The US women’s team have lost their lawsuit over equal pay but they continue to make progress in the court of public opinion

This isn’t how the fight for equal pay is supposed to end for the US women’s national team.

On Friday a US district court judge rejected the USWNT’s allegations of gender discrimination and ruled in favor of the US Soccer Federation, declaring that the team have not been underpaid.

Related: Joe Biden wades into equal pay dispute between USWNT and US Soccer

• Comment has followed superstar throughout his life
• Jordan addresses issue during ESPN’s The Last Dance

Michael Jordan has discussed the quote that has come to define what many see as his willingness to put profit over principles.

During a 1990 Senate race in his home state of North Carolina, Jordan refused to endorse Democrat Harvey Gantt, an African American who was running against the incumbent Republican Jesse Helms, a notorious racist. Jordan, who at the time had already won the first of his five NBA MVP awards, explained away his refusal to take a stance by saying “Republicans buy sneakers, too”.

Related: Michael Jordan's furious desire to conquer all still burns decades later

• Head coach died ‘peacefully at home’ say Dolphins
• Shula recorded only two losing seasons in long career in Miami

Don Shula, the head coach with the most wins in NFL history, has died at the age of 90.

Shula is most famous for leading the 1972 Miami Dolphins to the only undefeated NFL season in history. The team said in a statement on Monday that Shula had “died peacefully” at home.

Related: Favre says Packers 'burned a bridge' with Aaron Rodgers in NFL draft

The Greatest.

Thank you for everything, Coach Shula. pic.twitter.com/7eXY4ZOKn6

• Rickie Fowler and Matthew Wolff the opposition at Seminole
• Broadcast to be screened live in UK and United States

Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Rickie Fowler and Matthew Wolff are to take part in an event to raise money for coronavirus charities. The foursome will play in the TaylorMade Driving Relief – a two-team skins challenge over 18 holes – at Seminole in Florida on 17 May.

McIlroy, the world No 1, will team up with Johnson against Fowler and Wolff, with up to $3m (£2.38m) going to the American Nurses Foundation and CDC Foundation. All four will follow strict physical-distancing measures and comprehensive testing will be used to protect players, TV staff and others at the course.

Related: Golf must be force for good when it makes long-awaited return | Ewan Murray

In the NFL, weaponizing victimhood hurts black players while favoring white ones

Rare is the NFL draft that provokes second guessing about a kicker. But this year’s edition was no ordinary draft (see: 19, Covid.) And Justin Rohrwasser is no ordinary kicker.

When the New England Patriots selected Rohrwasser in the fifth round to replace the legendary Stephen Gostkowski, it was a shock, especially as the 23-year-old hadn’t been considered an exceptional talent in college. ESPN host Trey Wingo was even forced to admit on live TV that the Worldwide Leader in Sports had no highlights of Rohrwasser’s career.

Related: If athletes like Nick Bosa support Trump they should at least be honest

The Eagles sevens captain has seen the Tokyo Games postponed and USA Rugby go bankrupt. She refuses to let her dream die

Abby Gustaitis, co-captain of the USA sevens team, has not heard the latest news from Tokyo.

Related: Tokyo Olympics in 2021 at risk of cancellation admits Japan's PM

Related: Tom Brady seen training in closed Tampa park during Covid-19 shutdown

Recognize these faces? #DontRushChallenge featuring the #USWNT7s has us ready for a party. pic.twitter.com/wvO6kNkKsi

• Quarterback left New England for Tampa Bay in March
• Covid-19 means practices with teammates are missing

Eli Manning, the man who beat Tom Brady in two Super Bowls, thinks his old rival may find it tough adapting to life with his new team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Brady left the New England Patriots in March after two decades and six Super Bowl titles with the team. The Buccaneers are blessed with weapons, such as Mike Evans, Chris Godwin and Brady’s old teammate Rob Gronkowski on offense, but the Covid-19 lockdown is an added obstacle for the quarterback as he adjusts to a new playbook.

Related: Tom Brady will have more fun in Tampa, but will he win?

• NBA teams expected to reopen practice facilities on Friday
• My favorite game: Sixers v Lakers, Game 1, 2001 NBA finals

NBA teams are expected to get the go-ahead to reopen practice facilities for limited use as early as Friday, less than two months after the coronavirus outbreak forced the suspension of the season.

With head and assistant coaches barred and scrimmages forbidden, the workouts are unlikely to resemble business as usual for the NBA but would nonetheless be a step towards normalcy for a league whose season was upended in dramatic fashion in March.

Related: My favourite game: Iverson stuns Kobe's Lakers in the 2001 NBA finals | Bryan Armen Graham

• Goodell’s memo outlines protocols for reopening team facilities
• NFL set to release full regular-season schedule on Thursday

The NFL has set protocols for reopening team facilities and has told the 32 teams to have them in place by 15 May.

In a memo sent by league commissioner Roger Goodell and obtained Wednesday night by the Associated Press, several phases of the protocols were laid out. The first phase to deal with the coronavirus pandemic would involve a limited number of non-player personnel, initially 50% of the non-player employees (up to a total of 75) on any single day, being approved to be at the facility. But state or local regulations could require a lower number.

Related: Why is it always the white NFL players who get a second chance?

Related: Eli Manning predicts 'tough' start for Tom Brady with Buccaneers

Local and state government officials must consent to reopening

The team must implement all operational guidelines set by the league to minimize the risk of virus transmission among employees

Each club must acquire adequate amounts of needed supplies as prescribed by the league

An Infection Response Team with a written plan for newly diagnosed coronavirus cases

An Infection Control Officer to oversee all aspects of the implementation of the listed guidelines

Each employee who returns to work at the club facility must receive Covid-19 safety and hygiene training prior to using the facility, and agree to report health information to the ICO

The response team must consist of a local physician with expertise in common infectious disease principles; the team physician can fill that role. Also on the response team will be the infection control officer, the team’s head athletic trainer; the team physician, if he or she is not serving as the local physician; the human resources director; the team’s chief of security; its mental health clinician or someone with equivalent clinical expertise; and a member of the club’s operations staff such as the facility manager

• State auditor says Favre will repay money for no-show speeches
• Hall of Fame quarterback faces no criminal charges after report

Former NFL quarterback Brett Favre is repaying $1.1m in welfare money that he received for multiple speeches where he did not show up, the Mississippi state auditor said Wednesday.

Auditor Shad White said his office received $500,000 from Favre on Wednesday, plus a commitment that Favre will repay the other $600,000 in installments over the next few months.

Related: NFL tells teams to have facility reopening protocols in place by next week

• Wife of seven-time Pro Bowler faces felony burglary charge
• ‘Stuff like this happens,’ says future Hall of Fame free safety
• NFL 2020 schedule: Chiefs kick off title defense against Texans

The lawyer for the wife of Baltimore Ravens safety Earl Thomas said she is being subjected to an “unfounded ongoing investigation” by Texas police after she allegedly pointed a gun at her husband’s head upon finding him in bed with another woman last month.

According to a police affidavit, Nina Thomas tracked down her husband at a short-term rental home in Austin in the early morning hours of 13 April and found him and his brother, Seth, in bed with two women.

Related: NFL 2020 schedule: Chiefs kick off title defense against Texans in season opener

• Ferguson meets Gaethje for UFC’s interim lightweight title
• UFC head Dana White eager to reach sports-starved audience

The main event of Saturday’s UFC 249 card in Florida is billed as being for the interim lightweight title but Tony Ferguson says he should be considered the real champion if he beats opponent Justin Gaethje.

Former collegiate wrestler Ferguson, coming into the bout on a 12-fight win streak, was supposed to fight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov in Brooklyn on 18 April but that was postponed due to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Related: UFC announces three events to be held without fans at Jacksonville arena

You could be excused for thinking that, of course, all animals breathe oxygen to live. Because it wasn't until very recently that scientists discovered the only multicellular animal that doesn't. Meet Henneguya salminicola.

We make a big deal about modern humans being smarter than Neanderthals, but, really, are we?

Every April, the Lyrid meteor shower fills the sky with shooting stars. Here's how to see them.

A hospital stay can be a stressful experience for anybody, and especially for a child. But a smiling new robot named Robin plays games, tells stories and comforts children in need of a friend.

Herd immunity means that after a certain percentage of a population is immune to a disease, the whole population is. This is usually achieved through vaccination but some are not convinced.

It's been 50 years since the first Earth Day, and while progress has been made in some areas, humanity still has had a major impact on the planet.

Many people think mushrooms have the potential to be environmental game-changers by replacing some plastics, meats and even eating through landfill waste. Could these fungi really help save the planet?

If you think asphalt is what hot tar roads are made of, you'd be wrong. Asphalt is only one ingredient in the recipe that makes up our roads. And it has a very long, very interesting history.

The moon has seen a lot in its 4.5 million years of life, and a detailed new geologic map serves as testament.

A new kind of survival story: Scientists discovered a star that came near a black hole and lived to tell the tale – at least temporarily.

For the first time since 2011, NASA will launch astronauts into space from U.S. soil. It will also be the first time ever a private company will get them there.

Uranus is the seventh planet from the sun and sits on an axial plane tilted at a jaw-dropping 97.7-degree angle. And yes, Uranus does actually stink.

From a kidult superhero movie to a spooky period melodrama, these films will provide entertainment for all the family

Kidult superhero movies are nothing new, but this 2018 animated splinter off the Sony-Spidey combine does something really smart with the money-spinning multiverse concept. In Rodney Rothman, Bob Persichetti and Peter Ramsey’s version, Spider-Man is reborn across the dimensions – as Gwen, as a private eye, as a pig – and the result is a fruitfully mind-bending recalibration of the entire mythos.

As authors from Chaucer to Hollinghurst have shown, sex reveals our emotions, instincts and morals. The question is not why write about sex, claims author Garth Greenwell, it’s why write about anything else?

There is a widely held belief, among English-language writers, that sex is impossible to write about well – or at least much harder to write about well than anything else. I once heard a wonderful writer, addressing students at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, say that her ideal of a sex scene would be the sentence: “They sat down on the sofa …” followed by white space. This is a prejudice I can’t understand. One of the glories of being a writer in English is that two of our earliest geniuses, Chaucer and Shakespeare, wrote of the sexual body so exuberantly, claiming it for literature and bringing its vocabulary – including all those wonderful four-letter words – into the texture of our literary language. This is a gift not all languages have received; a translator once complained to me that in her language there was only the diction of the doctor’s office or of pornography, neither of which felt native to poetry.

More than this, surely it is absurd to claim that a central activity of human life, a territory of feeling and drama, is off-limits to art. Sex is a uniquely useful tool for a writer, a powerful means not just of revealing character or exploring relationships, but of asking the largest questions about human beings.

The latest in our series of writers recommending hidden films available to stream is a invite to travel back to 1932 for a brutal thriller

Some film tropes get wheeled out so often they create their own furrow. Perhaps that’s why the timeworn premise of “man hunting man” has evolved into its own disreputable but seemingly indestructible mini-genre. This year has already seen the deferred release of scattershot satire The Hunt, a button-pushing thriller from the Blumhouse production line in which snooty US liberals kidnap and stalk blue-collar “deplorables” in a customised paddock sited far from flyover country.

Related: 'My favourite forgotten film' – you recommend your best streaming gems