c1 0 eZ su the washington post.friday, april 3 , 2020
colleges
Ivy League won’t give
athletes an extra year
The Ivy League decided not to
allow its spring athletes who had
their seasons shortened by the
coronavirus pandemic to have an
additional year of eligibility as
graduates despite the NCAA
granting that option this week.
The move, which was
announced Thursday, w as
consistent for the Ivy League with
its policies. The conference hasn’t
allowed athletes to participate in
any sports as graduates.
“A fter a number of discussions
surrounding the current
circumstances, the Ivy League has
decided the League’s e xisting
eligibility policies will remain in
place, including its long-standing
practice that athletic
opportunities are for
undergraduates,” t he league said
in a statement.
The NCAA Division I Council
voted Monday to give spring
athletes regardless of their year in
school a way to get back the
season they lost because of the
novel coronavirus, but it did not
guarantee financial aid to the
current crop of seniors if they
return to play next year....
Michigan State athletic
director Bill Beekman defended
basketball c oach Tom Izzo a fter
Izzo w as accused in an ESPN
report of contacting a witness
who was part of a 2017 c riminal
sexual conduct investigation
involving one o f his players.
According to a police report
obtained by ESPN, Michigan
State student Brayden Smith was
with b asketball player Brock
Washington o n the n ight a
female student said Washington
forcibly groped her. When p olice
interviewed Smith, he said h e had
already b een contacted b y Izzo
and assistant coaches Dwayne
Stephens a nd Mike Garland.
They “ asked (Smith) i f he was OK
and if there was a nything that he
had seen during the evening,”
according to the report.
“There’s n othing to support
any claims that any member of
the men’s b asketball staff
conducted their own
investigation, or interfered with
any ongoing i nvestigation,”
Beekman said in a statement.
DePaul and Coach Dave Leitao
agreed to a contract extension
through the 2023 -24 season after a
year in which the Blue Demons
went 16-16....
Former Wake Forest a nd
Marshall basketball coach Carl
Tacy d ied. He w as 87....
Ohio S tate s tar Kaleb Wesson,
who averaged 14 points a nd
9.3 rebounds this past season,
will e nter the NBA draft....
George Mason guard Ian Boyd
will return t o the s chool for a fifth
year o f eligibility a fter sitting out
last season while r ecovering from
wrist surgery....
Oregon State’s Destiny Slocum
will e nter the transfer portal for
her final season of eligibility....
North Dakota forward Jordan
Kawaguchi, Minnesota Duluth
defenseman Scott Perunovich
and Maine goalie Jeremy
Swayman were n amed as the
three finalists for the Hobey Baker
Memorial Award, given to the
most outstanding player in college
hockey.
soccer
A European plan is being
formed to resume competition
around July and August, with
domestic leagues told not to
abandon competitions yet
because of the coronavirus
pandemic.
The determination to ensure
competitions are “decided on the
field” t o protect their integrity was
outlined in a letter obtained by the
Associated Press. It w as signed by
the heads of UEFA, t he European
Club Association and European
Leagues body and was being sent
to their members.
The correspondence was issued
hours after the Belgian top flight
became the first major European
competition to recommend
ending its season with the current
standings declared final....
Atlético Madrid said it reached
an agreement with its players and
coaching staff to reduce their
salaries by 70 percent while
competitions are stopped during
the coronavirus pandemic.
Misc.
According to the California
Horse Racing Board website, a
2 -year-old filly named Smiling Ali
died a fter a training session at
Santa Anita. It w as the seventh
death at t he track in Arcadia,
Calif., since December....
The Chicago Blackhawks
agreed to two-year contract
extensions with forward Matthew
Highmore and goaltender Kevin
Lankinen....
Ed Farmer, an all-star reliever
who spent nearly three decades as
a radio broadcaster for the
Chicago White Sox, died. He w as
70.
— F rom news services
DigestFROM NEWS SERVICES
AND STAFF REPORTSNew England Patriots owner
Robert Kraft helped to secure and
arrange for more than 1.7 million
N95 masks to be delivered to hos-
pitals in Massachusetts and New
York, government and team offi-
cials s aid.
The initial s hipment of approxi-
mately 1.2 million masks was
scheduled to arrive Thursday af-
ternoon in Boston f rom China a nd
was being carried by the Patriots’
team plane.
“It is an honor for our family to
be a part of this humanitarian
mission,” Kraft said in a written
statement issued through the Pa-
triots. “We knew that purchasing
greatly needed N95 masks and
providing the Patriots plane to
expedite their delivery to local
hospitals w ould immediately h elp
protect our courageous health
care professionals.”
Overburdened health-care
workers have cited shortages of
personal protective equipment
amid t he g lobal novel coronavirus
pandemic.
The Kraft family is paying
$2 million of the approximately
$4 million cost of t he masks. Kraft
and his son, Patriots executive
Jonathan Kraft, teamed with the
state to purchase 1.4 million
masks for Massachusetts. Robert
Kraft also purchased 3 00,000
masks for New York.
The 500,000 masks not includ-
ed in Thursday’s initial shipment
are expected to arrive in the Unit-
ed States as soon as next week.
“Multiple organizations across
the public and private sectors, all
of which were in lockstep with
Governor Charlie Baker’s vision-
ary leadership, w orked together to
execute this mission with the pur-
pose of helping save lives,” Kraft
said. “I truly hope t hat in doing so,
we can in s ome way inspire others
to find creative ways to give more
in support of our doctors, nurses
and f irst responders.”
— Mark Maske
l REDSKINS: A former agent
for D errius Guice filed a l awsuit in
California a gainst the Washington
running back and his current rep-
resentatives at Young Money
Sports, seeking $500, 00 0 in dam-
ages.
In t he suit, filed March 31, agent
Fadde Mikhail says that Guice
signed w ith h im after leaving LSU
in January 2018, then switched
agencies four months later in the
weeks before that year’s NFL
draft. Mikhail says he loaned
Guice $191,000 in early 2018 and
negotiated hundreds of thou-
sands of dollars of endorsement
and m arketing deals for Guice and
is entitled to a 15 percent commis-
sion.
The Redskins had no comment
on the lawsuit. Guice’s agents also
declined to comment.
Mikhail says he negotiated a
four-year deal with Nike that
would pay Guice $40,000 a year
with a $100,000 signing bonus, a
$35, 000 advertising deal with
Hyundai, a $17,000 autograph
signing agreement with Panini
America and a $35, 000 agreement
with Leaf trading cards. The suit
also says G uice had a deal t o make
up to $600,000 in a utograph s ign-
ings.
The suit says Guice’s current
agency was supposed to pay back
the l oans he took f rom Mikhail.
— Les Carpenter
l COWBOYS: Aldon Smith,
the former all-pro p ass rusher for
the S an Francisco 49ers seeking to
return to the NFL after his career
was put o n hold by off-field issues,
agreed to a contract with D allas,
according to a person familiar
with the deal.
The one-year deal could pay
Smith, 30, who last played in the
NFL with the Oakland Raiders in
the 2015 season, as much as
$4 million, according to that per-
son, who spoke o n the condition of
anonymity because there had
been no official announcement
about t he agreement.
Smith’s r equest to the NFL to be
reinstated r emains pending.
— Mark Maske
l TITANS: Tennessee running
back Derrick Henry signed a fran-
chise tender that puts him under
contract for the 202 0 season for
$10.2 million as the team works
toward reaching a long-term deal
with the 2019 NFL rushing l eader.
l GIANTS: New York s igned
linebacker Kyler Fackrell, who is
coming o ff a d isappointing season
with the Green Bay Packers, to a
one-year, $ 4.6 million contract.
l PACKERS: Green Bay s igned
free agent wideout Devin Funch-
ess as he tries to bounce back from
an injury-shortened 2019.
— Associated PressNFl NotesKrafts help
purchase
and deliver
N95 masks
BY SAM FORTIERWhen Kendall Fuller walks
back into the Washington Red-
skins’ locker room for the first
time, he won’t be bitter. The cor-
nerback understands why others
might think he was angry when
the t eam t raded h im to the K ansas
City Chiefs for quarterback Alex
Smith two years ago, but he insist-
ed he wasn’t. He went to Redskins
Park the day after the trade to tell
everyone goodbye.
“That’s just a move that they
made to try to get the football
team better,” Fuller said Wednes-
day during a conference call with
reporters, his tone the equivalent
of a verbal shrug. “I’m just excited
to get back there, see everybody,
work with the guys, meet the new
coaching staff.”
Even though he had an up-and-
down two years in Kansas City,
Fuller returns to Washington at
the peak of his career. He is a
champion (his fourth-quarter in-
terception helped the Chiefs seal
their first Super Bowl victory in
50 years). He is rich ($13.5 million
of his new four-year, $40 million
deal is guaranteed). He is taking
on a big role (slotted as the pre-
sumptive No. 1 cornerback after
the Redskins traded Quinton
Dunbar t o the Seattle Seahawks).
This puts Fuller in an unusual
spot because, e ven though he is theteam’s most accomplished corner,
he has played mostly slot corner-
back throughout his career. The
Redskins might ask Fuller to bump
outside, his position in high school
and college, because he could bring
a steadying presence the team
hasn’t h ad there in several seasons.
For now, though, it’s unclear how
the Redskins will use him.
Fuller himself doesn’t know
what his role will be as the Red-
skins finish free agency and look
to the draft to build their roster.
The coaching staff hasn’t ironed
out i ts expectations for h im, Fuller
said, because it hasn’t been able t o
meet while the novel coronavirus
pandemic creates global chaos.
Fuller expressed excitement “to
show my talent... anywhere on
the field,” whether at outside cor-
ner, in the slot or, on a rare occa-
sion, at safety. He does, though,
prefer one o f those positions.
“I always think of myself as [an
outside] corner first,” Fuller said,
adding: “ I remember after m y sec-
ond year, my older brother kind of
made a joke with me because he
knows how much I love corner,
being on the outside. He was like,
‘You might’ve played so good on
the inside that teams will only
want you to play in there.’ ”
Fuller, a Baltimore native, comes
from one of the most accomplished
football families in the DMV. His
three older brothers — Vincent,Corey and Kyle — all played for
Virginia Te ch, too, and spent stints
of varying lengths in the NFL. Kyle,
a Chicago Bears cornerback, is the
only other Fuller still in the league.
Their mother and father, Nina and
Vincent, still live in Baltimore, and
returning to the area intrigued the
free agent this offseason.
Ye t Fuller, Washington’s third-
round draft pick in 2016, refused
to get his hopes up when the Red-
skins spoke with his agent, Joel
Segal, at the NFL scouting com-
bine in F ebruary. H e knew this was
a business. But he couldn’t help
but like what the Redskins had to
offer: a new coach with a good
reputation, a fearsome defensive
front to pressure opposing quar-
terbacks, a nd a coaching staff with
a track record of developing cor-
nerbacks s uch as James Bradberry
and Donte Jackson, whom Fuller
respected. Then his phone rang
with the Redskins’ offer.
“I said: ‘Say less. Let’s do it,’ ”
Fuller remembered.
The family celebrated Fuller’s
return. He would be closer not
only to his parents but his brother
Vincent’s newborn son. Corey
joked with Kendall that now that
he was so close, their mom might
try to move in with him. Shortly
after s igning, Fuller told h is moth-
er she couldn’t come to his games.
Nina hadn’t attended them when
Fuller was with the Redskins thefirst time, either, because her son
wanted nothing more after his
games than a big Sunday dinner
with the family.
“Sweet potato with marshmal-
lows, collard greens, mac and
cheese,” F uller s aid. “A s long as she
cooks those three, I’m cool with
anything else.”
Amid the pandemic, Fuller said
he has changed his workouts to
include more body weight e xercis-
es. But he is confident he will get
through the spring and summer
and be ready to go whenever the
season starts. He is now focused
most on translating what he
learned with Kansas City about
how to win and implementing
those lessons with Washington.
On Wednesday, when every-
thing s eemed uncertain b ut possi-
ble, Fuller talked about mind-set
and culture and leadership. He
talked about how, with the Chiefs,
it felt as if the Super Bowl was the
expectation from the spring. It
might not seem like that now, es-
pecially not this spring, but Fuller
wants the Redskins to get there.
He wants to make this team feel
how he once did. He still remem-
bers the s creaming fans, t he mass-
es of red, the dream come to life
that was the championship pa-
rade i n Kansas City.
“It was fun. It was fun,” he said.
“We got to get one in D.C., too.”
[email protected]Fuller returns with plenty to celebrate
Free agent cornerback rejoins Redskins after winning a championship and earning a big contract
ryan Kang/associated Press
Kendall Fuller (29) was traded to the Chiefs before the 2018 season and ended his tenure there with an interception in Super Bowl LIV.BY RICK MAESEAs Olympic organizers set
about the unprecedented task of
postponing a Summer Games,
they’re forced to rearrange the
complicated chess set in unprece-
dented circumstances. The novel
coronavirus pandemic prompted
government restrictions and
changed the way business is con-
ducted around the world, and
officials with the International
Olympic Committee are working
from their home offices and din-
ing room tables, mostly in Swit-
zerland, making plans to stage
the world’s largest sporting spec-
tacle seven time zones away.
Most of the IOC staffers have
no plans to return to To kyo in the
near future, so the business of
reorganizing the To kyo Games
for 2021 is being conducted daily
on telephones and video confer-
ences.
“We have adapted to this new
virtual environment,” said Chris-
tophe Dubi, the IOC’s Olympic
Games executive director. “So
we’re missing to be with people,
obviously, but we’ll do the right
thing and we contribute to the
fight against covid-19.”
While Olympic officials are
still in the early stages of plotting
out a Summer Games in 2021,
they feel confident they will be
able to present a full Olympic
offering with all sports and all
disciplines planned for the To kyo
program next summer.
Speaking on a conference call
with reporters Thursday, Dubi
said he’s hopeful the Summer
Games in 2021 will resemble the
2020 blueprints, but much work
needs to be done. Venues and
facilities were contracted for
2020, and many have other plans
or tenants lined up for next sum-mer. New contracts need to be
negotiated and drawn up, but the
IOC is hopeful the sites will be
available to host Olympic events
a year later.
“A ll of the 41 venues were
incredibly proud of to have the
Games because it’s a game-
changer for any building to have
hosted the event,” Dubi said. “So
the likelihood is that those nego-
tiations would go in the right
directions.”
Dubi declined to offer an esti-
mate on the cost of postponing
the Olympics, saying it’s “really
premature to get into this.
“I’ve read numbers, but these
are really speculation because I
can guarantee the work is really
ongoing. It’s tens of thousands of
line items on budgets that need to
be reviewed.”
For Olympic officials, the first
step is done: This week, the IOC
and To kyo organizers announced
the Summer Games would startJuly 23, 2021, 364 days after the
original start date. That means
that all the moving parts can start
moving.
“For us, we have some certain-
ty,” Dubi said. “We’re shooting
towards a target that is now
really identified, and it is reassur-
ing.”
Dubi likened an Olympics to a
complex machine. Four months
before the long-scheduled 2020
Opening Ceremonies, “this was a
machine that was ready to deliv-
er,” Dubi said.
Now it must be maintained
and treated so it can deliver
12 months later. The list of equip-
ment and facilities that need to
be addressed includes the
41 competitions venues, 40,000
hotel rooms, 2,000 buses and
thousands of contracts for goods
and services.
“A ll of this now has to be
re-secured one year later,” Dubi
said. “It’s a massive undertakingto get back to the fundamentals
and make sure in a matter of
weeks we have secured and
locked all of this.”
And much of the work needs to
be done from afar, at least for
now. While To kyo 2020 officials
on the ground handle much of
the heavy lifting, the IOC is in-
volved in most every aspect of
planning for the Olympics, pro-
viding guidance, expertise and
hands-on assistance.
The seven-hour time differ-
ence between Lausanne and To -
kyo has meant plenty of early
mornings in front of computer
screens for IOC officials video
conferencing with organizers in
Japan.
To kyo 2020 officials don’t face
many of the restrictions that have
been imposed elsewhere in the
world. Government officials
there have been hesitant to enact
some of the more severe preven-
tive measures aimed at slowing
the spread of the virus. Japan’s
coronavirus numbers are well
below many other countries with
2,495 cases and 70 deaths (ex-
cluding cases and fatalities from
the Diamond Princess cruise
ship), but the country — and
To kyo specifically — has seen a
recent uptick in covid- 19 cases.
On Thursday, Tokyo reported
97 new coronavirus cases, a re-
cord high, but Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe is resisting growing
calls to declare a state of emer-
gency.
Meanwhile, in-person help
from IOC officials is probably
months away.
“We all have to do the right
thing when it comes to health,”
Dubi said. “Everything we have
done is driven by that model.
Health is first.”
[email protected]Olympic organizers doing long-distance logisticsissei Kato/reuters
I OC members, most living in Switzerland, are coordinating with
Tokyo officials seven time zones away to reschedule the Games.