Sports

8:30 AM ET The NHL’s 2021-22 season hit the quarter mark last weekend. While that means we have a long way to go, it also means we have some insight into which teams are thriving, which teams are spiraling and which teams have just left us baffled. Here are the Stanley Cup contender tiers —

12:05 AM ET Jeff PassanESPN Close ESPN MLB insiderAuthor of “The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports” IRVING, Texas — Major League Baseball locked out its players early Thursday morning, certifying the game’s first work stoppage in more than a quarter-century after months of talks yielded little progress toward

For the sixth consecutive year, ESPN presents its annual ranking of the best men’s players and coaches in world soccer! Welcome to FC 100. As always, rankings are broken down into Top 10 lists for positions, plus a countdown of managers, in order to present the most meaningful look at talent on the pitch and

2:26 PM ET Tiger Woods offered hope of a return but also a sobering assessment of his situation in his first interviews since a serious car crash in February. Speaking at his first news conference Tuesday, a day after a lengthy video conversation with Golf Digest was released, Woods expressed gratitude for being alive and

11:45 AM GMT Munster have nine new COVID-19 cases in their camp in South Africa, the Irish rugby team said on Tuesday, taking the total count to 10. Both staff and players have tested positive and will quarantine in a hotel in Cape Town, joining the first player who returned a positive test on Sunday.

7:44 AM ET By the time fighters in Bellator and UFC return to their respective cages, on Friday and Saturday, the calendar will have flipped over to December. Although there are only a month’s worth of fights remaining in 2021, there’s still a lot left to be sorted out for both promotions. A lot of

2:27 AM ET Mike CoppingerESPN NEW YORK – Teofimo Lopez was on top of the world. With the win over Vasiliy Lomachenko in December 2020, Lopez was instantly and universally recognized as one of the 10 best pound-for-pound boxers in the world. With a big personality on top of his success, Lopez was on the

3:53 PM ET Houston Rockets guard John Wall has expressed his hopes to the organization that he can resume playing for the team in the near future, sources tell ESPN. Wall and the Rockets had agreed on him sitting out until a trade could be found, but the five-time All-Star guard talked to Houston general

7:00 AM ET ESPN staff The Week 12 NFL schedule for the 2021 season is stacked with great matchups, and we got you covered with what you need to know heading into the weekend. Our NFL Nation reporters bring us the biggest keys to every game, a bold prediction for each matchup and, of course,

6:15 PM ET SMU coach Sonny Dykes will be the new head coach at TCU, sources confirmed to ESPN. Dykes, 51, is 30-17 in four seasons at SMU, including 25-9 in the past three seasons. In 2019, Dykes led SMU to a 10-2 season, becoming the first Mustangs coach to win 10 games in a

2:11 PM ET After months of feuding, trading jobs during interviews and on social media, then seemingly making up at the Ryder Cup — there was even a bro hug! — until that unraveled earlier this week, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka are finally taking this rivalry to the golf course. Today, in the latest

10:25 AM ET We have just a few weeks of exciting hot stove action while the cold reality of a likely work stoppage lurks. We’ve seen a few years of smaller labor skirmishes that have undercut joyful moments with financial truths. (It’s his big league debut! Ugh, but they manipulated his service time?) But this

7:00 AM ET As we approach American Thanksgiving weekend — and a triple-header of matchups on ABC, ESPN+ and Hulu — we’ve also traversed another week of the 2021-22 NHL schedule. And for the second straight week, we’ve got a new No. 1 team atop the ESPN NHL Power Rankings. Moreover, now that teams are

4:41 PM ET Rob DawsonCorrespondent VILLARREAL, Spain — The Manchester United-owning Glazer family, as well as executive vice-president Ed Woodward and director Richard Arnold, will no doubt celebrate the team’s 2-0 win over Villarreal to reach the knockout rounds of the Champions League as Group F winners, but they don’t deserve to. By botching the

10:52 AM GMT Kevin Sinfield, the former captain of Super League side Leeds Rhinos, returned to the Headingley ground on Tuesday to reach the finish line of a gruelling 101-mile run, within 24 hours, from Leicester to raise money for the motor neurone disease charity, MND Association. Sinfield has completed a number of remarkable challenges

8:00 AM ET Four months removed from a devastating leg injury against Dustin Poirier at UFC 264, Conor McGregor has begun his public campaign to line up his next opponent inside the Octagon. Unlike previous efforts, however, this latest push has been broader in scope. As he sat injured in the cage back in July,

8:47 AM ET LAS VEGAS — Shawn Porter’s final moments in the ring showed why he had to walk away. Following his second knockdown in the 10th round of Saturday’s WBO welterweight championship fight against Terence Crawford, Porter scowled and repeatedly smacked the canvas with his gloves as referee Celestino Ruiz issued an 8-count. With

5:36 PM ET Associated Press NAPLES, Fla. — The stakes were high and the odds would have seemed long to anyone but Jin Young Ko. Her only chance at LPGA player of the year was to win the CME Group Tour Championship. In her way was Nelly Korda, the No. 1 player in the world.

10:36 AM ET D’Arcy MaineESPN.com Earlier this month, tennis player Peng Shuai accused Zhang Gaoli, a former high-ranking Chinese government official, of sexual assault. Peng wrote, in a lengthy social media post, that Zhang had forced her to have sex despite repeated refusals. The post was removed within 20 minutes from her verified account on

10:05 PM ET Ole Miss quarterback Matt Corral appears to have already made the decision to turn pro following the season. The junior from California tweeted a lengthy message on Friday night, thanking “Rebel Nation” and calling Saturday’s matchup against Vanderbilt “my final game at The Vaught,” a reference to Ole Miss’ Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. “Thank