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Add “football” to the list of things Donald Trump wants over the advice of public health officials as the nation and world at large continue to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic. The president held a call with the commissioners of various American sports leagues on Saturday and, according to a report, insisted that the NFL should be able to start its season on time.

ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported on the conference on Saturday, noting that Trump urged the league to start on time and floated ideas that could help owners keep leagues profitable.

In a conference call with major league sports commissioners on Saturday, President Donald Trump said he believes the NFL season should start on time in September, sources familiar with the call told ESPN.

Trump also said he hopes to have fans back in stadiums and arenas by August and September, sources said, though it is currently unclear if medical experts find that to be a realistic timeline amid the current coronavirus pandemic.

This flies in the face of warnings public health officials are giving about when normal life can resume in a nation suffering one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks on the planet, with little hope for proper testing and vaccination coming in the near future. It also came hours after the Washington Post reported that sporting events may be on ice for a lot longer than most optimists, including Trump, hope. Speaking with public health officials, Adam Kilgore wrote that fans may need to prepare for “disappointment” regarding whether sports can come back safely in this current climate.

“Unfortunately, I think perhaps if anything, having large spectator sports open back up may even have to be delayed a little bit longer than relaxing some of the other things,” said Dean Winslow, an infectious-disease doctor at Stanford. “I hate to say that, because I’m a big sports fan.

“There’s also the scenario a lot of people worry about, including my friend Dr. Fauci, that if you relax the control measures too soon, you could potentially induce a second wave of transmission to susceptible people,” Winslow added when asked about professional and college football starting on time. “It’s a little too soon to make that prediction. I certainly don’t think it’s impossible that we’ll be able to start resuming things such as sporting events by the early fall.”

Saturday’s decree is yet another example of Trump’s disinformation that disrupts advice given by public health officials. Just Friday, for example, the Center for Disease Control urged Americans to wear non-medical facial coverings in public to help stop transmission of the disease. Trump, in announcing that recommendation, said he would not wear one. Meanwhile, other governmental officials are less certain football will happen in front of packed stadiums come fall.

It’s entirely unclear if optimism for football is warranted at this point, but based on what scientists and those at local levels of government believe, the president’s remarks to Goodell put the cart before the horse.

WWE WrestleMania 36 airs this weekend, both Saturday, April 4, and Sunday, April 5, live on tape on WWE Network and pay-per-view. For the first time, the show — advertised as Too Big For Just One Night — will be a two-night event, so we’ll have two open discussion threads, two results posts, two Best and Worst of WrestleManias, and so on.

Here’s the card as we know it, which is already very different from the one we used for predictions. No word yet on which matches will happen on which night.

WrestleMania 36 Card:
(advertised as of Saturday, April 4)

1. Universal Championship Match: Goldberg (c) vs. Braun Strowman
2. WWE Championship Match: Brock Lesnar (c) vs. Drew McIntyre
3. NXT Women’s Championship Match: Rhea Ripley (c) vs. Charlotte Flair
4. Raw Women’s Championship Match: Becky Lynch (c) vs. Shayna Baszler
5. Smackdown Women’s Championship Match: Bayley (c) vs. Sasha Banks vs. Lacey Evans vs. Naomi vs. Tamina
6. Raw Tag Team Championship Match: Street Profits (c) vs. Austin Theory and Angel Garza
7. Smackdown Tag Team Championship Ladder Match: John Morrison (c) vs. Jimmy Uso vs. Kofi Kingston
8. Women’s Tag Team Championship Match: Kabuki Warriors (c) vs. Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross
9. Intercontinental Championship Match: Sami Zayn (c) vs. Daniel Bryan
10. Elias vs. King Corbin
11. Aleister Black vs. Bobby Lashley
12. Kevin Owens vs. Seth Rollins
13. Last Man Standing Match: Edge vs. Randy Orton
14. Firefly Funhouse Match: Bray Wyatt vs. John Cena
15. Boneyard Match: The Undertaker vs. AJ Styles
16. Dolph Ziggler vs. Otis

– Kickoff Show Match: Natalya vs. Liv Morgan
– Kickoff Show Match: Cesaro vs. Drew Gulak

Hosted by Rob Gronkowski

Make sure to give your favorite comments from tonight’s open discussion a thumbs up, because as always we’re including ten of the best, funniest, and most insightful in tomorrow’s Best and Worst of WrestleMania 36 Night One column. Be sure to flip your comments to “newest” in the drop-down menu, and enjoy whatever the show ends up being!

With the total number of COVID-19 cases in the US nearing 300,000, the need for surgical masks and other medical supplies is higher than ever. Recently, some celebrities have taked the initiative to purchase masks and have them made to be donated to various hospitals. Earlier this week, DJ Khaled and his philanthropic foundation We The Best partnered with Direct Relief and Simplehuman to purchase and donate 100,000 masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) to healthcare workers in Miami and New York hospitals. Last week, Future announced that he would also be donating masks through a partnership between his non-profit, FreeWishes Foundation, and Atlanta Sewing Style. Now, Jay-Z and Meek Mill have announced their own plans to donate masks, but this time, to prisons that are in need of them.

Working through their criminal reform organization, Reform Alliance, Jay-Z and Meek Mill announced they’ll donate 100,000 surgical masks to various prisons across the country. News of their donation arrived just a day after rapper YNW Melly revealed he had tested positive for the virus while awaiting his trial in a South Florida jail.

According to CBS News, of the 100,000 masks, the Reform Alliance will send 40,000 masks to the Tennessee Department of Corrections, 5,000 to Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, 50,000 to Rikers Island jail in New York City — which had 650 inmates released from the prison to fight overcrowding according to New York City mayor Bill De Blasio — and an additional 2,500 masks to a Rikers medical facility.

Speaking on the donations to CBS News, Jessica Jackson, the chief advocacy officer at Reform Alliance said, “We’re really worried about the number of people coming in and out of the facility, and the fact that the people living there might be sitting ducks during this pandemic… We’re still looking at jail and prison populations that are completely overcrowded to dangerous levels when you’re looking at a pandemic like this head-on.

“This is a movement,” she said. “But we need all of the voices we can get.”

Meek Mill is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The first pre-taped, no-audience WrestleMania experienced a dramatic card change last night when, via promotional graphic, the Roman Reigns vs. Goldberg Universal Championship match that Reigns, WWE officials, and a WWE-approved media outlet had confirmed Reigns would not be in days earlier was changed to Goldberg vs. Braun Strowman. Today, three more match changes were made hours before the start of WrestleMania 36 Night One.

The most notable is that the Smackdown Tag Team Championship match has been changed from a triple threat between Miz and Morrison, The Usos, and The New Day to a non-title singles triple threat match between John Morrison, Jimmy Uso, and Kofi Kingston.

The storyline reason WWE gives for this is that Miz was injured during last night’s episode of Smackdown. The reported real-life reason, per the Wrestling Observer Newsletter earlier this week, is that Miz showed up to the WrestleMania tapings sick and was not allowed to perform. Miz’s illness is also, according to WON, what prompted Reigns to pull out of his Mania match.

Two matches were also announced for the WrestleMania kickoff shows: Liv Morgan vs. Natalya and the Chikara throwback special of Drew Gulak vs. Cesaro. It looks like one of these matches will take place on Saturday and one on Sunday, but, like the rest of WrestleMania, WWE has yet to reveal which match will take place on which night.

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In the last few weeks while most (but not all) of the nation is quarantining, entertainers have stepped up by offering their services, often from the comfort of their own homes. Late night hosts have brought back their shows using webcams, musicians have played songs or even live shows, and actors have recited Shakespeare. Everyone’s doing it — so why not “cancelled” stand-up comedians, too?

As per The Hollywood Reporter, on Saturday Louis C.K. — who’s been largely (but not entirely) AWOL since he was accused of sexual misconduct back in 2017, claims he confirmed as true — dropped a new stand-up special onto his website. It’s entitled Sincerely Louis C.K., and if you’re someone who still enjoys his work despite…all that, it can be yours to download for $7.99.

In a press release, C.K. tacitly confirmed that the special was made live because of the coronavirus, and that it was here to help relieve stress and pass the time.

“I feel like there are two kinds of people in this world,” C.K. said in the statement. “One kind needs to laugh when things get shitty. In fact, the shittier things get, the more serious, the more dark the more terrifying, the more dangerous and dire anything is, the more important it is to laugh in the midst of it and often directly in its face.”

He added, “These people believe it’s no coincidence that human beings have survived despite our fragile hairless bodies, through the most difficult of times And that we are the only species, besides ladybugs, Who laugh at life.”

So it’s up to you. If you want to download a new Louis C.K. special, you can do so here.

(Via THR)

One annual tradition that did not get the chance to take place due to the NCAA canceling winter and spring championships as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic was the announcement of the upcoming National Basketball Hall of Fame class at the Final Four. This was supposed to be the weekend that is normally dedicated to college basketball’s biggest event, and while the pomp and circumstance that normally comes with announcing the Hall of Fame class was missing, we still learned which legends of the game will be enshrined in Springfield.

It was announced on Friday evening that Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, and Kevin Garnett, all of whom were on the ballot for the first time, will be in the class. That was confirmed on Saturday afternoon.

Beyond these three champions, a host of other greats of the game will make it to the Hall of Fame. One other player will earn the honor this year: WNBA legend Tamika Catchings.

The list of coaches who will join them is immense. A trio of college basketball legends — Baylor coach Kim Mulkey, Bentley coach Barbara Stevens, and former Oklahoma State coach Eddie Sutton — will make it in, as will former Lakers and Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich.

Rounding out the class is Patrick Baumann, a former FIBA executive who served as the organization’s secretary general and passed away in 2018.

From top to bottom, it is an absolutely loaded class with plenty of folks who left an indelible mark on the game. While predicting anything at this point is awfully difficult, the Hall of Fame’s enshrinement ceremony is slated to take place on August 30, 2020.

Everyone wants to see the NBA start back up as soon as it possibly can. The league has been on hiatus since March 11, when Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19, and in the weeks since, the conversations among basketball fans have revolved around exactly when the 2019-20 season will start back up.

The issue, of course, is that a pandemic does not particularly care about whether or not basketball games get played, and until it is safe, the risk that comes with holding games — with or without fans — is quite high. It’s why the concept of a centralized location to play games has been floated, but even then, there needs to be enough testing and preventative measures in place to keep everyone safe.

With all that said, a path forward could look a bit tricky, and as Brian Windhorst of ESPN laid out on Friday, that reality is setting in a bit. Windhorst reports that the league and the Player’s Association have had conversations in recent days that have led to serious pessimism about restarting this campaign.

“The talks between the player’s union and the league this week, I’ve talked to both sides of this issue,” Windhorst said. “And it is clear that the NBA is angling to set up a deal that enables them to shut the season down. Now, they don’t have to do that yet, and the way they’re negotiating, they’re leaving themselves an option either way. But they are not having talks about how to restart the league, they are having financial talks about what would happen if the season shuts down, and I think there’s a significant amount of pessimism right now.”

One of the major things influencing this, Windhorst reports, is how the Chinese Basketball Association has struggled to get its restart off the ground, in part due to the way asymptomatic carriers can spread the novel coronavirus. Further complicating matters is that pushing this season back too far could end up hurting the 2020-21 campaign as well.

“There comes a point where you go too far, where you start to look at damaging two seasons, and that is what the NBA is trying to evaluate,” Windhorst said. “They do have runway here, I do think that they could, if they had to, go into August or September to finish this season, but I’m not sure they feel confident about that right now. And a big factor is testing, we just don’t have the testing.”

Ideally what Windhorst is saying is a worst-case scenario that never comes to fruition. Still, with how much uncertainty there is about, well, everything, it seems safe to say that the league and the NBPA are facing an uphill battle right now to get this season back underway.

These are some nap-friendly finds you won’t want to sleep on.

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