Four Division Series, four elimination games, one day

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🚨 Headlines

🏒 NHL Opening Night: The Panthers beat the Blackhawks, 3-2, after raising their second straight Stanley Cup banner; Nathan MacKinnon became the leading scorer in Avalanche history in a 4-1 win over the Kings; the Penguins blanked the Rangers, 3-0, to spoil former head coach Mike Sullivan's debut in New York.

🏈 Flacco to the Bengals: With Joe Burrow out until at least December and Jake Browning proving to be an inadequate replacement, the Bengals (2-3) traded for Browns QB Joe Flacco in hopes of saving their season.

🏀 LeBron's "Second Decision": LeBron James' cryptic tease about making the "decision of all decisions" (which many speculated would involve his retirement) turned out to be nothing more than a liquor ad. Extremely cringe on his part.

👊 McGregor suspended: The UFC suspended Connor McGregor for 18 months after he violated the whereabouts policy under its anti-doping program. With his suspension retroactive to his last missed test, the 37-year-old won't be eligible to return to competition until March 2026.

🏀 Tatum's new role: While Jayson Tatum spends the upcoming season rehabbing his ruptured Achilles, the Celtics star will also serve as Duke's Chief Basketball Officer, acting as a consultant to his alma mater in a role created specifically for him.

⚾️ Win or go home

Cherish today, baseball fans. After six months of jam-packed MLB schedules, this is the last day all year with more than two games. All four division series will be played back-to-back-to-back-to-back starting in the mid-afternoon — and all four are elimination games.

Mariners at Tigers | 3pm ET, FS1

Seattle put Detroit on the ropes with Tuesday's 8-4 victory, taking a 2-1 series lead to move within a win of their first trip to the ALCS since 2001. Tigers righty Casey Mize, an All-Star who led the team with 14 wins this season, takes the bump with the season on the line.

Right place, right time: MVP candidate Cal Raleigh hit his first homer of the postseason, and 61st of the year, to a fan wearing a custom "Dump 61 Here" shirt in a nod to Raleigh's "Big Dumper" nickname. Some things are just meant to be.

Brewers at Cubs | 5pm, TBS

Milwaukee has more than looked the part of baseball's best team so far in these playoffs, taking a 2-0 lead over Chicago with an aggregate score of 16-6. Can the Cubs scratch out a win at home tonight, or will their first postseason appearance in five years end in an NLDS sweep?

21-year-old phenom: Is Jackson Chourio having the best start to a playoff career ever? In five games including last year, he's 10-for-18 (.556) with more home runs (3) than strikeouts (2). Against the Cubs, he’s 5-for-7 with a double, a homer and six RBIs.

Blue Jays at Yankees | 7pm, FS1

New York staved off elimination with Tuesday's comeback 9-6 victory, but must win again tonight to send the series back to Toronto. Can rookie hurler Cam Schlittler deliver another magical performance after last week's historic outing against Boston?

All Rise: Aaron Judge, now batting a cool .500 through six playoff games, came up clutch yet again with a game-tying 3-run homer on Tuesday night. That was his sixth career postseason home run when facing elimination, tied with David Ortiz for the most in MLB history.

Phillies at Dodgers | 9pm, TBS

The defending champs are 4-0 so far this postseason, including two road wins over the mighty Phillies despite Shohei Ohtani going 1-for-9 with six strikeouts. With a victory tonight at home, they'll reach their seventh NLCS in the past 10 seasons (!!).

Starting pitchers: The Dodgers will hand the ball to Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who has a career postseason ERA of 2.84 in five starts. The Phillies are going with Aaron Nola, who's had a great career for them but was pretty terrible this season (6.01 ERA) and has a career playoff ERA of 4.02 in 10 starts.

🏈 NFL power rankings

The Lions have ridden an NFL-best four-game winning streak to the top of our latest power rankings. But not far behind them are the Buccaneers and Colts — surprising newcomers to the top five.

Up and down:

• Biggest risers: No. 4 Buccaneers (up 5), No. 5 Colts (up 5), No. 6 Broncos (up 5), No. 16 Patriots (up 5)

• Biggest fallers: No. 13 Chargers (down 8), No. 11 Rams (down 7), No. 14 Seahawks (down 6), No. 19 Ravens (down 5), No. 23 Cardinals (down 5)

Dive into the rankings.

🏀 WNBA Finals: By the numbers

The Aces take a 2-0 lead into Phoenix tonight for Game 3 of the WNBA Finals (8pm ET, ESPN), where the Mercury will try to stem the bleeding in the league's first-ever best-of-seven series.

20 and 10

A'ja Wilson put up 21 points and 10 rebounds in Game 1 followed by 28 points and 14 rebounds in Game 2, marking the second time the Aces center has posted consecutive 20-10 games in her WNBA Finals career. No other player in league history has accomplished that even once.

1.9 million viewers

The opening game of this year's Finals drew 1.9 million viewers (and peaked at 2.5 million), making it the most-watched Game 1 since the league's inaugural season. Only that 1997 championship, which was a winner-take-all Game 1, had more people watching.

3-1 at home

The Mercury face an uphill battle against a team that has beaten them five out of six times this year, but they can at least take solace in the fact that they're 3-1 at home this postseason, while the Aces are just 1-2 on the road.

57 bench points

One area where the Aces have a clear advantage is their bench, which has outscored the Mercury's bench, 57-24, through two games. Six-time All-Star Jewell Loyd has been the MVP of that unit, scoring 27 points so far in the Finals.

391 assists

Mercury forward Alyssa Thomas etched her name in the history books on Sunday with the 391st assist of her postseason career, passing Courtney Vandersloot (390) for the most ever. Aces guard Chelsea Gray, with 20 assists in these Finals alone, is right on her tail with 380.

🏈 New-look UFL unveils teams, stadiums

How does spring football plan on getting bigger? By getting smaller.

From Yahoo Sports' Jay Busbee:

For more than 40 years now, visionaries, investors and the occasional future president have attempted to make spring football work in the United States. All have foundered or failed, struggling both to draw fans and to justify their own existence.

Here's the big question that has bedeviled spring football since the USFL first kicked off in 1982: Is this a problem of product or presentation? Is the very idea of spring football flawed, or do its problems lie in the way it's branded, marketed and offered up to the public?

The United Football League believes it's hit on an answer to those questions, and on Tuesday unveiled a range of strategies designed to maximize spring football's strengths (it's football) while minimizing its weaknesses (low attendance relative to NFL games).

Starting in the 2026 season, three new franchises — the Orlando Storm, the Louisville Kings and the Columbus (Ohio) Aviators — will begin play in the eight-team league. They replace the Memphis Showboats, Michigan Panthers and San Antonio Brahmas, which played in the league's first two seasons.

Two other teams, the Dallas Renegades and Houston Gamblers, have rebranded and moved to smaller soccer stadiums. Virtually all of the eight current UFL teams will now play in these smaller, sub-20,000-seat stadiums.

Keep reading.

🏒 NHL trivia

Alex Ovechkin had the top-selling NHL jersey during the 2024-25 season.

Question: Who was No. 2 on that list?

Hint: His initials match his team.

Answer at the bottom.

🏀 NBA on NBC is back

The NBA is back for NBC for the first time since 2002, and we got our first look at the new scorebug during Tuesday's Bulls-Cavaliers game on Peacock. Thoughts?

For reference, here are the old NBA on NBC scorebugs from the 1990s and early 2000s.

Trivia answer: Connor Bedard (Chicago Blackhawks)

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