Vanderbilt University's Sarah Fuller became the first woman to play in a Power 5 conference football game on Saturday when she kicked off to open the second half in her team's game against the University of Missouri.
The big picture: Vanderbilt recently recruited Fuller — who plays goaltender on the school's women's soccer team — as a kicker after some of the school's players had to quarantine due to COVID-19 contact tracing, according to the school.
Driving the news: The move comes "in response to the continuous increase in positivity rates throughout the country” and because “a number of players and staff celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday with out-of-town guests," NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a memo late on Friday, per the NFL Network's Tom Pelissero.
The NFL has once again postponed a Baltimore Ravens-Pittsburgh Steelers matchup originally scheduled for primetime on Thanksgiving day due to a COVID-19 outbreak.
Why it matters: It's the first time the league has had to scrap a game since October, as the U.S. copes with another surge in coronavirus infections heading into the holidays.
It seems hard to believe that 238 days from now — on July 23 — the Summer Olympics will open in Tokyo. But that's still the plan, after the games were postponed a year because of the pandemic.
Driving the news: The Tokyo organizing committee on Friday announced a series of 18 test events (some for operations), to begin in March and run into May, AP reports.
