The Houston Astros are very sorry for cheating their way to a World Series win, even as their owner bizarrely flip-flopped on whether their cheating changed any games.
Why it matters: The sign-stealing scandal is among the biggest since the steroid era, spilling over into other clubs and giving MLB some nasty publicity.
A 31-year-old Portuguese hacker named Rui Pinto from 2015 to 2019 leaked a series of anonymous documents that exposed corruption in European soccer, pulling back the curtain on the murky world of soccer finance and resulting in criminal prosecutions of several top players.
Driving the news: Turns out the enormous trove of data that Pinto obtained held a much bigger secret, revealing how Isabel dos Santos, Africa's richest woman and the daughter of Angola's former president, exploited her country's wealth to amass a $2 billion fortune.
100 years ago Thursday, the Negro National League was founded by former pitcher and executive Rube Foster.
Why it matters: The NNL became the first Negro league to achieve stability and last more than one season. It "proved that African American players could play on even terms with their white counterparts — and draw just as much interest from baseball fans," per the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
By the numbers: Basketball shoe sales currently represent less than 5% of the athletic shoe market, a huge drop from their 13% market share in 2014, per research firm NPD.
The average NBA franchise is now valued at $2.12 billion, per Forbes — a figure that has grown 476% in the past decade.
Why it matters: Thanks to the NBA's international growth and the $24 billion TV deal it signed with ESPN and Turner in 2014, team values have grown at a much faster rate than the other three major U.S. sports leagues.
NCAA president Mark Emmert and four other witnesses testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee yesterday, as the issue of student-athletes profiting off their name, image and likeness (NIL) took center stage in the nation's capital.
"Sports is something that cuts across party lines, it cuts across geography and it's so ingrained in our culture. Everyone wants to see that if nothing else in our country works, they want to see our sports work."
