The ESPN Daily: The biggest bets in sports, the wildest QB carousel ever, and Gronk gets emotional over retirement

HEY, BIG SPENDER

The biggest bets in sports … Let’s be clear: Very few of these bets are going to pay off. If casinos were bad at math, they wouldn’t have indoor waterfalls, you know? But hey, imagine how thrilled the person who wagered $10,000 on the Vikings to win the Super Bowl will be if they actually pull it off? That’s the great thing about big bets like this: The promise of a legendary payout makes even the most outlandish bet an attractive prospect. Here are the biggest wagers going right now in the world of sports. Read More

THINGS TO CARE ABOUT

What actually matters in the preseason … The signal-to-noise ratio in the NFL preseason is out of whack. It’s extremely easy to overvalue individual performances — we all remember players who looked like world-beaters in the preseason only to recede into the background once the real games started. Bill Barnwell’s got a rundown of some of the biggest news this summer to determine which of it will have legs … and which will be forgotten when the leaves start to turn. Read More

The wildest QB carousel ever … Tua Tagovailoa’s game-winning touchdown pass in the 2017 title game brought Alabama another championship. But that’s not all it did. Tua’s touchdown set off a wild array of QB moves and transfers that dramatically changed the college football landscape. For the first time, we’ve tracked the shockwave from that single pass, which continues to reverberate years after the fact. Read More

Handicapping the home run race … Trout. Bellinger. Yelich. Alonso. All these guys are furiously battling to take the MLB home run crown this season, with all of them having legitimate shots to hit 50. We ran the numbers to find out who’s going to be on top when it’s all said and done. Read More

THINGS TO WATCH

OVERHEARD

“I thought it was pretty disgusting. He’s making a really tough decision and then before that, he makes the decision, I don’t know why that doesn’t stay in house to kind of protect him a little bit. Although when I think about it, I thought it would’ve been more of a standing-ovation type thing and a thank you than boos.”

— Aaron Rodgers on Colts fans’ reaction to Andrew Luck retiring Read more

REMEMBER WHEN?

On this date last year, Zlatan Ibrahimovic had an extremely Zlatan message for L.A. Galaxy season-ticket holders.

WHAT’S ON TODAY?

US Open (All day starting at 11 a.m., ESPN/ESPN+): Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Serena Williams, and Ashleigh Barty will all be taking the court today as the U.S. Open continues. Not at the same time on the same court, though. That’d be awfully crowded.

Cubs at Mets (7:10 p.m. ET, ESPN+): Kyle Hendricks takes on Noah Syndergaard in a battle with NL wild-card implications — though the Cubs are still in the NL Central race, they’re more likely to make it to the playoffs the hard way. The Mets are way out of the NL East race, but that’s due to the division’s quality more than anything else, and they look to contend for the wild card until the end of the season.

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