The NFL announced Monday that it will hold its 2020 draft next month as scheduled, but will cancel the planned public events in Las Vegas due to the coronavirus outbreak.
The big picture: The league said the selection process will still be televised, adding that it is exploring "innovative options" for conducting the draft in such a climate.
After months of negotiations, a narrow majority of players voted to approve a new 10-year labor deal that will shape the NFL over the next decade.
Why it matters: The new collective bargaining agreement will allow the NFL to expand its regular season from 16 to 17 games as early as 2021 and expand the playoff field from 12 to 14 teams starting this season.
Max Goren, an 18-year-old sports management major at N.C. State, kept up the March Madness "One Shining Moment" tradition by splicing together highlights of the college basketball season before it abruptly ended. Watch it here.
What he's saying: Max told us by email that he used only YouTube and iMovie editing software: "[G]iven that I'm on an extended spring break ... with no sports to watch, ... I have a lot of spare time!"
UFC held a fight on Saturday night in an empty arena in Brazil, becoming one of the few major professional sports leagues to continue live events in the wake of the World Health Organization declaring the coronavirus a pandemic.
Why it matters: “We’re not stopping,” UFC president Dana White said on ESPN. "We will keep finding a way to put on the fights. I’m in the fight business. I’ve been doing this for over 20 years, and this stuff happens to me every weekend — obviously not at this level.”
Dallas Mavericks ownerand "Shark Tank" star Mark Cuban, who quickly announced that he'd pay workers "as if the games happened" during the NBA shutdown, spoke with Axios by email yesterday.
The big picture: The cancellation of sports due to the coronavirus — the NBA, March Madness, MLB spring training and more — is what has hit some Americans the hardest, serving as a reality check as to just how serious this situation is.
