Sports · Monday, 7 September 2026

01 Briefing what happened

American football's owners kept their commissioner to 2031. More than 95% of his pay hangs on numbers they choose.

Roger Goodell's fifth extension runs four months past the end of the players' labour deal, so he will negotiate the next one. The clubs he runs are worth ten times what they were in 2006, and most of that came from buyers paying more per dollar of income.

4.7 to 12.7

years of income a buyer pays for an NFL club, 2006 against today

the price of a club rose far faster than the money it takes in [3]

95%+

of Roger Goodell's pay tied to hitting targets

the six owners on the pay committee choose the targets and judge them [2][3]

$299bn

what the NFL's 32 clubs are worth together

they were worth about $29bn when Goodell started in 2006 [3]

2030

the season the players' labour deal runs out

Goodell's new contract runs four months past it, so he leads the talks [1][2]

The lead story — what happened

The NFL's club owners agreed a four-year extension for their commissioner, Roger Goodell, and announced it on Sunday. [1][3]
It runs to 31 March 2031. It is his fifth extension since he took the job in 2006, after deals in 2009, 2012, 2017 and 2023. [1][3]
More than 95% of what he is paid is tied to performance, measured against targets that the owners' own pay committee sets and judges. [2][3]
That committee is six club owners, chaired by Robert Kraft of the New England Patriots. It hired an outside pay consultant and its own lawyers. [2][3]
The number that has moved most under Goodell is what the clubs are worth. The average NFL club was about $900m in 2006 and is $9.34bn now. [3]
Most of that rise is not extra income. Buyers now pay 12.7 times a club's yearly revenue, against 4.7 times in 2006. [3]
Large investing institutions did much of that. They buy sport because it does not rise and fall with the stock market. [3]
League revenue was about $23bn in the year to March 2025, up 8%. Goodell set a $25bn target in 2010, when revenue was around $8bn. [1]
The contract ends four months after the players' labour deal expires at the end of the 2030 season. Goodell will negotiate the next one. [1][2]
An 18-game regular season is one of the things the league has in mind for those talks. [1]
The value of Goodell's own deal was not published. The NFL stopped having to disclose his pay when it gave up its non-profit registration. [3]
The last full public figure was $212.5m across his first ten years. Sportico calculates his total NFL earnings would near $1bn by 2031 at $55m a year. [3]

Who is involved

Roger Goodell

the commissioner of the NFL, the person who runs American football's biggest league; he is 67 and has held the job since 2006 [1]
Robert Kraft

the owner of the New England Patriots; he chairs the six-owner committee that sets the commissioner's pay [2][3]
John Mara, Shad Khan, Jimmy Haslam, Michael Bidwill and Greg Penner

the owners of the Giants, Jaguars, Browns, Cardinals and Broncos; the other five members of that pay committee [2][3]
The NFL Players Association

the union that represents NFL players; its labour deal with the league runs out after the 2030 season [1][2]

How it unfolded

2006 Goodell replaces Paul Tagliabue; the average club is worth about $900m [3]
2010 he sets a target of $25bn in league revenue by 2027, from about $8bn [1]
2023 his fourth extension, due to run out in March 2027 [1]
Sunday the pay committee tells the owners a fifth extension is agreed, to March 2031 [3]
After 2030 the players' labour deal expires and the next one is negotiated [1][2]

Where this points

Watch the labour talks: the league wants an 18-game season, and the man who will argue for it is now fixed in place until four months after the current deal ends. [1][2]

What is pushing on the whole day

The bar and the word are our reading of how hard each one is pushing today. The arrow is where it is heading. The evidence is in the stories below.

Outside money buying clubs High↑

big investing institutions want something that does not follow the stock market [3]

Owners' control of the pay decision High→

six owners set the targets and keep the right to judge them [2][3]

Pressure from the players' union Building↑

the labour deal ends after 2030 and the league wants two extra games a year [1]

Room left in media money Steady→

the current television and streaming contracts already run to the 2032 season [2]

The rest of the day

28 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
Michigan won on a clock nobody else could see

Michigan beat Western Michigan 13-12 after replay officials found one second left and allowed a second last-play throw. The NBC broadcast clock had already reached 0:00. Officials were watching a different clock, filmed by a camera pointed at the scoreboard inside the stadium. Mike Pereira, who used to run officiating in the NFL, said the protocol is to use the pictures everyone sees. The rulebook for college replay does not say which clock wins. Western Michigan's president, a former federal prosecutor, said he looked at the process closely and found nothing unfair in it. [4][5][6]

Why it matters — A one-second gap between two clocks decided a game, and no written rule settles which of the two counts. Every college replay this season now rests on that gap.
03
LSU won 51-10 and still left the two men out

LSU beat Clemson 51-10 in Baton Rouge on Saturday night, two days after its own conference sued it in a federal court. The row is over Dae'Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris, two players who had been in NFL training camps and want to play college football again. A Louisiana judge cleared LSU to use them on Thursday. LSU left both off the roster anyway. Its coach Lane Kiffin said afterwards that a bad result would have been the whole story. [7][8][10]

Why it matters — It answers the question left open on Friday: a court said LSU could play them and LSU chose not to. The school won the game without spending the permission it had just been granted.
04
Clemson's coach is suddenly in trouble

The 51-10 defeat is the heaviest of Dabo Swinney's time as Clemson's head coach. He won two national championships there, both against Alabama, and the club has slipped badly two seasons running. Swinney has refused to sign an established quarterback from another school even when his own roster needed one. Against LSU, Clemson gained 40 rushing yards, made eight first downs to LSU's 38, and changed quarterbacks before half-time. [9]

Why it matters — It puts a price on refusing the transfer market that now builds college rosters. His job is being openly discussed after one game of the season.
05
The Giants signed two players to get under the cap

The New York Giants were about $1.18m over the NFL's spending limit of $272.76m per club, with the season starting. On Saturday they extended their backup quarterback Jameis Winston for two years and $13m, and their left guard Jon Runyan for two years and $22m. Signing players creates room because the limit counts only the charge booked this year, not the whole contract. The Giants had already redone two other deals for the same reason. [11][12][13][14][15]

Why it matters — It is the clearest example of how the salary cap actually works: a club short of room fixes it by promising more money later, not less money now.
06
A Giants co-owner is being talked about as the next face of the club

Carolyn Tisch Blodgett is a co-owner of the New York Giants and runs Gotham FC, the New Jersey club that won last season's American women's football championship. Her grandfather Bob Tisch bought half the Giants in 1991 for $75m and was mocked for it. A minority stake sold to the Koch family last year valued the club above $10bn. Her uncle Steve Tisch and her mother moved their stakes into their children's trusts in March. [16]

Why it matters — The same team, the same city, and a price 130 times higher in 35 years. Bob Tisch bought a hobby; his granddaughter has inherited an investment.
07
Kalshi stopped taking bets on injuries

Kalshi, a US exchange where people buy contracts on whether something will happen, removed all markets on how long injured athletes would be out. It did so on Tuesday, after its federal regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, asked it to. The company had taken at least hundreds of thousands of dollars in such bets this year, on players including Luka Doncic and Anthony Edwards. Critics say the bets turn private medical information into something tradeable. [17]

Why it matters — No rule changed and no order was published. A phone call from a regulator closed a market that a written rule had not.
08
A betting exchange is now selling the weather

Kalshi and its rival Polymarket now sell contracts on how hot a city will get on a given day. They also sell contracts on how many billion-dollar weather disasters the United States will have this year, and on whether the world avoids severe warming. Kalshi's markets will appear inside the Weather Channel's app, which it says has more than 330 million users. The company argues the prices themselves are useful forecasting data. [18]

Why it matters — It shows where this business is heading after sport. The same machinery that priced a football result is now pricing the climate, in an app most people opened for the forecast.
09
Executives keep leaving Crypto.com's betting arm

Steve Goodsell resigned as chief technology officer of CDNA, the exchange owned by Crypto.com, on Friday. Its chief executive, chief compliance officer and chief risk officer have all left since November. Goodsell blamed another round of cost cutting at the parent company. Crypto.com said it bought the exchange in 2022 as a modest addition and has since decided event contracts are a far bigger opportunity, and restructured the teams. [19]

Why it matters — A company can re-price its own subsidiary upward while the people who built it walk out. The opportunity grew; the staff did not.
10
A podcaster said someone else placed his bets

The Massachusetts Gaming Commission is reviewing comments by Bill Simmons, a podcaster and former ESPN writer. He said on his own show that he had his daughter's boyfriend log into his FanDuel account to place bets. Simmons lives in California, where sports betting is illegal; the account is in Massachusetts, where it is legal. Having someone else bet for you is banned by both the state and FanDuel. He said they did it again a week later. [20]

Why it matters — State-by-state betting laws are enforced on where the account is, not where the person is. Simmons described in public the exact move that gap invites.
11
Golf's main tour is rewriting its crowd rules

The PGA Tour is changing its fan code of conduct for the 2027 season. It will train volunteers to walk among spectators and report bad behaviour, and build a system to track online abuse aimed at players people have bet on. The tour says fewer than 5% of ejections this year were betting-related. Golf fans stand close enough to affect a shot, which players including Jordan Spieth have said out loud. [21]

Why it matters — Golf is the sport where a spectator can physically change the result, and betting gives some of them a reason to want to.
12
The football Hall of Fame cut its voting panel almost in half

The Pro Football Hall of Fame is reducing its selection committee from 50 people to 28, starting with the class of 2027. It is also abolishing the seniors category, which reserved places on the final ballot for players retired a long time. Finalists will no longer carry over automatically to the next year. The changes follow the committee's decision not to elect the coach Bill Belichick. He needed 80% of the 50-person vote last year and did not get it. If he is a finalist again he will now face one contributor and 13 players. [22]

Why it matters — The players did not change; the electorate did. Each remaining voter now holds nearly twice the share of the vote they held before.
13
Heat cut a college football quarter to ten minutes

South Carolina's opening game against Kent State had its fourth quarter shortened from 15 minutes to 10 because of heat. The temperature at the stadium passed 100F and felt close to 110F. A lower-division game in Topeka, Kansas was stopped in overtime at 16-16 for the same reason, ending in Washburn's first tie since 1977. Georgia kicked off at 100F, the hottest game in the program's history. [23]

Why it matters — American college football schedules its opening weekend in early September for television, and the calendar has now started shortening the games it sells.
14
FIFA says its president will stand again

FIFA, football's world governing body, confirmed on Sunday that Gianni Infantino will stand for re-election as president in March. He has held the job since 2016, when he replaced Sepp Blatter. He has been under pressure since scrapping a plan to sell stakes in FIFA competitions to private investment firms, a plan that drew a boycott threat from UEFA, European football's governing body. [24]

Why it matters — Until now his intention to stand was reported. FIFA has now said it officially, which starts the clock on whether anyone runs against him.
15
Jamie Vardy joined a second-tier club

Burnley signed Jamie Vardy on a season-long deal. He arrived as a free agent, so no fee was paid, after leaving the Italian club Cremonese when it was relegated. Burnley were relegated from the Premier League last season and have started badly under their new head coach Nicky Hayen. Vardy has had no pre-season and will use the coming international break to catch up. He spent most of his career scoring goals for Leicester City in the Premier League. [25]

Why it matters — A club in trouble reached for a name it could get for nothing, because the only players available after the window shuts are the ones nobody paid for.
16
Antonelli won at Monza from near the back

Kimi Antonelli won the Italian Grand Prix, his home race, after starting near the rear of the grid with a penalty for changing his engine. Pierre Gasly took a surprise pole. Charles Leclerc crashed heavily at the Parabolica corner and the race was stopped. Antonelli passed Max Verstappen on lap 16 of 53, then caught his own team-mate George Russell after a safety car left Russell on the wrong tyres. [26]

Why it matters — The race turned on which cars had fresh tyres when the safety car came out, not on who was quicker. A grid penalty cost him nothing in the end.
17
The women's Super League opened with Chelsea already short

England's Women's Super League started at the weekend. Chelsea won the previous six league titles and finished third last season. They were held 1-1 at home by Aston Villa despite 23 shots inside the penalty area and a goal ruled out. Manchester City won their opening game. Arsenal, the bookmakers' favourites, needed a debut goal from 19-year-old Lisa Baum to win 1-0 at Brighton. London City Lionesses beat Manchester United 2-1 on the opening night. [27]

Why it matters — Chelsea's problem last season was finishing, and one weekend in it looks unchanged. The league's newer clubs are now taking points off the ones that used to collect them all.
18
Crystal Palace are under investigation over four substitutions

The Women's Super League opened an investigation after Crystal Palace made substitutions in four separate stoppages during a 1-0 win over Everton. The rules allow three such windows in a match. The league said Palace breached the rule and that the inquiry covers both clubs and Pro Ref, the body that supplies referees. There is no automatic punishment written down. A tribunal could issue anything from a warning to a points deduction. [28]

Why it matters — The penalty is not in the rulebook, so a panel will decide what a fourth substitution window is worth. Palace won the game 1-0, which is the margin now in question.
19
Hearts are second with a squad picked by a model

Hearts have won four league games in a row and sit second in Scotland after five matches. They lost their head coach, their captain and their set-piece coach in the summer. Recruitment is guided by Jamestown Analytics, the data firm owned by Tony Bloom, who also owns Brighton in England and invested in Union Saint-Gilloise in Belgium. Union rose from the second division to a league title in 2025 and the Champions League. [29]

Why it matters — The same firm's method is now running in three countries at once. Hearts lost the people a club is normally rebuilt around and got better anyway.
20
Great Britain and Ireland won the Walker Cup

Great Britain and Ireland beat the United States 13.5 to 12.5 at Lahinch in Ireland. It is their first Walker Cup since 2015. The Walker Cup is a team match between amateur golfers from the two sides, played every two years. They were 4-0 down at lunch on the final day. They then took seven of the ten singles matches. Stuart Grehan beat Preston Stout, the world's top-ranked amateur, twice in the week. Josh Hill won the decisive match on the last hole. [30]

Why it matters — It is the biggest comeback in the event's history and ends a run of five straight American wins.
21
Alcaraz reached the quarter-finals after months out

Carlos Alcaraz beat Tommy Paul to reach the US Open quarter-finals. He has reached the quarter-finals here every year since his debut in 2021 except one. He returned this year after four and a half months out, and the question around him has been whether his wrist would hold against a heavy serve. One of his forehand winners against Paul was measured at 103mph. [31]

Why it matters — A wrist injury is the one that decides whether a tennis career continues at the top, and his has now survived four rounds of a major.
22
Tiafoe beat Medvedev in a full Louis Armstrong

Frances Tiafoe beat Daniil Medvedev in the fourth round of the US Open on Sunday. Medvedev had won six of their seven previous meetings. It was Tiafoe's tenth win in ten appearances on the Louis Armstrong court, the tournament's second show court. No American man has won a Grand Slam singles title since Andy Roddick won this tournament in 2003. Armstrong has grown in standing this year while the main Arthur Ashe court filled up with influencers. [32][43]

Why it matters — The crowd has quietly moved to the smaller court, and the player who feeds on crowds keeps winning there.
23
Everton drew after a window their fans hated

Everton drew 2-2 with Manchester United at home. Ainsley Maitland-Niles, signed from Lyon on Tuesday, scored the equaliser from the edge of the box in his first appearance. United led twice and hit the bar. Bryan Mbeumo had put United ahead by driving in from the right wing and curling a shot past Jordan Pickford. Everton's supporters were described as distraught after a much-criticised transfer window that left the squad thin. United have now dropped five points in three league games. [33][34][44]

Why it matters — A club whose window its own fans called botched still took a point off Manchester United. The bill for a thin squad usually arrives later in the season.
24
Arsenal beat Chelsea with a captain who had stopped scoring

Arsenal beat Chelsea 2-1. Kai Havertz equalised before half-time and the captain Martin Odegaard scored the winner in the 50th minute. Odegaard has now scored three goals in four appearances this season. He scored once in 36 appearances in the whole of last season. Arsenal conceded first and came back, which their captain said was the point of the performance. [35]

Why it matters — One goal in 36 games and three in four is the same player under different conditions, which is what makes early-season numbers so easy to misread.
25
Eighteen NFL clubs changed who calls the plays

Eighteen of the NFL's 32 clubs have a new offensive playcaller this season, the person who chooses each attacking play during a game. Denver's head coach Sean Payton unexpectedly handed the job to his offensive coordinator, Davis Webb. Seattle replaced Klint Kubiak, who left to become head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. The season opens with Seattle hosting New England, a rematch of last season's Super Bowl. [36]

Why it matters — More than half the league changed the person making its most frequent in-game decision, which is why early-season form tells you very little.
26
Liverpool may go back for Sarr in January

Liverpool are reported to be considering another move for the Crystal Palace forward Ismaila Sarr in January, after Palace blocked his departure late in the summer window. Sarr is a Senegal international and is said to still want the move. Separately, Richarlison may look to Saudi Arabia after a move to the Turkish club Trabzonspor fell through. He asked to leave Tottenham and was left out of their Premier League squad for the season. [37]

Why it matters — Both are reports rather than confirmed deals. They show what the transfer window leaves behind: players a club cannot use and cannot sell until January.
27
Gemma Stevens won Burghley at the 31st attempt

Gemma Stevens won the Burghley Horse Trials, one of the two biggest events in British eventing, riding Chilli Knight. It was her 31st start at the sport's top level, 25 years into her career, and her first win at either Burghley or Badminton. She was the only rider in the field to finish on her dressage score, 29.6, meaning no penalties in the later phases. She rode the horse's mother before him. [38]

Why it matters — Last month she failed to finish the cross-country for Britain at the World Championships. Five weeks later she was the only clear round in the field.
28
Notre Dame opened its season in a Green Bay stadium

Notre Dame played its opening game on Sunday night at Lambeau Field, the Green Bay Packers' stadium, against Wisconsin. Every Notre Dame helmet carried a decal for Lou Holtz, who died in March aged 89 and was the last coach to win the school a national title. Notre Dame have 11 and have not added one since. Head coach Marcus Freeman learned the job under Luke Fickell, who was standing on the Wisconsin sideline. [39]

Why it matters — A college team opened in a professional stadium 200 miles from its campus, because that is where the television audience and the gate are.
29
Ohio State and Texas meet in week two

The opening week of American college football mostly produced blowouts. Ohio State, ranked first, beat Ball State 56-3. Oregon, ranked second, were 24-point favourites and won only 34-27 against Boise State. UMass, 29.5-point underdogs, beat Rutgers to end a 16-game losing run. Next Saturday Ohio State travel to fifth-ranked Texas, a rematch of a 14-7 game last season, and Michigan are home underdogs against Oklahoma. [40][41][42][45]

Why it matters — The first week is scheduled against weak opponents, so almost nothing was learned. The second week is where the ranking actually gets tested.

02 Lesson why it matters

Why the price went up ten times when the earnings went up three

An NFL club sells for about ten times what it did in 2006 while taking in about three times the money, because the people buying clubs changed.

The twist

Most of the ten-fold rise in what an NFL club is worth came from buyers agreeing to pay more per dollar of income, not from the club earning more dollars.

How it works

A club takes in money every year
A buyer decides how many years of that money to pay for it
New kinds of buyer arrive who will pay for more years
The price jumps while the yearly money barely moves
Whoever is measured on the price collects the credit

The same force, elsewhere today

Where this chain is also running, in today's other stories.

The Giants co-owner story

half the club cost $75m in 1991 and the whole was priced above $10bn last year, because family offices now buy what one businessman bought as a hobby
Crypto.com's betting arm

the parent bought it in 2022 as a modest addition and now calls event contracts a far greater opportunity; the subsidiary was re-priced by its owner while its executives left
Hearts and Jamestown Analytics

the same step one level down: a buyer with a different way of pricing players pays different prices, and a club rebuilt on those prices sits second in Scotland

Where you've seen this

Houses

the same house sells for far more when lenders let more people bid on it

Company shares

a firm's share price can double while its profits stand still, because more money is chasing that kind of firm

Farmland

pension funds buying land raise the price per acre while the crop is unchanged

The catch

A price that rose because buyers arrived can fall when they leave, and nothing about the club itself has to change either time.

And the whole of it

Everyone here is watching a different number. The owners watch what a club would sell for. The commissioner is paid against targets those owners set. The players are about to bargain over games and wages, and a supporter sees what a ticket costs. Each of those numbers is real, and nobody holding one can see the other three.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

Six NFL club owners, led by Robert Kraft of the New England Patriots, have tied more than 95% of Roger Goodell's pay to targets that the same six owners set and judge. The target that has actually moved is what their own clubs are worth, from about $900m each in 2006 to $9.34bn now, and his contract runs four months past the end of the players' labour deal so that he negotiates the next one.

Why it works on us — The owners' memo calls the deal heavily performance based, which sounds like accountability while the same six people keep the right to decide what counts as performance.

Who gains

Roger Goodell — His pay is measured against targets the owners choose, and Sportico calculates his total NFL earnings would approach $1bn by March 2031 if he averaged $55m a year from here. [3]
The 32 NFL club owners — They keep the man who oversaw the clubs going from $29bn to $299bn in place for the labour talks and for the media contracts that follow. [2][3]
Lane Kiffin — LSU won 51-10 two days after its own conference sued him and the school, and the result pushed the lawsuit off the front of the sports pages. [7][10]
The 28 remaining Hall of Fame voters — The panel shrinks from 50 people to 28, so each of them now holds nearly twice the share of the vote they held before. [22]
Tony Bloom's Jamestown Analytics — Hearts lost their coach, their captain and their set-piece coach and sit second in Scotland, which is the firm's best advertisement to the next club. [29]
Carolyn Tisch Blodgett — Her uncle and mother transferred their Giants stakes into their children's trusts in March, which moves her nearer the front of the family's ownership. [16]

Who pays

NFL players — The person who will negotiate against them is fixed in place until four months after their own deal expires, and the league wants two extra games a year out of those talks. [1][2]
Dae'Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris — They won a court order on Thursday clearing them to play and were still left off LSU's roster on Saturday. [8]
Dabo Swinney — He lost 51-10 having refused to sign an established quarterback from another school, and Clemson changed quarterbacks before half-time. His job is now openly discussed after one game. [9]
Long-retired NFL players — The Hall of Fame is abolishing the seniors category, so players out of the game for decades now compete for places against everyone else. [22]
College football players in the South — South Carolina's fourth quarter was cut to 10 minutes with the temperature past 100F, and Georgia kicked off at 100F, the hottest game in that program's history. [23]
Everton supporters — Reporters described the club's fans as distraught after a much-criticised transfer window that left the squad thin, and it drew 2-2 at home in week three. [33][34]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

What Roger Goodell is actually paid.

The value of the deal was not disclosed. The NFL stopped having to publish his pay when it gave up its non-profit registration, and the last full public figure is $212.5m across his first ten years. [3]
02

What the NFL's television and streaming contracts are really worth.

Sportico puts the latest round at $125bn over 11 years. CBS Sports puts the current deals at just over $110bn and The Athletic at more than $110bn. None of the three says which contracts are being counted. [1][2][3]
03

Which clock the rules say wins a college football replay.

Mike Pereira, formerly the NFL's head of officiating, says the protocol is to use the pictures the television audience sees. The college replay case book does not name a clock, and instead refers to the one shown on the replay monitor. [4]
04

Whether Crystal Palace are punished for using four substitution windows.

The Women's Super League says the rule was breached but sets no automatic penalty. A tribunal could impose anything from a warning to a points deduction, and the game was won 1-0. [28]
05

Whether LSU ever plays Dae'Quan Wright and Zxavian Harris.

A Louisiana judge cleared them on Thursday and LSU left them off Saturday's roster anyway. The conference's federal case against the school is still live. [7][8]
06

Why the Commodity Futures Trading Commission wanted injury betting stopped.

The request was described by a source at the agency. No public order, rule or reasoning has been published, and Kalshi removed the markets the same week. [17]
07

How much of the New York Giants Carolyn Tisch Blodgett owns.

She is a co-owner and declined to say what size stake she holds. Her uncle and mother moved their stakes into their children's trusts in March. [16]
08

Whether anyone stands against Gianni Infantino in March.

FIFA confirmed on Sunday that he will run. Its announcement names no rival candidate, and says nothing about when nominations close. [24]

04 Hope carry this

Great Britain and Ireland were 4-0 down at lunch on the last day of the Walker Cup and won it 13.5 to 12.5, their first since 2015. Stuart Grehan beat the world's top-ranked amateur, Preston Stout, twice in the same week.

Also true today

Gemma Stevens won the Burghley Horse Trials on her 31st start at the top level of eventing, 25 years into her career. She was the only rider in the field to finish on her dressage score.
Carlos Alcaraz reached the US Open quarter-finals after four and a half months out injured.
Western Michigan lost to Michigan by one point on a review of a clock the crowd could not see. Its president, a former federal prosecutor, said he had looked at the process closely and found nothing unfair in it.