Sports

7:50 AM ET Mike CoppingerESPN The first two months of the 2022 boxing schedule featured returns for several notable fighters — Keith Thurman and Daniel Jacobs among them — but lacked marquee matchups. The next two months on the calendar are when boxing truly begins to heat up with some of the biggest names in

7:25 AM ET It’s almost wrong to refer to the time period between the Super Bowl and training camp as the NFL offseason. Packed with tentpole events designed to keep fans interested for the next five months, it’s more accurate to call it the NFL’s second season. The spring of 2022 will be just as

6:55 AM ET We’re more than halfway through the third straight pandemic-affected NHL season — but it finally feels like we’re tracking toward normalcy. We have (mostly) full arenas again, and a (mostly) typical 82-game schedule — save for those few weeks in December where a flurry of postponements threatened to wreak havoc on everything.

9:55 AM ET Jeff PassanESPN Close ESPN MLB insiderAuthor of “The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports” TAMPA, Fla. — The most important day in baseball’s attempt to salvage its season arrives Saturday. Major League Baseball plans to make a proposal it hopes will defibrillate negotiations on a new

4:30 PM ET After a week of rampant speculation about Bryan Harsin’s future at Auburn and an internal inquiry into his handling of the football program, Harsin remains the head coach of the Tigers. On Friday, the school announced that Harsin will return for his second season at the helm. “My most recent conversations with

5:24 PM ET ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Christian Pulisic is the youngest United States men’s national team player ever to appear in a World Cup qualifier, score a goal and captain the team. His transfer in 2019 from Borussia Dortmund to Chelsea was the most ever paid (a reported £58 million fee) for

1:14 PM ET Associated Press ARCADIA, Calif. — A necropsy on 2021 Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit showed no definitive cause of death. The California Horse Racing Board on Friday released the results of the examination performed after the colt collapsed and died following a workout on Dec. 6 at Santa Anita. Trainer Bob Baffert

12:12 PM GMT Maro Itoje has been moved to blindside flank as England coach Eddie Jones made a number of changes to his side to face Italy in the Six Nations Championship at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome on Sunday. England lost their competition opener 20-17 in Scotland last weekend, but will be expected to

10:11 AM ET Associated Press CHARLOTTE, N.C. — NASCAR’s top drivers have once again unified to form an independent council to gain a collective voice in decisions that affect the sport. The Drivers Advisory Council, announced Friday, is a more organized effort than a previous attempt to unify in 2014. A board of directors has

10:56 PM ET The UFC’s first Fight Night card on the road since 2020 has its new main event. Curtis Blaydes will meet Chris Daukaus in the heavyweight contender headliner of UFC Columbus on March 26 in Ohio, sources confirmed Thursday with ESPN. MMA journalist Ariel Helwani was the first to report the news. ESPN

1:57 PM ET Mike CoppingerESPN Canelo Alvarez and Gennadiy Golovkin, at long last, are on the verge of a trilogy fight. Canelo and Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing are closing in on a two-fight deal worth upward of $85 million for boxing’s top star to compete on DAZN, sources told ESPN. The first fight of the

7:05 AM ET SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — It’s one of the most iconic shots in PGA Tour history, not as much for the feat itself but for the celebration that ensued. After Tiger Woods‘ hole-in-one on the par-3 16th hole on the Saturday of the 1997 Phoenix Open, there were the missed high-fives, beer showering the

3:42 AM ET LOS ANGELES — A troubling loss to the defending champion Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday night led to an uneasy admission within the Los Angeles Lakers‘ locker room: The roster is not working, and something must be done to get the team back on course with Thursday’s trade deadline fast approaching. The suspicion

3:56 PM ET HOUSTON — During Lovie Smith’s introductory news conference as the Houston Texans‘ new head coach, general manager Nick Caserio said the lawsuit by Brian Flores had no effect on the team’s search. “There were conversations with Brian after [the lawsuit] took place, so it really didn’t affect our process at all,” Caserio

8:04 AM ET The NHL’s journey with the city of Las Vegas has been a fascinating one. In a span of five years, we’ve gone from the league discouraging its new expansion team from adopting a name associated with gambling to having NHL players shooting pucks at playing cards on The Strip in a blackjack-inspired

7:00 AM ET ESPN staff Recently our college football reporters examined the biggest strength for every team in our 2022 Way-Too-Early top 25, breaking down what makes the best teams so good. Now we’ll turn the tables and look at each team’s biggest question mark. What could keep them from reaching their preseason aspirations? What

7:00 AM ET Inner-circle Hall of Famers. The best player in the game today. A couple of PED-tainted superstars. Our ranking of the 100 greatest MLB players of all time comes down to the top 25. Dozens of ESPN writers and editors submitted more than 20,000 votes (see full methodology here) to determine the final

1:38 PM ET Rob DawsonCorrespondent MANCHESTER, England — Manchester City don’t do cup upsets. Not recently, anyway. And so, while Manchester United were dumped out of the FA Cup by Middlesbrough and both Chelsea and West Ham were made to struggle past Plymouth Argyle and Kidderminster Harriers, Pep Guardiola’s team allowed Fulham to dream for

1:38 PM ET Two title fights are now official for UFC 273. Alexander Volkanovski will defend his UFC featherweight title against Chan Sung Jung, “The Korean Zombie,” in the main event of the pay-per-view card April 9 in Jacksonville, Florida, UFC chief business officer Hunter Campbell confirmed to ESPN on Friday. The co-main event will

7:31 AM ET “The Colosseum. Oh, you should see the Colosseum, Spaniard. Fifty-thousand Romans. Watching every movement of your sword. Willing you to make that killer blow. The silence before you strike. And the noise afterwards. It rises. It rises up like … like a storm. As if you were the thunder god himself.” —