021. Pulisic, then, fills the Cherundolo/Johnson role of the guy who starts if he’s healthy. And then I’d say Musah and Weah were “maybe starters,” while Ream and Sargent were both surprises.
In 2021, Miles Robinson, Kellyn Acosta and Sebastian Lletget all played over 1,000 minutes. Robinson would’ve started in Qatar had he not torn an Achilles, while Acosta was sunset into a backup role with the emergence of Musah after the latter’s one-time switch from England.
Lletget was a Berhalter favorite who just couldn’t stack up with the development of the team’s younger talent. Brenden Aaronson also played 800-plus minutes in 2021 but wasn’t starting come the World Cup.
Who will start for the USMNT at the 2026 World Cup?
To bring it all together: There have usually been around seven expected starters at the end of the year before the World Cup, one guy who will start if healthy, and then some combination of maybe-starters and outright surprises.
Across the 33 starters at the previous three World Cups for the U.S., there was one guy who played zero minutes the year before, three who played fewer than 500 minutes, 17 between 500 and 900 minutes, and 11 who played 1,000 minutes or more. On average, keepers played 1,135 minutes the year before the World Cup, and outfielders played 799.
Incredibly, very few of the most talented Americans have even hit 500 minutes this past year. These are the 11 players who broke that threshold:
Matt Freese: 1,170 minutes
Tim Ream: 1,108
Max Arfsten: 1,086
Chris Richards: 1,004
Alex Freeman: 976
Diego Luna: 953
Patrick Agyemang: 806
Malik Tillman: 765
Sebastian Berhalter: 704
Tyler Adams: 697
Luca de la Torre: 545
Some players below 500 minutes: Pulisic, Dest, McKennie, Musah, Weah, Turner, Sargent, Aaronson, Antonee Robinson, Folarin Balogun, Johnny Cardoso, Gio Reyna, Joe Scally, Tanner Tessman and Ricardo Pepi.
Working from the 1,000-plus-minutes list, I think we can pencil in Freese, Ream and Richards all as starters. And I think we need to put Arfsten on the list, too. Pochettino clearly loves him, the switch to a back three helps cover up his matador tendencies out of possession, and the other option, Robinson, still hasn’t started a Premier League game for Fulham this season. He has played only 64 total minutes.
That’s four likely starters, and we need to get to six or seven. It’s really hard to see anyone other than Adams starting in central midfield if he’s healthy.
It’s also clear that Pochettino wants one of the three center backs to be more of a half-fullback-half-center-back — this is what he did at Chelsea — and Alex Freeman played that role and scored two goals (!?) against Uruguay. It’s also worth pointing out, not that I think this data is driving decision-making in any real way, but Freeman already looks like an all-time great MLS fullback, based on the goals-added metric from American Soccer Analysis. He won’t turn 22 until after the World Cup.
Obviously, we can add in Pulisic as our “if he’s healthy, he starts” star. He’s the best player in the pool, he’s the best American player ever and this is the one World Cup they get with him in his prime.
That leaves four more spots: right wing back, the other central midfield slot, the other attacking midfielder next to Pulisic and the striker.
As Matthew Doyle noted for the MLS website, Pochettino has succeeded in expanding the American player pool — or at least expanding our perception of the player pool. That’s interesting, especially in light of recent comments by Canada manager Jesse Marsch, who suggested that managers might be able to rely on a smaller core of players than usual because the expanded World Cup means teams will have more days off between matches. I’m not sure whether Pochettino’s approach is the right or wrong one, but it certainly makes this specific exercise a little trickier.
If he’s healthy, though, Balogun is clearly the best American striker — he gets good shots unlike anyone else in the pool — and he has played more minutes than any attacker since the Gold Cup. So he’s our starting striker.
At right wing back, especially if Freeman is playing as a centerback-ish type, there’s no real option other than Dest. He was injured for a good chunk of this year, so he didn’t play much, but a wingback role also covers up his defensive inadequacies, and like Arfsten, he started the final two games of the year.
Next to Pulisic, there are plenty of options: Luna, Tillman, McKennie, Weah, Reyna, maybe even Aaronson or Alejandro Zendejas. You’ve been asleep for half a decade if you’re willing to confidently predict anything about Reyna’s future, so he’s out.
Although he’s currently injured, Tillman would be my pick. Not, like, my pick if I were the coach, but my pick for who the coach will pick. I’m not confident in this projection, but I think he gets a slight edge simply because he has played way more for Pochettino over the past year.
That leaves us with the last spot: the one next to Adams. Although they’ve played a lot, Sebastian Berhalter and de la Torre really don’t make sense as starters. So it’s between McKennie, Tessman, Musah and Cristian Roldan. Musah hasn’t been called up since before the Gold Cup, so I’m not planting my flag there. McKennie wasn’t called up this window, so he probably should be lower down my list, too.
Reading the tea leaves suggests Roldan because of that one tea leaf that literally quotes Mauricio Pochettino as saying, “Cristian Roldan is maybe an example of if you want to build your perfect player.” But it seems like there is one guy who comes out of nowhere to break into the starting XI every cycle. And given that he has appeared in only four games for the U.S. and didn’t even get called up for the final two games in 2025, McKennie fits that bill.
Now, my predicted lineup is almost definitely going to be incorrect. But with around seven guys who were key pieces this year, one injured star, and three players who have been in and out of the picture, it looks a lot like all of the other USMNT lineups that have started World Cups in recent years.
Who would be a football manager? Well, as it turns out, in the Premier League the answer is an increasing number of head coaches.
The difference between the job titles of “manager” and “head coach” may seem mere semantics at first glance, but events at Manchester United and Chelsea this month point to deeper structural problems that many clubs are now grappling with.
Both Ruben Amorim and Enzo Maresca chose to go public with frustrations they deemed as unnecessary interference from the infrastructure around them.
Maresca went first. In mid-December, after a routine 2-0 home win over Everton, which should have calmed the mood around Stamford Bridge, Maresca opted instead to ignite a fire by declaring the buildup “the worst 48 hours” of his tenure due to “a lack of support.”
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His working relationship with senior figures at the club quickly eroded, and Chelsea parted company with Maresca just 19 days later. We will never know for certain, but perhaps Amorim, increasingly disgruntled at United, was inspired by those events in west London.
The following day, Amorim hinted at internal issues at a prematch news conference before facing Leeds United and, after that game, launched a full-scale assault on his bosses, insisting he joined United to “be the manager, not the head coach.” Amorim was sacked the following morning.
Chelsea have since doubled down on their existing head coach model by appointing Liam Rosenior as Maresca’s successor, not least because of his experience working for the club’s owners, BlueCo, at their sister team, Strasbourg of France’s Ligue 1.
United’s next move seems less certain after they installed Michael Carrick as an interim boss before making a permanent appointment in the summer.
The club still appears stuck at a crossroads created by legendary manager Sir Alex Ferguson’s departure in 2013, just as Arsenal were when Arsène Wenger left in 2018. They were the two most prominent exponents of the old model, which dictated that control comes at all costs for a manager. But what balance works best in 2026?
What’s the difference between ‘head coach’ and ‘manager’?
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This isn’t a new problem. Ferguson and Wenger once sat on stage together at a League Managers’ Association meeting, opining on how the preeminence they enjoyed was founded on controlling all aspects of their respective clubs. They were becoming increasingly isolated cases.
“The manager is the most important man at the club,” Wenger said. “If not, why do you sack the manager if it doesn’t go well?”
“Very good,” said Ferguson, sitting alongside him, smiling.
Ferguson later praised then-Premier League bosses Alan Curbishley and Kevin Keegan for leaving their posts on “a point of principle,” specifically that West Ham and Newcastle United, respectively, were letting players leave against the wishes of their managers. That was in 2008.
The intervening 18 years have seen the power balance shift steadily away from autonomous managerial figures toward head coaches, who are expected to work within a structure which divides responsibilities, including scouting, recruitment, medical determinations and data analysis among several others. A manager is a visionary to whom everyone must answer. A head coach is more of a prominent cog within a larger machine.
In one clear example of the transformation in thinking, Arsenal appointed nine new department heads around the time of Wenger’s departure in 2018 and trebled the number of operations staff in three years.
Top Premier League clubs routinely arrive at away games with two team buses — the expanded support staff no longer fit onto one bus with the playing squad. Club doctors Stephen Lewis (Chelsea) and Zaf Iqbal (Arsenal) were even listed on the official teamsheet for Wednesday’s Carabao Cup semifinal first-leg clash at Stamford Bridge.
Where the boundaries are drawn for each member of this infrastructure is where the tension usually lies for a head coach.
Today, there are only five Premier League clubs employing someone whose official job title is ‘manager’: Arsenal, Everton, Manchester City, Crystal Palace and Leeds.
One of those is Mikel Arteta, but he is a unique case. He was appointed as Arsenal head coach in December 2019 — following Unai Emery’s unsuccessful attempt to operate within the club’s post-Wenger model — but then “promoted” to manager in September 2020 after winning the FA Cup a month earlier in a Covid-delayed season.
Arteta revealed last week that the plan to promote him was actually hatched before his Wembley triumph.
“It was in my house,” he said. “They came to me and started to propose the idea of what they thought and the way they wanted to structure the club. That was after probably five, six months in the job.
“They believed that and [I said] ‘this is where I think I can help, this is my vision, this is what I would do, this is how I see this project.’ I presented it, and from there we started all together to start to add value to those ideas.
“I didn’t demand it. I didn’t ask for it, and they believed it was the right thing to do. When you have a leader, which is ownership in this case — Stan [Kroenke] and Josh [Kroenke, representing owners Kroenke Sports Enterprises] — and Josh that is very close to us with clear alignment to all of us what he wants to do, how he wants to create that space for everybody, I think it is very easy to work like this.
“At the end, it is about the relationships and the people that we have from great teams with very different qualities. Sometimes, I have been more on certain things; when there is somebody who is much better than me on that, I let them do it. For me, the title doesn’t really reflect the way we operate daily.”
Although KSE is an American company, well-placed sources within football point to the increase in U.S. ownership — now 22 of the top 44 clubs comprising England’s top two leagues — as a contributing factor. They want their clubs to retain a stable, long-term identity of their own, impervious to the idiosyncrasies of the man in the dugout.
The modern-day trend certainly appears to be clubs seeking to establish an identity based on principles set by their own sporting infrastructure, rather than the shorter-term whims of a manager or head coach who is just passing through. The League Managers’ Association published data last year suggesting the average tenure of a sacked manager is 1.42 years.
But there are signs head coaches are pushing back against this transient existence. Amorim and Maresca took internal tensions public while Tottenham Hotspur captain Cristian Romero broke ranks with an Instagram post that suggested the Spurs hierarchy “only show up when things are going well, to tell a few lies.”
It doesn’t help advocates of the head coach model that Arsenal under Arteta lead the Premier League from Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City and Aston Villa, who named Emery as head coach but whose influence is widely acknowledged to extend far beyond the limitations that title would suggest.
Finding the right fit
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Julien Laurens explains what went wrong for Ruben Amorim at Manchester United after being sacked following 14 months at the club.
Supporters have protested against Chelsea’s BlueCo owners, who completed their takeover in 2022 and whose methods have frustrated head coaches of high pedigree before Maresca, including Thomas Tuchel and Mauricio Pochettino.
The appointment of Rosenior has emboldened critics, suggesting the owners want a “yes man” as head coach, willing to acquiesce to the specialists who operate separately to his immediate coaching staff.
Predictably, Rosenior pushed back on any such notion when speaking at his first Chelsea news conference.
“Being a head coach, you talk about football systems and tactics,” he said. “[But] that’s 10% of the job. The job is to create spirit, energy, a culture. It doesn’t matter if you’re called a head coach, manager or anything else. The job is the same. My job is to have a team that runs, fights for each other, that plays with spirit and quality. That’s what I’m going to focus on.”
Whatever the rights and wrongs of Chelsea’s strategy — which includes employing five sporting directors, an independent medical team whose advice on player load must be followed and regular technical feedback sessions for the head coach after every game — they know exactly what they want.
Multiple sources told ESPN that BlueCo had quickly identified Rosenior as a leading candidate among a small pool of options, ruling out higher-profile names almost immediately. The belief in their model is resolute and clear.
If anything, control has been tightened. Maresca brought six staff with him from Leicester City. Rosenior has three from Strasbourg — assistant Justin Walker, first-team coach Kalifa Cissé and analyst Ben Warner — while Calum McFarlane was promoted from Chelsea’s under-21s and goalkeeper coach Ben Roberts remains in post. Set-piece coach Bernardo Cueva was appointed independently from Maresca and stayed on. All six of Maresca’s staff left.
There seems to be less clarity at United. Even caretaker boss Darren Fletcher admitting that he called Ferguson for “his blessing” before accepting the temporary position smacked of a club still struggling to emerge from the shadow of its past. They didn’t appoint a director of football and technical director until 2021, and Amorim was the first man in the club’s history to be appointed “head coach” rather than “manager.”
However, club sources have told ESPN that director of football Jason Wilcox sees recruitment falling within his sphere of influence and has said publicly that he can’t help but “interfere” in what the head coach is doing. It is, at least from the outside, a confused picture.
Carrick has brought in two staff members for his five-month stint: ex-England No. 2 Steve Holland and Jonathan Woodgate, who worked under Carrick at Middlesbrough.
‘Manager’ is a title that’s earned
Recruitment is invariably a point of friction. Club sources told ESPN that Maresca wanted a center back last summer after Levi Colwill got injured but was told to find internal solutions.
Conversely, ESPN sources say Arteta fought hard and won a battle to sign Mikel Merino from Real Sociedad in 2024 despite others involved in recruitment casting doubt over his ability and transfer fee.
Tottenham are grappling with their own approach, appointing Fabio Paratici as co-sporting director alongside Johan Lange in October, only for Spurs to confirm on Wednesday that the former will leave next month to join Fiorentina.
Gone are the days when the chief scout — and wider scouting staff that followed — operated as close allies of the manager. Some head coaches now insist on bringing their own trusted recruitment staff, often as part of their initial appointment, because they want specialists who share their way of seeing the game. This guarantees the coach a voice early in the scouting process and keeps them closely involved in the club’s strategic thinking and player selection.
Sources working in recruitment say that even though power has gradually shifted away from the manager or head coach, cases where players are signed without that individual’s involvement remain extremely rare, to the point of being almost unheard of in a top-five league environment.
However, the level of power can change over time. If a sporting director signs off on a run of mediocre transfers, a head coach may use that to push for greater influence over recruitment. Equally, when a head coach is flavour of the month with successful results, some will take the opportunity to gain a greater say in squad building.
What matters initially are the job description and the powers laid out in the contract. Perhaps the conclusion is that head coaches who want to become managers have to go to great lengths to earn it.
Arsenal recognised they needed a cultural overhaul and believed in Arteta to deliver it. Guardiola earned it before he arrived as City’s whole football structure was tailored to lure him to the club. Emery has improved Villa to such a dramatic extent that the case for greater influence was almost impossible to ignore.
Maresca and Amorim chanced their arm and failed. They almost certainly won’t be the last.
Information from ESPN’s Rob Dawson and Tor-Kristian Karlsen contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has identified a host of athletic competitions it classifies as “major sporting events” — aside from soccer’s 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympic Games — that athletes and coaches will be allowed to travel to the U.S. to take part in despite a broad visa ban on nearly 40 countries.
In a cable sent to all U.S. embassies and consulates Wednesday, the State Department said athletes, coaches and support staff for the World Cup, the Olympics and events endorsed or run by a long list of collegiate and professional sporting leagues and associations would not be subject to the full and partial travel bans that apply to citizens of 39 countries and the Palestinian Authority.
However, the cable made clear that foreign spectators, media and corporate sponsors planning to attend the same events would still be banned unless they qualify for another exemption.
“Only a small subset of travelers for the World Cup, Olympics and Paralympics, and other major sporting events will qualify for the exception,” it said.
President Donald Trump’s administration has issued a series of immigration and travel bans as well as other visa restrictions as part of ongoing efforts to tighten U.S. entry standards for foreigners. At the same time, the administration has been looking to ensure that athletes, coaches and fans are able to attend major sporting events in the U.S.
Trump’s Dec. 16 proclamation banning the issuance of visas to the 39 countries and the Palestinian Authority had carved out an exception for athletes and staff competing in the World Cup, the Olympics and other major sporting events. It delegated a decision on which other sporting events would be covered to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Wednesday’s cable lists the events that are covered, including “all competitions and qualifying events” for the Olympic Games, Paralympic Games, Pan-American Games, and Para Pan-American Games; events hosted, sanctioned or recognized by a U.S. National Governing Body; all competitions and qualifying events for the Special Olympics; and official events and competitions hosted or endorsed by FIFA, soccer’s governing body, or its confederations.
The exemption also will cover official events and competitions hosted by the International Military Sports Council, the International University Sports Federation and the National Collegiate Athletic Association as well as those hosted or endorsed by U.S. professional sports leagues such as the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and Women’s National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and Little League, National Hockey League, Professional Women’s Hockey League, NASCAR, Formula 1, the Professional Golf Association, Ladies Professional Golf Association, LIV Golf, Major League Rugby, Major League Soccer, World Wrestling Entertainment, Ultimate Fighting Championship and All Elite Wrestling.
The cable said other events and leagues could be added to the list.
Of the 39 countries, a full travel ban applies to Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Mali, Myanmar, Niger, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and people with Palestinian Authority-issued passports.
A partial ban is in place for citizens of Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Burundi, Cuba, Dominica, Gabon, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Malawi, Mauritania, Senegal, Tanzania, Tonga, Togo, Venezuela, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
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President Donald Trump will return to the sidelines Monday with Secretary of State Marco Rubio for the College Football Playoff championship in Miami, where the Indiana Hoosiers will face the Miami Hurricanes.
Trump’s expected attendance was first reported by Axios.
President Donald Trump, right, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attend an NFL game between the Washington Commanders and the Detroit Lions at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Md., Nov. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Monday’s appearance at the national championship game marks another high-profile outing for the president, who has attended several major sporting events during his second term.
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In April, Trump sat alongside UFC President Dana White outside the octagon for UFC 314 in Miami and again two months later at UFC 316 in New Jersey. He also attended several events in September, including the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black in New York and a New York Yankees game on Sept. 11, 24 years after the 9/11 attacks.
President Donald Trump waves to the crowd as he arrives on the first hole on the first day of competition for the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black. (Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters via Imagn Images)
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President Trump has taken a special interest in sports in his second term.
In December, he warned the current state of name, image and likeness (NIL) was not sustainable and could pose a threat to college athletics, especially sports outside of football. He has also made ensuring the fairness and safety in girls and women’s sports a top priority of his administration.
President Donald Trump attends the 126th Army-Navy Game between the Army Black Knights and the Navy Midshipmen at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore Dec. 13, 2025. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
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Top-seeded Indiana, led by Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza, will take on Miami at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, Monday at 7:45 p.m. ET.
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