Arizona Cardinals fans won’t be able to purchase a Mavin Harrison Jr. jersey anytime soon.

The Cardinals drafted the Ohio State star with the No. 4 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft on Thursday night, but just hours before his name was called on stage, it was reported that Harrison had not signed a preliminary NFLPA licensing agreement.

According to ESPN, the agreement allows his name and likeness to be monetized after getting drafted and before formally signing an NFL contract.

The most immediate impact of this was fans’ ability to purchase Harrison’s jersey on Thursday.

Flanked by his family and legal team, Reggie Bush celebrated the return of his Heisman Trophy Thursday during a news conference at the location where he earned it — the Los Angeles Coliseum.

The USC great and longtime NFL running back spoke with reporters for the first time since the Heisman Trust reinstated the 2005 award he earned while helping lead the Trojans to a Pac-10 championship and the national championship game. His Heisman Trophy was back by his side.

"I never believed in any of the lies that were being told about me, spread about me, things that were being said about me," Bush said. "I never believed it for a single day."

The Federal Trade Commission issued a final ruling Tuesday banning noncompetes, saying companies can, in many cases, no longer prevent their employees from leaving for a competitor. The FTC said current noncompetes for “senior executives” can stay in place, but no new ones may be enforced.

An estimated 30 million Americans have noncompetes, according to the FTC, and the clauses are littered all over the sports world. They stop coaches from leaving to do their same job for their team’s rivals. They’re in big contracts at retailers like Nike. They’re present in name, image, and likeness deals for college athletes. In February, DraftKings sued a former exec whom it alleges stole company secrets and took them to Fanatics as part of a “secret plan,” which the employee denied by calling the accusations “completely false and fabricated.”

Three sports lawyers tell Front Office Sports they found the FTC’s decision surprising and say it will have ramifications throughout the sports ecosystem, including pushback from both employers and employees that could wind up in court.

More than two dozen college athletes are suing the state of Iowa, multiple of its agencies, and several state workers following a sports betting scandal that ended many of their careers.

Last spring, state investigators announced investigations into wagering by 26 athletes at Iowa and 15 at Iowa State. Most of the athletes pleaded guilty to underage gambling and paid a fine to dismiss counts of identity theft. But a few who didn’t accept a plea deal had all charges against them dropped in March due to misuse of tracking software by investigators.

The lawsuit, filed Friday by attorneys Van Plumb and Matthew Boles, comes 10 days after the publication of a Washington Post investigation that detailed how investigators uncovered the gambling activity, using tracking software to put a “digital fence” around athletic facilities without obtaining a warrant and interviewing athletes without telling them they were under investigation.

After picking up two separate pieces of NHL media rights, Amazon is inching closer to a highly rare sweep of the four major men’s U.S. pro sports leagues.

The online retail and streaming giant has completed a two-year pact with the NHL to stream games on Mondays in Canada, starting with the 2024–25 season, creating a new Prime Monday Night Hockey showcase. Amazon has also struck an additional deal with the Kraken for regional rights to show the NHL team’s games on Prime Video to fans in Washington state, Oregon, and Alaska.

The company, meanwhile, is separately closing in on a landmark deal to acquire a portion of the NBA’s national rights, according to The Athletic.

Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Jakob Junis is alert and conscious at a local hospital in Pittsburgh after he was hit in the neck by a ball during batting practice on Monday, the team announced.

Junis was taken off the field at PNC Park by an ambulance after he was hit by a batted ball while jogging in the outfield. The Pirates were taking batting practice at the time. Junis, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, was loosening up near the warning track when the ball hit him in the neck.

He remained on the field near the warning track for about 15 minutes while being attended to. Junis was then lifted into an ambulance and taken to a local hospital.

After the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD uncovered the positive drug tests of 23 Chinese swimmers before the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo, the country is firing back. A spokesperson for its foreign ministry said Monday that “The relevant reports are fake news and not factual.”

China has held that the athletes were accidentally exposed to small levels of trimetazidine, a substance banned because it can help blood flow and reduce recovery time. It’s the same drug that disrupted the figure skating world until a January ruling banned the Russian skater Kamila Valieva and redistributed the medals. Both China and Russia said their athletes unknowingly injected the heart medication through contaminated food. The Court of Arbitration for Sport ultimately rejected Valieva’s excuse—that some of her grandfather’s medication ended up in her strawberry dessert—and banned her for four years.

The World Anti-Doping Agency has stood by its decision to not punish the Chinese swimmers or publicize the initial case, saying strict COVID-19 restrictions in China made it difficult to investigate the cases and China’s explanation.

Caitin Clark is showing once more that the WNBA economy developing around here holds few limits.

One week after the Iowa superstar was drafted by the Fever with the No. 1 pick—fueling record ratings for the WNBA draft and meteoric rises in ticket sales—the team struck a deal Monday with Tegna to place 17 of the team’s games on the media company’s over-the-air stations in Indianapolis. Those games, beginning with a May 16 contest against the 2023 league runner-up Liberty, will be shown on either WTHR, the NBC affiliate, or WALV, the MeTV affiliate.

Apple’s latest foray into soccer could be historic.

Two years after Apple agreed to a 10-year, $2.5 billion deal for Major League Soccer’s global streaming rights, The New York Times reported the technology company is nearing a deal with FIFA for the worldwide television rights for its new Club World Cup, which will debut in the summer of 2025. The United States will host the tournament.

The tournament itself has been years in the making and faced a rash of delays, most notably the COVID-19 pandemic, which prevented it from being played in China in 2021. The value of the broadcast deal “might be as little as a quarter of the $4 billion FIFA had first estimated,” the Times reported; it’s unclear if the games will be behind an Apple+ paywall. Apple has an MLS Season Pass fans could purchase for $14.99 per month in-season or $99 for the entire season. Apple+ subscribers get a slight monthly ($12.99) and yearly ($79.99) discount.

Last month, during the first round of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips sat beside Clemson athletic director Graham Neff. In a normal year, this situation would be standard operating procedure: The pair, likely assigned to this seating arrangement by the NCAA, might be sharing small talk and celebration as the Tigers beat New Mexico 77-56. After all, their first win—in what would become an Elite Eight run—was good for both the conference’s image and its finances, thanks to the tournament prize money system referred to as “units.”

But, nearly a year removed from last summer’s major wave of realignment, the vibe was decidedly icy. The two did little more than acknowledge each other’s presence when Neff sat down midway through the first half; otherwise, they “weren’t particularly chatty,” according to one reporter on the ground. Another reporter likened the scene to a botched wedding seating chart. Neff got up at halftime and never returned.

Coban Porter, the younger brother of Denver Nuggets star Michael Porter and Jontay Porter, who was recently banned from the NBA, was sentenced Friday to six years in prison for killing a 42-year-old woman in a drunken driving crash last year.

Porter was a sophomore playing basketball for the University of Denver at the time of his arrest.

He was involved in a crash Jan. 22 just before 2 a.m., and an arrest affidavit said he was driving around 50 mph when he ran a red light at South University Boulevard and crashed his vehicle into Katharina Rothman’s vehicle.

WASHINGTON — On Thursday, within a matter of a few hours, the current unruly state of college athletics was on full display.

The NCAA’s transfer portal buzzed to life with dozens of new additions who’ve been lured away by financial inducements from booster-led collectives. The state of Virginia passed legislation that defies NCAA rules by permitting its schools to directly compensate athletes starting July 1. And finally, a national association filed a third complaint with the National Labor Relations Board seeking to make athletes employees.

Meanwhile, within an auditorium on the campus of Howard University, the man who at least partially controls any future college athletics model — the guy perhaps responsible for both bringing disorder to the landscape as well as determining a more stable future — took the stage for a 90-minute panel discussion.

The Timberwolves are entering the NBA playoffs after the franchise’s best regular season in two decades. You’d need to go back to 2004, when Kevin Garnett led Minnesota to 58 wins and then to the Western Conference Finals, to find a T-Wolves team this successful. On Saturday, fans will get to see Kevin Durant, Devin Booker, and the Suns come to town to tip off one of the best matchups in the first round.

Life is good in Minnesota, right?

It should be. But there’s one not-so-behind-the-scenes issue clouding the Timberwolves this postseason: No one knows who the team’s owner is going to be this time next year. The future of the franchise looks like it will be decided in arbitration after majority owner Glen Taylor took Minnesota off the market just weeks ago, thwarting the planned transfer of control to current minority owners Alex Rodriguez (above) and Marc Lore.

FedEx will be making a different kind of local shipment during the college sports season.

The e-commerce and transportation company announced on Friday it will send the University of Memphis $5 million per year for the next five years in a corporate NIL deal that is believed to be the first of its kind.

“This is a massive example of what NIL was intended to be and can be, but it’s done the right way with the right kind of infrastructure from a Fortune 50 company to hometown student-athletes,” Memphis athletic director Laird Veatch told The Memphis Commercial Appeal. “Really, I don’t think there’s another deal that we’re aware of that is this size or the scope across multiple programs and across multiple years.”

Former Arizona State football coach Herm Edwards, who previously coached the Jets and the Chiefs, likely won't be coaching in college again any time soon, if ever.

Via Noah Furtado of 247Sports.com, the NCAA has issued a three-year “show cause” order to Edwards for his role in recruiting violations within the program.

This means that, for the duration of the order, any school that hires Edwards will have to show cause as to why they should not be sanctioned by the NCAA.

The violations arose from meetings with more than 30 high-school recruits during the COVID-19 "dead" period.

A University of Oregon football player was charged with felony hit-and-run in a fatal incident that occurred earlier in the week, police said Wednesday.

Daylen Amir Austin, 19, was arrested in the incident, Eugene police said. The crash occurred on Monday, and the victim was a 46-year-old man, police added.

"This is a complex investigation and EPD is still gathering information to be submitted to the Lane County District Attorney’s Office for a final charging decision," police said in a Facebook post.

Austin is a defensive back for the Ducks. He played in three games for Oregon during the 2023 season and recorded three tackles and one pass defended.

The worst-kept secret in pro sports is no longer a secret. Now comes the hard part for Utah.

As has been increasingly expected for more than a week and capping a period of rising turbulence, the NHL is shifting the Coyotes to Salt Lake City beginning with the 2024–25 season. The league’s Board of Governors unanimously approved on Thursday a complex, two-stage transaction in which Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo will return the franchise back to the league for $1 billion. The NHL is then reselling the Coyotes to Ryan Smith (above), owner of the NBA’s Jazz and co-owner of two pro soccer teams in Utah, for $1.2 billion, with the difference split among other NHL team owners.

“As everyone knows, Utah is a vibrant and thriving state, and we are thrilled to be a part of it,” said NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.

On Thursday in Los Angeles, in-person testimony concluded in the potentially landmark labor case concerning the employment status of USC football and basketball players.

The National Labor Relations Board case was first filed in February 2022 as an “unfair labor practice” charge against USC, the Pac-12, and the NCAA. The charge, brought by longtime college athlete advocate Ramogi Huma and his National College Players Association, alleges that USC, the Pac-12, and the NCAA are all joint employers of football and basketball players—and that they have been misclassifying these athletes as “amateurs.”

After four months of hearings, there will be a lengthy waiting period until judge Eleanor Law hands down a ruling. The record for the case doesn’t officially close until July 31; until then, parties have time to submit final written arguments. It could then take several months for a decision, extending the case into 2025. Then, whichever party loses will likely file an appeal to the national board.

Starting August 1, college athletes accused of sexual misconduct cannot be suspended from their team until a school investigation has occurred, according to new regulations from the Department of Education, led by Secretary Miguel Cardona. An official from the Biden administration told ESPN that removing an athlete from their team without due process is an “unfair burden.”

The regulations clarified the no-suspension rule along with other Title IX-related policies for educational institutions, which detail how they should handle reports of sexual misconduct.

The question of whether accused athletes can compete resurfaced this basketball season as Illinois’ leading scorer Terrence Shannon was arrested on rape charges. He was suspended by Illinois for part of the season, but later sued the school, returned and helped his team to an Elite Eight appearance in the NCAA Tournament.

Colorado Rockies hitting coach Hensley Meulens has triggered investigations by the FAA and United Airlines after a since-deleted video on social media showed him in the cockpit of the team’s charter mid-flight.

“I’m gonna land the plane tonight,” Meulens says in the video. “So relax.”

In the video, Meulens is seated in one chair with a pilot in the other one. The incident happened on the team’s April 10 flight from Denver to Toronto. The Rockies played three games against the Blue Jays on April 12, 13, and 14.

“We’re deeply disturbed by what we see in that video, which appears to show an unauthorized person in the flight deck at cruise altitude while the autopilot was engaged,” United Airlines said in a statement, adding that it has grounded the pilots involved while its investigation is underway.

When it comes to calling the Masters, warns golf analyst Peter Kostis, the wisest strategy for sportscasters is to adhere to the Latin phrase “primum non nocere”—first, do no harm.

Broadcasting the Masters is a death or glory affair. One great call can etch an announcer’s name into history. Just ask Jim Nantz (above, right) and Verne Lundquist, whose long careers at CBS date back to a pair of famous calls at the 1986 Masters.

But one wrong remark can leave you excommunicated from the country’s most-watched tournament. Pour one out for Gary McCord, who was banned from CBS’s coverage after joking about “body bags” and Augusta National Golf Club “bikini-waxing” its lightning-fast greens. And pour another one out for the late Jack Whitaker, who was barred for calling the crowd coming up the 18th fairway a “mob.”

Arman Tsarukyan and the UFC won’t face any legal action after he appeared to punch a fan during his walkout at UFC 300 in Las Vegas on Saturday night.

The fan in question, Obed Ardon, told Bloody Elbow on Monday that the emotions of the moment simply got to him. He was there with his brother on the floor, and insisted that he wouldn’t file a lawsuit.

“I will not sue, that never crossed my mind,” Ardo said. “My first thought was, ‘I hope I don’t get kicked out.’”

Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Rashee Rice is being sued by two people who were injured in the multi-car crash he allegedly caused while driving at high speeds in Dallas last month.

According to court documents viewed by Fox 4 Kansas City, Rice and SMU cornerback Teddy Knox, who is accused of driving the other car that caused the crash, are being sued by Irina Gromova and Edvard Petrovskiy, for causing numerous injuries including “trauma to the brain, lacerations to the face requiring stitches, multiple contusions about the body, disfigurement, internal bleeding, and other internal and external injuries that may only be fully revealed over the course of medical treatment.”

It’s Tax Day across the U.S., the deadline by which individuals and organizations must report their financial state for 2023 to the Internal Revenue Service and state officials. But some California legislators are already thinking ahead to future tax years, with Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani at the center of their focus.

Ohtani’s unprecedented $680 million in deferrals in his record-setting $700 million contract, to be paid out between 2034 and ’43, have inspired a legislative bill calling on the U.S. Congress to establish a “reasonable cap on deferred compensation,” in turn allowing individual states to capture more tax revenue. The California Center for Jobs and the Economy has calculated that Ohtani could save up to $98 million in state taxes by moving to another state or out of the country, and some in the Golden State want at least a meaningful portion of that money.

Ryan Smith’s two-year quest to land Salt Lake City an NHL franchise will likely conclude later this week, although it won’t be the expansion team his Smith Entertainment Group lobbied for publicly in January.

Instead, it will be the Arizona Coyotes—or at least the players, coaches and some other staffers of the franchise that has called the Valley of the Sun home since 1996. Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo, Smith, and the NHL are nearing the end of negotiations of a $1 billion sale of the team that will play under a new name at Salt Lake City’s Delta Center starting next season, sources with knowledge of the transaction tell Front Office Sports.

Meruelo keeps the Coyotes name and will have five years to build an NHL arena with the league’s promise of making the Phoenix market the home of an expansion team, the sources confirmed. SportsNet was the first outlet to report the setup.

Southern Methodist University cornerback Theodore “Teddy” Knox has been suspended from the team following his connection to a multi-vehicle collision in Dallas last month, according to multiple reports on Thursday. The accident, which left multiple people injured, also involved Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Rashee Rice.

Rice reportedly turned himself in to police Thursday evening. He and Knox face the same eight felony charges, including six counts of collision involving bodily injury, one count of collision involving serious bodily injury and one count of aggravated assault.

Knox was driving one of two cars involved in the six-vehicle crash on March 30, WFAA reported Thursday, citing the police. Both vehicles were reportedly listed under Rice’s name.

The Arizona Coyotes have told their players they are moving north.

Coyotes general manager Bill Armstrong met with the team before their game against the Edmonton Oilers on Friday to confirm rumors that the NHL has facilitated a sale of the team to Ryan and Ashley Smith, owners of the Utah Jazz, according to ESPN. Players had reportedly been demanding answers, leading Armstrong to fly up to Edmonton to break the news.

Terms of the sale of the team from current owner Alex Meruelo have not been reported.

Nearly 30 years into its existence, MLS is officially getting a soccer-specific stadium in the largest U.S. city, ending more than a decade of the often-frustrating pursuit and rising questions about whether it could or would ever happen.

NYCFC gained Thursday formal land-use approval for a $780 million, 25,000-seat stadium at Willets Point in Queens, near both Citi Field and the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. The city council approval follows an initial announcement of the stadium plan in November 2022. An opening is now targeted for ’27.

“This is just a rich moment of history,” said New York mayor Eric Adams (above). “Just think about how people said it was not possible. Everyone tried before. Willets Point has been an eyesore for so many years. … We scored a major goal for New York City.”

Bad Bunny’s agency did bad—or so baseball’s powerful players union says, according to a new report.

William Arroyo, the main baseball agent for Rimas Sports, the agency led by the Puerto Rican star, had his MLB Players Association certification revoked after a union investigation over improper benefits provided to players, according to ESPN.

The MLBPA informed Arroyo’s clients, which include Mets catcher Francisco Alvarez, Nationals outfielder Eddie Rosario, and Reds infielder Santiago Espinal, among others, on Friday.

Another chapter in the tumultuous history of the media company that, until last month, published Sports Illustrated was detailed in a lawsuit filed in Delaware last week.

The plaintiffs are James Heckman and William Sornsin, cofounders of The Arena Group, which until January published SI under a license from Authentic Brands Group. They allege that Ross Levinsohn, who was ousted as Arena CEO late last year, “enacted a fraudulent coup” to seize control of Arena in the summer of 2020, a year after Arena (then known as Maven) entered into a 10-year, $150 million deal licensing deal with Authentic.

“Once Levinsohn took control of Arena, he intentionally mismanaged Arena and destroyed its value to set up a change-of-control transaction to enrich himself,” the complaint states. “In so doing, Levinsohn violated his fiduciary duties and acted in bad faith by prioritizing his self-interest above the Company’s.”

Scott Boras lost the 2023-24 MLB offseason, and now he has lost Jordan Montgomery as a client.

Montgomery, now with the Arizona Diamondbacks, dropped Boras as his agent and hired Joel Wolfe and Nick Chanock of the Wasserman agency, according to ESPN's Kiley McDaniel.

Montgomery was one of four big-name Boras clients who entered last offseason with nine-figure demands, waited until at least late February to sign and exited with what amounted to a prove-it deal. The other three players were Cody Bellinger of the Chicago Cubs, and Blake Snell and Matt Chapman of the San Francisco Giants.

Rashee Rice surrendered himself to police Thursday in response to an arrest warrant issued after the Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver was involved in a multi-vehicle crash last month in Dallas, according to online records accessed by the Kansas City Star.

The 23-year-old reportedly entered custody at Glenn Heights Police Department. His bond was set at $5,000 with a total of surety bond of $40,000. He reportedly posted bond and was released quickly.

Rice faces eight charges, including six counts of collision involving bodily injury, one count of aggravated assault and one count of collision involving serious bodily injury. The aggravated assault charge is a second-degree felony, while collision involving serious bodily injury is a third-degree felony.

During his introductory press events with media members Thursday, incoming AAC commissioner Tim Pernetti kept repeating two phrases: “take big swings” and “nothing is off the table.” Pernetti does not begin his tenure at the AAC until June, but already he’s hinting that he’s taking those ideas literally.

Pernetti, to varying degrees, appears interested in bringing private equity money into the AAC, and in considering some sort of athlete unionization or employment model. On the former, specifically, he observed that “private equity is heavily investing in sports,” noting that “it’s circling the neighborhood in college sports.” He believes it’s inevitable that the industry will enter the NCAA space and that it could be a major benefit to the AAC.

Pernetti didn’t specify how he might bring private equity investment into the conference, but there’s a model to follow, set by Florida State, that could create more capital for school distributions—which, in many ways, is the glue to keeping a conference together. Currently, the AAC distributes only between $9 million and $10 million to each member school every year, just a fraction of what the ACC, SEC, Big Ten, and Big 12 provide. The conference could also work with private equity investors on funding outside events or other conference-related initiatives.

Fanatics’ live event aspirations are now coming into full reality, just as other parts of the company’s business face ongoing criticism and rising competitive pressures.

The sports merchandising giant announced Thursday plans for the debut of Fanatics Fest NYC, a three-day convention in New York celebrating sports fandom, culture, and collecting. Set for Aug. 16–18 at the Javits Center, the festival marks the first major, company-branded iteration of Fanatics Events, a live and special event division of the company formed last summer. Modeled somewhat after pop culture staples such as the New York Comic Con, Fanatics Fest NYC will feature a series of collectors’ showcases, product releases, and appearances by major stars such as Tom Brady, Peyton and Eli Manning, Derek Jeter, Kevin Durant, and Sabrina Ionescu.

Fanatics described the event as “residing at the intersection of sports, culture, entertainment, and collecting,” and it follows the company’s recent production of WWE World at WrestleMania, an interactive fan experience created in conjunction with the pro wrestling showcase.

The drama around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani appears to be coming to an end. On Thursday, the Department of Justice filed a criminal complaint against Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s longtime interpreter, and charged him with bank fraud related to an alleged theft of $16 million from his friend.

How did we get here? Below is a decade-long timeline of the Ohtani-Mizuhara relationship and Mizuhara’s descent into an apparently serious gambling problem. The texts and interactions with illegal bookmakers are as reproduced and alleged by the federal complaint; Mizuhara has not been convicted of any crime.

Zach Edey’s Purdue career will end after Monday’s national championship game against Connecticut, and he has had two consecutive National Player of the Year awards, a Final Four run, and the school is already retiring his No. 15 jersey.

And he’s barely profited off it.

While NC State’s DJ Burns piled up NIL deals along the way of his team’s Cinderella run to the Final Four, Edey has not become a legend at the bank.

“I feel like I’m missing out on a lot of money,” Edey said at the Final Four ahead of Purdue’s win that clinched a title game berth.

LIV Golf representatives have been invited to the Masters for the first time, highlighting the thawing of tensions in the game’s great split.

LIV chief executive Greg Norman is not expected to appear and it remains up in the air whether Yasir Al-Rumayyan – the LIV chairman and governor of the £600 billion Saudi Public Investment Fund which bankrolls the breakaway league – will attend.

However, it is understood that at least one high-ranking LIV official will be under the famous oak tree in front of the clubhouse, where the sport’s power-brokers assemble.

Amateurism, or at least the NCAA’s version of it, is dying. Between several federal court and National Labor Relations Board cases, the NCAA could be anywhere between one and five years away from its business model being completely struck down, with athletes being deemed employees with the right to unionize.

But at this year’s men’s Final Four in Phoenix, the conversations about college sports’ existential crisis amounted to little more than a whisper. This weekend, there were only two publicly announced events related to it, and neither of them received major fanfare. Coaches chatted about the prospect of employment, but there were no official proposals addressed, one source tells Front Office Sports.

The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics announced Monday it had voted to ban transgender women from women’s competitions starting during the 2024–25 academic year, leading to questions about whether the NCAA will follow suit.

At the NAIA’s national convention, its executive body, the Council of Presidents decided “only students whose biological sex is female” can compete in women’s sports starting Aug. 1. The decision includes transgender men or nonbinary students who are undergoing hormone treatments.

“We know there are a lot of different opinions out there,” NAIA president Jim Carr told CBS Sports. “For us, we believed our first responsibility was to create fairness and competition in the NAIA. … We also think it aligns with the reasons Title IX was created. You’re allowed to have separate but equal opportunities for women to compete.”

After a number of baseball’s best pitchers were ruled out for the season over the weekend, the head of the MLB Players Association is blaming the league’s pitch clock rules for making the problem worse.

“Despite unanimous player opposition and significant concerns regarding health and safety, the Commissioner’s Office reduced the length of the pitch clock last December, just one season removed from imposing the most significant rule change in decades,” executive director Tony Clark said Saturday in a statement.

The league implemented the pitch clock ahead of the 2023 season and reduced the time to pitch when runners are on base from 20 to 18 seconds in December. Players averaged 7.3 seconds left on the 20-second clock when they began pitching last season, according to MLB.

There is a very established process when a fan catches a milestone home run, such as Shohei Ohtani's first homer with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The ball legally belongs to the fan, who is quickly escorted from their seat so team officials can speak with them and work out what it will take for the fan to part with the ball. Sometimes, all it takes is a little signed memorabilia; other times, cold hard cash. Crucially, it is within the fan's rights to take the ball and go home.

This practice goes back decades, but the Dodgers couldn't avoid unnecessary drama when it happened with Ohtani's homer on Thursday.

The NFL season doesn’t kick off for another five months, but the Cardinals have already tallied their first loss, this one in court.

An NFL arbitrator appointed by commissioner Roger Goodell awarded Terry McDonough, the team’s former vice president of player personnel, $3 million for “defamatory statements” the team made about him, according to a Monday filing in Arizona federal court. (The same arbitrator denied McDonough’s contract-based claims of retaliation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and invasion of privacy.)

The arbitration request was originally directed to Goodell almost a year ago. In the filing, McDonough accused Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill of ordering him to break NFL rules: He claims that Bidwill wanted him and then coach Steve Wilks to communicate via burner phones with the team’s GM, Steve Keim, during the 2018 training camp, a period when Keim was suspended, stemming from a DUI arrest.

The New York Red Bulls have withdrawn their U15 and U17 teams from the Generation Adidas Cup tournament following two alleged incidents of racial abuse against their players.

The Red Bulls allege that U17 defender Eric Tai received racial abuse from a player with Croatian squad Hajduk Split. The player in question was sent off by the referee, who recognized the racist language allegedly being directed at Tai, as reported by The Athletic.

This follows an incident that occurred on Monday in which U17 goalkeeper Joshua Grant alleged that he was racially abused by a player from CF Monterrey. However, no official heard the language being used in this instance and didn't address the episode.

Joel Embiid's return to the Philadelphia 76ers' lineup came at an avoidable cost.

The NBA is fining the 76ers $100,000 for violating injury reporting rules surrounding the reining league MVP's return to the floor on Tuesday against the Oklahoma City Thunder.

"Embiid was listed as 'Out' in Philadelphia's initial injury report and subsequently played in the game," the NBA said in a statement released Friday. "The fine takes into account the 76ers' prior history of fines for violating injury reporting rules."

Mortgage billionaires Dan Gilbert and Mat Ishbia have quietly hated each other for years. The two NBA owners and Michigan natives—Gilbert bought the Cavaliers in 2005, while Ishbia bought the Suns from the disgraced Robert Sarver last year—have had an intense business rivalry for more than a decade. As recently as this week, it seemed to be just that: a fun story for the business press but nothing particularly relevant to sports fans.

On Tuesday, ESPN ran a story about the Gilbert-Ishbia feud. While it detailed a history of passive-aggressive comments from Ishbia about Gilbert’s Rocket Mortgage, the dynamic between the two men was described as “not contentious.” A Gilbert spokesperson told ESPN, “They have never met. From Dan’s perspective, there is no rivalry.”

That’s no longer the case.

The A’s are officially ending their time in Oakland after 57 seasons, announcing Thursday a plan to move to Sacramento for the 2025–27 seasons. But in exiting one difficult, increasingly toxic situation in their current home, the MLB club is introducing a whole other set of complications in the California state capital.

A decision about the temporary home of the A’s was for months a closely watched situation. Oakland seemed the favorite in recent weeks, in part due to the Coliseum’s existing standing as a facility approved for MLB play, and also because staying in the market would preserve a local media-rights deal with NBC Sports California that paid the club $67 million last year.

But the deliberation materially changed in recent days. After a meeting Tuesday with Oakland city officials, the A’s said they were “far apart” on deal terms to return to the Coliseum. And the start of the 2024 season for the A’s has been marked by fan protests and a further drop in what was already by far the league’s worst attendance. The impending departure also means that Oakland will have lost the A’s, Raiders, and Warriors—all in a five-year period.

Chiefs wide receiver Rashee Rice was driving the Lamborghini involved in a hit-and-run last Saturday in Dallas, his attorney said at a news conference Thursday.

Royce West, Rice's attorney, added that the wideout admitted to being behind the wheel at the time of the crash during an interview with the police. No official police report had been filed as of Wednesday. Officers are still investigating why Rice left the scene and the wideout is "fully cooperating," West said.

Rice's representation has yet to communicate with the Chiefs in any capacity because facts are still unclear, per West. The attorney said he wants prioritize the victims of the crash and ensure that Rice didn't leave the scene because he was running or hiding from someone.

The WTA Finals will be held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for the next three years, the association and Saudi Tennis Federation announced Thursday. The prize pool will increase significantly and hit a new record, going from $9 million in 2023 to $15.25 million in ’24, and the WTA says it will be even higher in the next two years.

After rumblings of moving the finals to Saudi Arabia first emerged, former tennis stars Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova wrote a January op-ed in The Washington Post criticizing the potential partnership, saying a tournament there would be a “significant regression” given the nation’s extensive record of human rights abuses. Longtime WTA head Steve Simon said Thursday that he has met with Evert and Navratilova and that he “shared the concerns around women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights within the Kingdom of Saudi,” but he does not expect any players to miss the event.

The WTA confirmed to Front Office Sports that players would be able to compete in their normal attire—Saudi Arabia typically requires both men and women to dress modestly—and it has been assured by Saudi authorities that there will be no restrictions as to same-sex couples sharing hotel rooms.

Joe Lewis, the former longtime owner of Tottenham Hotspur who pleaded guilty to insider trading charges in January, avoided prison time in his sentencing by a federal judge in New York Thursday. Lewis was initially charged with over a dozen counts of security fraud and conspiracy, which carried a potential sentence of up to 25 years, but ultimately pleaded guilty to just three. U.S. sentencing guidelines based on his plea deal recommended a maximum of 18 to 24 months in prison.

U.S. District Judge Jessica Clarke sentenced the 87-year-old British billionaire to three years of probation and a $5 million fine. She said his age and poor health were the reasons to avoid a prison sentence.

It’s a light slap on the wrist for Lewis, whose family still controls a majority of the soccer club. His charges included sharing information on four companies in his portfolio to friends, romantic partners, and associates—including two pilots for his private plane—which prosecutors say allowed them to make millions of dollars. He was hit with 16 counts of securities fraud, pleading guilty to two, and three counts of conspiracy, pleading guilty to one. Prosecutors described his conduct as a “brazen insider trading scheme” when he was indicted last summer.

Nike has yet another impressive innovation in the uniform space: a new euphemism for sweat stains.

As MLB players and fans continue to pan this season’s new baseball uniforms, a spokesperson for Nike, which designed the attire, told The Athletic in a statement that the company was looking to “lessen the moisture-related aesthetic color differences.”

MLB, meanwhile, is finally pointing a gentle finger in the fiasco, and it’s not at Fanatics, which handles the production of the new uniforms. In the same Athletic story, the league praised Fanatics for doing everything Nike told it to do and pointed out that Nike is responsible for the smaller size of jersey nameplates and for any issues with jersey fabric, which has drawn attention for its transparency.