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Beginning next season, college football will look even less like college football. The College Football Playoff, along with its broadcaster, ESPN, said Monday morning that the postseason field will double from 12 to 24 teams. (Two seasons ago, that number was four.)
To accommodate the expanded calendar, the regular season will start a week earlier and end on Thanksgiving weekend, and the Power 4 conference championships will be eliminated. Teams will have the first weekend of December off, and the playoff will begin the next weekend.
The move further reduces the importance of the regular season, once a hallmark of the sport. For most of history, when two undefeated teams met in Week 6, the winner controlled its own destiny and the loser knew its season might be over. Now they will both probably make the playoff field.
ESPN reported that ESPN, which is already paying about $1.3 billion per year to air the 12-team tournament, will pay another $1.7 billion over five years for the additional games.
Nearly a week after Democrats decisively took back the House and Senate majorities in the midterms, President Donald Trump is casting doubt on the results.
“Does anybody really believe that this ‘Election’ was honest. How could the Polls be so wrong???” Trump wrote in a social media post Monday. “Some early voting ‘dumps’ were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote.” Public polls did, in fact, predict widespread Democratic victories, although, on average, they underestimated the size of the sweep.
“It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter!” Trump added, suggesting without evidence that there was something wrong with the machines people used to cast their ballots.
For years, Trump has made baseless claims about elections being rigged if they did not go in his favor. In the midterm elections, voters in nearly every demographic group swung to the left. In Georgia, North Carolina and Texas, the Democratic Senate candidates would have won based on their early and mail-in vote totals alone, a fact that Trump tried to cast as suspicious in his social media post.
Last week, in the immediate aftermath of the midterms, Trump did not question the integrity of the election, acknowledging that it had been a poor night for Republicans but saying that was because he had not been on the ballot.
The only known handwritten final draft of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech will be publicly displayed for the first time later this month and sold at auction in January.
The draft was kept by King’s head of public relations, Edward T. Clayton, said Christie’s, the auction house that will facilitate the sale. Clayton’s widow first found the draft in the late 1990s but put it back into her late husband’s desk, not knowing it was the only known handwritten final draft. She rediscovered the draft in 2024.
The auction house expects the document to sell for upward of $10 million.
King worked on the speech at Washington’s Willard Hotel, which is less than a mile from the National Mall, where he delivered the historic address. An estimated crowd of 250,000 people had descended on the nation’s capital to march for civil rights.
The draft is seven pages long. An image of it published by Christie’s shows the speech scrawled in blue ink, littered with scratch-outs and other edits.
The draft will be displayed at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta from Nov. 16 to 22. It will be displayed again in Chicago and then at Christie’s in New York from Jan. 15, King’s birthday, to Jan. 21. It will be sold Jan. 22.
A Roth conversion moves assets from tax-deferred retirement accounts, such as 401(k)s, to a Roth IRA, where you can withdraw qualified distributions tax-free. If you don’t want to pay tax on retirement income later on or expect your tax rate to increase, conversion may be right for you.
There’s a catch. Conversion is a taxable event. Pretax principal and investment gains are treated as ordinary income in the year of the conversion. This increases income and could push you into a higher tax bracket. It can also increase Medicare premiums.
While most people pay standard premiums, an income-related monthly adjustment amount applies to high earners. As of 2026, IRMAA added between $81.20 and $487.00 to Part B premiums.
Income from two years prior determines whether IRMAA applies. So, premiums at age 65 are based on income at 63, premiums at 66 are based on income at 64, and so on.
Since most people start Medicare at 65, income from a conversion at 63 or later could trigger IRMAA, making the conversion process much costlier. You don’t have this problem at 62 or younger, so if you’re considering conversion, factor this into your timeline.
As lawmakers returned to Washington on Monday, an expected impeachment vote loomed over Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The effort to remove Hegseth has been led by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), who said he plans to introduce a resolution calling for a vote as soon as Monday.
Even if the House votes to impeach Hegseth, a conviction would require a two-thirds majority in the Senate, making his removal from office unlikely.
The House has impeached just two Cabinet officials in the United States’ 250-year history.
The first was distinguished Civil War veteran William Belknap, President Ulysses S. Grant’s secretary of war, amid a corruption scandal in 1876. He was charged with criminal disregard for his office and accepting payments in exchange for making official appointments. Belknap resigned before the House vote but was impeached regardless. The Senate acquitted him.
In 2024, President Joe Biden’s homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, was impeached and accused of failing to enforce immigration laws and breaching public trust. The charges were narrowly approved in the House, but the Senate dismissed them without a full trial.
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As a nutrition columnist, I often interview experts to get their thoughts on the latest studies about food and health. But for the past year, I’ve been asking them a more personal question: What do you eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner?
I’ve heard some fascinating answers. While their meals are never identical, they often share a common theme, especially when it comes to breakfast: Greek yogurt. They like Greek yogurt because it’s high in protein, rich in vitamins and minerals, and it contains probiotics, which promote gut health.
If you need breakfast inspiration, here are ideas from some of the country’s top health experts:
- Walter Willett, a professor and former chair of the department of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Willett prepares a bowl of steel-cut oats, then adds a cup of Greek yogurt, some nuts, and fruit. His fruit of choice is usually blueberries, which he prefers because studies have found that blueberries may help lower your risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
- Chris Damman, a microbiome expert and gastroenterologist at the digestive health center at the University of Washington Medical Center. Damman’s typical breakfast contains fiber, fermented foods, healthy fats and polyphenols, which are beneficial compounds found in plants. Some mornings he has a bowl of oatmeal and adds nuts, seeds, milk, berries and a bit of dark chocolate. Other mornings, he eats a bowl of low-fat Greek yogurt topped with granola, nuts and fresh fruit.
- Eric Topol, a cardiologist and author of the best-selling book “Super Agers: An Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity.” Topol starts his mornings with a big cup of black coffee, followed by a bowl of nonfat Greek yogurt topped with blueberries or strawberries and low-sugar granola. “I look forward to it every day,” he told me.
For NFL front offices, Sunday was the final exam. By Tuesday afternoon’s trade deadline, every team has to decide whether it’s chasing a title this season or chasing draft picks — and a few of them got pretty clear answers this weekend.
Start in Indianapolis, where all-pro running back Jonathan Taylor may have just played his last game as a Colt. Indy lost to Dallas on a touchdown in the final two minutes and fell to 2-7, and Taylor spent his postgame news conference fielding questions about whether he’d be back. The Colts reportedly have an offer of a second-round pick and more for their star running back, but they surely would like a bigger haul.
Cincinnati, meanwhile, looks like a team ready to shop, perhaps just a piece or two away from a return to the Super Bowl. Quarterback Joe Burrow was terrific again in an impressive win over the Falcons in Madrid. The Bengals already gave up a first-round pick for defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence II in the spring, and another splash, maybe at safety, wouldn’t be shocking.
Wideouts could be the hottest item these next couple of days. Kansas City had no problem handling the Jets on Sunday, but the Chiefs are still winning without much receiving help for quarterback Patrick Mahomes. And Denver, which somehow keeps pulling out close wins and leads the AFC West, could also use receiving help. Indianapolis’s Josh Downs, Tennessee’s Calvin Ridley and Cleveland’s Jerry Jeudy are among the names floating around.
Then there are the teams that may be ready to call it a season. The Chargers are 0-8 after getting blown out by Houston. They insist they don’t need to sell, but contenders will surely call about pass rusher Khalil Mack anyway. Philadelphia has lost seven straight and needs to start planning for its future. The Eagles already sent center Cam Jurgens to Baltimore, but tight end Dallas Goedert is among those who could also hear his name called Tuesday.
And Dallas, despite its win over the Colts, is 4-5 and could listen on receiver George Pickens, who’s playing on the franchise tag this season.
As for Taylor, he said he knows as much about his future as the rest of us. Speaking to reporters after Sunday’s 27-23 loss, he very much sounded a lot like a man saying goodbye.
Asked if it was his final game there, he said, “If it is, I’m very grateful for the city of Indianapolis.”
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- November 9, 2026
Should the Commanders buy or sell at the deadline? Neither.
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