There are four graded stakes races at Saratoga and two at Del Mar today.

The Saratoga races are all in succession, races 9, 10, 11, and 12, and can be seen live on FOX from 5:00 to 7:00 pm ET.

Notes: Race 9 is loaded with talent, but Explora has two wins and a second in three tries at seven furlongs, all stakes.

Race 10 is a win-and-you’re-in for the Breeders’ Cup. Hard to deny the talent of #3, Zulu Kingdom, winner of 8 of 11 races, all on Turf and four at the one mile distance. Morning line favorite, #5 Deterministic, is 9-for-15, but most of his wins have come at longer distances. #6, Capitol Hill ran second, over Zulu Kingdom in the Grade 3 Poker, and deserves a long look for connections Bill Mott and rider Junior Alvarado. Irad Ortiz Jr. rides #1, Rhetorical, 6-for-10 lifetime, has trained well for this event and should offer a fair price.

A couple of key scratches sets up a wide open race 11. #5 Pacific Avenue and #9 Bottas (who won a stakes on Friday) are out, leaving #3 Remember Momba, and #10 West End Kid as the likely favorites. Glavine scratched out of the Friday race won by Bottas and is a stout closer who may enjoy the longer distance.

The Whitney looks to boil down to two favorites, #1 Magnitude (Jose Ortiz), and #8 Baeza, who ran third in the 2025 Kentucky Derby and Belmont. The edge goes to Magnitude, who ran third to Soveirnty in last year’s Travers, but appears to be in the best form of his career and is 3-for-4 at the 1 1/8 mile distance. Race 12 is a win-and-you’re-in for the Breeders’ Cup.

Del Mar races start at 5:00 pm ET, so there’s late action in the Grade 3 Best Pal (6:07 pm ET post time) and the Grade 3 Yellow Ribbon (8:50 pm ET post)

Notes: Loaded with speed, the Best Pal may flow to the outside horse, #6 Kennyton, who packs a bullet work for his graded stakes debut.

#5 Take A Breath has two recent Grade 3 wins at distance and should get a good stalking position. May want to use in exotics with #6 Warming and #1, long shot Princess Attitude.

It's early August, and, what every red-blooded football fan knows is that it's time to kick off the NFL season with the traditional Hall of Fame Game in Canton, Ohio.

This year's entries are the Cardinals and Panthers, both from the NFC, and both with substantial question marks approaching the 2026 regular season.

There probably won't be much to see in this contest, as it is usually a forum for both teams to get a little physical contact, try out some rookies and bench players and work through some of the playlists. As far as a betting angle goes, the HOF game is usually one of the worst propositions in the pre-season, so it would be wise to tread lightly, if at all.

That said, the Panthers probably have fewer problems than the Cardinals and better prospects overall.

Coin Flip: Carolina

Fearless Rick’s Pick: Panthers 23 Cardinals 14

By Claude AI, Assistant Publisher

Every outlet has its own preseason Top 25, and every outlet is convinced it's right. Rather than pick a favorite, we did what any idle mind would do: average them together. Below is a composite ranking built from four major preseason polls — ESPN's Football Power Index, USA Today's "way-too-early" Top 25, CBS Sports' way-too-early rankings, and Sporting News' post-spring Top 25 (published as a partial list; only the teams it actually ranked are counted). Each team's composite score is the average of its ranking across every poll that included it. Teams that only turned up on one list were left out, since one outlet's opinion isn't a composite of anything.

The result: five different teams got at least one first-place vote across these four polls, but only one team topped the average.

Composite Preseason Top 25

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