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New on Sports Illustrated: Report: ABC to Air Michael Jordan Documentary 'The Last Dance' in April

<a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2020/03/31/michael-jordan-documentary-airing-april-abc">
The network previously planned to air the 10-part documentary 'The Last Dance' in June.
ESPN and ABC will move the release of the 10-part Michael Jordan documentary "The Last Dance" from June to April, according to the New York Post's Andrew Marchand. 
The documentary
</a><a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2019/12/24/espn-last-dance-documentary-trailer-michael-jordan-chicago-bulls-1997-1998">detailing Jordan's final season with the Bulls</a> in 1997-98 will debut its first installment on Sunday, April 19. The schedule for when each episode will air has yet to be announced.
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The highly-anticipated documentary will hopefully help fill the void left by the suspension of all live games across the NBA, <a href="https://www.si.com/nhl/2020/03/12/nhl-season-suspended-coronavirus">NHL</a>, <a href="https://www.si.com/mlb/2020/03/12/mlb-delays-season-coronavirus-outbreak">MLB</a> and <a href="https://www.si.com/college/indiana/basketball/ncaa-cancels-basketball-tournaments-spring-sports">college sports</a>. The <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2020/03/12/nba-suspends-season-further-notice-coronavirus">NBA suspended play indefinitely</a> on March 12, and no return date has been targeted. 
Numerous NBA players have tested positive for the coronavirus, including Jazz All-Stars <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2020/03/12/rudy-gobert-utah-jazz-coronavirus-positive-covid-19">Rudy Gobert</a> and <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2020/03/12/jazz-donovan-mitchell-tests-positive-coronavirus">Donovan Mitchell</a>, two-time Finals MVP <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2020/03/17/kevin-durant-coronavirus-test-positive">Kevin Durant</a>, and Celtics guard Marcus Smart. 
There are more than 729,100 confirmed cases of the coronavirus globally across at least 171 countries.

New on Sports Illustrated: Report: ABC to Air Michael Jordan Documentary 'The Last Dance' in April

The network previously planned to air the 10-part documentary 'The Last Dance' in June. ESPN and ABC will move the release of the ...

New on Sports Illustrated: Bellator Cancels Events Through May Amid Coronavirus Outbreak

<a href="https://www.si.com/mma/2020/03/31/bellator-canceled-may-coronavirus-crisis">
May events in San Jose, London and Temecula, Calif. have been canceled due to coronavirus outbreak.
Three Bellator events slated to be held in May were canceled on Monday, according to ESPN's
</a><a href="https://twitter.com/arielhelwani/status/1244788195314872320">Ariel Helwani</a>.
Bellator 242 was scheduled for May 9 in San Jose, followed by Bellator London on May 16. Bellator 243 was slated to be held back in California on May 29, including a flyweight match between Liz Carmouche and Mandy Bohm.
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UFC <a href="https://www.si.com/mma/2020/03/16/ufc-postpones-events-coronavirus-outbreak">postponed three upcoming events</a> on March 16 amid the coronavirus outbreak. UFC president Dana White said the league's offices will be closed through March 31, asking all employees to begin working from home. 
UFC on ESPN+ 29, UFC on ESPN 8, and UFC on ESPN+ 30 will be postponed due to the coronavirus. 
There are more than 729,100 confirmed cases of the coronavirus globally across at least 171 countries.

New on Sports Illustrated: Bellator Cancels Events Through May Amid Coronavirus Outbreak

May events in San Jose, London and Temecula, Calif. have been canceled due to coronavirus outbreak. Three Bellator events slated to be hel...

New on Sports Illustrated: No title

New on Sports Illustrated: Giving Spring Athletes Extra Year Is the Right Thing to Do, but Presents New Complexities

<a href="https://www.si.com/college/2020/03/31/ncaa-spring-athletes-extra-year-eligibility-financial-hurdles">
The NCAA granting spring athletes an extra year of eligibility was the appropriate gesture, but the devil will be in the details—and the dollars.
The NCAA has left the front porch light on for Class of 2020 spring sports athletes. The runners, jumpers, softball players, baseball players and others who had their college careers cut short earlier in March
</a><a href="https://www.si.com/college/2020/03/30/ncaa-extra-year-eligibility-spring-athletes-coronavirus">can come back to school for another year</a>.
Winter sports athletes? Not so much. Unfortunate as it is, that was always a long shot.
The spring sports that were canceled just as seasons had begun were the more obvious casualty. Three centuries ago in mid-March, when the decisions were made to terminate those seasons, it seemed too early to call off the mid-June College World Series. By the end of March, that decision isn’t questioned by anyone.
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So, yes, this is an appropriate gesture, and let’s take a moment to acknowledge that. The NCAA and its member schools, so often derided for allegedly treating student-athletes as chattel, took care of the ones most affected by this extraordinary crisis. The vast majority of these athletes are not going to make a dime for their schools, but the schools are going to re-invest in them.
At the same time, this new legislation is not easily transferrable from the Division I Council vote Monday to on-campus reality. Financing more scholarships is a huge consideration. Rosters could be bloated, with a correlated impact on playing time and concerns about exceeding roster limits. The nuts and bolts of larger teams—locker room space, medical staffing, training table allotments and campus housing assignments—all must be factored in.
“You don’t want the complexity of this to get in the way of doing what’s right for the student-athletes,” said Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione. “But there are a wide range of complexities to deal with. This comes with unintended consequences, and some of them are difficult consequences.”
Sports Illustrated communicated with half a dozen athletic directors from across the D-I spectrum after the ruling came down Monday night. They all liked the idea behind restoring a lost opportunity to their athletes—but they also recognized that the devil will be in the details. And the dollars.
The biggest single issue is this: Adding scholarship costs at a time when universities are bracing for big revenue hits on every front—athletically, academically and in terms of donor contributions and endowment gifts. A spiraling economy creates a tricky higher education backdrop for fielding bigger teams.
“This is likely to offer an interesting insight into school priorities,” said one Power 5 athletic director. “Expanding grant-in-aid funding at the same time so many schools are imposing hiring freezes and cutting department budgets.”
Fact is, this will be meatball surgery all over America. It will look different everywhere. It likely will lead to a spike in transfers, and potentially a rash of decommitments from recruits who were planning to sign national letters of intent in the spring period but now see a different landscape in front of them.
“By force of nature, there aren’t going to enough chairs to sit in when the music stops,” Castiglione said.
As this unprecedented Back To Campus movement unfolds, you can (as always) expect the athletic departments with the deepest pockets to come out in the best shape.
Power 5 schools sitting on larger revenue war chests can seemingly afford the additional outlay in scholarships. Group of Five schools have less money to play with. Non-FBS schools theoretically could have even less. And so on down the line.
But even within those strata, there are different economic equations. Scholarships at Alabama, Cincinnati and VCU don’t cost anywhere near what they do at Vanderbilt, SMU and Davidson. Do the private schools with the big tuitions want to take on the additional expense?
Then there is the Ivy League, which simply doesn’t do graduate athletes. Is that rule waived, or do athletes from those schools who just received another year of eligibility flood the transfer market?
Almost all spring sports are equivalency sports. That is, they have a set scholarship limit that is smaller than the size of the overall roster, which means scholarships are broken up and parceled out—unevenly. The star pitcher may be on a full ride while the average middle infielder is on a partial scholarship. (This is where academic aid, Pell Grants and other funds become part of the complex accounting process.)
This is where the new calculus could become a bit Hunger Games-ish. Schools can decide what size scholarship they want to dole out to returning Class of 2020 athletes—it doesn’t have to be identical to what they were receiving this academic year. Thus an athlete who was on a half scholarship but not performing up to expectations could find himself or herself offered a walk-on spot for 2020–21. At best.
“It was interesting to discover how many of our spring sports coaches were opposed (to the legislation),” one AD said. “They hated the subjectivity inherent in this—many schools will likely only invite the contributors back, and they think the incoming freshmen are getting screwed by clogging the pipeline in front of them.”
There was one consensus among the ADs Monday night: This is just a piece of the giant, shifting puzzle that must be fitted together in the coming months. Nobody knows what is going to happen, and everyone is worried about one thing: a fall without football, or with a lesser version of football.
Every spring sport (and most of the winter and fall ones, too) depend on that revenue gusher. If it is turned off—or turned down—the impact will be massive.
“If we have home football games, it will be a game changer,” said one coach in a non-revenue sport. “If this extends to the fall and we lose some home games, all bets are off.”

New on Sports Illustrated: Giving Spring Athletes Extra Year Is the Right Thing to Do, but Presents New Complexities

The NCAA granting spring athletes an extra year of eligibility was the appropriate gesture, but the devil will be in the details—and the do...

New on Sports Illustrated: Shaquille O'Neal Defends Appearance in Netflix's 'Tiger King'

<a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2020/03/31/shaq-defends-appearance-netflix-tiger-king">
O'Neal clarified his appearance on the Netflix show with 'Tiger King' star Joe Exotic.
Shaquille O'Neal defended his appearance on the
</a><a href="https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2020/03/25/tiger-king-netflix-documentary-joe-exotic-carole-baskin">Netflix Show Tiger King</a> on Monday, saying he "had no idea" about the events occurring at the Oklahoma ranch owned by featured character Joseph Maldonado-Passage.
Maldonado-Passage, who goes by "Joe Exotic," was sentenced to 22 years in prison in January after being found guilty in a murder-for-hire plot. He was also found guilty of illegally selling tiger cubs.
"So we go in there, and it's a beautiful place, and the character that was there was Exotic Joe," O'Neal said on <a href="https://podcastone.com/the-big-podcast-with-shaq">The Big Podcast With Shaq</a>. "We're there and I dropped some donations for the tigers' foods and all that. We take pictures with [the] tigers. We went back a couple times. Then we go back another time and we found out that he's involved with all the stuff, and then, actually, I stopped going."
O'Neal appeared on the first episode of the seven-episode series. He toured the zoo and took pictures with the animals, and he later said "shoutout to Exotic Joe," on TNT. 
"I love tigers. I love white tigers," O'Neal said. "I met this guy–not my friend. Don't know him. Never had any business dealings with him, and I had no idea any of that stuff was going on."

New on Sports Illustrated: Shaquille O'Neal Defends Appearance in Netflix's 'Tiger King'

O'Neal clarified his appearance on the Netflix show with 'Tiger King' star Joe Exotic. Shaquille O'Neal defended his appea...

New on Sports Illustrated: Report: NBA Planning Players-Only 2K Tournament Broadcast on ESPN

<a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2020/03/31/nba-planning-players-2k-tournament-broadcast-espn">
The NBA hopes to have the event launch on Friday, according to Yahoo Sports' Chris Haynes.
The NBA is planning a "players-only NBA-2K tournament" to be broadcast on ESPN, according to Yahoo Sports'
</a><a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/sources-nba-planning-to-run-a-playersonly-nba-2-k-tournament-001949679.html">Chris Haynes</a>. 
"The league hopes to launch the event Friday, with the tournament including some big-name players," per Haynes.
The NBA suspended play indefinitely on March 12 after <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2020/03/12/rudy-gobert-utah-jazz-coronavirus-positive-covid-19">Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive</a> for COVID-19. Teammate Donovan Mitchell also tested positive, as did Pistons forward <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2020/03/15/detroit-pistons-christian-wood-positive-coronavirus">Christian Wood</a>, <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2020/03/19/marcus-smart-tests-positive-coronavirus">Celtics guard Marcus Smart</a> and <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2020/03/17/kevin-durant-coronavirus-test-positive">four members of the Brooklyn Nets</a>, including Kevin Durant. 
No return date has been set for the NBA, and there remains the possibility that the remainder of the 2019-20 season is canceled entirely. Mavericks owner Mark Cuban <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2020/03/12/mark-cuban-nba-season-not-canceled-suspended-game-schedule">remains optimistic the NBA will resume</a>, citing late May as a potential timeframe. 
There are more than 729,100 confirmed cases of the coronavirus globally across at least 171 countries.

New on Sports Illustrated: Report: NBA Planning Players-Only 2K Tournament Broadcast on ESPN

The NBA hopes to have the event launch on Friday, according to Yahoo Sports' Chris Haynes. The NBA is planning a "players-only NB...

New on Sports Illustrated: No title

New on Sports Illustrated: US Open Stadium Converted to 350-Bed Hospital to Fight COVID-19

<a href="https://www.si.com/tennis/2020/03/31/us-open-stadium-converted-coronavirus-hospital">
The Billie Jean King National Tennis Center will be converted to a 350-bed facility, according to the Wall Street Journal's Katie Honan.
A training facility at the Billie Jean King Tennis Center in Queens, N.Y. is being converted into a 350-bed facility to fight the coronavirus outbreak, according to The Wall Street Journal's
</a><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/queens-stadium-to-be-converted-into-temporary-hospital-in-coronavirus-fight-11585605068">Katie Honan</a>.  
The Billie Jean King Tennis Center is one of the stadiums used for the US Open, held in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park each August. Construction to alter the facility could begin on Tuesday, per Honan. 
The United States Tennis Association <a href="https://www.si.com/tennis/2020/03/13/usta-suspends-events-coronavirus">suspended all tournaments</a> indefinitely on March 13. The <a href="https://www.si.com/tennis/2020/03/17/french-open-postponed-september-coronavirus">French Open has been postponed</a> until September, but there has been no announcement on a delay for the 2020 US Open. 
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the death toll in New York due to the coronavirus had climbed to 1,218 as of Monday morning. There are more than 729,100 confirmed cases of the coronavirus globally across at least 171 countries.

New on Sports Illustrated: US Open Stadium Converted to 350-Bed Hospital to Fight COVID-19

The Billie Jean King National Tennis Center will be converted to a 350-bed facility, according to the Wall Street Journal's Katie Honan...

New on Sports Illustrated: Sean Payton Reveals Elements of Saints' Playbook on Social Media

<a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/03/30/sean-payton-saints-playbook-twitter">
Payton drew up some of his favorite play calls for everyone to see.
Sean Payton is looking for ways to pass the time like the rest of us during the coronavirus pandemic.
The
</a><a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/saints/">Saints</a> head coach had a little fun on Twitter on Sunday night showing off his favorite play calls after an Illinois football coach <a href="https://twitter.com/b_peters12/status/1244239824728571905">asked</a> people to tweet their favorite all-purpose concepts out of empty formations.
Payton drew up a few of his favorites and even explained some of the terms used by his team.
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The sports world has been shut down amid the pandemic, and the NFL mandated all teams to close their facilities. Nearly two weeks ago Payton tested positive for the coronavirus despite not having a cough or fever. He was <a href="http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000001107619/article/sean-payton-says-hes-cleared-of-coronavirus">cleared last week</a> and said he was "doing well" while continuing to practice social distancing.
Payton has been active on Twitter to help pass the time at home and replied to quarterback Drew Brees's recent post about seeing a rattlesnake while walking his dogs.
"Let's find a different route. OK?" Payton joked.
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We're glad to see Payton is staying in good spirits during this difficult time.

New on Sports Illustrated: Sean Payton Reveals Elements of Saints' Playbook on Social Media

Payton drew up some of his favorite play calls for everyone to see. Sean Payton is looking for ways to pass the time like the rest of us d...

New on Sports Illustrated: Empty-Arena ‘WrestleMania’ Doesn’t Diminish Becky Lynch’s Feud With Shayna Baszler

<a href="https://www.si.com/wrestling/2020/03/30/wwe-becky-lynch-wrestlemania-shayna-baszler">
After headlining last year’s event in front of 80,000 fans, this year’s WrestleMania will be a vastly different experience for Becky Lynch—though important in its own way.
Becky Lynch will not be main-eventing WrestleMania for the second straight year.
Lynch starred in last year’s main event,
</a><a href="https://www.si.com/wrestling/2019/04/08/wrestlemania-35-wwe-becky-lynch-kofi-kingston">closing out WrestleMania 35</a> by defeating Ronda Rousey and Charlotte Flair to win both the Raw and SmackDown Women’s Championship titles. Though it ended in a <a href="https://www.si.com/wrestling/2019/04/08/wwe-wrestlemania-finish-ronda-rousey-becky-lynch">disputed finish</a>, the 20-minute match elevated Lynch’s status in the world of pro wrestling, as she will forever be the first woman in WWE history to have her hand raised in the main event of WrestleMania.
This is clearly a different year, however, and viewers will not see Lynch in the main event of WrestleMania 36. Though Lynch’s whirlwind has continued into the new year—she is rapidly approaching the one-year mark as Raw Women’s Champion, a lengthy reign rarely seen in today’s wrestling landscape—the privilege of closing out WrestleMania will likely belong to Bill Goldberg, or Brock Lesnar and Drew McIntyre.
“Am I disappointed?” Lynch says. “No, I’m not disappointed. Sometimes you’re going to be the main event, sometimes you’re not. I’m somebody that went from the pre-show of WrestleMania to the main event. It’s all about how you react, respond, and keep moving forward.
“This is also not the last WrestleMania. I’m not retiring tomorrow, there are so many years ahead of me. I’m always thinking about how I can get to the main event. It has to be the right place for it, but that’s always the goal in my mind.”
Lynch does have a meaningful match on the horizon for this year’s <a href="https://www.si.com/wrestling/2020/03/19/wrestlemania-36-wwe-gronk-coronavirus-updates">two-night WrestleMania</a> event, defending her title against Shayna Baszler.
Baszler is something of an overnight success, though it took her 14 years to achieve that distinction. A former mixed martial artist with a long career inside the cage, <a href="https://www.si.com/wrestling/2019/09/24/wwe-shayna-baszler-nxt-womens-championship">Baszler brings that authenticity and legitimacy into her work in WWE</a>. There are not many pro wrestlers with a legitimate MMA background who were also trained by Josh Barnett and the late Billy Robinson, but Baszler is familiar with standing out for being different.
“There is no denying what Shayna has done,” Lynch says. “She’s put in the work, she was a pioneer in women’s MMA, long before Ronda came along. She’s someone who went to the independents. She loves wrestling, I know she does. She’s not somebody who said, ‘Oh, that’s an easy way for me to be on TV. Let me try that because my other sport didn’t work out.’ She actually went and trained, did her time on the independent circuit, went to NXT, trained her ass off there, and she was the longest combined NXT Women’s Champion. She has put in the work, and there is no doubt about that.”
Baszler is the exact opponent Lynch has needed for the past 12 months. Despite her massive popularity, Lynch has struggled since last year’s WrestleMania to find the right chemistry with an opponent. She was put in an especially tough spot last April, moving directly from a heated program with Rousey to wrestling a talented-but-inexperienced Lacey Evans. Charlotte Flair had the marquee match at SummerSlam against Trish Stratus, while Lynch wrestled the opener against Natalya Neidhart.
Lynch worked a triple threat match in November against Baszler and Bayley, which served <a href="https://www.si.com/wrestling/2019/11/25/wwe-survivor-series-sets-stage-wrestlemania-36">as the main event of Survivor Series</a>. Baszler won the match by forcing Bayley to tap out, but Lynch stood tall as the show went off the air after Baszler turned her back on Lynch during her post-match celebration.
“I’m not underestimating her for a second—I think she’s underestimating me,” Lynch says. “I won’t underestimate the danger of Shayna. She has proven herself in many disciplines, and in NXT. She’s a worthy competitor for the Raw Women’s Championship. I’m going out there to prove I’m better.”
Lynch admitted that the triple threat match did not meet the standards for a main event, though in her defense, it was placed in a difficult spot as four of the seven matches on the main card were triple threats. Women also face unique pressure when wrestling in the main event, and Lynch was asked if there is a smaller margin for women closing a show
“It shouldn’t be about women—people shouldn’t use it as a chance to say, ‘That’s why women shouldn’t be main-eventing,’” Lynch says. “You can’t wipe out an entire gender based on your opinion to a match.
“No excuses, I’m open to criticism. Give me your opinion, I’ll take it. This is what anyone in the main event, male or female, has to deal with. If you ever have a bad night or a match that people don’t agree with, you’re the one out there that has to change and adjust. It makes you better in the long run.”
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The feud between Lynch and Baszler has started to click in the past few weeks, and the story has left viewers wondering whether we will see a hungry challenger usurp the reigning champ at WrestleMania.
“There is no doubt she’s hungry,” Lynch says. “This is the time for me to prove myself as champion. It will be a day short of one year for me as champion. A lot of people would be comfortable. I’m not.”
Despite the storyline tension between the two, Lynch shared that she holds immense respect for Baszler, particularly in the way she performs in such an authentic manner. Baszler does not present herself in a similar fashion to WWE’s female stars during the majority of the Divas era, and she would never be in this position had she not kept her character true to herself.
“When you look back at the past, did Dusty Rhodes look like he could be a WWE superstar?” asked Lynch. “You know what I mean? It’s not about looks. Yes, you need to have a unique look, and, of course, Shayna has that. And you have to have something about you—and Shayna has that, too. There is not a mold to fit into. Maybe that happened for a period of time in wrestling, but hiring people on how they looked was an unsuccessful period of time in wrestling.
“It’s about the energy you can bring and the heart you have for this energy, male or female. Otherwise, dare I say, you have people who are empty vessels. You need a very specific love and a very specific passion. As to whatever package that comes in, it’s almost irrelevant.”
The crowd’s role in pro wrestling cannot be understated. Losing the crowd also means the loss of energy, adrenaline, and decibel level in a venue. Lynch’s showdown with Baszler will take place in an empty arena, a setting that seems foreign to Lynch after her transcendent rise atop the company was in large part due to the demands of her passionate fan base.
“I cannot wait to have people back in the stands,” Lynch says. “It’s really different without them. You have to really focus on your message, what you want the people at home to understand, and you have to forget about that clarification you get from the audience being there. Having them respond to you is really gratifying, and you know they appreciate what you’re saying. But all of that is gone.
“I was worried that, without that adrenaline from them being there, I wouldn’t be able to have that same type of intensity. It’s a different thing now, and it forces your brain to think differently.”
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Lynch is genuine in her praise of her fan base, and the sincerity in her voice was clear as she stated that she cannot wait for wrestling fans to enjoy her match at WrestleMania despite all of the ongoing concerns of the Coronavirus around the world.
“We’re all taking such precautions,” Lynch says. “We isolate at the shows and people are taking the precautions seriously. But people need a distraction, they need hope, they need to know everything is going to be OK.
“Times like this show us the importance of relationships, especially your family, and how you need to love and support and encourage them. I encourage anyone with the means to do so to help anyone who is not in a good position. Even supporting local businesses, tipping more if you have the means, and I hope that the human race all will band together to support those people that aren’t in such privileged positions.”
Even without the distinction of being in the main event, Lynch wants her match at WrestleMania to stand out as one of the most unforgettable on the entire card.
“Shayna is a whole different entity,” Lynch says. “There is going to be a whole other energy to this match, and you’re going to see someone looking to make a name off me. And you’re going to see a determined champion looking to prove, once again, why she is the greatest of all-time.”
Justin Barrasso can be reached at <a href="mailto:JBarrasso@gmail.com">JBarrasso@gmail.com</a>. Follow him on Twitter @<a href="https://twitter.com/JustinBarrasso">JustinBarrasso</a>.

New on Sports Illustrated: Empty-Arena ‘WrestleMania’ Doesn’t Diminish Becky Lynch’s Feud With Shayna Baszler

After headlining last year’s event in front of 80,000 fans, this year’s WrestleMania will be a vastly different experience for Becky Lynch—...

New on Sports Illustrated: Olympic Men's Soccer Age Cutoff Decision Puts Career Opportunity in Balance for Many

<a href="https://www.si.com/soccer/2020/03/30/mens-soccer-olympics-age-cutoff-decision-eligibility-fifa-ioc">
The postponement of the 2020 Olympics has a number of domino effects, one of them being the eligibility of a number of players hoping to show out in a world championship.
One unknown as a result of the coronavirus pandemic has been sorted, at the very least. Tokyo's 2020 Olympics will be 
</a><a href="https://www.si.com/olympics/2020/03/30/tokyo-2021-olympics-dates-set-schedule-announced">postponed by a full year</a> to July 23-August 8 of 2021, giving all involved a clear path for how to proceed. Nevertheless, the postponement's consequences have spawned <a href="https://www.si.com/olympics/2020/03/26/molly-seidel-tokyo-2020-olympics-postponed-marathon">a number</a> <a href="https://www.si.com/olympics/2020/03/26/justin-gatlin-interview-tokyo-2020-olympics-postponed">of human</a> <a href="https://www.si.com/olympics/2020/03/27/olympics-tokyo-2020-postponed-madisyn-cox-swimming">interest</a> <a href="https://www.si.com/olympics/2020/03/27/emma-coburn-olympics-postponed-coronavirus-training-antidoping">stories</a> and a wide web of knock-on effects, and one of the more unique dominoes yet to fall is what happens with the men's soccer tournament. 
Being an under-23 competition (with the absurd three overage player exceptions per team, but more on that later), the roster construction for qualifying nations is intrinsically tied to a birthday cutoff date. The date for the 2020 Games was due to be Jan. 1, 1997, meaning any players born earlier were ineligible to participate.
FIFA and the IOC have yet to decide if that date will stick (thus making 2021 a U-24 competition) or if it will be bumped a year to Jan. 1, 1998 (thus keeping it a U-23 one). If it's the latter, then a number of would-be Olympians will find themselves out of luck, missing out on a rare career opportunity to increase their own exposure in front of a global audience and represent their nations in a world championship.
From the USA's qualifying squad announced for what was supposed to be Concacaf's tournament alone, nine players would fall into that latter category. Hassani Dotson, Jeremy Ebobisse, Justen Glad, Aaron Herrera, Jonathan Lewis, JT Marcinkowski, Erik Palmer-Brown, Sebastian Saucedo and Jackson Yueill, all born before Jan. 1, 1998, would all be ineligible. Mexico has it even worse, with 12 such players on its qualifying squad and others, such as Ajax standout Edson Alvarez, not part of qualifying but in the mix for the final Olympic squad.
It stands to reason that Concacaf's qualifying competition won't be rescheduled until there is a resolution from the FIFA/IOC level on the age requirement, but keeping the tournament a U-23 one would force U.S. U-23 manager Jason Kreis and Mexico U-23 manager Jaime Lozano to drastically reshuffle their qualifying squads.
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The U.S. men haven't reached the Olympics since 2008, so there's an added emphasis on getting there. There already were roster hurdles in getting clubs to agree to release their players when they otherwise are not obligated to do so for youth competitions. U.S. men's national team general manager <a href="https://www.si.com/soccer/2020/02/25/brian-mcbride-trip-europe-americans-abroad-usmnt-gm">Brian McBride spoke about that hurdle at length</a> upon taking charge in his new role. That stipulation already ruled the age-eligible likes of Christian Pulisic, Tyler Adams, Weston McKennie, Gio Reyna and Josh Sargent out (for qualifying at the very least). Add in a shrunken player pool after going through pre-qualifying camps with a select group of talent, and the headache gets that much stronger.
The age cutoff decision affects way more than the USA and Mexico, of course. What about the nations that have already qualified and likely had their Olympic plans set? (Only Concacaf had yet to sort out qualifying to claim the final two places in the 16-team field.) If it does remain a U-23 competition, then it would prohibit five players from Argentina's qualifying squad and an astounding 12 from Brazil's from going to Japan. The host nation itself had nine players from its most recent U-23 gathering who wouldn't be able to participate. It's true that qualifying squads and tournament squads do not fully mimic one another, and that those who sealed qualification weren't all going to be going to the main stage, but it's a potentially detrimental development for both some individuals and their nations.
"If some who were set to play this year are no longer able to participate, it would be very disappointing for them, given the hard work they've put in," Japan manager Hajime Moriyasu <a href="https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/03/40b477c42637-soccer-postponement-could-end-olympic-dream-for-young-talents.html">told Kyodo News</a>.
For European entrants like Spain, France and Germany, the postponement's effects could be two-fold. First, there's the age question, which could put the likes of Mikel Oyarzabal, Borja Mayoral, Benjamin Heinrichs, Suat Serdar, Marcus Thuram, Lucas Tousart and many others on the wrong side of the barrier. There's also a UEFA U-21 championship slated for June 2021, and nations involved in both competitions will have to decide where their available and released young players will go. Surely, those players who are cleared will not be doubly cleared to participate in both competitions, whereas without any Olympic postponement, there may well have been some roster overlap.
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The easiest thing for FIFA and the IOC to do would be to honor the original date of eligibility, and, for one Olympics, make things of the U-24 variety. It's something <a href="https://www.si.com/soccer/2020/03/26/olympic-mens-soccer-tournament-age-limit-postponement-australia-fifa-ioc">the Australian federation has already been vocal about</a>, with its chief executive, James Johnson, saying, “This would ensure the players who helped their nation qualify for the games this year but might otherwise be ineligible for the tournament next year because of age restrictions, have an opportunity to fulfill their dreams of representing their country and becoming Olympians.”
With three of 18 roster places (17%) already able to go to overage players, it's not like the powerbroker parties are very committed to the idea of it being a strictly U-23 competition, anyway. They should be, as the overage exception throws any idea that this tournament is conducted in the name of youth development out the window. Imagine if, say, for the NCAA basketball tournaments, schools were allowed to bring back alums for the Big Dance. It would make no competitive sense and be done solely to draw more eyeballs to games–kind of like the thinking that went into the men's Olympic soccer regulations. Yes, Neymar helping to lead Brazil to gold in Rio in 2016 made for some wonderful imagery and headlines, but it's completely against the spirit of what a U-23 world championship should look like. 
Nevertheless, the opportunity to become Olympians hangs in the balance for a number of players. It's one of the many consequences brought about by the coronavirus pandemic, and it's one that has the chance to significantly impact a number of individuals for whom appearing on the medal stand—or at the very least representing their country on such a unique stage—means a great deal.

New on Sports Illustrated: Olympic Men's Soccer Age Cutoff Decision Puts Career Opportunity in Balance for Many

The postponement of the 2020 Olympics has a number of domino effects, one of them being the eligibility of a number of players hoping to sh...

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New on Sports Illustrated: This Day in Sports History: Indiana Wins NCAA Tournament Hours After Ronald Reagan Is Shot

<a href="https://www.si.com/college/2020/03/30/indiana-north-carolina-ncaa-tournament-championship-ronald-reagan-shot">
Indiana and UNC played a championship game the same day President Ronald Reagan was shot in an assassination attempt.
On March 30, 1981, basketball powerhouses Indiana and North Carolina met in the NCAA tournament championship game. The highly-anticipated matchup took on a much deeper significance when the NCAA decided to hold it hours after President Ronald Reagan was shot in Washington.
The day started like normal for the Hoosiers. They ate breakfast and went to a meeting with coach Bob Knight before a group of players gathered in a Philadelphia hotel room for their daily ritual watching the soap opera "Days of Our Lives." The news broke in to say Reagan had been shot in an assassination attempt. The country–and the teams–were stunned.
Around 2:30 p.m. ET, John Hinckley fired six shots at Reagan outside of the Washington Hilton Hotel in an attempt to impress actress Jodie Foster. Immediately the NCAA Basketball Committee had a decision on its hands. Should the championship game be played? The committee weighed its options and considered everything from postponing the game up to 48 hours or naming the Tar Heels and Hoosiers co-champions.
Coaches Dean Smith and Knight weren't asked by the committee for their input and neither was sure what to tell their players about the state of the game. 
"My feeling was, if the president died, there was no way we could or should play," Smith later admitted,
</a><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/the-day-reagan-was-shot-they-played-for-the-ncaa-tournament-championship/2016/03/24/fc5bf61c-f206-11e5-85a6-2132cf446d0a_story.html">according to The Washington Post.</a> "What bothered me was that they appeared to be concerned with two things: not looking bad to the public and making TV happy."
Both teams eventually headed to the Spectrum uncertain if they would play that night. After arriving, Smith, Knight and an NCAA official met in a tiny broom closet for roughly an hour before the 8:23 p.m. ET tipoff to discuss what to do. Players began warming up and a little less than 30 minutes before the scheduled start time the NCAA reached a decision–the game would be played.
Indiana and North Carolina tipped off only seven minutes late, and at 8:50 p.m. ET Reagan came out of surgery. The nation collectively sighed a breath of relief to learn the president would be okay.
<a href="https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/indiana/2016/03/23/day-president-shot-night-iu-won-title/82116272/">According to The Indianapolis Star</a>, Reagan had a little fun with his nurse and handed her a note saying, "All in all I'd rather be in Philadelphia."
After a close first half, Indiana went into the locker room ahead, 27–26, thanks to Randy Wittman's jumper at the buzzer. Star point guard Isiah Thomas shined in the second half, especially with two impressive steals converted into baskets. 
Thomas led the night in scoring with 23 points, and the Hoosiers beat UNC 63–50 to win their second national title in five years.

New on Sports Illustrated: This Day in Sports History: Indiana Wins NCAA Tournament Hours After Ronald Reagan Is Shot

Indiana and UNC played a championship game the same day President Ronald Reagan was shot in an assassination attempt. On March 30, 1981, b...

New on Sports Illustrated: Khabib Nurmagomedov Says He's Stranded in Russia, UFC Looking for New Tony Ferguson Opponent

<a href="https://www.si.com/mma/2020/03/30/khabib-nurmagomedov-stranded-russia-ufc-249-coronavirus">
Khabib Nurmagomedov is set to fight Tony Ferguson at UFC 249 on April 18.
Khabib Nurmagomedov may not get to face Tony Ferguson at UFC 249 due to travel restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic. Nurmagomedov
</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg_cQXvOsgQ">announced on Instagram live</a> Monday that he is at home in Dagestan, Russia, and is unsure if he'll be able to fight Ferguson on April 18.
"We were training at [American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, Calif.] without any information regarding the fight–where and how is it going to happen," he said, <a href="https://www.rt.com/sport/484449-ufc-249-khabib-nurmagomedov-out-stuck-russia/">per a RT Sport translation</a>. "Then the UFC told us that the fight 100% isn't happening in the States. And they said that 99% that it will happen in [the United Arab] Emirates–Abu Dhabi."
He added that he flew to UAE around 10 days ago but soon learned the country planned to close its borders and only allow residents to fly in or out amid the pandemic.
"So, we had to fly back to Russia. Currently, I am in Dagestan and I am training and preparing every day, although I don't know what am I preparing for, because after we came to Russia we also learned that the borders are going to be locked," he said. "Same like in the States, same like in Europe, Emirates–everywhere. The whole world is in quarantine right now."
UFC 249 was originally scheduled to take place at Barclays Center in Brooklyn next month. That location was nixed since New York City has become the epicenter of the coronavirus in the U.S., but UFC president <a href="https://mmajunkie.usatoday.com/2020/03/dana-white-says-he-has-location-for-ufc-249-confirms-closed-door-event">Dana White recently said it will be a closed-door event</a> held at another location. This marks the fifth time UFC has scheduled Nurmagomedov vs. Ferguson only to see the fight fall apart.
<a href="https://www.espn.com/mma/story/_/id/28970604/khabib-nurmagomedov-vs-tony-ferguson-likely-again">ESPN reports</a> UFC is aware of Nurmagomedov's situation and is looking at alternate plans for the April 18 fight card. Sources told ESPN that Ferguson has been offered a fight against Justin Gaethje but an agreement has not been reached.
Nurmagomedov suggested on Instagram Live that UFC might book another opponent to face Ferguson.
"So now I am hearing that they are looking to organize it with or without me. OK, go ahead," he said. "Everyone should follow the laws. I am not against it. I know that fighters need to feed their families and pay their bills. I know how hard it is for the fighter. Unless they fight, they aren't getting any money.
"I am even hearing that they are looking for an opponent for Tony because he is in the states and I am here in Russia. But I am here not on my own will. The UFC told me that this fight 100% isn't happening in the USA, and even if it's not happening in the Emirates, it will happen on this side of [the] Atlantic. We discussed everything with the UFC. By that time, I already spent five weeks of hard training at AKA.
"Now I don't really know what's going on. It's really hard to train and cut your weight when the whole world is locked down and you don't know what you are preparing for."
Russian prime minister Mikhail Mishustin said on Saturday that the country would close its borders on Monday to help curb the spread of the coronavirus. There are more than 741,700 confirmed cases of the virus globally across at least 177 countries.

New on Sports Illustrated: Khabib Nurmagomedov Says He's Stranded in Russia, UFC Looking for New Tony Ferguson Opponent

Khabib Nurmagomedov is set to fight Tony Ferguson at UFC 249 on April 18. Khabib Nurmagomedov may not get to face Tony Ferguson at UFC 249...

New on Sports Illustrated: Phil Mickelson Hints at Rematch with Tiger Woods During COVID-19 Layoff

<a href="https://www.si.com/golf/2020/03/30/phil-mickelson-tiger-woods-rematch-coronavirus">
Mickelson said "he's working on" a possible rematch with Woods to be played during the coronavirus layoff.
A few weeks into this COVID-19-induced sports layoff, all of us are in dire need of some live competition. Now there’s a chance fans could get their sports fix with a rematch.
On Sunday night a fan posed a question to Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods on Twitter, asking (sic), “do you think there is a chance you two go play a round mic’d up with one camera guy and just put it out there on a stream for people to watch?? We need live sports”
Mickelson, who has become a social media savant over the last two years, replied to the fan, Chris Yurko, saying he’s “working on it.”
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When asked if he was joking around, Mickelson put the speculation meter into overdrive tweeting “I don’t tease. I’m kinda a sure thing”
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So, could we see Tiger vs. Phil II? It certainly seems within the realm of possibility. Two players, on an empty golf course, with a bare bones camera crew streaming the match live. The match would give fans exactly what they need while providing gamblers some much appreciated action.
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Woods and Mickelson first squared off in a head-to-head match at Shadow Creek in Las Vegas in 2018. Mickelson ended up winning the match and the $9 million payout in a playoff.
The event was initially scheduled to be a pay-per-view event, but technical difficulties led to the match being streamed on Bleacher Report free of charge.
Musicians and entertainers have been streaming free performances during the Covid-19 pandemic, many of which have generated charitable funds for doctors, nurses and first responders. Could Phil and Tiger pull something off along the same lines? It seems like a no-brainer to this golf fan.

New on Sports Illustrated: Phil Mickelson Hints at Rematch with Tiger Woods During COVID-19 Layoff

Mickelson said "he's working on" a possible rematch with Woods to be played during the coronavirus layoff. A few weeks into ...

New on Sports Illustrated: Is It Wrong for Baseball Players to Get Tommy John Surgery?

<a href="https://www.si.com/mlb/2020/03/30/is-it-wrong-for-mlb-pitchers-to-get-tommy-john">
Pro athletes are already under fire for preferential treatment during the coronavirus crisis—medical ethicists say this is another example.
On March 13, a recommendation came from the American College of Surgeons: minimize, postpone, or cancel all elective surgery amid the spread of coronavirus. This instruction was shared the next day by the U.S. Surgeon General, and in the two weeks that have followed, it’s been echoed in executive orders issued across the country.
In that same time frame, MLB teams announced pitchers who would undergo Tommy John surgery: Tyler Beede of the Giants, Chris Sale of the Red Sox, Noah Syndergaard of the Mets. But what does it mean to have the procedure in a pandemic? Especially when every medical resource is precious—and pro athletes are already under fire for receiving preferential testing and treatment.
Legally, teams and players are on solid ground. The national recommendations are just recommendations, and it’s still feasible to perform a surgery like Tommy John in many parts of the U.S. Among the states that have issued executive orders on the subject, there’s varied language on what exactly is prohibited, from “elective” procedures (New Jersey) to “non-essential” (Ohio) to “non-urgent” (Kentucky). In many states, doctors themselves can determine which of their own procedures fit that terminology, at least for now. So, barring additional local regulations, an individual practice can quite easily make a legal determination that its essential procedures may include Tommy John.
“I think it’s a really fuzzy line,” says Christopher Scott, the chair of medical ethics and health policy at Baylor College of Medicine, when it comes to defining what procedures are, legally speaking, essential or not.
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<figcaption>Syndergaard went under the knife in Florida last Thursday. (Erick W. Rasco)</figcaption>
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But the question of can a player have Tommy John surgery is different from the question of whether one should. And medical ethicists say that a procedure like Tommy John—which pitchers need to throw hard, but not to lead healthy off-the-field lives—is hard to justify in the middle of a pandemic.
“At the present time, I don’t think there’s even a question that it would be inappropriate and should not be done in any areas that are hit hard by COVID,” says David Magnus, a professor of medicine and biomedical ethics at Stanford and the former chair of the ethics committee for Stanford Hospital. “And I think it’s arguably a bad idea to do anywhere right now…. Even in areas where there have been no reported cases, or very few, and it hasn’t spread yet, that’s changing by the hour. Maybe right at this moment, they don’t need the space, or the personnel that would be involved in the procedure, but that can change so rapidly that I think it would be an irresponsible use of resources. Nobody should be doing this.”
It’s not that the orthopedic specialists who perform the surgery would likely otherwise be responsible for coronavirus patients. But the equipment—such as masks—could certainly be needed. So could the physical space and the other staff, such as nurses, especially when all sorts of nontraditional areas in hotspots—even New York's Central Park—are being converted to treat patients and retired medical personnel are being asked to return to the field.
Beede’s surgery was done on March 20 in Texas, a few days before the state issued an executive order about elective procedures. The Red Sox have not released any details about Sale. But Syndergaard’s was scheduled for late last week in Florida—after an executive order from Gov. Ron DeSantis prohibiting “any medically unnecessary, non-urgent or non-emergency procedure or surgery which, if delayed, does not place a patient’s immediate health, safety, or well-being at risk, or will, if delayed, not contribute to the worsening of a serious or life-threatening medical condition.”
Syndergaard’s procedure was handled by the Hospital for Special Surgery in West Palm Beach. “After reviewing the details of this particular injury, and using rigorous medical criteria as a guide, it was determined this surgery is essential,” a hospital spokesperson said in a statement. HSS said it has cut back significantly on its patient load and has approved only one Tommy John surgery other than Syndergaard’s in the last week. (The other was for “an individual who is not a professional athlete” and took place at an HSS location in New York after it was deemed similarly essential.)
Major League Baseball has long cast itself as an essential piece of America, more deeply woven into the fabric of the country than any other sports league. To see these types of medical procedures continue, while others are halted nationwide, can seem like a betrayal of that trust. “I think there’s a bigger kind of concern around this, and that’s the social responsibility,” Scott says. “That’s where it gets me a little uncomfortable, because if, let’s say, a clinic is performing Tommy John surgery and using medical supplies that might need to be shunted to a city hospital, then that’s a responsibility that private clinics—as well as clinics that are in hospitals, and all the rest—should be thinking about before they’re saying, ‘Well, we’re going to be doing these because the financial health of the player is in jeopardy.’”
This question of financial health is generally the main pushback here. Postponing Tommy John, in which a torn ligament in the arm is replaced by a healthy tendon from elsewhere in the body, will typically not pose a risk to physical health. “There’s no medical need where you need to have that,” says Arthur Caplan, head of the division of medical ethics at New York University School of Medicine. Tommy John certainly affects when a pitcher will be able to finish rehab and return to the mound, however, which can affect earning potential in a sport where careers are often short and volatile. But granting allowances for a procedure based on financial reasons poses its own ethical problems.
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<figcaption>The Red Sox have been short on details about their ace Sale's situation. (Bob DeChiara/USA TODAY Sports)</figcaption>
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In the current environment, Caplan says, “[Surgery patients] don’t get procedures for their livelihood, they get them for their lives.”
That runs counter to the argument Dr. Neal ElAttrache made earlier this week in the
</a><a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/giants/article/Top-Tommy-John-surgeon-defends-procedures-done-15154721.php">San Francisco Chronicle</a>, where the sports surgeon said, “I know that I’m going to get criticized for taking care of these kinds of guys, but it’s essential to their livelihoods. If you have somebody’s career at stake and they lose two seasons instead of one, I would say that is not a non-essential or unimportant elective procedure.”
But the ethicists say that this kind of logic can be faulty in a world where these procedures have already been limited. Should an MLB player whose career is at stake be prioritized over, say, a college kid whose future draft position is at stake? Over a player who could be even younger? “Those are interesting ethical questions that can be deliberated by scholars,” Scott says. But to have surgeons pick and choose on their own is to risk a system that only exacerbates existing inequity.
Some draw a parallel to NBA players getting tested for the coronavirus while people around the country reported problems getting tested no matter their symptoms.
“People worry about the fact that testing may not have been fairly distributed, so people who are famous or are athletes get access when others don’t,” says Magnus. “If the same is true for surgeries, you can’t have elective surgeries under any circumstances unless you’re an athlete, that would foster mistrust and problems with the public around their views about the health system.”
In the last few weeks, it’s become increasingly difficult to try to isolate any one type of medical procedure from the bigger picture of what’s happening in the country, ethicists say. Everything from reproductive care to dental procedures has been put on hold. And sports medicine takes place in this context, too.
“You can’t be in the system and out of the system,” Scott says. “Medicine is all of our responsibilities.”

New on Sports Illustrated: Is It Wrong for Baseball Players to Get Tommy John Surgery?

Pro athletes are already under fire for preferential treatment during the coronavirus crisis—medical ethicists say this is another example....

New on Sports Illustrated: John Krasinkski, Steve Carell Reunite in New Web Series, 'Some Good News': TRAINA THOUGHTS

<a href="https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2020/03/30/john-krasinski-steve-carell-reunite-some-good-news">
John Krasinski's 'Some Good News' offers light in dark times.
1. Thank you, John Krasinski. Thank you.
The actor is not only trying to provide us with some light in these dark times, but he also gave us a mini Office reunion with Steve Carell on Sunday.
Krasinski launched a new YouTube series, Some Good News, which is pretty self-explanatory. In a very enjoyable twist, Krasinski uses a newscast format to focus on the positives going on in the world.
In the debut edition, Krasinski mentioned that last week marked the 15-year anniversary of The Office and threw it to his "entertainment correspondent." Enter Carell.
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In a moment that will make any Office fan smile from ear to ear, the duo discussed the greatest blooper from the show.
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This was a rough weekend if you paid attention to the news, so I hope Krasinski fully understands how much this was needed. And I hope if you are an Office fan who hasn't seen Some Good News, that you will watch the video and smile for a few minutes.
If you want more Carell, I interviewed him on the SI Media Podcast last year and we discussed a few of the more memorable episodes in the series, including "Basketball" and "Casino Night," which he wrote.
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2. Sean Payton would appreciate it if his quarterback avoided snakes when going for a walk.
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3. Yankees reliever Aroldis Chapman seems to have lifted weights 24/7 during this time of social distancing.
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4. After appearing in <a href="https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2020/03/25/tiger-king-netflix-documentary-joe-exotic-carole-baskin">Netflix's smash hit Tiger King</a>, Shaq would like everyone to know that he has no relationship with Joe Exotic. <a href="https://nesn.com/2020/03/shaq-clarifies-relationship-with-joe-exotic-following-tiger-king-cameo/">Via NESN</a>:
“So we go in there, and it’s a beautiful place, and the character that was there was Exotic Joe. We’re there and I dropped some donations for the tigers’ foods and all that,” O’Neal said. “We take pictures with [the] tigers. We went back a couple times. Then we go back another time and we found out that he’s involved with all the stuff, and then, actually, I stopped going.” Added O’Neal: “I don’t harm tigers. I love tigers. I love white tigers. Do I put donations to these zoos to help these tigers out? I do it all the time. Do I own tigers personally at my house? No. But I love tigers. Listen, people are going to make their own opinions, but, again, I was just a visitor. I met this guy—not my friend. Don’t know him. Never had any business dealings with him, and I had no idea any of that stuff was going on.”
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5. It's WrestleMania week. Obviously, the show this weekend will be unlike any other WrestleMania, but even if it was the typical Mania show, I still yearn for the old-school days when we'd get performances like these from Vince McMahon, Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan.
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5. Author, reporter and podcast host James Andrew Miller is the guest on this week's SI Media Podcast. Miller went in depth on what ESPN could do with its Monday Night Football booth now that the network has been snubbed again by Peyton Manning.
In the second half of the podcast, Miller and I break down the Curb Your Enthusiasm season finale and review Season 10.
You can listen to the podcast below or download it on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/michael-mulvihill-and-conrad-thompson/id997819235?i=1000452993293">Apple</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/4Bvno6GHUWSuOLTAIWma1u">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sports-illustrated-media-podcast">Stitcher</a> and <a href="https://play.google.com/music/listen#/ps/Iq5rbvuoxjtxxns3fnal5ciyy4y">Google Play</a>.
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6. RANDOM YOUTUBE VIDEO OF THE DAY: This is what I want to do anytime I go to the supermarket these days and someone comes within six feet of me.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LHhbdXCzt_A" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
7. SPORTS HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Knicks-Suns, 1993, in an all-out brawl called by the great Marv Albert.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/32M5D9vLENQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Be sure to <a href="https://www.si.com/author/jimmy-traina">catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts</a> and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sports-illustrated-media-podcast/id997819235?mt=2">iTunes</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/4Bvno6GHUWSuOLTAIWma1u">Spotify</a> or <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sports-illustrated-media-podcast#/">Stitcher</a>. You can also follow Jimmy on <a href="https://twitter.com/JimmyTraina">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/jimmytraina/">Instagram</a>.

New on Sports Illustrated: John Krasinkski, Steve Carell Reunite in New Web Series, 'Some Good News': TRAINA THOUGHTS

John Krasinski's 'Some Good News' offers light in dark times. 1 . Thank you, John Krasinski. Thank you. The actor is not only...

New on Sports Illustrated: CBS, NBC to Broadcast Two New Wild-Card Games

<a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/03/30/nfl-playoff-expansion-cbs-nbc-wild-card-games">
NFL owners are expected to vote and approve the playoff expansion on a conference call on Tuesday.
NFL owners are expected to vote and approve the playoff expansion on Tuesday,
</a><a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/03/30/nfl-draft-coronavirus-team-changes-players-affected?utm_campaign=themmqb&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com">according to</a> the MMQB's Albert Breer. The TV arrangements for the wild-card round will also be voted on. 
According to Breer, the league has negotiated contracts with CBS and NBC to broadcast two new wild-card games. The deals would be approved after the playoff format passes. The league will also vote on extending its streaming agreement with Amazon through the 2022 season.
The wild-card round will include six games as part of the new collective bargaining agreement that was approved by the NFL and its players. The 17-game regular season could come as early as 2021.

New on Sports Illustrated: CBS, NBC to Broadcast Two New Wild-Card Games

NFL owners are expected to vote and approve the playoff expansion on a conference call on Tuesday. NFL owners are expected to vote and app...

New on Sports Illustrated: Barcelona Players to Take 70% Pay Cut to Help Support Club Employees During Coronavirus Pandemic

<a href="https://www.si.com/soccer/2020/03/30/barcelona-players-pay-cut-messi-coronavirus">
Barcelona's players will make additional contributions to help financially support club employees.
Barcelona players will take a 70% pay cut to help financially support non-sporting staff during the coronavirus pandemic, the club
</a><a href="https://www.fcbarcelona.com/en/club/news/1650154/fc-barcelona-statement">announced</a> Monday.
"In the case of the football first team, the reduction will be over 70% of that originally agreed with the club," FC Barcelona said in a statement. "This additional contribution by the team, together with the contribution that the club itself shall make, will guarantee 100% of the salaries of all non-sporting staff at the club, which will be submitted for ERTE (temporary redundancy) this week.
"The club wishes to express its gratitude to all of the professional athletes for their implication in such an exceptional situation that has been caused by this health crisis."
The pay reduction will also affect the club's other professional teams, including its basketball squad.
Before the club released its statement, Lionel Messi announced the pay cut <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B-WwreSiaL7/">on Instagram</a>. He added players would make additional contributions to ensure club employees would continue to collect 100% of their pay during the coronavirus pandemic.
In his statement, Messi also stated he was surprised by pressure within the club to take the pay cut and said the players were planning to take action all along.
"We want to clarify that our desire has always been for a reduction to be applied to our salaries because we understand that this is an exceptional situation and we are the first that have ALWAYS helped the club with what they have asked," Messi said. "Many times we have even done things on our own accord, at moments when we felt it necessary or important."
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Barca's board of directors and the players began negotiating a deal last week. The club, which is owned by its members, fears the sports shutdown could cause it to take a severe hit financially.
La Liga is among the many sports leagues around the globe <a href="https://www.si.com/soccer/2020/03/23/la-liga-season-suspended-indefinitely-coronavirus-outbreak">suspended indefinitely amid the pandemic</a>. Spain imposed a nationwide lockdown two weeks ago as its number of coronavirus cases continued to rise. The country currently 85,195 confirmed cases, the third-most in the world. There are more than 741,000 confirmed cases of the virus globally across at least 177 countries.

New on Sports Illustrated: Barcelona Players to Take 70% Pay Cut to Help Support Club Employees During Coronavirus Pandemic

Barcelona's players will make additional contributions to help financially support club employees. Barcelona players will take a 70% p...

New on Sports Illustrated: Gambling 101: What is a Point Spread?

<a href="https://www.si.com/gambling/2020/03/30/gambling-101-what-is-a-point-spread">
Learn the finer details of point spreads and how bettors use them to place wagers across the big four major sports.
Sports often provide an escape from the everyday grind. While the games alone are great entertainment - betting on the action adds an extra level of excitement. Including point spreads, moneylines, and game totals, bettors have a variety of wager options. This SI Gambling 101 feature focuses on against the spread odds as odds and prices vary across the
</a><a href="https://www.si.com/">Big Four North American sports</a>.
Point spread odds act as an equalizer for perceived inferior teams when they face superior squads. Point spread pricing is available on basketball and football game. The spread varies depending on the matchup. Puck lines replace the point spread in hockey and run lines are used in baseball. NHL and MLB odds are -1.5 on the favorite and +1.5 on the underdog. Juice, also know as vigorish, is added in various amounts to all point spread lines.
<h3>What Are NFL Point Spread Betting Odds?</h3>
From preseason futures to regular season action and <a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/02/20/expanded-nfl-playoffs-14-teams">four rounds of playoffs</a>, NFL betting options are available all year long. As with all sports, bookmakers attempt to get equal action on both sides when they post NFL point spreads. Without ATS pricing, few if any bettors would wager on a 1-12 team that's facing a squad with a 10-3 record. To 'level’ the playing field, bookmakers give the underdog side a point spread ‘head start’ before the game begins. Here is an example from 2019:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/patriots/">New England Patriots</a> -10.5 (-110)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/bengals/">Cincinnati Bengals</a> +10.5 (-110)</li>
</ul>
New England was a -10.5 (-110) favorite when they visited Cincinnati during Week 15 action. That meant the Patriots needed to win by a least 11 points for New England bettors to cash winning tickets. The juice (-110) attached to the point spread means a $110 wager generates a $100 return. The venue affected the line above, as the Patriots ATS odds would have been closer to -17 if this match were played in New England. Original wagers are returned on all winning point spread tickets.
<h3>What Are MLB Point Spread Betting Odds?</h3>
Rather than a point spread, bookmakers offer run line odds on baseball action. Run line favorites are posted at -1.5, and juice usually is a plus number. Run line underdogs are listed at +1.5, and the vigorish is often a negative number. If two teams have comparable stats and records, the return on the favorite gains value and the underdog return drops. When top teams play lower-ranked squads, the value on the favorite is reduced, and bettors are tempted with a higher return on the underdog. 
<ul>
<li>New York Yankees +1.5 (-127)</li>
<li>@ Boston Red Sox -1.5 (+107)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Boston Red Sox +1.5 (-145)</li>
<li>@ New York Yankees -1.5 (+125)</li>
</ul>
In the first example above, bettors who backed the Yankees earned a $100 return on $127 wager. Had Boston covered, the return would have been $107 on a $100 bet. Home field advantage affects how bookmakers set run line pricing. The games above were played seven days apart, and the pitching matchup was the same in both contests. The favorite flipped when the venue changed in the second game, and New York paid $125 on $100 wagers when the Yankees won 4-2 in the Bronx.
<h3>What Are NBA Point Spread Betting Odds?</h3>
Point spread odds vary from EVEN to 20 points or more on NBA betting boards. While it can be slightly higher or lower, the juice is usually set at -110 on both sides. Home court advantage is a big deal in the NBA, and point spreads often get jacked up on top-ranked home teams. The odds below are from a Los Angeles versus Oklahoma City home-and-home series in 2019. The Lakers were -11 point favorites in the first game at Staples Center arena but dropped to a -4.5 chalk three nights later on the road.
<ul>
<li>Oklahoma City Thunder +11 (-110)</li>
<li>@ <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/lakers/">Los Angeles Lakers</a> -11 (-110)</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Los Angeles Lakers 4.5 (-110)</li>
<li>@ Oklahoma City Thunder -4.5 (-110)</li>
</ul>
When betting on NBA point spreads, it's wise to research how teams perform at home and on the road against the number. The <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/heat/">Miami Heat</a> is an excellent example as they were 20-12-0 ATS at home but just 13-19-1 as visitors during the first 65 games of the 2019 NBA season. Some teams are over-valued at home but pay out more often against the number on the road. Oklahoma City is an example as the Thunder went 17-16-0 ATS at home but posted a sparkling 23-8-0 point spread record on the road.
<h3>What Are NHL Point Spread Betting Odds?</h3>
Similar to run lines in baseball, puck line odds replace point spread pricing on NHL betting boards. Favorites enter the game with a -1.5 deficit, and the juice is often listed as a positive number. Underdogs receive +1.5 goals, and the vig usually is set at a negative price. In the example below, Toronto is the favorite, and bettors receive a $210 return on $100 bets if the Maple Leafs win by at least two goals. Boston backers would earn a $40 profit on $100 bets if the Bruins win or lose by one goal.
<ul>
<li>Boston Bruins +1.5 (-250)</li>
<li>@ Toronto Maple Leafs -1.5 (+210)</li>
</ul>
Bettors need to pay attention to statistics when considering puck line wagers. The best time to lay pucks is when high-scoring squads play teams that struggle to light the lamp. Empty net goals help puck line bettors as they can turn losing tickets into winners with as little as one second left on the game clock. Teams trailing by one or more goals will often pull the goalie to add an extra skater as time winds down. Countless puck line tickets have been saved when teams score into the empty net.
MORE FROM SI GAMBLING
<a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/03/28/nfc-south-2020-win-totals-bets">NFC South Win Totals</a>
<a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/03/25/nfc-east-2020-win-totals-bets">NFC East Win Totals</a>
<a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/03/26/nfc-north-2020-win-totals-bets">NFC North Win Totals</a>
<a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/03/27/nfc-west-2020-win-totals-bets">NFC West Win Totals</a>
<a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/03/27/afc-west-2020-win-totals-bets">AFC West Win Totals</a>
<a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/03/26/afc-south-2020-win-totals-bets">AFC South Win Totals</a>
<a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/03/25/afc-north-2020-win-totals-bets">AFC North Win Totals</a>
<a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/03/26/afc-east-2020-win-totals-bets">AFC East Win Totals</a>

New on Sports Illustrated: Gambling 101: What is a Point Spread?

Learn the finer details of point spreads and how bettors use them to place wagers across the big four major sports. Sports often provide a...

New on Sports Illustrated: Who Is the New Quarterback U.?

<a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/03/30/college-program-modern-quarterback-u-based-on-analytics">
Louisville? Oklahoma? Auburn? An analytic look at what college program can rightfully brand itself the 'U.'
Welcome to Position U., where we set out to determine which colleges have the right to brand themselves the "U" at eight different positions. And we decided to do it by measuring what every college should strive to do, in sports and beyond: Prepare students for professional careers.
In order to make it modern, we used a 10-year data set. Dipping further back would mean going across different coaching eras at the college level, as well as including a lot of players who are no longer active in the NFL. (We did run an unofficial 20-year data set for the quarterback position, which you can read about at the bottom of this article.)
We came up with a scoring system that balanced not just the quantity of players programs put into the NFL, but the quality of those players' careers. One measure we used is draft position—an inexact but still relevant measure of a player's approximate value when he left college. We credited players for career games started. But rather than assigning a point value to every game started, which would weigh too heavily in favor of older players, we lessened that effect by using ranges.
We also awarded points for the highest achievements (MVP, and for non-quarterbacks, Offensive/Defensive Player of the Year and All-Pro) and awarded a smaller amount of credit for Rookie of the Year, an indication of a player's preparedness when entering the league. (We made the decision to exclude the Pro Bowl. Between fan voting and the league's need to dig deep into the
</a><a href="https://ftw.usatoday.com/2020/01/nfl-pro-bowl-xavier-rhodes-vikings-really">pool</a> of <a href="https://static.clubs.nfl.com/image/private/t_editorial_landscape_12_desktop/bears/vy8nfcz10y2sgqgqneik">alternates</a> with so many players dropping out annually, there's been a reduction in the legitimacy of that achievement.)
For all positions in this series, scoring is based on alumni who entered the NFL between 2010 and 2019 and were either (1) drafted or (2) undrafted but appeared in at least one game. Players who transferred during their college careers are counted only as part of the last program they played for. Players are only credited for the position at which they were drafted. Our full scoring system is at the bottom of this article.
* * *
WELCOME TO POSITION U.: Linebacker U. (coming Tuesday) | Wide Receiver U. (coming Wednesday) | Offensive Line U. (coming Thursday) | Running Back U. (coming Friday) | Tight End U. (coming Saturday) | Defensive Line U. (coming Sunday) | Defensive Back U. (coming next week)
* * *
<h2>QUARTERBACK U.: OKLAHOMA</h2>
<figure><img height="349" src="https://www.si.com/.image/c_fit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_620/MTcxNDM1MjU3ODgxNDM3ODc1/murray_pos_u_site_new.jpg" width="620" /></figure>
1. Oklahoma, 28 points 2. Florida State, 20 
3(tie). Auburn, 17 
3(tie). Louisville, 17 
5(tie). Texas A&M, 14 
5(tie). USC, 14 
7(tie). Baylor, 12 
7(tie). N.C. State, 12 
7(tie). Texas Tech, 12 
10(tie). Missouri, 11 
10(tie). Oklahoma State, 11 
10(tie). Stanford, 11
With three No. 1 overall picks (Sam Bradford in 2010, Baker Mayfield in ’18 and Kyler Murray in ’19), no program comes close to the Sooners. Even if Texas Tech transfers Baker Mayfield and Davis Webb had their achievements, along with Patrick Mahomes’s, count toward the Red Raiders’ score, it wouldn’t be enough to pull them even with Oklahoma.
Six of the Top 14 QBU schools are current or former Big 12 programs. There are myriad reasons for this, including the rise of the spread offense, but clearly steady access to the state of Texas helps. Nine of the 16 NFL QBs these schools produced were from the Lone Star State. Six of those nine quarterbacks were first-round picks, including four top-10 selections (Murray, Mayfield, Mahomes and Robert Griffin III). Incredibly, the University of Texas had just one QB drafted the last decade—Colt McCoy in 2010—and just six offensive players drafted overall.
Quarterbacks have longer careers than other NFL players, and if the data set was expanded to the past 20 years then USC would be QBU. That would be thanks to their prolific output during the Pete Carroll years; the Trojans had five quarterbacks—including three first-rounders—drafted between 2003 and '09. Though while Carson Palmer delivered, the careers of Mark Sanchez and Matt Leinart were forgettable (Matt Cassel, a collegiate backup and seventh-round pick, actually made the second-most career starts among USC alums entering the league this century, after Palmer). Sam Darnold is the only current starter from USC, and Matt Barkley and Cody Kessler are the only other active Trojans QBs in the NFL.
In the 20-year set, Oklahoma would also be leap-frogged by California and Michigan. Cal's standing would be carried by Aaron Rodgers and helped along by Jared Goff and Kyle Boller (a first-round disappointment, but one who still made 47 career starts). The Wolverines, meanwhile, would be almost <a href="https://vault.si.com/vault/2012/01/09/tom-brady-as-you-forgot-him">all Tom Brady</a>—Chad Henne is the only other Michigan QB from 2000 on to make more than one NFL start.
The 20-year Quarterback U. standings (with the "career starts" scale tweaked to reflect the expanded window) would be as follows:
1. USC, 47 points 
2. California, 36 
3. Michigan, 34 
4(tie). Louisville, 28 
4(tie). Oklahoma, 28 
6. Oregon, 27 
7(tie). Auburn, 25 
7(tie). Florida State, 25 
9. N.C. State, 23 
10. Boston College, 20
* * *
<h2>ALUMNI FOR TOP THREE</h2>
OKLAHOMA Sam Bradford (2010 1st overall, 83 starts, OROY) 
Kyler Murray (2019 1st overall, 16 starts, OROY) 
Baker Mayfield (2018 1st overall, 29 starts) 
Landry Jones (2013 fourth round, 5 starts)
AUBURN 
Cam Newton (2011 1st overall, 124 starts, MVP, OROY) 
Jarrett Stidham (2019 fourth round)
FLORIDA STATE 
Jameis Winston (2015 1st overall, 70 career starts) 
EJ Manuel (2013 first round, 18 career starts) 
Christian Ponder (2011 first round, 36 career starts)
LOUISVILLE 
Lamar Jackson (2018 first round, 22 starts, MVP) 
Teddy Bridgewater (2014 first round, 34 starts)
* * *
<h2>OUR SCORING SYSTEM</h2>
DRAFT POSITION Top 10: 4 points 
Round 1 (non-top 10): 3 points 
Rounds 2-3: 2 points 
Rounds 4-7: 1 point 
Undrafted: 0 points
NFL GAMES STARTED 80-plus: 5 points 
48 to 79: 4 points 
16 to 47: 3 points 
5 to 15: 2 points 
1 to 4: 1 point
NFL AWARDS MVP: 5 points 
Offensive Rookie of the Year: 2 points
Research by <a href="http://twitter.com/The_Reid">Reid Foster</a> and Gary Gramling.
• Question or comment? <a href="mailto:gary.gramling@si.com">Email us</a>.

New on Sports Illustrated: Who Is the New Quarterback U.?

Louisville? Oklahoma? Auburn? An analytic look at what college program can rightfully brand itself the 'U.' Welcome to Position U....

New on Sports Illustrated: The Rock and the Mount Rushmore of Wrestling: Unchecked

<a href="https://www.si.com/wrestling/2020/03/30/the-rock-wrestling-mount-rushmore">
The Rock gave his Mount Rushmore of wrestling. Here's mine.
The Rock is right when it comes to the Mount Rushmore of wrestling.
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Other than not including himself. Though he’s almost bigger than the business at this point and probably also on the Mount Rushmore of universally beloved humans. 
But there’s only one objective Mount Rushmore when it comes to professional wrestling..."The Great One" himself, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair. Those are the top guys in the history of the industry and there’s really not much of an argument. However, it wouldn’t be fun to stop there so I have to give you my personal top four as well.
First there’s my GOAT—"The Heartbreak Kid" Shawn Michaels. HBK could have a great match with anyone whether a technical master or a lumbering big. He was also very good on the mic and has an iconic theme song. My only complaint is that he would telegraph Sweet Chin Music by stomping on the mat. Doesn’t make any sense.
Next—The Undertaker. Now I must admit my opinion on this has shifted very recently but that’s because <a href="https://www.si.com/wrestling/2020/03/23/wwe-wrestlemania-espn-build-hype">my son has taken a liking to the Taker</a> and I’ve been able to see how his entrance has left a generational imprint. Which I suppose shows you the power of the darkness. And after recently watching Undertaker vs Michaels at WrestleMania’s 25 and 26 with my kid I wasn’t going to make this list without including him. 
Then I have to go back to Stone Cold and The Rock. As someone who definitely wore an Austin 3:16 shirt to high school and even attempted an open button down with sunglasses tilted below my eyes I’d raise an eyebrow if anyone undersold the impact of those two. They were the coolest thing in the world during that run. 
There it is my WWE Mount Rushmore. Insert your favorite wrestling catchphrase here.

New on Sports Illustrated: The Rock and the Mount Rushmore of Wrestling: Unchecked

The Rock gave his Mount Rushmore of wrestling. Here's mine. The Rock is right when it comes to the Mount Rushmore of wrestling. ...

New on Sports Illustrated: An XFL Linebacker Is Donating Half of His Remaining Paychecks to Coronavirus Efforts

<a href="https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2020/03/30/xfl-brian-peters-paycheck-donation-coronavirus">
Former Texans linebacker Brian Peters will donate half of his remaining five XFL paychecks to food banks, medical workers and other coronavirus-related causes.
<h2>He’s doing his part</h2>
The sudden halt to global sports was especially inconvenient for the XFL. The league had some buzz after the first few weeks of its inaugural season and would need to keep that momentum going to continue growing the league’s footprint in a second season. Unlike the AAF,
</a><a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjV6p7vncLoAhXLhXIEHVaJBb0QFjAAegQIAxAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.si.com%2Fnfl%2F2019%2F05%2F01%2Falliance-american-football-aaf-collapse-charlie-ebersol-tom-dundon&usg=AOvVaw2CbR0UMjRlAhahs2aRlYBB">which flamed out prematurely and spectacularly</a>, the XFL’s first season ended due to circumstances beyond its control. 
It’s disappointing for several reasons, including for the players who were hoping to use the final five weeks of the season to add to their NFL audition tapes. But they’ll at least be paid through the end of the regular season. 
One player, former Texans linebacker Brian Peters is putting that money toward a good cause. Peters announced Sunday that he’ll be donating half of his remaining five paychecks to food banks, medical workers and other coronavirus-related causes.
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Peters has made a lot of money playing professional football, but not never-work-another-day-in-your-life money. After going undrafted out of Northwestern in 2012, he played in the Arena Football League, the short-lived United Football League and the CFL before landing on the Vikings’ practice squad in 2015. The Texans signed him later that year and he spent four seasons as a key contributor on Houston’s special teams before his NFL career ended in 2018. His donations will total $3,900, which is no small chunk of change, but as Peters’s Twitter bio says, “Help and support are not yours to keep.”
<h2>The best of SI</h2>
The greatest <a href="https://www.si.com/college/2020/03/28/march-madness-great-moments-games-what-if">“what if” scenarios in March Madness history</a>. ... The cancelation of <a href="https://www.si.com/mlb/2020/03/26/opening-day-2020-cincinnati">Opening Day is especially impactful in Cincinnati</a>. ... What life is like <a href="https://www.si.com/college/2020/03/27/coronavirus-italy-spain-ncaa-international-athletes">for European NCAA athletes after returning home</a>.
<h2>Around the sports world</h2>
Aaron Rodgers got <a href="https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/28964015/packers-aaron-rodgers-details-frenzied-departure-peru">out of Peru just a few minutes before the airport closed</a>. ... A New Mexico high school wrestling champ <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2020/03/26/suspected-kidnapper-gets-pinned-high-school-wrestler-new-mexico/2923871001/">pinned a kidnapping suspect to the ground until cops could arrive</a>. ... Stephon Marbury has a plan to deliver <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/03/29/stephon-marbury-plans-to-deliver-10-million-masks-to-ny-amid-coronavirus-crisis/">10 million N95 masks to first responders and healthcare professionals in need</a>. 
<h3>What Ronaldinho is up to in prison in Paraguay</h3>
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<h3>It’s like a five-year-olds’ soccer game</h3>
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<h3>A guy like Joey Gallo is likely to hit it right through that net</h3>
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<h3>The Rock could easily be a competitive eater</h3>
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<h3>I was always a fan of this guy</h3>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><a href="https://twitter.com/espn/status/1243722774742523905"></a></blockquote>
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<h3>Isolation, Olympian style</h3>
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<h3>So that’s how Aroldis Chapman throws 104</h3>
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<h2>Not sports</h2>
The coronavirus could cause a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-malaysia-karex-idUSKBN21E1OJ">global shortage of condoms after the world’s largest factory was forced to close</a>. ... A man who’s lived alone <a href="https://www.kunc.org/post/need-tips-social-distancing-guy-s-been-doing-it-almost-50-years#stream/0">at the top of a Colorado mountain  for 50 years gives his tips for social distancing</a>. ... The rapper Future is providing <a href="https://pitchfork.com/news/future-to-provide-masks-for-healthcare-workers-and-patients-affected-by-coronavirus/">masks to healthcare workers and patients</a>.
<h3>That’s not the kind of mask you need</h3>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><a href="https://twitter.com/connortryan/status/1243957744912171009"></a></blockquote>
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<h3>They look like the Beatles</h3>
<div>View the <a href="https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2020/03/30/xfl-brian-peters-paycheck-donation-coronavirus">original article</a> to see embedded media.</div>
<h2>A good song</h2>
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Email dan.gartland@si.com with any feedback or follow me on Twitter for approximately one half-decent baseball joke per week. Bookmark this page to see previous editions of Hot Clicks and find the newest edition every day. By popular request I’ve made a Spotify playlist of the music featured here. Visit our Extra Mustard page throughout each day for more offbeat sports stories.

New on Sports Illustrated: An XFL Linebacker Is Donating Half of His Remaining Paychecks to Coronavirus Efforts

Former Texans linebacker Brian Peters will donate half of his remaining five XFL paychecks to food banks, medical workers and other coronav...

New on Sports Illustrated: Belarus President Boasts About Keeping Soccer League Running Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

<a href="https://www.si.com/soccer/2020/03/30/belarus-soccer-league-coronavirus-pandemic">
“It’s better to die standing than to live on your knees,” Belarus's president says.
MINSK, Belarus (AP) — With most sports around the world shutting down because of the coronavirus pandemic, longtime Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko is proudly keeping soccer and hockey arenas open.
The Eastern European nation of nearly 9.5 million even
</a><a href="https://apnews.com/0ae22102ba119c51a623cb42ebb9ecc4">started</a> a whole new soccer season this month as coronavirus cases rose.
The move has the full support of Lukashenko, who took to the ice in an amateur hockey tournament on Saturday with a few hundred spectators in the stands.
“It’s better to die standing than to live on your knees,” he said, defending Belarus’ refusal to introduce isolation measures and border restrictions like its neighbors, such as Russia.
With foreign sports networks having little to show and few other options for sports betting, Lukashenko says the pandemic is a perfect opportunity to put the country’s soccer league on display.
“I look at Russia and some people there are winning a lot on bets, because beforehand they didn’t really know our teams,” Lukashenko said. “Someone’s losing, someone’s winning. It’s all useful.”
Fans entering the stadiums in Belarus are given antiseptic hand gel and some have their temperatures monitored by medics. Few wear masks because they’re not considered necessary for open-air events, Belarus soccer federation spokesman Alexander Aleinik said.
Belarus doesn’t publish daily figures on the spread of the virus. On Friday, the last day for which statistics are available, the country recorded 94 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with no deaths.
<figure><img height="349" src="https://www.si.com/.image/c_fit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_620/MTcxNTAwNDM5NjQ3Mjk5MDQz/belarus-soccer-coronavirus.jpg" width="620" /></figure>
The Belarusian league isn’t usually an international attraction. Crowds this season barely average 1,200 and UEFA ranks it the continent’s 25th strongest, just below Norway, Israel and Kazakhstan.
But Russian TV has given its games prominent slots on state sports channels and betting firms around Western Europe are streaming them for customers.
British fans on social media have picked teams to follow and thrown themselves into a new fandom, elevating obscure players to hero status and berating coaches for supposedly negative tactics.
There isn’t much competition, with betting sites offering little more than Nicaraguan soccer, Tajikistan basketball and Russian table tennis as rivals.
Sergei Melnikov is one of those hoping to make an impression on the mostly empty global sports stage. He is the director of the Isloch club, which beat Smolevichi 1-0 on Sunday to keep pace with the leaders on points.
“The whole world is watching our soccer right now,” Melnikov said. “That means we have to show the best that we’ve got.”

New on Sports Illustrated: Belarus President Boasts About Keeping Soccer League Running Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

“It’s better to die standing than to live on your knees,” Belarus's president says. MINSK, Belarus (AP) — With most sports around the ...

New on Sports Illustrated: He Missed his Masters Moment—and Robbed a Bank Instead

<a href="https://www.si.com/golf/2020/03/30/masters-bank-robber-michael-crane">
On the morning he was supposed to start cutting highlight reels for CBS, he instead scribbled out a demand for $1,500 and handed it to a teller
Michael Crane was no golfer. But he did dream of a star turn at the Masters, a chance to show off his handiwork and skill, a culmination of years of practice. And in April 2007 his chance arrived: At 31 he was handpicked to work one of the most-watched broadcasts on the sports calendar.
A freelance TV editor, Crane specialized in quick-cutting highlight packages that played within event broadcasts—the type that would embroider any big game—and his career was flourishing. That year alone, he recalls having already worked the Super Bowl, the Final Four and more than a dozen other events. Now he would be venturing to the most exalted golf course in the U.S., working for CBS on its commercial-free broadcast of “a tradition unlike any other.”
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Yet here it was, the Monday morning of Masters week, and instead of focusing on Augusta National’s greens and, ultimately, the green jacket, Crane was fixated on a different color: red. As in the red dye spurting over his hands and tracing an arc, before splashing onto his rented Chevy Monte Carlo. An exploding cartridge, he would later realize, had been placed in the pile of bills handed to him by a teller at the Augusta bank he had just robbed with two strangers.
Clutching a wad of cash, a look of horror setting in, Crane figured, quite rightly, that he would not be making the final cut at the Masters, after all.
* * *
When Young Michael Crane was asked what he wanted to do when he grew up, reflexively, he would reply: Play in the NFL. Or work for ESPN. His father, an electrician in rural Warrior, Ala., a half hour north of Birmingham, suggested the boy come up with more plausible career choices. The son persisted.
Overcoming a deficit of size (5' 9", 160 pounds) with a surplus of heart, Crane was a running back and an all-state defensive back at Corner High. After one season playing at what is now Western Alabama (in Division II) he quit, in part because of homesickness and in part because he’d married and had a son on the way. His NFL ambitions at an end, he appeared to have abandoned his ESPN aspirations when he took an entry-level job in statement processing at a SouthTrust Bank in Birmingham.
Crane, then 22, spent a few months at that soulless desk job before he got his first break: A friend offered him some freelance work, first shooting, then producing and editing, at a TV startup, College Sports Southeast. He quit his bank job the next week. He’d take any gig in sports TV; if that meant shooting a football game in the rain or getting up in the wee hours to make a kickoff in Kentucky that afternoon—well, what’s 400 miles? “I was making about $18,000,” Crane says, “and I told my wife that if I could get to $30,000, that would be awesome.”
A year or so later, Crane was freelancing at the Great Outdoor Games in Lake Placid, N.Y., when someone asked whether he knew how to operate an EVS machine. “Sure,” he said. Then he asked around: Does anyone know what the hell an EVS is? Crane stayed up all night in his hotel room, reading the manual for a video-editing apparatus that pulls short clips from multiple cameras. By the next day he was at least semiconversant. “It was the ultimate in fake it till you make it,” he says. “I was just hoping I could power up the machine, but it went well.”
<figure><img height="522" src="https://www.si.com/.image/c_fit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_620/MTcxNDEwMjgzNzIwMzUzNzc0/2015-07-12_231317_original.jpg" width="620" />
<figcaption>Crane at the EVS.</figcaption>
</figure>
Crane didn’t just pick it up quickly; he was a natural, a virtuoso. The equipment—about the size of a laptop, with various dials and levers and buttons—almost came to seem an extension of his arm. Pairing his feel for sports with his dexterity as an editor, he could put together an in-game highlights package in a matter of seconds. If a running back, say, rushed for 100 yards in a half, Crane would pull video from various “looks” and fashion a 20- or 30-second clip of the best runs. “You want the highlights to seem natural, to tell the same story that’s playing out live,” Crane says, “That’s what really good guys who run tape do.”
Pick a big sports moment. Most fans will be able to picture it; they’ll also remember the TV announcer who called it, Al Michaels or Dick Vitale or Joe Buck. The “talent,” though, is only a small part of an ecosystem that is equal parts army and hospital. So-called below-the-line guys—and the vast majority of workers in sports broadcasting remain men—are every bit as responsible for your enjoyment of the game as the folks sitting in hair and makeup. These anonymous operatives in the production truck can make or break a broadcast.
And inside that community word travels fast. Within a year and a half of his introduction to the EVS, Crane’s skills were an open secret. He was a man in demand. “Michael had an innate ability to see things,” says Bob (Rossi) Rosburg, a longtime network sports producer who worked tennis events with Crane in the 2000s, “and, more importantly, to present them in meaningful ways.”
Crane’s dream of working at ESPN? Heck, he’d already worked football and basketball games for the network. Here he was, still in his mid-20s, and John Madden—in the booth for Monday Night Football and in need of quick highlights for his famed telestrator—was asking for him by name. CBS hired him to freelance the NCAA tournament. Golf Channel and Tennis Channel tried to book him the same week. The Grizzlies’ broadcast team enlisted his services, offering him a seat on their plane. In April 2004, Crane worked a tennis tournament for ESPN in Charleston, S.C. Before the week was over a producer asked, “Do you speak French?”
“No,” Crane responded, perplexed. “Why?”
“Because you’re damn good, and we need you in Paris next month to work the French Open.”
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Later that summer NBC would send Crane to the Athens Olympics, making for a blistering several weeks of work. “It was nuts,” he recalls. “One minute it would be water polo and the next it would be volleyball.” In part because of his deft handiwork, the network’s coverage at the Games received an Emmy.
Not yet 30, the self-described “Alabama kid” with a hickory-basted drawl was “living the effing life,” he says, making $700 a day before overtime and a per diem, and working 250 days a year. “The only reason it wasn’t more,” he says, “was because I had to turn down jobs.” He was “making national pay,” he notes, “and, remember, I’m living in Alabama.”
The dream came at a price. His marriage fell apart—Crane was in Athens when he asked for a divorce—and all the travel kept him from seeing his son and new daughter as much as he’d like. Still, at his 10th high school reunion he could regale classmates with stories from the road, and he could afford to be quick in throwing down his credit card when his colleagues repaired to the bar at the end of a broadcast.
Like so many of his coworkers, Crane got a rush from the job. If on-air announcers projected calm and authority, the vibe in the truck was the exact opposite, a hive of frenetic energy. It wasn’t simply that live sports are unscripted, unchoreographed, subject to sudden change. It was the knowledge that an audience of millions was about to consume his work.
The stress and the exhilaration, though, were compounded by erratic hours and erratic travel. Crane was working at Wimbledon in 2004 when rain delays threw off his work schedule. By the time the tournament ended he had to fly directly to the Great Outdoor Games in Reno, eight time zones away, and hit the ground running. “Twelve Red Bulls got me through it,” he says. “I was in the truck bouncing off the walls.”
Eventually the natural highs of the job—to say nothing of caffeine-and-taurine-propelled ones—gave way to dark lows. Crane says he did his share of heavy drinking, but cocaine quickly became his drug of choice. He developed a sixth sense for where to find it, sussing out dealers in hotel lobbies, strip clubs and dive bars. More times than he can recall he would show up to work after a sleepless night, still high. “I don’t know,” he says, “if I was hiding [my use] well or not.”
To which coworkers say: yes and no. Brad Douglas, an EVS producer who often worked alongside Crane, including at that 2004 French Open, remembers him showing up late for a shift in Paris, his eyes rimmed in red, two Coca-Colas in one hand and two bags of chips in the other. Douglas recalls thinking, Do what you want in your downtime, but when it affects the broadcasts we’re going to have a problem. And that never happened. “I couldn’t believe what he was doing,” Douglas says. “He could whip together 10 clips and make a highlight package during a commercial break. Audio? Perfect. Timing? On the money. Not one mistake. “You had an uncomfortable feeling that things could go south for him at any moment—but as far as his work, he was a savant.”
<figure><img height="487" src="https://www.si.com/.image/c_fit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_620/MTcxNDEwNTQyMjIzNjk3NTg3/079013227.jpg" width="620" />
<figcaption>Amen Corner at Augusta, where Crane was set to show his handiwork in April 2017. </figcaption>
</figure>
* * *
This is what "south" looked like for Michael Crane.
Around 4 p.m. on Sunday, April 1, 2007, he checked into his room at the Augusta Holiday Inn on Gordon Highway, on the west side of town. Then, with half a day to kill before his first production shift, he went about scrounging up a fix. He found a pair of local dealers and invited them back to his room, where he quickly blew through $1,500 on coke and crack. In Crane’s words: It was “an all-night party.”
That party ended the next morning only because he had run out of money. (It might have gone longer, Crane says, had he not let the dealers indulge from their own stash.) Crane didn’t have an ATM card to get more cash. So he made a suggestion that—in his haze, anyway—seemed brilliant: Why not knock off a bank?
In no shape to drive, he gave his dealers the keys to his rental car and jumped in the back seat. The three men headed to a Wachovia branch a few minutes down the highway, six miles from Augusta National. (Three years earlier Wachovia had bought SouthTrust Bank, Crane’s first employer.)
<figure><img height="611" src="https://www.si.com/.image/c_fit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_620/MTcxNDEwNTg1NzEwMjQxNDU5/michael_crane_02.jpg" width="620" />
<figcaption>Crane at the Wachovia branch in Augusta.</figcaption>
</figure>
At 9 a.m.—one hour before he was supposed to arrive at work, just as the bank opened—Crane walked through the front door, unarmed and wearing no mask, while the dealers waited in the car. Under his Atlanta Braves visor his face was clearly visible to surveillance cameras. He grabbed a deposit ticket and on the front scribbled a demand for $1,500, claiming to have a gun. Do not say a word. . . . Someone outside as well. . . . Be quick and we leave. Then he presented the note. More confused than scared, the teller asked, “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Crane wasn’t—but he said yes anyway. The teller handed over a stack of bills, inside of which was a packet of distance-activated exploding dye. And just as Crane reached his car, a few hundred feet away from the front exit, the packet exploded. “Holy s---!” came the chorus from the three robbers.
<img height="345" src="https://www.si.com/.image/c_fit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_620/MTcxNDM3MjY0OTczMzQyMTc5/masterscrane_web.jpg" width="620" /></a>
<figcaption>Find more Sports Illustrated True Crime stories here.</figcaption>
As police cruisers rolled up to the bank, the conspirators sped off, heatedly discussing their next move. When they got back to the Holiday Inn, the dealers split. For Crane, the possibility of missing his shift at the Masters was suddenly the least of his concerns.
The cocaine fog having lifted as the gravity of the situation set in, he figured there was no use in running. He walked to the hotel courtyard, sat on a bench and phoned the Augusta police. When the dispatcher picked up, Crane said words to the effect of: “I know who robbed that Wachovia Bank. He’s staying at the Holiday Inn.”
Crane recalls being overcome by a wicked cocktail of emotions—shame, embarrassment, fear, self-loathing. But perhaps most prominent was relief. He knew he had been out of control for years. “Drugs wear you down, and I was so tired,” he says. “Tired physically, but also tired of screwing up and making bad decisions.”
Lighting a cigarette, he waited for the cops to come arrest him. He confessed to the crime on the spot, took full responsibility over his accomplices and offered to answer any questions. (The two dealers were picked up at the nearby Augusta Super Inn later that day. Their charges were dropped.)
One year earlier, the big scandal from Augusta before play started had been about a 26-year-old man who fired a gun at the courtesy car assigned to golfer Tom Lehman. The guy from the broadcast team who tried to jack a local bank was a whole new level of outré pretournament news. While word of Crane’s arrest—and the bizarre circumstances—rocketed around the television compound, he was booked at Richmond County Jail on a robbery charge.
Then he made one last error: He declared himself a suicide risk, hoping he would be put in a cell by himself. The intake officer took all of Crane’s personal possessions, including his clothes, and assigned him to a room with six other men who were also deemed dangers to themselves.
Crane had expected to spend the week at perhaps the most pristine and dignified enclave in sports. Instead, as Zach Johnson was being feted on Sunday and fitted with a green jacket, Crane was 13 miles away, sharing, he says, a cell with a half-dozen other naked accused felons.
* * *
After pleading guilty that October to bank robbery by force and intimidation, Crane was sentenced to 37 months—the recommended minimum—at a federal correction facility in Talladega. He was despondent about his plight until a cellmate summoned him. “He says, ‘Michael, get in here. I want to show you something. Bring your paperwork,’ ” Crane recalls. “He goes, ‘See your release date? . . . Let me show you mine.’ He pulls it out. It says: death. After that I stopped moping.”
Sports also helped Crane get through what “seemed like an eternity” in prison. He could hold his own on a softball field and on a basketball court, but his line of work gave him real currency among the inmates. He could rattle off stories from the Super Bowls he’d worked and the times he’d flown on an NBA team’s charter. Eventually, he could also joke about the felonious misadventure in Augusta. His go-to setup line before launching into an account of his saga: “One year at the Masters I upstaged Tiger Woods. And I didn’t even pick up a club.”
<figure><img height="412" src="https://www.si.com/.image/c_fit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_620/MTcxNDEwNjY5OTk4OTc0NjQz/006901653.jpg" width="620" />
<figcaption>What Crane missed in 2007: Zach Johnson's first major, and only green jacket.</figcaption>
</figure>
After 29 months Crane was released. “You walk out and it’s ‘Aaah, freedom,’ ” he says. “Then it’s, ‘Oh s---, what’s next?’ ” He knew that reentering sports broadcasting—at least immediately—was unlikely. He wasn’t prepared, though, for how many other careers would be closed to him. “My first job out of prison was cleaning Porta Potties for minimum wage. I would wear my cap down so people couldn’t see my face. I’m still fresh off being this high-rolling ESPN guy.”
Broke and estranged from much of his family, Crane began, episodically, using again, a violation of his parole that could have put him back in prison. And on June 6, 2013, homeless and isolated, he says he attempted to hang himself in a hotel room. “But as soon as I kicked the chair out [I fell to the floor],” Crane recalls. “I sat there for 12 hours and started writing down things I’d lost: family, career, home. . . . The sixth or seventh thing I wrote—and I kept [that list] in my pocket for a long time—was purpose. I’ve got to find something, a reason. If I’m still here, there’s a reason. And I checked into rehab.”
Ideally, this is where the comeback story begins. But Crane’s last half-decade hasn’t been nearly that tidy or linear; his days make for a ledger filled with wins and losses. He has tried, with varying success, to stay clean. (He says he has been drug-free for five years.) He has tried, with varying success, to reconnect with his two kids and his family. He has tried, with varying success, to restart his career.
One of his wins came in 2015 when he and his son, Cameron, then 17, started a travel baseball team outside Birmingham. Though Crane had never coached, he had the requisite skill set, including bottomless optimism and patience. Crane says his Dizzy Dean League team of 16- and 17-year-olds started out 2–6 . . . and finished 25–10. Soon, enough people wanted to play for Crane that he launched an entire travel program, 31 North, named for the highway that bisects Birmingham. Players came from all over the state, and if they couldn’t afford the entry fees, Crane says, he refused to turn them away. He’d cover them.
In 2018, though, owing to a shortfall of funds, 31 North closed down in the middle of the season, leaving players disappointed and parents irate—and, in at least one instance, demanding a refund. Crane denies a claim that he was found unresponsive in his car during one tournament (he says he had been working three straight days and was exhausted), and he has vowed to form another team for the upcoming season. Still, when he recounts this setback, his voice catches and he clenches a fist in frustration. “Baseball has gotten so expensive,” he says. “It’s becoming a rich-kids sport. I hate seeing kids not get a chance to play.”
As for his own setback, Crane is torn. He cops to his mistakes. No one, he says again and again, told him that robbing a bank was a good idea; no one made him do it. “I was always taught to take your ass-kickings.” At the same time, he feels he has discharged his debt. “If you’re asking me whether I’m ready for life to get easier,” he says, “my answer is yes.”
<figure><img height="413" src="https://www.si.com/.image/c_fit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_620/MTcxNDEwNzMwNjY1Mzg4MDE0/x163199_tk1_0030.jpg" width="620" /></figure>
Crane is now 44. He tends to wear a ballcap over his close-cropped hair, and he still has the compact physique of a former athlete. He has inched back into freelanceing in sports television, reacquainting himself with an EVS. He started working high school football games and has expanded recently to Pro Bull Riders events, pro soccer games for ESPN3, motocross for NBC and college football for CBS Sports Network. He supplements his income by selling sports memorabilia on eBay and says he would like to get into motivational speaking.
Some of his most taxing work has been in repairing relationships that frayed. Crane acknowledges that he has caused a lot of pain for a lot of people, eroded a lot of trust. He says he simply tries to follow the guidance of his probation officer, who has condensed his advice to five words: Do the next right thing.
Anchored as he was in sports media, aware as he was of its capacity for storytelling, Crane knows one of his field’s most durable narratives. One can imagine the highlight package he’d cut: The dazzling talent gets noticed and fulfills—then exceeds—his dreams. He flies high and lives fast, armored with the same unshakable self-belief and sense of invincibility that serves him so well in his day job. Then he makes a spectacular mess of things, suffers, has his moment of reckoning. -Finally, he tries to author a redemptive ending.
And Crane knows this familiar sports arc isn’t limited to athletes.
This story appears in the April 2020 issue of Sports Illustrated. To subscribe, <a href="http://subscription.si.com/storefront/subscribe-to-sports-illustrated/site/si-50for39nfl1015.html?fpa_subch=null&fpa_crid=104749186334&fpa_siteName=cm.si&fpa_dartType=text&link=1036552&fpa_oc=SI.com+TIME+Form+Ctrl+10%252F16&xid=SI.com+Redesign_Desktop+Main+&fpa_adid=521152694&fpa_ch=home&fpa_dartPosition=globalhdrsublnk">click here</a>.
<a href="http://si.com/truecrime">Find more Sports Illustrated True Crime stories here</a>
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New on Sports Illustrated: He Missed his Masters Moment—and Robbed a Bank Instead

On the morning he was supposed to start cutting highlight reels for CBS, he instead scribbled out a demand for $1,500 and handed it to a te...