USA TODAY Sports/MMA Junkie rankings, April 15: UFC 314 results in multiple upward shifts
USA TODAY Sports/MMA Junkie rankings, April 15: UFC 314 results in multiple upward shifts
UFC 314 was a major card – with major impacts.
Coming out of Saturday's fight card in Miami, multiple fighters shifted upward in the official USA TODAY Sports/MMA Junkie rankings including Paddy Pimblett, Jean Silva, Virna Jandiroba, and Dominick Reyes.
Additionally, another impactful (though lesser so) fight card took place in the Sunshine State. 2025 PFL World Tournament 2 featured wins from Liz Carmouche and Ekaterina Shakalova.
Check out all the latest pound-for-pound and divisional USA TODAY Sports/MMA Junkie rankings.
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Chicago Tribune
30 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Column: Was horse's loss a metaphor for journalism's future?
Journalism took another hit on Saturday. The big bay horse, named for the profession of reporting and editing, came in a close second at the Belmont Stakes after being the favorite. Sort of like the career many of us have chosen over the years. Close, but no cigar in the winner's circle as the number of news operations and organizations continues to wane and lose their track records. I was so certain that Journalism, the thoroughbred, would take the eight-horse field at the Belmont, the third leg of horse racing's vaunted Triple Crown, that I wagered an amateur's $10 across the board, meaning to win, place or show. That Journalism would win its second Triple Crown outing would be a celebration of the business, a vindication of unwarranted attacks on a free press. A resurrection at the very least. It was in the cards. Turned out, it was a punter's Runyonesque dream. Journalism's rival, Sovereignty, came from behind into the final eighth of a mile of the race at the track at Saratoga Race Course in New York, drew even and surged past onto victory. The race was a mirror of the Kentucky Derby, where Sovereignty bested my three-year-old, who had smashingly won the Preakness Stakes, the second jewel in the Triple Crown. Even naming a horse Journalism is an odd choice among breeders, who usually anoint clever puns or cute monikers for their equine charges. Co-owner Aron Wellman, a one-time sports editor at his high school newspaper at Beverly Hills High, gave the horse its name. 'So journalism is something that I value very much, and I appreciate responsible and diligent journalists,' he told USA Today. Besides a few members of the administration of President Donald Trump, who doesn't? They might have placed their bets on Sovereignty. Yet, finding a place to lay down that $30 bet turned out to be harder than expected. Traveling to the Circa sportsbook at The Temporary casino in Waukegan's entertainment zone at Fountain Square was a wasted trip. Seems at the Circa you can wager various parlays on all sorts of sporting events, but not horse racing. That monopoly belongs to the Hawthorne Race Course, with the closest betting shop in Prospect Heights. I know where Mount Prospect is and Round Lake Heights, but Prospect Heights? Where's Arlington Park when you need it? Gone to perhaps becoming a football stadium. Next, a check of some of the online betting sites, like Twin Spires, owned and operated by Churchill Downs, Inc., where the Kentucky Derby is held. Too many questions to fill out and fees. Fortunately, Highrollin' Pete from Libertyville was on his annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas, staying at the iconic pyramid-shaped Luxor on The Strip. He placed the bet through the hotel's sportsbook. The one-time favorite, Journalism, paid $3.20 to place and $2.30 to show, on a $2 across-the-board wager. My meager math skills translate that into $27.50 in winnings on a $30 bet. A loss. Which is what is happening to newspapers and journalism in general. It's acknowledged that the U.S. has lost 3,200 newspapers, more than one-third, since 2005. That's when advertisers began turning to online marketplaces instead of print advertising, which at one time generated about 80% of a newspaper's revenue. Northwestern University's Medill Local News Initiative has reported that obituaries for 127 newspapers were written in 2024. You've heard of food deserts? Some communities are now considered news deserts, especially in rural areas, where local news outlets have gone the way of rotary-dial phones. A study from the Evanston university discovered that almost 55 million Americans have limited access to local news. That's a scary number to consider when these same folks are left to rely on information from biased cable news programming, online and social media privateers, and Artificial Intelligence-generated news and feature stories. Newsies at one regional newspaper — through no fault of their own — were embarrassed recently after a features syndicate provided a special section with AI-generated material, some of it downright false. That should be a wake-up call for the profession. Along with the loss of print newspapers, an estimated more than 7,000 journalism jobs, including some in broadcast media, disappeared between 2022 and 2023. Many editors and reporters have taken buyouts as companies seek to trim payrolls in the face of declining readership and advertising. Lester Holt, a former Chicago television news anchor, signed off on his last NBC Nightly News offering at the end of May after a decade anchoring the network's half-hour evening news segment. 'Around here, facts matter, words matter, journalism matters,' he said on his last broadcast. That's also true around here, too. Despite Journalism coming in a sad second-place finish, for journos, there's always the next race and the possibility of winning on the nose.
Fox News
37 minutes ago
- Fox News
Simone Biles doesn't realize what she's admitting about trans women in her posts, Riley Gaines says
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Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
3 Important Tax Considerations Following The House Versus NCAA Ruling
Following a lengthy legal battle, the AP reports that Judge Claudia Wilken has approved a deal between the NCAA and lawyers representing NCAA athletes. While the deal is nuanced, the key takeaway from this deal is that schools can now begin paying athletes directly. This change represents a significant departure from the NCAA's longstanding tradition of its athletes being student-athletes, hence remaining amateur (and unpaid) during their time in college. Although this coming year will be the first time that college athletes will begin to get paid directly by their schools, athletes receiving millions of dollars has become a mainstay in recent years. This ruling will allow schools to pay a total of $20.5 million in total to their student-athletes in the initial year. While these significant cash flows for the athletes can be very beneficial, they also carry tremendous tax burdens that the athletes may or may not be prepared to accept. In this article, I highlight three important tax considerations that college athletes should consider as we head into a new era of collegiate athletics compensation. Section 61(a) of the Internal Revenue Code tackles this topic. It states, 'Gross income means all income from whatever source derived.' This line item means that as athletes receive money from schools, NIL collectives, or sponsorships, they will be required to remit taxes on those funds received. As many deals are worth millions of dollars, it is important to highlight the ramifications of receiving these funds. For instance, consider Duke standout forward Cooper Flagg, whose Fox Sports reports received $28 million in compensation during his one year as a college basketball star. This amount of income firmly puts him into the top tax bracket at the federal level, meaning that all income over $626,350 will be taxed at a 37% tax rate. This means that without any other deductions, Flagg would owe over $10 million in federal income taxes. Furthermore, Flagg will have considerable state income tax liabilities due to the tax levied in his domiciled state of North Carolina as well as will have to pay the self-employment taxes (15.3%). What can also be problematic is that all compensation is subject to taxation, including in-kind compensation. According to Opendorse, athletes need to be aware of compensation beyond just the cash payments they receive. For instance, if an athlete has a partnership with a local car dealership and, as part of that partnership, they get a free car lease, the fair market value of that car lease that the athlete is not paying is a form of compensation. Similar rules apply to athletic gear, meals and entertainment, travel expenses, and other forms of in-kind compensation. What potentially gets lost in the equation is that these athletes do not have an employer who takes taxes out of their paycheck, as do most taxpayers. Instead, they must make quarterly payments to the taxing authority for their portion of the taxes owed. Thus, if an athlete receives a $1 million check, the athlete must put aside a significant portion (potentially more than half of it) of those funds to pay their taxes. This withholding will become even more important as athletes begin derive even more compensation directly from their schools. A critical wrinkle in the taxation of sports-related income is the jock tax. According to H&R Block, the jock tax is an extra layer of taxation levied on athletes when they play in a different taxing jurisdiction. This tax is levied on the athlete's salary. However, some jurisdictions will include bonuses that were achieved if the conditions of receiving those bonuses were met while performing in that other jurisdiction. The jock tax has led to numerous headlines in the media. According to Kiplinger, the jock tax led to a back-and-forth tax battle between California and Illinois over Michael Jordan's income during the 1991 NBA Finals. Their article also highlights how players like Stephen Curry and Nikola Jokic routinely pay over $1 million in jock tax on an annual basis. The precise formula for calculating the jock tax is messy and varies substantially based on where the athlete plays. For a college athlete now being compensated by their school, they will need to determine the portion of their income earned while playing at universities and tournaments in different states and ensure that they comply with the tax laws in those states. Even after an athlete pays federal income taxes and jock taxes, they will then need to pay their state income taxes. The state income tax rate can fluctuate drastically, as high as 13.3% in California and as low as 0% in several states, including Texas, Florida, and Washington. Thus, an athlete may want to consider their state tax liability when selecting their school. As I reported in Forbes, an athlete like Arch Manning decided between playing at Alabama, LSU, and Texas. While there were clearly many factors in play, Manning chose to play at Texas (0% state income tax rate) over the other schools in states that impose a state income tax, saving him hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. This nuance has led to states like Alabama and North Carolina to consider exempting NIL from state income taxes. In fact, as I reported in Forbes, Arkansas has gone the entire way and passed a law exempting this income from state taxation. Interestingly, many of these proposed and passed laws were directed at NIL income without considering the possibility that these athletes might eventually get paid directly by their schools. Thus, the House v. NCAA ruling has tremendous impacts on state income taxation considerations for these athletes, and the athletes will need to carefully consider and monitor their income to ensure that they comply with state tax laws.
