In a statement released through the university, football players said they supported the decision, in part because “not enough is known about the potential long term effects of contracting” the virus.(The College Football Playoff, the competition that is the most lucrative and prominent of events involving fall sports, will not be affected by the decision.)The wave of news on Wednesday — the Big Ten announced that it intends to begin its football season on Labor Day weekend — comes at a moment when playing college football is increasingly problematic as the landscape within the sport mirrors what is happening nationally, with hot spots emerging and few signs that the pandemic is under control. Cases like this are what prompted a group of Pac-12 players — at least one from every school in the league except the University of Colorado — to threaten Sunday to opt out of the season unless more health and safety measures were put in place, along with other demands.

When a whistle stopped play with four minutes, 27 seconds remaining in the Rangers’ season-ending 4-1 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes on Tuesday night, the TV broadcast cut to a shot of the longtime goaltender Henrik Lundqvist, sitting on the bench, arms folded, hair perfectly coifed because he had not played. Then the camera pivoted to the Rangers head coach, David Quinn, who, with his team down 0-2 in a best-of-five series, had elected to start the rookie Igor Shesterkin in Game 3 over Lundqvist, who backstopped the first two games of the series. Over 15 seasons with the Rangers, Lundqvist set franchise records in wins (449), shutouts (63) and playoff wins (61). But as this season progressed, and before the coronavirus pandemic shut down the regular season in March, Shesterkin, a 24-year-old Russian rookie, at times overshadowed the veteran Lundqvist.

EDMONTON, Alberta — It is said that hockey is the heartbeat of Alberta’s capital city. But Edmonton, a city of just fewer than a million people, persisted and the dogged effort paid off in early July when the league instead selected it and Toronto as the sites for postseason play.“We’ve had a great staff doing a ton of work,” said Bob Nicholson, the Edmonton Oilers’ chairman. On Saturday, 12 Western Conference teams will begin the qualifying round and round-robin seeding tournament at Rogers Place, the four-year-old arena that sits at the center of the city’s Ice District, a $2.5 billion (CAN) mixed-use sports and entertainment zone.

Legendary England all-rounder Ian Botham has been made a member of the House of Lords of the British Parliament. The 64-year-old Botham, a former captain, was among 36 new peers announced by the government to join the unelected House. He is the first cricketer to be awarded a peerage since former England women’s team captain Rachael Heyhoe-Flint in 2011. Botham’s most famous moment on the cricket field came in 1981 when he inspired England to a sensational win over Australia in the Ashes.

The National Hockey League and its players’ union announced on Monday that the two groups agreed on a four-year extension to the current collective bargaining agreement, a pivotal decision that paves the way for hockey to resume play amid the coronavirus pandemic. The start of formal training camps is slated for July 13, with teams traveling to two hub cities starting July 26. players will participate after not playing in 2018, pending an agreement with the International Olympic Committee — and through a period of uncertainty until salary cap numbers and escrow percentages can be more definitively planned. The league reportedly selected Edmonton and Toronto as the two so-called hub cities that will host its proposed return to play, but is awaiting approval from the players’ union.

Rafael Nadal, the 19 Grand Slams winner and a lifelong Madridista, congratulated Real Madrid after the La Liga club won its 34th domestic title. After Real Madrid clinched the title with a win over Villarreal on Thursday with one game to spare, Nadal spoke to Real Madrid TV on Saturday to express his joy. Nadal said how sad it was that the title victory could not be celebrated with the fans. Hopefully we can celebrate the joys with our people in a short time,” said Nadal.

Lewis Hamilton won the Hungarian Grand Prix for the eighth time to equal Michael Schumacher’s single-venue record and take the championship lead on Sunday. Hamilton’s latest victory from pole position was as comfortable as the nearly 9-second margin over second-place Max Verstappen suggested. Hamilton first won here in 2007 and his first success with Mercedes also came at the Hungaroring track in 2013, the year after replacing Schumacher on the Silver Arrows team. Hamilton took a record-extending 90th career pole on Saturday to match Schumacher’s record for seven poles on the 4.4-kilometer (2.7-mile) track nestled among rolling hills outside of Budapest.

It’s how, on Tuesday, I — accidentally — pierced the carefully crafted bubble the European PGA Tour had created to facilitate a six-stop swing in Britain as part of its remade 2020 season. It turns out that the European Tour’s health and safety procedures — a testing-heavy regimen described by the former world No.1 Lee Westwood as “military style, almost” — were nearly sabotaged by a third-party online travel website, which processed my prepaid booking for a two-night stay at the tour’s so-called bubble hotel in northeast England. The European tour believed it had sealed off the hotel, which is a pitch shot from the Newcastle International Airport and a short drive to Close House golf club, the site of this week’s British Masters.

WASHINGTON — An hour before Dr. Anthony S. Fauci threw the first pitch at the season opener between the New York Yankees and the Washington Nationals, President Trump stood on the briefing room stage at the White House and declared that he, too, had been invited to throw out his own opening pitch.“Randy Levine is a great friend of mine from the Yankees,” Mr. Trump, referring to the president of the baseball team, told reporters on Thursday as Dr. Fauci was preparing to take the mound. There was one problem: Mr. Trump had not actually been invited on that day by the Yankees, according to one person with knowledge of Mr. Trump’s schedule. But Mr. Trump had been so annoyed by Dr. Fauci’s turn in the limelight, an official familiar with his reaction said, that he had directed his aides to call Yankees officials and make good on a longtime standing offer from Mr. Levine to throw out an opening pitch.

Young Indian tennis player Sumit Nagal is set to compete in his second Grand Slam main draw after receiving a direct entry into the US Open, which several top players will miss due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It will be Nagal’s second appearance at the US Open, starting August 31, and he is the only Indian in the men’s field with Prajnesh Gunneswaran, ranked 132, missing out. Last year, Nagal reached his maiden Grand Slam at the US Open after winning all his qualifying round matches to set up a dream encounter with the legendary Roger Federer. Talking about this year, Nagal said,” I don’t have much expectations, I just want to go and do what I enjoy which is playing tennis.”

Defending champion Marc Marquez of Honda made two mistakes in the race, with the second leading to a crash at turn four that ended his race with four laps to go. From his pole position Quartararo had a poor start and dropped to fourth in the first lap as Vinales took the lead, with Pramac Ducati’s Jack Miller also looking for a podium finish. There was drama at turn four when Marquez lost control of his front, going off the track and into the gravel, but the defending world champion managed to regain control of the bike to rejoin the race in 18th place. Vinales, who had started with a soft front tyre, was struggling with 17 laps to go and went wide, dropping to third, while Quartararo took advantage to move back into the lead with Miller in second.

Seattle’s expansion National Hockey League team will be known as the Kraken.“We have not defined what the kraken looks like, but you know it’s there from the eye,” said Jay Deutsch, a co-owner of the team, in a telephone interview.“The kraken is watching.”A kraken is a legendary sea monster of Norse mythology.

SAN FRANCISCO — Had President Warren G. Harding not been bedridden in those midsummer days of 1923, he might have left his eighth-floor suite at the Palace Hotel and headed to the southwestern edge of the city, where a new golf course named Lake Merced Golf Links was under construction. He had played golf only days before, in Vancouver, British Columbia. But Harding never left the Palace Hotel alive again.“Most historians rank Harding as the worst of all American presidents,” according to the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, a nonpartisan think tank devoted to presidential history.

Eddie Shack, a colorful, pugnacious wing who became a fan favorite at Maple Leaf Gardens playing for Toronto’s four Stanley Cup championship teams of the 1960s, and who remained in the public eye as a pitchman on Canadian television sporting a cowboy hat and flowing mustache, died on Saturday in Toronto. Shack’s death, at a hospital, was announced by the Maple Leafs. He scored the winning goal for Toronto in Game 5 of the 1963 Stanley Cup finals against Detroit, though he took no credit, saying the puck had caromed into the Red Wings’ net off his backside.“He was a powerful skater,” Darryl Sittler, the captain of the Maple Leafs in Shack’s last season with them, told The Peterborough Examiner of Ontario.