The families of team members in the College Football Playoff championship game, which will be contested Monday between Ohio State and Oregon at AT&T Stadium in Irving, Tex., will be allowed to receive travel expenses to the game from the CFP operators under a ruling from the NCAA. It’s associated with a program in which members of teams participating in the men’s and women’s Final Fours will be permitted to receive as much as $3,000 (for semifinal losers) and $4,000 (for title-game participants) in travel, hotel and meal expenses from the NCAA....

Previously, the policy allowed transgender women to compete on women’s college sports teams as long as they showed they had received testosterone-suppressing medication for at least a year before. Now, according to an NCAA statement, the decision will be left to each sport’s national governing body. If there is no governing body, it will fall to the sport’s international federation policy. If there is none, the athletes will follow the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) criteria....

The decision left many in the sports world, including long-time ESPN analyst Dick Vitale, to call for the NCAA to grant those seniors an extra year of eligibility. Dickie V’s dome might have been on the right track. On Friday afternoon, the Division I Council Coordination Committee declared that “eligibility relief is appropriate for spring sports.” MORE: Dayton’s ‘magical’ season ends as NCAA Tournament’s biggest ‘what if’ Many were excited about the news, but it still raises a lot of questions....

Someone had to ask, right? So I asked. When was the last time he thought about last year's NCAA Tournament experience, when his Lobos were upset by 14-seeded Harvard? Does he ever think about it? MORE: NCAA Tournament scoreboard | Biggest first-round upsets Williams, who was sitting next to fellow senior Cameron Bairstow, grinned. "Two seconds ago. We just talked about it before we came up here. We figured someone was going to ask us, and we're glad you did....

But we're not going to do that. Why? Because lets be honest, it's a play-in game. Cal Poly and Texas Southern finished the season with a combined record of 32-33. Wichita State won more games than both these teams combined. Would you like to know why these two teams are playing in the play-in game? Would you like to know why these two teams combined for a sub .500 record this season?...

We didn’t want it to, not with Kentucky and Wichita State playing at a level we hadn’t seen yet in this tournament, and might not again. The passion of the players was riveting. We were transfixed. As the clock wound down, we dreaded the end of regulation, begged for an overtime or two. But that’s not the way these things work. MORE: Interactive bracket | Complete schedule, results All good things must come to an end....

And they’ve got a problem. MORE: Incredible photos from Saturday’s games | Willie Cauley-Stein’s rim-rattling dunk | Boeheim’s teenage daughter heckled It is a problem that No. 8 seed Cincinnati was tough enough to exacerbate and game enough – but not quite good enough — to exploit. It is a problem that could be as significant an obstacle to UK’s ninth NCAA championship as any of the opponents or potential opponents remaining in their path: Force the Wildcats to become a jump-shooting team, and at the moment they can’t make a jumpshot....

But if you think the committee waits until the final hour to solidify the bracket, you’re wrong, because even before the first game tipped off on Sunday, 67 of the 68 spots were locked in, according to the official March Madness Twitter account. MORE: Field of 68 | Automatic bids | Printable bracket | Realtime Brackets game The last remaining spot has yet to be filled because UConn, a team that will not receive an at-large bid, has a chance to earn the AAC’s automatic qualifier with a win over SMU on Sunday afternoon....

MORE: NCAA scoreboard | Vegas lines, pick | Day 2’s biggest moments | Weekend matchups Providence Friars (22-11) No. 6 seed, East Region Coach: Ed Cooley (fourth season) Bid: At-large/ Big East Starting lineup G Kris Dunn, 6-3, So., 15.8 ppg, 7.6 apg G Jalen Lindsey, 6-7, Fr., 3.6 ppg, 1.5 rpg F LaDontae Henton, 6-6, Sr., 19.7 ppg, 6.4 rpg F Carson Desrosiers, 7-0, Sr., 6.9 ppg, 4.4 rpg...

The public is also backing Kentucky and Duke as favorites. The only game in which the amount of money bet is higher than the ticket percentage for a different team is Little Rock-Iowa State. ALR is getting just 37 percent of the tickets, but 54 percent of the money. Saturday picks: ISU-ALR | IU-UK | KU-UConn | UNC-Prov | Wichita-Miami | Gonzaga-Utah | Duke-Yale Want to win a free entry to the world’s biggest sports betting contest?...

And it wasn’t that UMBC (that’s University of Maryland-Baltimore County) upset Virginia, it was how they pulled off the stunning win. The game was tied at halftime, and the upstart Retrievers smoked the Cavaliers — who were 31-2 on the year and had a 17-1 record in an ACC that had five teams ranked in the final AP poll and nine teams in the NCAA Tournament — in the second half, rolling to a jaw-dropping 74-54 victory....

A’ja Wilson scored 23 points on 9-of-15 shooting to lead the Gamecocks to victory. She controlled the paint and seemed to score whenever her team needed it. Just 48 hours ago it was the Bulldogs who looked invincible after beating formerly undefeated Connecticut on Morgan William’s buzzer-beating shot in overtime. But the 5-5 guard was the focal point of a tall and lengthy South Carolina defense, which was able to keep her in check....

As a company notorious for housing misinformation and for giving large groups of people a vast platform to engage in discourse, Facebook has attempted to beef up its measures to create a more transparent arena in which citizens can more honestly engage in their politics, in receiving political messages. But, as reported by First Draft News, a U.K.-based nonprofit that aims to counter misinformation and disinformation online, after conducting a thorough investigation into the matter, it was found that the overwhelming majority of conservative advertisements posted in the weeks before an important U....

Trump’s only viable opponent, former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, suspended his campaign against the incumbent president in March. Weld’s exit left Trump as the GOP’s presumptive nominee. According to the poll, 23 percent of voters who are inclined to vote Republican do not want Trump to be the party’s nominee. That represents a minority of those polled as 70 percent would like to see Trump receive the nomination. More Democrats seem to be unhappy with Biden as the party’s presumptive nominee with 28 percent of likely Democratic voters reporting they would prefer someone else as the party’s top choice....

So far, 29 Democrats and 18 Republicans announced their plans to either retire or seek other offices. Democratic Representatives James Langevin of Rhode Island and Jerry McNerney of California became the latest to join the growing list of retirements Tuesday. In a column for The Providence Journal, Langevin wrote, “it is time for me to chart a new course, which will allow me to stay closer to home and spend more time with my family and friends....

The complaint, which was filed by the parents of Jake Gardner against the Douglas County Attorney’s Office in Omaha, Nebraska, alleges that the office’s accusations that Gardner was racist led to his suicide. Gardner was charged with manslaughter and other felonies in last year’s May 30 shooting death of James Scurlock, 22, outside Gardner’s bar. Gardner’s parents are suing Douglas County’s top prosecutor and a special prosecutor Monday in federal court, seeking an undisclosed amount in compensatory and punitive damages, the Omaha World-Herald reported....

The neck, or cervical spine, is made up of seven different bones called vertebrae. Cervical spondylosis, or neck arthritis, can occur over time from aging or injury, causing cartilage breakdown between the vertebrae. The resulting pain and stiffness of the neck is common as the vertebrae are unable to glide smoothly due to the cartilage degeneration. Symptoms can increase by looking up or down or by holding the head in the same position for extended periods of time, and may include grinding or popping in the neck, muscle spasms, and in severe cases, cervical radiculopathy....

Filipino referee Carlos Padilla, now 88, has revealed just how he helped Pacquiao defeat Hussein in an extraordinary interview. Padilla, famously the third man in the ring for the “Thrilla in Manila” between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, admitted to giving Pacquiao longer than the permitted time to recover from a knockdown, ruling a headbutt from his countryman as a punch and encouraging the doctor to stop the fight early due to a cut on Hussein from the headbutt....

However, don’t count Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, among those who were offended. “It’s an honor, as we look at it, that the president has such an affinity for Satchel,” Kendrick told Newsweek on Friday. “We take absolutely no offense to what the president said. As a matter of fact, we applaud the president for continuing to to be an advocate for this history....