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🚨 Headlines
🏀 Virginia makes history: No. 10 Virginia upset No. 2 Iowa, 83-75, in Monday’s double-overtime thriller at Carver-Hawkeye Arena to become the first women’s team ever to go from the First Four to the Sweet 16.
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📺 Big Madness ratings: Thursday’s opening-round coverage of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament was the most watched ever, per CBS and TNT. The 16-game slate drew an average of 9.8 million viewers, while the primetime games specifically averaged 12.5 million.
🏈 NFL stars ink deals: Jaxon Smith-Njigba signed a four-year, $168.6 million extension with the Seahawks that makes him the highest-paid WR in NFL history; Travis Kelce re-upped with the Chiefs for three years and $54.7 million (though the contract language essentially makes it a one-year deal).
🤝 WNBPA approves CBA: The WNBA players’ union has voted unanimously to approve the new collective bargaining agreement. The attention now turns to a two-team expansion draft for the Portland Fire and Toronto Tempo.
🏀 Coaching moves: Creighton head coach Doug McDermott is retiring after 16 years with the Bluejays; Cincinnati is hiring Jerrod Calhoun from Utah State to replace Wes Miller; Arizona State is hiring Randy Bennett from Saint Mary’s to replace Bobby Hurley.
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🏈 The NFL’s ever-expanding slate
(Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
(Patrick Smith)
How many days of the week are you willing to give the NFL? It started with Sundays. Then Mondays. Then Thursdays. Then some Fridays and Saturdays. Ready to devote your Wednesdays to the league, too? You’d better be. It’s coming.
What we’re hearing: The NFL will kick off the 2026 season on a Wednesday night, as WSJ reported last week. Meanwhile, there are rumblings that the league is exploring playing a game on Thanksgiving Eve — which is, of course, also a Wednesday.
Did you expect anything less? The NFL already muscled the NBA off its traditional Christmas perch, encroached on college football’s postseason and created a “Black Friday Game” tradition. Now, it’s breaking the seal on Hump Day.
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From Yahoo Sports’ Jay Busbee:
Once you get people accustomed to tuning in on Wednesdays during the season, why not go for the biggest Wednesday of them all, the one right before Thanksgiving? It’s just sitting there untouched, right?
Sure, Thanksgiving night reunions might have to get wrapped up before kickoff, or wait until halftime. But so what? There’s football to be watched!
Think further down the line. The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 prevents the NFL from playing during early-season Fridays and Saturdays, but it’s as quaint as leather helmets.
When the NFL and its media partners eventually decide to lobby on “updating” that act, expect it to evaporate like breath at a December Lambeau Field night game.
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10 years from now, it’s not just possible, it’s likely we’ll have NFL regular season games on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday and Monday nights, with Saturdays added in as soon as college football wraps up.
Is that too much football for you? Is there such a thing as too much football for you? At least there’s Tuesday. For now.
My take: The world’s richest sports league can commandeer every compelling date on the calendar — but that doesn’t mean it should. The NFL works because it’s contained. It has a rhythm. A cadence. Scarcity is the magic. Add more nights and you’re not just expanding the schedule — you’re eroding the ritual. Careful, Roger!
🏒 The best division in hockey (by far)
(Grant Thomas/Yahoo Sports)
With just three weeks left in the regular season, the 2025-26 Atlantic Division has a chance to go down as one of the best divisions in NHL history.
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By the numbers: The red-hot Sabres* sit atop the red-hot Atlantic, which has a cumulative points percentage of .597. That’s on pace to be the highest of any division since the league moved to four divisions in 2013, besting the 2016-17 Metropolitan (.592).
All eight teams in the Atlantic have a points percentage of .500 or better, which means they’ve all earned points (either two for a win or one for an OT loss) from at least half their games.
Five teams — Buffalo, Tampa Bay, Montreal, Boston and Detroit — have a points percentage of .600 or better. No other division has more than three such teams.
Consider this: The sixth-place Senators (37-24-9) would be in first place if they were in the Pacific Division. First place!
Playoff picture: As you can see below, it’s not just the Atlantic Division teams racking up points; the Eastern Conference as a whole has been significantly better than the West this season.
East: Hurricanes (96 points), Sabres (95), Lightning (91), Canadiens (86), Bruins (86), Penguins (86), Blue Jackets (85), Islanders (85) … Red Wings (84), Senators (83), Flyers (80), Capitals (79) in the hunt.
West: Avalanche (102), Stars (97), Wild (92), Ducks (82), Mammoth (80), Golden Knights (78), Oilers (77), Predators (75) … Kings (73), Kraken (71), Sharks (70), Jets (70), Blues (67) in the hunt.
*Ending the drought: The first-place Sabres are on a ridiculous heater (33-6-3 in their last 42 games!), putting them in position to snap the longest postseason drought in NHL history. Buffalo last made the playoffs in 2011, when current leading scorer Tage Thompson was 13 years old.
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⚾️ MLB power rankings: Young talent
(Taylar Sievert/Yahoo Sports)
The MLB season begins this week, and our experts have evaluated all 30 organizations based on their 26-and-under talent, a useful exercise to determine how well each team is set up for both present and future success.
Top 10:
Brewers: There’s an embarrassment of riches in Milwaukee, where OF Jackson Chourio is already a star, IF Brice Turang is a 5-win player, fireballer Jacob Misiorowski became an All-Star after five starts and 18-year-old Jesús Made is the No. 3 prospect in all of baseball.
Mariners: CF Julio Rodríguez has been a superstar since winning ROY in 2022, RHP Bryan Woo will look to follow up on last year’s Cy Young-worthy breakout campaign and top-10 prospect Colt Emerson should make his debut at shortstop sometime this summer.
Athletics: 1B Nick Kurtz and SS Jacob Wilson finished first and second in last year’s ROY voting. Is that good? That’s alongside defensive wizard Denzel Clarke, sweet swinging Lawrence Butler and 19-year-old SS Leo De Vries, the No. 4 prospect in in baseball.
Pirates: Reigning Cy Young Paul Skenes is the best pitcher in the majors, 19-year-old SS Konnor Griffin — who’s already flashed prodigious pop — is the No. 1 overall prospect, RHP Bubba Chandler is the 11th, and they’ve got three more in the top 100 behind them.
Reds: SS Elly De La Cruz and RHP Hunter Greene are, deservedly, the biggest names. But you’d be wise not to overlook slugging infielder Sal Stewart and right-handed pitchers Chase Burns and Rhett Lowder, a trio representing Cincy’s “next wave” of young talent.
Mets: RHP Nolan McLean, who wowed in last year’s eight-start debut, is the best 26-and-under pitcher not named Skenes. And thanks to an ascendant pitching development system, guys like Jonah Tong and Jack Wenninger could soon become impact starters, too
Orioles: Even with Jackson Holliday getting off to a slower start than expected, Baltimore’s collection of young hitters is excellent, led by perennial MVP candidate Gunnar Henderson and the sweet-swinging Samuel Basallo, who might be Rafael Devers in catcher’s gear.
Diamondbacks: It’s hard to top what Arizona’s dynamic duo of OF Corbin Carroll and SS Geraldo Perdomo did last year, as both finished in the top six for NL MVP. Their pitchers don’t show as much upside, but maybe 2025 first-rounder Patrick Forbes will change that.
Royals: Bobby Witt Jr. has put up three straight top-seven MVP seasons, but he’s just the tip of the iceberg in Kansas City, where LHP Noah Cameron put up a 2.99 ERA last year as a rookie and 3B Maikel Garcia was named both an All-Star and Gold Glover.
Tigers: Perhaps no team boasts a duo of position-player prospects as good as SS Kevin McGonigle and OF Max Clark, the second- and 10th-ranked prospects in baseball, who should both make their big league debuts at some point this summer.
11-30…
(Taylar Sievert/Yahoo Sports)
Full rankings: Team-by-team analysis
🌎 The world in photos
Tyler and his son, Beau, celebrate the win. (David Jensen/Getty Images)
(David Jensen / ESPN Images)
🇺🇸 Darlington, South Carolina — This is just getting out of hand now. Tyler Reddick, who didn’t win a single race last year, has now won four of the first six this season after cruising to a decisive victory on Sunday at the Goodyear 400.
Elite company: Reddick joins Dale Earnhardt (1987) and Bill Elliott (1992) as the only Cup Series drivers to win at least four of the first six races to start a season.
(Dan Mullan/Getty Images)
(Dan Mullan)
🇵🇱 Toruń, Poland — Mondo Duplantis won his fourth consecutive world indoor title in the pole vault on Saturday, clearing the bar at 6.25 meters but stopping short of attempting yet another world record.
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Mondo’s strategy: The American-born Swede has broken the world record 15 times, topping his previous mark by a single centimeter each time to maximize his earnings (he’s paid upwards of $100K per record). His most recent record (6.31 meters) came earlier this month in Sweden.
Keep your chin up, lad. We’ve all been there. (Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)
(Ryan Pierse)
🏴 London, England — Tottenham simply cannot buy a win, falling 3-0 at home to fellow cellar-dweller Nottingham Forest on Sunday to extend the club’s winless streak in league play to an astonishing 13 matches.
How dire is it? Tottenham, which hasn’t been relegated since 1977, is currently just one point clear of the drop zone (bottom three) with seven matches left. The bottom six teams: Wolves (17 points), Burnley (20), West Ham (29), Tottenham (30), Forest (32) and Leeds (33).
(Gold & Goose Photography/Getty Images)
(Gold & Goose Photography)
🇧🇷 Goiania, Brazil — MotoGP’s long-awaited return to Brazil descended into farce over the weekend after heavy rainfall and extreme heat caused the track surface to fall apart and the race to be shortened.
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What went wrong? The chaos began when a large sinkhole was discovered during Saturday’s qualifying, and things got worse on Sunday when the asphalt began to degrade. In the end, the Grand Prix was shortened from 31 to 23 laps, and Italy’s Marco Bezzecchi emerged victorious.
📺 Watchlist: Tuesday, March 24
Tiger celebrates on the ninth hole during Monday’s match. Tonight, he’ll do so as a playing member of the team. (James Gilbert/TGL Golf via Getty Images)
(James Gilbert)⛳️ TGL Finals
Jupiter Links lost Monday night’s best-of-three series opener to Los Angeles, but they’ve got reinforcements coming tonight (7pm ET, ESPN) as they try to force a decisive third match in the championship.
Tiger’s back: Tiger Woods will return to his Jupiter Links squad with the season on the line for his first competitive golf in over a year after tearing his Achilles last March.
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🏀 NBA on NBC
The fourth-place Cavaliers host the eighth-place Magic in the first leg of tonight’s doubleheader (8pm), followed by the fourth-place Nuggets visiting the seventh-place Suns in the nightcap (11pm).
Playoff race: Both games showcase teams trying to fight their way into an automatic playoff berth. In the East, Orlando (38-33) is 1.5 games out of sixth; in the West, Phoenix (40-32) is 3.5 games out of sixth.
More to watch:
🏒 NHL: Wild at Lightning (7:30pm, TNT) … Two legit Stanley Cup contenders take the ice in Tampa.
🎾 Tennis: Miami Open (11am, Tennis) … Taylor Fritz headlines the men’s Round of 16; Coco Gauff headlines the women’s quarterfinals.
⚾️ Spring Training: Red Sox at Twins (1pm, MLB); Angels at Dodgers (8pm, MLB) … Final day of Spring Training.
⚽️ Women’s Champions League: Wolfsburg vs. Lyon (1:45pm, CBSSN); Arsenal vs. Chelsea (4pm, CBSSN) … Quarterfinals, first-leg.
Got plans tonight? Gametime is the best place to score last-minute tickets to the events in your city. Get tickets now!
⚾️ MLB trivia
Hint: The answer isn’t A-Rod. (Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
(Jim McIsaac)
There are nine members of MLB’s 600 Home Run club:
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Question: Who is the only member to never win an MVP award?
Answer at the bottom.
📆 Flashback: Dunk City
FGCU’s Sherwood Brown celebrates with teammates. (Elsa/Getty Images)
(Elsa)
13 years ago today, Florida Gulf Coast (aka. “Dunk City”) upset San Diego State, 81-71, to become the first No. 15 seed to reach the Sweet 16 of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and cement their status as one of March’s most memorable Cinderellas.
Who has joined them? Oral Roberts (2021), Saint Peter’s (2022) and Princeton (2023) are the only other No. 15 seeds that made the second weekend. And Saint Peter’s is the only one that advanced to the Elite Eight.
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Trivia answer: Jim Thome
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