There are a lot of positions on the Minnesota Vikings roster that still need some attention, and despite Aaron Jones being confirmed to return for the 2026 season. Running back should still be high on the list of Vikings draft priorities as we head towards April.

Aaron Jones looked to be heading the same way as the likes of Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave. News even broke of Jones’ impending release at the same time as Hargrave’s future was reported. Unlike Hargrave, the Vikings and Jones thrashed out an agreement that allowed Minnesota to get the salary cap relief it desired while Jones remained a Viking.

Minnesota’s Backfield Still Lacks a Long-Term Answer

Jones is a big personality and leader on this team, and with Minnesota already losing some players that fit that mold this offseason, like Harrison Smith and CJ Ham, keeping Jones around is a sensible move.

That leaves the Vikings with Jordan Mason and Zavier Scott on the depth chart alongside Jones – basically the same as last year, minus the departed Ty Chandler. It leaves the Vikings without the desperate need to find an RB immediately, but Jones will be 33 and a free agent next year, while Mason will also hit free agency.

It puts the team in a good position to use this Vikings draft to find an RB who can come in without the immediate pressure to lead the backfield. Jones and Mason should share the major workload this season, and a rookie trying to force his way into a share of that workload is exactly the kind of healthy competition you want.

The Top RB Options in This Year’s Draft

Jeremiyah Love is the top RB prospect and the only one expected to be drafted in the first round. Love is expected to go high, probably too high for the Vikings at 18, but if he does get in reach, he would give Minnesota a decision to make. I’m not expecting that to happen, so that leaves this Vikings draft looking at the Day 2 RB prospects.

My favorite prospect is Love’s Notre Dame teammate Jadarian Price. He has lots of talent, but has been in the shadow of Love, meaning he hasn’t had as much opportunity as you’d like. Price has a great blend of vision, spatial instincts, foot speed, smooth fluidity, and is an explosive vertical threat. Arkansas Mike Washington Jr is a very different type of back, a big-bodied (6’1 “, 225 lbs) one-cut, north and south runner.

Other options on Day 2 are Nebraska’s Emmett Johnson, who would be a popular choice given his Minnesota roots. Johnson, a well-leveraged creator at 5’11”, 200 pounds, sets himself apart with his blistering foot speed, cutting flexibility, vision, and explosiveness out of cuts.

Jonah Coleman had an excellent college career across stints with Arizona and Washington, but a dip in performance came at the wrong time for his draft stock. He had a lot of success as a pass catcher, which should interest the Vikings.

Day 3 Options to Fall Back On

If, for whatever reason, the Vikings don’t get an RB on Day 2, it’s not a complete disaster. There are still some good players who could potentially be on the board. The problem is that Minnesota doesn’t have a pick on Day 3 until deep into the fifth round, which means a move for someone like Kaytron Allen, Demond Claiborne, or Kaelon Black could require trading up.

The Vikings could wait until the fifth round or later and take a swing on someone like Adam Randall, a former WR-turned-RB who would be an interesting developmental project. Other names to look out for in the later rounds include Nicholas Singleton, Roman Hemby, and Robert Henry Jr.

The Vikings will almost certainly take an RB at some point in the draft; it’s just a question of where and with which of their nine draft picks. Day 2 looks like the sweet spot to me.

Proud UK Viking. Family Man. Enjoy writing about my team. Away from football an advocate for autism acceptance.

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Antoine Griezmann and Mohamed Salah are set to leave Europe. OL Lyonnes lost the first leg of their Women’s Champions League quarter-final. In tennis, Arthur Fils reached the quarter-finals in Miami, unlike Térence Atmane. Finally, Denmark’s Magnus Cort Nielsen has won the second stage of Volta a Catalunya.

England men’s cricket director Rob Key has responded to recent criticism from all-rounder Liam Livingstone, saying the player remains firmly in contention for national selection despite a disagreement over communication and team environment. Livingstone, who has been out of the England setup since last year’s ICC Champions Trophy, had criticised the team management for avoiding difficult conversations and suggested his future depended on changes behind the scenes. He also claimed that Key had told him he had 100 more important things to do during a one-on-one discussion.

Responding to the remarks, Key defended his position but chose not to go into details of their conversation.

“Look, I’m not going to go into private conversations,” Key told Sky Sports. “Obviously, there’s another side to that conversation as I saw it. What I did say to Liam at the end of what was a fairly tetchy phone call to say the least [was that] there’s no way I see a player of Liam Livingstone’s ability not being up for selection for England,” he told ESPNCricinfo.

Key reiterated that the 32-year-old still has a pathway back into the side and revealed that selectors had considered recalling him earlier this year.

“There’s no way a player of his ability is out of the picture,” Key said, urging Livingstone to focus on performance. “If he gets back to his best and starts scoring runs, he’ll absolutely be in the frame again.”

The former England cricketer also pointed out that Livingstone was once seen as a leadership option during an ODI series against the West Indies in 2024.

“We thought as much of him to make him captain at one stage, when we didn’t have all the senior players there. I still have a huge amount of time for Liam Livingstone, and there’s no reason that someone at 32’s England career should be over,” Key said.

While Livingstone had described the England setup as cliquish, Key dismissed the claim but admitted that disagreements are common in a high-performance environment. He added that selection decisions will continue to be based on performance.

Meanwhile, Livingston has reached India to take part in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026. He was purchased by Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) for 13 crore in the auction.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

The collective bargaining agreement (CBA) of the women’s national basketball association (WNBA) in the United States is a seismic moment in sports history.

The deal, agreed in mid-March 2026 after 17 months of negotiations, reportedly includes a salary cap increase, significantly higher minimum salaries, revenue sharing, and charter flights. It is considered a huge step in the right direction for player empowerment and league growth.

More than that, though, it is the headline of a wider movement in women’s sports that is empowering players to push for better pay, conditions and a greater share of the revenue they help generate.

“This agreement is historic not just for basketball, but for the architecture of women’s professional sport globally,” Popi Sotiriadou told DW.

Sotiriadou, an associate professor at Griffith University in Australia, is an expert in the business of women’s sport. She believes the WNBA deal reflects the commercial maturity of women’s sport, that investing in stars is a precondition for commercial growth, and that there is enormous power in coordinated collective action.

“The structural shift to a revenue-sharing model that directly links player compensation to the commercial growth of the league is amazing. In essence, players are now economic co-owners of the league’s growth trajectory, not salaried employees of a static enterprise,” she said. 

“This shows a formal recognition by a professional women’s league that player value is the primary driver of commercial value. That represents a shift in philosophy, not merely in dollars.”

Women’s football ready to benefit

Women’s football also looks well-placed to benefit from this deal.

“We know women’s football has a solidarity mindset, and that extends beyond football. What the [WNBA’s] CBA does is connect women’s athletes all over the world to recognize their value, to fight for that value,” Alex Culvin, the director of women’s football at the international football players’ union FIFPRO, told DW.

Culvin believes the WNBA has benefited from seizing upon momentum since its inception in 1996. Women’s football is now in the midst of that, and Culvin believes now is the time to make sure plans are in place to strike.

“When we get to 2027, we have a World Cup in Brazil, probably the most iconic place in the world to have a World Cup. The boom is going to be inevitable, so the mindset for everybody around the sport, players, unions, stakeholders is how do we capitalize on it? And I think the WNBA’s CBA has almost shone a light on that before we get to the World Cup. It’s created a seismic shift on value,” Culvin said.

Impacts are already being felt, and they are going to be made too. The deal hands professional women’s football in the US (NWSL, the top league) a perfect opportunity to take the next step.

“The NWSL’s 2026 minimum salary of $50,500 (€43.600) sits against the WNBA’s new floor of $270,000-$300,000. That gap will be very hard for NWSL ownership to defend publicly. With a performance-based reopener built into the current agreement, and a full renegotiation due in 2030, the WNBA deal hands NWSL players a powerful reference point,” Sotiriadou said.

“The WNBA deal demonstrates what organized players and a commercially mature league can achieve together.”

While a global CBA is unlikely in football, both the WNBA’s action and the CBA’s policies can be highly impactful tools for women’s sports moving forward. Shared revenue is the obvious headline, but also improving minimum salaries, covering and improving travel, and protecting players through policies like no-release or -trade clauses during pregnancy can make an enormous difference. Culvin believes even the non-tangible impact of this deal, such as its use as a reference in pitches, should not be underestimated.

“The question for our unions and players who are members of those unions is what is the role of the unions and as custodians of the game to ensure that the revenue that’s generated is fairly distributed. You can obviously be micro and cherry-pick, saying this clause is amazing or this article is amazing. And then you can kind of be macro and ask, ‘What does this say to football as an industry?’” Culvin said.

What happens next?

Billie Jean King, Flor Isava-Fonseca, the Williams sisters, Allyson Felix, Simone Biles, Kathrine Switzer, Megan Rapinoe  the list of people who have changed women’s sports is storied. Each one has moved the needle, and reminded the next generation of what has been done before.

“You’ve got a responsibility to ensure that you maximize that opportunity and push for everything that you’re worth,” Culvin said.

Sotiriadou sees other sports, such as women’s tennis, golf and emerging rugby competitions as possible benefactors of the deal.

“In each case, the WNBA deal now stands as the benchmark: proof that a professional women’s league, at commercial scale, can sustain a revenue-linked pay model,” Sotiriadou said.

For Culvin and FIFPRO, it’s all about creating the conditions to capitalize on the growing wave of momentum in women’s football.

Perhaps most tellingly of all, though, is what this deal tells us. This is certainly about women’s sport being good and smart business, but it is also about the message. The women of the WNBA recognized their value, organized themselves and worked tirelessly to seize on long-developed momentum to get paid what they deserved. The deal is bound to change their sport forever. It will likely be remembered as a watershed moment in all of women’s sports, many of which will be asking the same questions as Culvin.

“It’s about lighting that spark a little bit more,” she said. “We’re here. What got us here won’t get us there. Where do we want to go to next?”

Edited by: Chuck Penfold

There will be 48 teams at the 2026 World Cup, and travel distances will vary depending on group location and knockout pathways.

While Fifa has regionalised some group-stage fixtures to limit coast-to-coast journeys, deep runs into the knockout rounds are likely to generate travel distances well beyond 12,000 miles for some fanbases.

The biggest group-stage travel burden will fall on the Uefa play-off qualifier in Group B, which could be Wales or Northern Ireland. Fans travelling to all three group games – in Toronto, Inglewood and Seattle – face clocking up more than 3,140 miles.

When return flights from the competing country are included, South Africa fans face the largest travel burden – both for the group stage and an admittedly unlikely run to the final:

The associated emissions for those flights are 4.7 tonnes CO2e per fan for the group stage, rising to as much as 5.9 tonnes CO2e per fan in the group-runner-up-to-final scenario.

The average South African’s expected CO2 emission for a whole year is 5.8 tonnes CO2e, according to the International Energy Agency.

The seeded team with the greatest projected travel burden for fans is Germany:

At the other end of the scale, France’s group travel – excluding international flights – is estimated at just 370 miles, and train travel is possible between two of their host cities.

Tiger Woods says he is “trying to play” in next month’s Masters after returning to action for the first time in more than a year as his team lost in the final round of the TGL season.

The 50-year-old, who has had a series of operations in the last two years, had been sidelined since having an operation in October to replace a disc in his back.

Woods’ previous appearance was also in TGL – an indoor team league his company co-founded – in February 2025.

His Jupiter Links team lost 9-2 against Los Angeles Golf Club in his return to competitive action.

The 15-time major-winner looked in good physical shape as he hit a couple of drives more than 300 yards and he said playing in the Masters will depend on how his body recovers.

The tournament, which Woods has won five times, begins on 9 April at Augusta National.

“I’ve been trying, this body doesn’t recover like it did when I was 24, 25,” said Woods.

“It doesn’t mean I’m not trying; I’ve been trying for a while. I’ve had a couple of bad injuries last year that I’ve had to fight through and has taken some time. I keep trying – I want to play.

“I’ve loved the Masters tournament, I’ve loved being there since I was 19 years old, so it’s meant a lot to me and my family over the years and I’m going to be there either way.”

Woods has held a non-playing role with Jupiter Links GC throughout the 2026 TGL season, the PGA Tour-backed league that uses a huge screen in a purpose-built venue in Florida.

Woods’ side beat Rory McIlroy’s Boston Common in last week’s semi-final to set up a meeting with Los Angeles in the best-of-three final.

Los Angeles, featuring England’s Justin Rose and Tommy Fleetwood, won the opening match, before Woods replaced Kevin Kisner for Tuesday’s season finale.

Jupiter Links, which also has Max Homa and Tom Kim in the team, went 2-0 up in the second game of the finals but Woods missed a three-foot putt on the seventh hole and the momentum switched to Los Angeles.

They made three eagles in a row before Jupiter conceded the match and the tournament on the 10th hole.

“It was fine physically,” added Woods.

“We got our ass kicked at the end. Three eagles in a row, we didn’t respond. I missed a short one to kind of get it started and give them momentum and we never got it back.”

Moses Itauma v Jermaine Franklin, Deontay Wilder v Derek Chisora and Fabio Wardley v Daniel Dubois will all be broadcast live on BBC Radio 5 Live and BBC Sounds.

Itauma’s fight with Franklin on Saturday in Manchester will kick off the heavyweight streak on BBC Radio 5 Live.

Wilder and Chisora collide in London on 4 April before Wardley defends his WBO heavyweight world title against Dubois on 9 May in Manchester.

There will be live text commentary of each fight night on the BBC Sport website and app, with video highlights available the next day.

Itauma defends his unbeaten and electric start to his professional career at Co-op Live arena as he takes on experienced operator Franklin.

The American has just two defeats on his record – to Dillian Whyte and Anthony Joshua – and comes into the contest off the back of a big upset win over Ivan Dychko in September.

Wilder v Chisora at the O2 Arena is part of a packed weekend of boxing action on the BBC, with Lauren Price defending her welterweight world titles against Stephanie Pineiro in Wales on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer.

The main events for both fight nights will not clash, and you will be able to follow all the action from both events on the BBC Sport website and app.

Wilder and Chisora are both fighting in their 50th bout and, despite promising to retire before, Chisora has insisted he will hang up his gloves whether he wins or loses.

Wardley and Dubois bring an all-British world title fight to Manchester’s Co-op Live arena.

Londoner Dubois is aiming to become a two-time heavyweight world champion while Ipswich’s Wardley remains unbeaten in 21 bouts.

France’s elite endurance event has earned ‘win and you’re in’ status for the prestigious Australian showpiece, the Melbourne Cup.

The Group 2 Prix Kergorlay over 3000m aligns with America’s Belmont Gold Cup and the Ebor Handicap as qualifiers exempting winners from the ballot for the Melbourne Cup (3200m) on Flemington’s first Tuesday of November.

Historically, the Prix Kergorlay has been an excellent guide to prospective Melbourne Cup winners.

Americain dominated both races in 2010, Dunaden lined up in the Prix Kergorlay in 2011 before conquering the Melbourne Cup.

Protectionist, trained in Germany, followed suit by winning the pair in 2014.

Victoria Racing Club Chief Executive Kylie Rogers highlighted the France Galop tie-up as a nod to two of racing’s greatest countries.

“France has a storied history and connection with the Melbourne Cup, and we are delighted to formalise our partnership with France Galop by introducing the Prix Kergorlay as a Golden Ticket race,” Rogers said in a statement.

“The Melbourne Cup attracts the best stayers from across the world, and this new partnership both incentivises and ensures that the strongest international contenders are competing on the first Tuesday in November.

“We look forward to building on this partnership and the long-shared bond between our two racing nations.”

Saturday’s Flemington card launches the quest for Melbourne Cup berths, with the Roy Higgins (2600m) providing exemption to its champion.

Victorian ‘win and you’re in’ fixtures also feature the Andrew Ramsden (2800m), Bart Cummings (2500m), Archer Stakes (2500m) all hosted at Flemington, together with Caulfield Cup (2400m), Moonee Valley Gold Cup, Geelong Cup, and Cox Plate (2040m).

Find competitive racing betting markets ahead of the Melbourne Cup on top betting sites.

Michael Carrick has lost just one of his 10 games in charge at Man Utd and there is a reason he is now the odds-on favourite to get the job permanently.

What started out in January as a long list of potential Manchester United head coaches for next season should have shrunk considerably over the previous three months, thanks to the man currently sitting in the hot seat.

Michael Carrick’s run of 23 points from a possible 30, with just one defeat in his 10 games in charge, has significantly strengthened his own candidacy to the extent that it should have ruled plenty of others out.

When Carrick was handed the reins until the end of the season just over two months ago, there were numerous potential targets and several current Premier League bosses in the frame.

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Now, it feels like Carrick has seen off those potential challengers. Oliver Glasner remains second or third favourite with most bookmakers, but his time at Crystal Palace isn’t ending particularly positively. He has already been beaten by Carrick, and his back-three system is an obvious sticking point.

So impressive has Carrick’s reign been, featuring wins over potential rivals for the job in Glasner, Marco Silva and Unai Emery and a draw with Andoni Iraola, that it’s difficult to see the sense in promoting someone from a mid-ranking Premier League club now.

Thomas Frank’s experiences at Tottenham show how difficult it is to make the leap from an upwardly mobile but ultimately under-the-radar club to one of the league’s supposed elite. At least Carrick has shown he can deal with the Old Trafford pressures, has the players on his side and can get results.

That counts for an awful lot when there are so many unknowns about other potential candidates, such as Glasner and Iraola, or even Gareth Southgate, who somehow still features highly in the betting.

Carrick has stabilised United and has them on course for a return to the Champions League. His approach to the job has delivered a sense of calm to Old Trafford that has been absent for an awful long time and that will count for a lot among the club’s executives.

Old Trafford insiders continue to insist that the process to recruit a new head coach will be a thorough one and that there is no rush to make a decision. Although United have only seven games remaining, there is plenty of time left in the season and there isn’t likely to be an early coronation of the kind bestowed on Ole Gunnar Solskjaer seven years ago.

United have been impressed with the work Carrick has done. While there is no guarantee he will get the job, it now feels like it’s either Carrick or one of the very few elite managers the club might be able to attract to Old Trafford.

Top of that list will be Luis Enrique, the Paris St-Germain boss who has a glittering CV and an attractive style of play. He has previously expressed an interest in working in the Premier League and speaks excellent English. The question is whether the rebuilding project at United would be attractive enough to Enrique, whose PSG side look to be coming to the boil at the perfect time again this season.

Another ‘elite-level’ contender is Julian Nagelsmann. He is leading Germany into the World Cup this summer and has a contract with the German Football Association that runs until 2028, which would make it a difficult appointment, but he has a long-standing relationship with the director of recruitment, Christopher Vivell, and experience managing a super club in Bayern Munich.

For many, the choice of head coach is now down to these three. There could be more twists and turns to come, but with every passing week, Carrick is doing his bit to rule others out.