The Ringer: The NFL Draft 2025

The NFL draft 2025 took place on April 24 and 26, and teams have the chance to acquire some of the best talent in college football. The Ringer is here to help you follow every move with big boards, mock drafts, scouting reports with in-depth player analysis, team needs, and more.

There are many interesting prospects to watch in this year’s draft, including the top-rated quarterback Cam Ward from Miami and pass rusher Abdul Carter from Penn State. Ward is a creative thrower with an ability to stay in the pocket and finds openings in tight windows while Carter has explosive athletic ability that makes him difficult to cover for any defensive back.

All 32 teams have a selection in each round of the draft (unless they trade away their pick). The order is set by reverse order of the regular season finish from last year, and ties are settled by using division or conference tiebreakers. The loser of the Super Bowl gets the 31st and final pick in each round.

Once a team makes its choice, it’s written on a special card and given to an NFL runner who brings it to the head table at Selection Square. Then, a representative of the NFL’s Vice President of Player Personnel reviews the selection and enters it into the database. The NFL also notifies the teams involved in the draft and broadcasters, making the pick official. Each team is allowed 10 minutes to make a selection in the first round, seven minutes in the second and five minutes in rounds three through six.

The Long-Term Impact of Athlete Endorsements

Athlete endorsements leverage the trust, credibility and visibility of recognizable athletes to transform marketing and boost brand sales. Athlete endorsements can also have a significant impact on culture and consumer trends.

Long-term partnerships tend to yield more substantial benefits. Athletes can become a true extension of the brand and its identity, deepening their integration into the company’s values. This allows for more authentic storytelling, including co-creation of exclusive collections. Athletes can also take on roles such as product development, giving them greater creative control over the products they endorse.

As with sponsorships, athlete endorsement deals typically involve a fixed fee and compensation structure that includes performance incentives. Lawyers carefully hone contract language to ensure that the agreement is mutually beneficial, with measurable goals such as increased visibility and consumer reach for the sponsor while maintaining rights of refusal and protections against alignment with controversial or high-risk products for the athlete.

Digital tools and platforms also allow brands to track campaign performance in real-time and optimize for maximum impact. Metrics such as conversion rates, sales uplift and brand sentiment help to measure the enduring impact of an endorsement.

Choosing the Right Athletes

The World Athletics Championship

The World Athletics Championship is the premier track and field event of the sport’s calendar. The event pits Olympic champions, Diamond League winners, and the year’s best athletes against each other to crown an ultimate world champion in each discipline. The competition is scheduled to take place from September 11 to 13 and is expected to offer a prize pool of $10 million dollars.

The Championships are held in odd years to avoid conflicts with the Olympics, which occur on a quadrennial basis in even years. Unlike the Olympics, which are organized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), sport federations and their national associations organize the World Athletics Championships with their own budgets, using a mixture of private and public funding.

The 2023 edition was the nineteenth World Athletics Championships, and it took place in Budapest, Hungary, from 19 to 27 August 2023. The competition returned to its normal two-year cycle after the 2021 edition in Eugene, Oregon, United States was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Traditionally, the World Championships serve as a strong preview of what to expect at the following year’s Summer Olympics. The Championships have produced some of the most dynamic and thrilling performances ever seen on a track, with Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt and American long-distance runner Carl Lewis leading the way in terms of world record breaks at the event. Athletes competing at the World Championships must be approved by their sport federations, and the selection process is based on world rankings.

International Qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup

Across the globe, high-stakes qualifiers are taking center stage. As teams vie to represent their confederations at the World Cup, they face a series of intense contests that test their mettle. While qualification systems differ, they all serve a common purpose: to identify the best representatives for football’s global tournament of dreams.

The first round of 2026 World Cup qualifying soft-launched in March, and will kick into full gear in September. The top seeds have already established a lead, while several countries are in a tight race to secure their spot.

In this phase, the 54 FIFA-affiliated nations are split into nine groups of five or six teams, which play each other in a hexa-format of home-and-away games over a span of three months in September and October. The top two in each group qualify for the World Cup, while the runners-up enter the inter-confederation playoffs.

In the second round, the seven highest-ranked teams – including Samoa and New Caledonia – were drawn into two four-team groups to play double round-robin home-and-away matches in October and November 2024. The winners in each group qualified for the World Cup, while the runners-up advanced to the fourth round, where they competed in a two-legged play-off tie to determine the Asian representation at the inter-confederation playoffs.

Sports Celebrity Gossip

Sports and showbiz have never been more connected – from athletes starring in movies to musicians repping their favorite teams, we cover the celebrity involvement that keeps sports top of mind for pop culture fans. We also have the scoop on athlete-celebrity collaborations, moments and controversies that keep people talking about sports long after the final whistle blows.

Charlotte and Madeline start the show with a few admin orders of business and quick informercials before diving into today’s hot topics. They have the latest on WNBA star Suni Lee and NBA player OG Anunoby making their relationship official, a former WWE superstar losing her job over Coldplay cheating drama, surfing star Billy Kemper sharing a video of his gruesome injury and Olympian Lindsey Vonn discussing her career and groin injury.

Plus, a TMZ Sports exclusive reveals the MLB star’s biggest dream team and why he thinks it will be his best year yet in the league. All that and more in this week’s edition of ‘Sports Celebrity Gossip’.

The Masters Leaderboard

The Masters leaderboard is the backbone of the golf world’s most prestigious tournament, and it plays a vital role in determining who will wear a green jacket at the end of Sunday’s play. This real-time scoreboard allows fans to track their favorite golfers as the tournament progresses and see how they compare to the rest of the field.

Rory McIlroy flipped the script after a disastrous second-nine at Thursday’s Masters with a masterful 66 on Friday, taking a two-shot lead over Bryson DeChambeau through 36 holes. The Northern Irishman rolled in birdies at Nos. 10, 11, and 13, including a dazzling recovery shot at the par-4 10th that was not intended to hit the green but did exactly that and left him with an easy putt for birdie.

Rose was not as fortunate, bogeying Nos. 5, 6, and 7, though he still holds the lead at 8 under as he seeks his first green jacket. Meanwhile, Xander Schauffele and Tommy Fleetwood are both in the mix at T17 after posting 3-under 69s, giving them a shot at winning the Masters for the first time in their careers.

With ideal weather conditions on tap for Saturday and Sunday, a truly memorable Masters is in store at Augusta National. Stay tuned to CBS Sports for live coverage of all the action at The Masters and follow the leaderboard to keep up with the latest updates. Check out the tee times and more information on this year’s tournament here.

Athlete Retirement News

For athletes, retiring from a sport can be a major life change. But despite the many challenges, it’s possible for some former athletes to find success in post-athletic careers.

This week, NFL star Tyrann Mathieu announced he was retiring from football. The safety, who is known for his toughness and blond patch in his hair, played 12 seasons with the New Orleans Saints and earned 21.5 sacks. He will now coach with the Buffalo Bills. Meanwhile, USA women’s soccer star Alex Morgan hung up her cleats after an impressive career that saw her score 123 goals with the national team.

As these athletes and others prepare to hang up their spikes, the BEAA recently released a survey that shows nearly half of Britain’s Paris Olympians and Paralympians feel unprepared for life after sport. The survey suggests that this may be partly due to the lack of support and planning offered to athletes once they retire from competitive sport.

Athletes should consider keeping in contact with their peers and coaches, even once they’ve stopped competing. This helps to maintain a connection and gives them someone to talk with about their transition. Family members, partners and friends also help to make the process easier.

It’s also important for athletes to plan ahead financially. After years of shelling out thousands for elite coaching and equipment and sacrificing a regular paycheck, it can be challenging to adjust to a world without sport in their early post-athletic lives. For this reason, it’s often helpful for them to set up savings accounts or invest money in non-sporting ventures.

The World Test Championship is a Good Idea – But it’s been Done Wrong

As a concept, the World Test Championship is a good idea. Spanning two-year cycles, the ICC’s newest competition aims to add context and excitement to the game’s longest format. It also aims to ensure that top teams play each other more often, something the sport needs more than it’s had in recent times.

But the way it’s been executed is far from ideal. While it’s not as skewed as some have suggested, it still favours the traditional big three. That’s because teams don’t have to play each other over a full round-robin, and series are confined to two Tests, which is not commercially viable for countries struggling to balance their international schedules.

Last November, New Zealand ended 12 years of Indian home dominance, storming the spin-heavy citadel for a 3-0 victory. The Proteas’ 69-run win in the 2025 final, courtesy of Aiden Markram’s outstanding hundred and Temba Bavuma’s crucial fifty, was no less remarkable. It ended a string of tournament heartache for the Proteas, most notably at the one-day and T20 World Cups.

The next three WTC finals will be staged in England – a decision made at the ICC’s annual conference in Singapore. It rewarded the English and Wales Cricket Board for its “successful track record in hosting recent finals”. India had reportedly hoped to host the 2027 showpiece, but the ECB said they were “absolutely delighted” to be chosen again.

Asian Games 2026

Join athletes from across the continent as they converge in the heart of Japan for a thrilling display of athletic prowess. From the precision of martial arts to the speed of track and field, 2026 Asian Games will be an unforgettable journey of competition and camaraderie.

The Asian Games are the biggest sports events in Asia, fostering friendship through sport and contributing to world peace. The first Asian Games were held in 1951, shortly after the end of World War II. The Games are a unique opportunity for nations of Asia to come together and share their cultures and values.

The Games will be held from September 19 to October 4, 2026, in Aichi Prefecture and Nagoya City, with 40 events and 15,000 athletes and team officials from 45 countries and regions. The 2026 Games will be the third time that Japan has hosted the Asian Games, following Tokyo in 1958 and Hiroshima in 1994.

The Games will feature a new format, where athletes will stay on a cruise ship instead of at the traditional Games Village. This ‘floating village’ will be equipped with all the facilities that athletes are used to at Games Villages, including dining halls and gymnasiums. The Games will be held during typhoon season, which makes this unique arrangement even more crucial. The organizers have also been working on a contingency plan for evacuating athletes in the event of a tsunami or typhoon. The Olympic Council of Asia has agreed to this plan and is considering whether to adopt it for future editions.

Formula 1 Standings

Formula 1 standings are the real-time indicators of drivers and teams’ progress across a demanding calendar of Grands Prix and shorter, preliminary events known as Sprints. In a sport where a fraction of a second can mean the difference between triumph and disappointment, standings are vitally important.

Drivers and teams earn points for themselves if they finish within the top 10 at each race. Teams that achieve a total of the most points at the end of the season win the coveted Constructors’ Championship title. The champions are awarded a substantial prize fund.

Each team runs two cars in every race. Both cars must finish in the top 10 to score points. Drivers who change teams during the season retain their individual driver points. They also keep the points they earned for their previous teams, if those teams were to finish higher than their new ones in the race.

A total of 25 points are available each race, with a maximum of 43 points for the driver who wins that race. Drivers who complete the fastest lap earn a bonus point.

Dead heats between teams happen regularly – though they’ve never decided the outcome of the championship itself. If two teams are level on points at the end of the season, the winner is determined by counting back results, with the team that has more race wins placed higher than those with more second place finishes and so on.