Sports, in brief

About 65% of the quarterbacks starting this season in American college football's top division have transferred in from another school. [1]

The cause is a rule change. Before the 2021-22 season the NCAA, which writes the rules for college sport in the United States, scrapped the requirement that a transfer sit out a full year. [1]

That put tested, finished quarterbacks on the market every winter, so schools stopped waiting for an 18-year-old to develop. [1]

Trent Dilfer, who won a Super Bowl at quarterback and now coaches a high school team in Nashville, put it plainly: 'instead of recruiting the child, now you're recruiting a man.' [1]

More than 80% of the 50 best-rated high-school quarterbacks of 2023 have transferred, and more of them have been to three colleges than have stayed at one. [1]

Wisconsin opens a fourth straight season with a quarterback signed from another college - Colton Joseph, from Old Dominion, who started Sunday's loss to Notre Dame. [1]

Money is the other half of it. A good starting quarterback in the four richest conferences is now paid $1m to $4m a year. [2]

A legal settlement lets a college share about $21m a year with all its athletes. The biggest spenders put more than twice that into the football squad alone, through sponsorship deals arranged for players. [2]

So the way in has moved down. At least 18 starters in the top division began below it, including Mississippi's Trinidad Chambliss, who started at Ferris State in Division II. [1]

High-school quarterbacks sign in December, days before the transfer window opens, so they commit without knowing who they will be competing against in January. [1]

The extreme version is already in court, where the SEC and the NCAA are fighting LSU and players who spent this summer in NFL training camps. [2][4]

A bipartisan bill in the US Senate, the Protect College Sports Act, would cut players back to one free transfer. It has not been voted on. [2]

Why it matters. Watch whether the Protect College Sports Act gets a vote in the US Senate. It would limit a player to one free transfer, and that is the one proposal on the table that would make experienced quarterbacks scarce again. [2]

The Atlanta Falcons named Tua Tagovailoa their starting quarterback for Sunday's opening game at Pittsburgh. Tagovailoa, 28, spent six years at the Miami Dolphins and made the Pro Bowl in 2023. Miami released him two seasons later, and that release cost it close to $100m in charges against its salary cap for a player no longer on its roster. Atlanta signed him for the veteran minimum of $1.2m. He beat Michael Penix Jr, the eighth pick of the 2024 draft, who tore a knee ligament last November. [5]

Why it matters. Atlanta preferred a man with 76 starts behind him to the young player it drafted and is still paying. That is the same choice colleges are making, one league up. [5]

The Scottish FA has proposed quotas and money to get young Scottish players onto the pitch. Two under-21 players eligible for Scotland would have to start every Scottish Cup and Premier Sports Cup tie. Clubs in all four divisions would have to give under-21s 60 minutes a game on average, sharing an extra 1m pounds. Those missing the target would lose 10% of their prize money to those that hit it. The analytics firm Twenty First Group told owners the clubs are missing 40m pounds a year by not developing and selling young players. [6]

Why it matters. Managers stopped taking a chance on academy players, so the governing body is proposing to pay them for it and dock them if they still will not. [6]

Zheng Qinwen beat Iga Swiatek 7-5, 6-3 on Monday to reach the US Open quarter-finals in New York. Zheng, the 2024 Olympic champion from China, had elbow surgery this year and had to win qualifying matches just to enter the main draw. She is the first qualifier in the women's last eight at the US Open since Emma Raducanu won the whole tournament in 2021. Zheng lost the first five games, having also come back from 5-0 down two days earlier against Madison Keys. [7]

Why it matters. Swiatek has won four French Open titles and the 2022 US Open, and had beaten Zheng in seven of their eight meetings. [7]

Mirra Andreeva reached her first US Open quarter-final on Monday, beating Anastasia Potapova 5-7, 6-4, 6-3. Leading 5-3 in the final set, Andreeva walked round the net when Potapova fell holding her left knee, helped her up and asked for ice to be brought to her opponent's bench. Potapova, who now plays for Austria, had her knee bandaged and finished the match, but could barely move and did not win another rally. Andreeva, 19, said she grew up watching Potapova, who won the junior Wimbledon title in 2016. [8]

Why it matters. Andreeva won the French Open this year, and this is the furthest she has been in New York. Potapova has still never reached a Grand Slam quarter-final. [8]

Supporters of Crvena Zvezda, Serbia's biggest football club, unveiled a huge banner of Ratko Mladic behind one goal at Sunday's match in Belgrade. Mladic commanded Bosnian Serb forces in the 1990s Balkan wars and was jailed for life in 2017 for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. He died in custody at The Hague on 27 August, aged 84, and was buried in Belgrade on Monday. The banner read 'Direction Potocari', the order he gave in 1995 before his soldiers killed more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslims at Srebrenica. [9]

Why it matters. Mladic is still a hero to Serbian nationalists, and their presence is strongest inside the supporter groups of Belgrade's two biggest clubs, both of which lean into military symbolism. [9]

Noah Lyles has withdrawn from the World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest, which runs from Friday to Sunday. Lyles, who won the 100 metres at the 2024 Paris Olympics and ran the world's fastest 100 metres this year at 9.79 seconds, strained his left hamstring in the 200 metres final at the US national championships in July. The meeting is a $10m invitation-only event built to be the sport's biggest between Olympics, with 16 runners per track event and $150,000 to each winner. Lyles said the strain caused other problems to flare up. [10]

Why it matters. He could have won that $150,000 in both his events, and the meeting was built to give track and field a headline occasion in the years between Olympics. [10]

Chelsea Football Club's trademark agents wrote to Ben Auffarth, a computer scientist in west London who founded a small firm called Chelsea AI Ventures in 2025. They told him to stop using the word Chelsea, change his blue-and-white colours, rename the company and hand over his web address free of charge. The club holds 'Chelsea' as a trademark on goods from football kit to fire extinguishers and software. Chelsea is also a district of London. Auffarth offered to change the colours instead, and the club accepted. [11]

Why it matters. Two intellectual property lawyers told The Athletic the club was probably overreaching. Liverpool were refused a trademark on their own city's name in 2019, on the ground that a club cannot own a place. [11]

Charles Barkley said the coming 2026-27 season will be his final one on 'Inside the NBA', the studio show he joined in 2000, and that the host Ernie Johnson intends to leave too. Barkley, 63, told the Bill Simmons podcast he had meant to retire at 60 but stayed when Johnson asked him to. He stayed again when the programme moved from TNT to ESPN, after TNT lost its NBA rights, so the off-camera staff kept their jobs. The show began in 1989. He added the caveat 'unless Ernie changes his mind'. [12]

Why it matters. ESPN bought a licence to the programme itself when TNT lost the games, so the show outlasted the deal that created it. Two of the three people it was bought for now plan to go. [12]

Lando Norris has launched a junior racing team called LN4 Fusion, buying assets from AIX Racing and applying to enter Formula 2, the category directly below Formula One. The team will be based in Veneto in northern Italy, with a second base in Cambridgeshire, and run day to day by Rene Rosin. Norris, who drives for McLaren and has signed there until at least 2030, said his aim is to develop drivers for Formula One. 'Getting to Formula 1 takes so much more than just talent,' he said. [13]

Why it matters. A driver at the top of the sport is paying to run the categories every Formula One driver has to come through first. [13]

Bernie Ecclestone, who ran Formula One's commercial business for about 40 years until he was removed in 2017, was stopped by police at Tires airfield near Lisbon on Monday after arriving on his private jet with an undocumented shotgun. Ecclestone, 95, told Reuters he had brought the gun from Switzerland for a clay pigeon shooting event and lacked the import paperwork. His wife Fabiana travelled on to Lisbon with a customs officer to hand the gun over to the authorities. He was briefly detained in Brazil in 2022 over an unregistered handgun. [14]

Why it matters. Fabiana Ecclestone is a vice-president for sport at the FIA, the body that writes and enforces motor racing's rules, which turns an airport incident into a governance question. [14]

This week's Irish Open is being played at Trump International Golf Links Doonbeg in County Clare, a course owned by Donald Trump, the US president. He is expected to attend and may hand over the trophy on Sunday. Rory McIlroy defends the title he won at the K Club last year, where he holed a 25-foot eagle putt on the last hole to force a play-off. Shane Lowry, who won the tournament as an amateur in 2009, is chasing his first individual win in four years. [15]

Why it matters. Ireland's national golf tournament is being held on ground owned by Donald Trump, the US president, who is in Ireland the same week to meet the Irish president and the taoiseach, Micheal Martin. [15]

Mauricio Pochettino, head coach of the United States men's football team, said on Monday he wants to change his players' habits as he begins a second term. He appeared to mean Christian Pulisic. The best-known American player pulled out of the 2025 CONCACAF Gold Cup to rest before the World Cup. 'You say, if I play, I have not holidays, I cannot arrive fresh for the World Cup. You know now that is bull----,' he said. The United States lost to Belgium in the last 16 of the World Cup they co-hosted. [16]

Why it matters. Pochettino is starting a second term after the United States went out in the last 16 of a World Cup they co-hosted, and he is publicly blaming habits rather than results. [16]

Major League Baseball has published its 2027 spring training schedule, with workouts due to start on 9 February. The sport's labour agreement expires on 1 December and owners are widely expected to shut the players out. MLB has proposed a salary cap - a hard limit on what each club may spend on players - for the first time since the strike that wiped out the 1994 World Series. The union says it will never accept one. In 2022 a deal took until 10 March and opening day moved. [21]

Why it matters. ESPN asked more than two dozen major leaguers, on condition of anonymity, whether they expect a lockout to shorten the 2027 season; the schedule is being printed while that question is open. [22]

A federal judge dismissed the Trump administration's lawsuit against California over its policy of letting transgender young people play on school teams matching their gender. The US justice department had spent a year trying to force the state to bar trans girls from girls' sport, and Donald Trump had singled out one trans track and field athlete by name online. California has allowed the practice since 2013, and it affects a very small number of the state's pupils. More than 20 US states now ban it. [20]

Why it matters. School sport has become the venue for a national argument, and the ruling leaves the rules different from one state to the next. [20]

Texas Tech, a school in Lubbock that spent most of its history outside American college football's elite, won the Big 12 conference last season and reached the College Football Playoff. It did it with a squad built on expensive transfers, including the edge rusher David Bailey. Head coach Joey McGuire denied reports the 2026 roster cost more than $50m, saying it is 'way closer to $30 million than $50 million'. The money comes from oil-rich alumni, chief among them Cody Campbell, who also paid for a $242m football building. [3]

Why it matters. This is what the transfer market looks like from the buying side. A school with no history of winning can now assemble a champion in one winter, which is exactly why nobody wants to spend three years coaching a teenager. [3]

The United States women's basketball team began its FIBA World Cup campaign in Berlin on Friday, chasing a fifth straight and twelfth overall gold medal. Sixteen teams played the group stage from 4 to 7 September, with the Americans drawn against China, Italy and Czechia. They have not lost a World Cup game since Russia beat them 75-68 in a semi-final on 21 September 2006, a run of 30 matches. The squad is led by Breanna Stewart, Napheesa Collier, Caitlin Clark and Jackie Young, and is playing without A'ja Wilson. [24]

Why it matters. The WNBA is on a two-week break, so its biggest names are playing for national teams instead of their clubs. [24]

Monaco came from behind to beat Paris Saint-Germain at the Parc des Princes, becoming the first team to win three Ligue 1 matches in a row against PSG since Qatari owners took over the Paris club in 2011. The win came days after Monaco failed to complete the sales of Lamine Camara and Folarin Balogun before the transfer window shut. Monaco, coached by the former Flamengo manager Filipe Luis, have won all four of their league games; PSG, the European champions, have won none. [25]

Why it matters. Two sales that did not happen left Monaco with players it had planned to cash in, and it is seven points clear of the champions because of it. [25]

Sabah of Azerbaijan play at Manchester United this week in the Champions League, managed by Valdas Dambrauskas. He knew at 12 he would not make it as a player, and arrived in London in 2002, aged 25, on a student visa with little English. He spent eight years as a gardener, a handyman, a paper boy and a floor polisher in a pub while paying for coaching qualifications. Then he went home to Lithuania to coach full time. He has since won 13 trophies in five countries. [26]

Why it matters. Nobody was going to hand him a first job, so he bought one, badge by badge, out of four part-time wages. Sabah also play at Arsenal in January. [26]

Ryan Silverfield, in his first year as head coach at Arkansas, gutted and rebuilt a 121-man squad in a single off-season and held a closed pre-season scrimmage with no fans and one reporter inside the stadium. The starting quarterback job came down to KJ Jackson, last season's Arkansas backup, and AJ Hill, who followed Silverfield from Memphis. Tracking data shown to the players afterwards recorded 25 of them hitting 20mph this August against 14 last year, and 12 hitting 22mph against five. [27]

Why it matters. Replacing most of a squad in one off-season is now normal rather than a crisis, and the quarterback choice was between one man already there and one the coach brought with him. [27]

College football kickers have long been treated as afterthoughts. They practise alone, play a tiny number of snaps, and for years many were not even on scholarships. Now they are banding together to get paid in the sport's new era of player wages. The Wall Street Journal reports they are determined not to be left out of the money now flowing to players. [23]

Why it matters. When a sport starts paying its players, the argument moves immediately to which positions count, and the least-watched jobs have to organise to be counted at all. [23]

The Dallas Cowboys' guard Tyler Smith will have surgery on his thumb and go on injured reserve, which keeps him out for at least four games. The earliest he could return is 8 October against Tampa Bay, though that is a short week with a Thursday kick-off, so 18 October against Green Bay is more likely. [17]

Why it matters. Injured reserve is a roster rule as much as a medical one: it frees the place for someone else while the club keeps paying the injured man. [17]

Cedric Gray, the Tennessee Titans linebacker who finished fourth in the NFL with 164 tackles last season, is in the concussion protocol after crashing a utility vehicle in Tennessee at the weekend. To play in Sunday's opener against the New York Jets he must complete a return-to-participation programme and be cleared by the independent neurological consultant assigned to his club. Gray, 23, was a fourth-round pick out of North Carolina in 2024. His is the latest in a run of injuries to American footballers riding off-road vehicles. [18]

Why it matters. The independent consultant exists because clubs used to clear their own concussed players, and the man who decides whether Gray plays does not work for the Titans. [18]

The Baltimore Ravens named Jovaughn Gwyn their starting centre for Sunday's opening game at Indianapolis, six months after losing Tyler Linderbaum, a three-time Pro Bowl selection. It will be the first start of Gwyn's four-year career. Head coach Jesse Minter called it a Week 1 decision rather than a permanent one, and said Gwyn had taken most of the practice repetitions with the starters. [19]

Why it matters. A first start after four years of waiting is the exception that shows the rule in the lead: teams give the job to whoever has already done it, until the person who has done it leaves. [19]

The Denver Broncos had three injured players back in practice on Monday: the wide receiver and returner Marvin Mims Jr, the tight end Adam Trautman and the rush linebacker Que Robinson. Mims hurt soft tissue a week into training camp, missed the first two pre-season games, then bruised a foot a few snaps into the last one. Denver open the season next Monday night at Kansas City, in Patrick Mahomes's first game since a multi-ligament knee injury late last season. [28]

Why it matters. Kansas City missed the play-offs last year and lost their division to Denver, so both clubs start the season against the one they most need to beat. [28]