Most of the sports world has been put on pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but a lot of Chicago-based sports are happening this weekend. The Chicago Huntsmen are in action in the Call of Duty League, and the basketball world is eagerly awaiting Sunday night’s next two episodes of the 10-part Michael Jordan series entitled The Last Dance.

The docuseries is basically the only basketball happening right now, which is why there have been a lot of Last Dance tie-ins and references throughout the sports world. And the latest involves the Huntsmen, one of the top teams in Call of Duty League currently “hosting” the online-only tournament between teams this weekend.

The weekend tournament coincided with the launch of limited edition No. 23 merchandise on the ULT website. The merchandise is essentially Huntsmen-branded gear with Jordan’s number 23 on it, coming in two colors — black and white. According to Call of Duty League the merchandise will go on sale on Sunday, the day of the weekend tournament’s final matches as well as the second night ESPN will air episodes of The Last Dance.

It’s a cool mashup of two Chicago sports entities, especially one hoping to be as dominant in Call of Duty League as the Jordan Bulls were on the court. We’ll see how Chicago does hosting the tournament’s finale, but the rave reviews The Last Dance has gotten means Chicago sports fans will definitely be happy on Sunday.

Some NBA players are struggling to get shots up during quarantine. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton, and Jayson Tatum have all mentioned that they do not have hoops at their homes, and as such, there are limitations to what guys can do while they’re stuck in one place due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The league has decided to comply with state and federal guidelines by shutting down practice facilities, again limiting options for players. But according to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, the NBA is going to open its facilities back up under a very specific set of circumstances.

As Wojnarowski tells it, as long as states relax stay-at-home orders, NBA teams are allowed to open up their facilities to players. This would only be for voluntary individual workouts, however, while larger workouts are still prohibited.

A major reason for this decision is reportedly what is going down in Georgia. The state’s governor, Brian Kemp, controversially gave the green light to opening up things like gyms. NBA players apparently asked their orgs what to do in this situation, and Wojnarowski reports, teams would rather that players are in their gyms and not a YMCA somewhere getting shots up.

Naturally, this leads to a question about whether or not the league will start to move toward restarting its season. The answer: no.

There’s no good answer in this situation — it is assuredly far too early for this move, but considering the alternative is players going to environments that teams cannot control, this is the league’s attempt at making the best of a bad situation. Hopefully things don’t come to this and states listen to scientists and medical professionals about when doing this sort of thing will be safe, but if it does, here’s to hoping players taking advantage of this — along with the workers necessary to keep these facilities clean — are able to stay healthy.

The NFL’s first modern virtual draft’s opening round went off with relatively few mistakes on Thursday night, but some moments were bigger than other. Out of all the moments found between 32 picks, Arizona Cardinals coach Kilff Kingsbury’s rejected Narcos set of a home took some of the highest marks of the night.

Kingsbury was briefly shown lounging in a very luxurious home while watching the draft unfold, and it quickly drew considerable buzz on social media.

And now we have proven it’s a replicable lifestyle if you have some children’s building toys around. Lori Johnston, a lecturer at the University of Georgia’s journalism school, tweeted photos of the LEGO version of Kingsbury’s home, and it’s wildly accurate.

The details here are incredible, starting with the multiple screens on the coffee table and the very Kingsbury-like LEGO mini lounging on the modern couch. This is the perfect home to recreate in LEGO, quite frankly, with modern lines and a very stark outdoor space framed by additional clean lines. It’s also great that the second photo does its best to recreate the view we got on draft night.

There are no LEGO Camelback Mountains here, unfortunately, so there’s some room for improvement. But it’s also a great quarantine project that gets full marks from NFL Draft fans.

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Teyana Taylor has been long-overdue a moment to shine and she’s hoping that her third album does the trick. After breaking out with VII back in 2014, Taylor returned in 2018 with another strong effort, K.T.S.E., an album that was cut short against her will to fit with the theme of Kanye West’s GOOD Music series in the summer of 2018. Since her second album, Taylor has been hard at work crafting her third album and Friday she shared an exciting update with fans.

Taking over Red Bull Music’s Instagram page to host a virtual screening of her Assembly Required: Teyana Taylor’s House of Petunia and a Q&A session with friend and dance captain, Coco Gilbert, Taylor revealed that her third album was in fact complete. “We’ve been working on the album,” she said. “The album is done—that’s why I look crazy right now. Before I got on with y’all, we literally just did the listening of the album. Y’all gonna be so happy.”

“This album is definitely more of a vibe. I don’t really do fast songs like that,” she continued. “There are some head-boppers. It’s not super-fast. You can dance and you can cry and you can ride.”

Taylor’s announcement comes a couple of days after sharing “Machine” with AI influencer Lil Miquela.

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Less than a year ago, Jay-Z found himself in a room occupied by no one else as hip-hop’s first billionaire. Now, Jay-Z will have to make room for a new billionaire. According to Forbes, Kanye West is officially hip-hop’s second billionaire, a title West had been seeking to receive for “months” according to the magazine.

After crunching the numbers, Forbes tallies West’s net worth to be $1.3 billion. Supplying the bulk of his net worth is his adidas shoe company Yeezy, which is currently valued at $1.26 billion. Next up, West’s discography and GOOD Music imprint are valued at $90 million and the rest of his net worth comes from his owned property ($81 million), land ($21 million) and stocks ($35 million). Despite the feat, West was unsatisfied with Forbes‘ reporting, claiming he’s actually worth $3.3 billion.

West claimed the magazine undervalued with the incorrect number. In response, Forbes said there was not enough independent verification on some of the figures that they were supplied. They also compared his numbers with an unwritten rule they created when valuing now- president Donald Trump: “take whatever the future president insisted he was worth, divide by 3, and start honing from there.” West complaints came on the backend of “months” of requests to officially receive the title as hip-hop’s second billionaire in which he claimed the magazine was being “disrespectful” and “purpose snubbing” him.

[via Forbes]

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Previously on the Best and Worst of Friday Night Smackdown: Sonya Deville did that one promo everyone does when they break up with their tag team partner, Dana Brooke and Daniel Bryan qualified for a Money in the Bank ladder match inside and on top of an office building, and Big E won a singles triple threat match to become Smackdown Tag Team Champions. Things are going great.

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Here’s the Best and Worst of WWE Friday Night Smackdown for April 24, 2020.

Money In The Bank Qualifiers Of The Week

Did you think it was weird last week when Dana Brooke defeated Naomi to earn a spot in the ladder match at Money in the Bank? Well, here’s Lacey Evans pinning Sasha Banks to do the same in a sort of Dawn Of The Planet Of The Karens scenario.

To catch you up to speed, Banks is becoming too aware that the “friend” she keeps around because she’s sycophantic easily manipulated (Smackdown Women’s Champion Bayley) foolishly believes that friendship goes both ways, and that she has the right to manipulate Banks back when necessary. That’s not how it works, but Banks hasn’t been able to find the right moment to rise up and betray her like she always does so she’s stuck doing the champion’s light, misguided bidding. Previously that meant being fed to Tamina. This week, it means being fed to Lacey Evans.

Banks is paranoid and waiting for the other shoe to drop in one way or another, so she’s really defensive and weird about everything that goes wrong. That causes everything to go wrong. For example, she’s about to lose clean to goddamn Lacey Evans when Bayley swoops in and puts Banks’ foot on the bottom rope, saving her. Lacey goes after Bayley and gets distracted, allowing Banks to roll her up. That would normally win the match as the Divas Roll-Up does a minimum of 50% damage, but Evans has pulled Bayley too far into the ring, and the referee’s HEY GET OUTTA THE RING priorities have taken over. The ref misses the pin completely, and Banks doesn’t have the capacity for abstract thought necessary to assume it’s anyone’s fault but Bayley’s. This distracts HER, and Lacey sneaks up like the best Solid Snake at Dillard’s and knocks Sasha out with her dreaded Anti-Sasha Fist*.

*Lacey’s also holding the picture of her daughter Sasha and Bayley brought out on a Popsicle stick, Summer Rae-style, when she punches and you’d think hitting your opponent in their face with a stick would be a disqualification, but whatever, it’s quarantine, we’re making it up as we go. I really appreciate the Summer -> Summer analogue, though.

After the match, Tamina’s music hits and there are TAMINA graphics everywhere, but Bayley is still somehow blindsided when Tamina shows up and kicks her. Tamina’s like white noise, I guess. But yeah, to recap, the Smackdown women’s division has Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville feuding over who Mandy should date, Lacey Evans and Dana Brooke going over Sasha Banks and Naomi, and Tamina knocking out Bayley in a title feud. One more bad idea and they’ll summon Kelly Kelly like the Planeteers summoned Captain Planet.

In the other qualifying match with loosely the same plot, King Corbin — the Lacey Evans of men — defeats Drew Gulak when Shinsuke Nakamura and Cesaro attack Daniel Bryan and cause a distraction. Gulak’s doing the best he can out here but doesn’t even get to use his own entrance theme. Corbin is better in the ring than we’ve probably ever given him credit for, too, so this is solid despite Corbin’s character stink making everything he does feel like a chore to sit through. I’m excited to see him hit Apollo Crews with a fax machine, or whatever.

Tag Team Divisions Ballyhoo Of The Week

The show opens with the time honored tradition of the Smackdown promo parade, with New Day trying to talk about their Smackdown Tag Team Singles Triple Threat Championship win only to be interrupted by the Lucha House Party, and then The Miz and John Morrison, and then, LOL, the Forgotten Sons.

Two major highlights here:

• Lince Dorado trying to get over the phrase, “lucha lit.” “Eight time Tag Team Champions, yo … that’s what I call LUCHA LIT!” Yeah, but it is a-a a good, good luchas, lucha … thing? God damn, woo!
• The Forgotten Sons having All-American Grade-A beef with The Miz because they’re Marines — well, Steve Cutler and Jaxson Ryker were — and Miz only plays a Marine in the movies. I wish Miz had just said, “do you know how acting works,” and went back to addressing teams that aren’t just here because they live close to the building.

The Forgotten Sons attack New Day because they’re the champions (or other reasons!), which sets up [checks notes] Miz and Morrison versus Lucha House Party for later in the night.

That ends up being pretty good, if only for the closest look we’ll ever get at what Miz would’ve looked like in Lucha Underground. Miz gets overconfident and gets his Skull-crushing Finale reversed into a victory roll for the upset, taking a loss to 2/3 of the losing end of a Lars Sullivan squash. Now that’s Lucha Lit.

Note: My favorite Lucha Lit song is ‘Mi Propio Peor Enemigo.’

In more important tag team news, the Women’s Tag Team Champions win a six-minute match with a four-minute commercial break in the middle. The first half’s fine, but the second half is rough. It mostly seems to be here to establish Bliss Cross Applesauce’s tag team finisher, a “modified 3-D” that used to be The Snapshot. So what are we calling it, the 3-DDT?

Speaking of signature moves, I can’t see Dana go for something like this and not imagine Pentagon Jr. just running up and dropkicking her in the back of the head. Usually those cartwheel moves are done in the corner to create the illusion that your opponent can’t get out of the way. The next time she goes for this on the floor, her opponent should take a step to the right and let her go twirling into the ring post.

Also On This Episode:

Sheamus kicks former Australian Rugby star Daniel ‘UHF’ Vidot, then returns to intimidate Michael Cole a little. It’s not Cole’s fault you accidentally got stuck in the Viking Raiders and Erick Rowan spot where you’re the only person on the brand winning jobber squashes every week, man. Not that I’m dying for a Sheamus main-event program or anything, but a guy with his resume should have something better to do 14 years into his WWE career than pick fights with announcers and win empty arena matches on the lowest difficulty.

This video package will be important for the Firefly Fun House match between Bray Wyatt and Braun Strowman, where we learn all the deep psychological reasons why a big aggro hillbilly in a sheep mask became a big aggro hillbilly without a sheep mask.

Worst: Old Man Take A Look At My Life, I’m A Lot Like You

Finally, an actual episode of Smackdown in the year of our Lord 2020 ends with Vince McMahon cutting a promo about how WWE is stupid and boring. Then he literally turns off the lights in the building and we hear crickets chirping. No, seriously. It’s clearly just a weird rib to pop Triple H, but to anyone that isn’t him or Vince it just looks like a senile old man wandered out and rambled about how much he hates everything, and then turned off the lights when he left without thinking anyone still needs them. It felt like sitting down with your relatives at Thanksgiving as a WWE segment.

The rest of it is what you’d expect from Triple H Appreciation Week. Video packages about D-X invading Nitro (by riding around in a jeep in the parking lot and not actually interacting with anyone from WCW), long unfunny improvisational bits between him and Shawn Michaels, and Ric Flair Facetiming in to cry on the telephone. OH, and before they turn off the lights and play “boring” sound effects, there’s a blooper reel and a retrospective on how many times Triple H has lost at WrestleMania.

We … really need the fans back soon, don’t we? Holy shit. At least two people in the world enjoyed it! Congratulations on your billion dollar investment, Fox!

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

JayBone2

That made Lashleys Sisters look like Citizen Kane.

Clay Quartermain

During the heat death of the universe, they will still be doing DX reunions

AshBlue

A quick Google search reveals Mantaur debuted 25 years ago. Why aren’t we celebrating him tonight?

AddMayne

Taylor Swish

HHH has the same feeling these days watching Vince on a live mic as Fauci does watching Trump talk

Baron Von Raschke

Weird that a group with a Revolutionary Leader helped a Monarch…but, that’s probably just me.

Birdman

“Hey Booker T, what’s your favorite HHH Mania match?”

*Awkward 23 second pause*

Shane Thomas

Has Vince McMahon become Grandpa Simpson?

EvilDucky

Me: HHH appreciation night? Not sure I can handle this…
*Lucha House Party music hits*
Me: Bring on the GAME!!

King of Smark Style

As a member of the WWE Universe, and ranking member of the TRUE AUTHORITY of the WWE, I feel it’s fair to say that this show has really gotten away from us.

Who left Bigfoot in charge of the company?

That’s it for this week’s Best and Worst of Smackdown. As always, thanks for getting through this with us and checking out the column, especially during this pandemic. It’s hard to keep a lot of this in context, especially with what’s going on with the company in the real world. We appreciate you, as well as your comments in our comments section below, and your social media shares. Next week begins UPROXX READER APPRECIATION WEEK, where I drink a bottle of NyQuil and then cut a promo about how terrible you all are.

Join us here next week for Daniel Bryan vs. King Constable, and Money in the Bank qualifying matches between Otis and Dolph Ziggler, and Mandy Rose and Carmella. And 25 minutes of Stephanie McMahon’s new Netflix stand-up special, I don’t know.

While college athletes sit at home broke, with their seasons cancelled and the future uncertain, their conferences are trying to help their schools stay rich. The Group of Five recently penned a letter to Mark Emmert, the president of the NCAA, claiming that the COVID-19 pandemic has rendered the status quo in college athletics fiscally imprudent.

Translation: The schools can’t continue to profit on the backs of unpaid laborers in the “new normal.”

The Group of Five consists of mid-major Division I conferences, including the American Athletic Conference, Conference USA, Mid-American Conference, Mountain West Conference, and Sun Belt Conference. They have sought immediate relief in the form of a blanket waiver that mostly reduces opportunities for college athletes.

These conferences would like several key NCAA regulatory requirements for maintaining Division I membership status waived, including but not limited to:

• Financial aid requirements.
• Minimum number of sponsored sports.
• A freeze on any new institutions from joining Division I conferences.

For. The. Next. Four. Years.

A freeze on new Division I members means fewer universities competing for the same pool of athletes. A waiver on financial aid requirements will be a direct hit to athletes. Removing the requirement on the number of sponsored sports will be a death knell to many existing so-called “non-revenue generating” programs across the country — Old Dominion’s wrestling and the University of Cincinnati’s men’s soccer teams were the first shoes to drop. Both schools cited impending budget cuts and the long-term health of their respective athletic departments as reasons for discontinuation. They also contend that making the decision now gives current athletes more time to navigate the transfer process.

With carte blanche granted by the powers that be, this waiver would likely lead to rash decisions by athletic departments, enabling them to eliminate programs and, as a result, athletic scholarships. While these cuts will be made under the guise of fiscal prudence, this may actually be faulty logic.

For the most part, programs like those cited above provide athletes with only partial aid, or even no aid at all. This can actually serve as a tool to attract paying students, even if they are paying below the “sticker price.” Unless the school is at enrollment capacity with a waitlist every year — many aren’t — they are likely making money on partial payers. Cutting these sports will result in a loss of this revenue.

Similarly, many schools mark athletic scholarships as an expense. This is an accounting trick. A scholarship is the school ostensibly paying itself. The cost of having a full-scholarship athlete on campus is actually significantly lower. Sure, the school will say an athlete is receiving a scholarship valued at $50,000 per year, but in reality, the athlete doesn’t actually cost the school anywhere close to that unless the school is turning away full-paying students to do so. Since very few students at most universities actually pay sticker price, even schools at full-capacity are rarely in a position where they are saying no to customers paying full-freight.

The power structure of the current college sports system obviously favors these conferences and their constituent universities. They have legitimate influence over NCAA guidelines and, more importantly, a direct line of communication to NCAA President Mark Emmert. Despite crying poor, the losses associated with cancelling March Madness and potentially delaying the start of the college football season will be made back in due time.

Having said that, COVID-19’s impact on the business of college athletics is not limited to the institutions. Thousands of athletes whose time and energy have been spent making other people rich won’t have the same economic rebound. They can’t profit from their inalienable right to market themselves. They cannot apply for the Paycheck Protection Program. Hell, many aren’t even eligible for stimulus checks.

The athlete doesn’t have a single avenue through which they can advocate for themselves in the face of a threat that has the capacity to alter the trajectories of their lives. If the Group of Five’s waiver request is granted, make no mistake: Athletes will bear the brunt of this pandemic in the interest of maintaining normalcy for bloated athletic departments nationwide.

To this end, it has recently been reported that the NCAA Division I Board of Governors will vote on a new rule to potentially alleviate SOME of the restraints on athlete’s ability to monetize their own name, image, and likeness over the next couple of years. While this appears to potentially be a positive step for athletes, they do not have time to waste right now.

As such, I would like to make a modest relief request on behalf of the athlete: a blanket waiver of NCAA rules that ban players from monetizing their own name, image, and likeness. While this change alone would not address the systemic issues of athlete exploitation in college sports, it would be a stride towards helping the NCAA’s workforce and product, and we’re already heading in this direction, anyway. More than thirty states currently have some form of name, image, and likeness legislation for college athletes in the works; ratification is inevitable.

Now, would this mean that every college athlete would find themselves swimming in lucrative sneaker deals? Of course not. But each athlete possesses a unique value, and who is Mark Emmert to tell them they’re not permitted to make every effort to realize that value?

There are plenty of levers athletes could pull outside of the realm of big brand partnerships to earn a few bucks — monetizing a Twitch stream, accepting payments for providing virtual training sessions, selling apparel, modeling, acting, or dropping some affiliate links in a social profile, to name a few — but only if these draconian rules are eliminated.

Now, I know some will cry out about this throwing away the balances of a “level playing field.” But let’s be real: The entire notion of equity across college athletics is a complete fallacy. Last I checked, the University of Texas has an annual athletic budget of over $206 million. Meanwhile, fellow Division I FBS school New Mexico State has an athletic department budget of $16.9 million. The inequity already exists in pretty much every department imaginable already.

Why do I care so much about helping 19 year olds line their pockets? Because I was one of them, and I’d have relished the opportunity to make, well, anything.

I played basketball at West Virginia and UMass. Both of my siblings played high major college hoops as well. I am intimately familiar with all that goes into being a college athlete and the burden placed on the athlete’s family in the name of amateurism.

College basketball players, on average, put in around 40 hours per week towards basketball-related activities. This spans beyond on-court duties — you have requirements to participate in university marketing initiatives, community events, media appearances, and more. Your life is ruled by your program. If you skip out on any of these activities, you put your scholarship at risk. This sounds like a full-time job because, well, it is.

But as a full-time college athlete, you hardly see a dime.

Had I tried to make a few bucks by monetizing a YouTube channel, running my own basketball camp, or selling goofy-ass dad hats emblazoned with references appealing only to the student section and the deepest recesses of basketball Twitter, I would have been stripped of my eligibility. Meanwhile, my teammates and I helped our coach secure a gig that paid him several million dollars per year to coach basketball at a different university.

Now, the winds of change are blowing, and the organization at the forefront can snap its metaphorical fingers if it so chooses. Instead of the NCAA moving at a snail’s pace to begin the process and eventually formulating a written plan on the issue of name, image, and likeness, make it happen now and give players a chance to help support themselves and their families in a period of economic uncertainty.

We’re in the middle of a global crisis. We’re experiencing significant educational disruption, economic hamstringing, and the deadliest worldwide virus in a century. College athletes being allowed to make some money as they ride out the storm should be the least of our worries.

If the NCAA is going to let schools change the rules for their own benefit in the name of the pandemic, it’s time they afford players the opportunity to profit from their cultural significance in the same way that schools, coaches, and administrators have done for decades.

It makes sense. It’s the right thing to do. And seeing as how major decisions are made in college athletics with the bottom line in mind, it certainly is appealing that this would cost the universities … nothing.

Luke Bonner is a former college basketball player. He is also the founder/CEO of PWRFWD and a long-time player rights activist. Follow Luke On Twitter: @LukeyBonner.