CNN
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The Los Angeles Rams are honoring Southern California firefighters as they take their draft headquarters on the road this year.

The team will conduct their 2025 NFL draft operations from Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) Air Operations, honoring first responders following the wildfires that swept across the Los Angeles area earlier this year.

LAFD’s Air Operations plays a vital role in emergency response efforts, particularly in combating wildfires across the Los Angeles region, according to the team.

The devastating wildfires swept through the city earlier this year, displacing tens of thousands of residents in the Pacific Palisades area and testing the city’s emergency response systems. The Palisades and Eaton wildfires – the most destructive in recent years – left 29 people dead and scorched nearly 60,000 acres, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

With the help of Zillow, the Rams and LAFD will alter a room within LAFD Air Operations to serve as general manager Les Snead and head coach Sean McVay’s draft headquarters. A separate hangar will be used as a space for coaches, scouts, team personnel and media.

Touching down at this year’s home base. @Zillow Draft HQ coming soon… 🚁 pic.twitter.com/5l1VihBFTf

— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) April 17, 2025

“Drafting from LAFD Air Operations is a powerful reminder of what it means to represent Los Angeles,” Rams president Demoff said in a statement. “Since the wildfires devastated our region in January, we have looked to bring LA Together to help with the recovery efforts, raise the spirits of those impacted, and shine a light on our first responders. We are humbled to partner with LAFD during one of the NFL’s biggest moments to express gratitude for those who risk their lives daily to protect our city.”

Per the team, LAFD Air Operations will be fully operational during the draft.

The Rams have donated nearly $2 million to fire relief efforts, according to the team.

“We are incredibly grateful to the Los Angeles Rams for their unwavering support of the Los Angeles City Fire Department and our wildfire-impacted communities,” interim fire chief Ronnie Villanueva said.

“Hosting the NFL Draft at LAFD Air Operations highlights the critical role our Air Operations plays in protecting Los Angeles, especially during wildfire season. The Rams’ generosity—renovating our station and recognizing our firefighters—demonstrates a deep commitment to the city we all serve. We look forward to standing alongside the Rams in this meaningful event.”

The draft is scheduled to take place from April 24-26 in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

CNN
 — 

Serena Williams has highlighted the perceived double standards surrounding men’s world No. 1 Jannik Sinner’s doping ban, saying in a new interview with Time magazine that she would have been suspended for 20 years for a similar offense.

Sinner is currently serving a three-month ban having twice tested positive for banned substance Clostebol, an anabolic steroid, in March last year.

The three-time grand slam champion previously escaped a ban when the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) ruled that he wasn’t at fault for the positive tests, accepting that the contamination was caused by a physio applying an over-the-counter spray to their own skin – not Sinner’s – to treat a small wound.

However, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) subsequently lodged an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), leading to Sinner accepting a suspension from February 9 to May 4.

Williams, a 23-time grand slam singles champion who stepped away from tennis in 2022, described the Italian as a “fantastic personality” and “great for the sport,” while also acknowledging her surprise at how his case was handled.

“If I did that, I would have gotten (a ban of) 20 years,” she told Time in an interview published on Wednesday. “Let’s be honest. I would have gotten grand slams taken away from me.”

She added: “I’ve been put down so much, I don’t want to bring anyone down … Men’s tennis needs him.”

Sinner, who won the Australian Open at the start of the year, is due to return to the court ahead of next month’s Italian Open in Rome.

Williams is not alone in criticizing the length of Sinner’s ban. Men’s 24-time grand slam singles champion Novak Djokovic said that the whole case was “not a good image for our sport” and suggested that many players believe there “is favoritism happening.”

Meanwhile, British player Liam Broady told BBC Sport that it felt like the suspension was intended to “impact Jannik’s career as little as possible.”

An ITIA spokesperson previously told CNN Sports that it approaches each case in the same way, “irrespective of a player’s ranking or status.”

It added: “We understand that anti-doping is a complex and sometimes confusing topic, and commit significant time and resources into providing education and support to players to help them understand the rules and how they apply to them.”

In a February statement, Sinner said that he has “always accepted that I am responsible for my team and realize WADA’s strict rules are an important protection for the sport I love.”

Williams also said that the case made her think of her former rival Maria Sharapova, who was handed a 15-month suspension after testing positive for heart disease drug meldonium in 2016.

Initially banned for two years, Sharapova argued on appeal that it had been an administrative error and that the punishment was “unfairly harsh.” CAS concluded that it would be wrong to call the five-time grand slam winner an “intentional doper.”

“Just weirdly and oddly, I can’t help but think about Maria all this time,” Williams said. “I can’t help but feel for her.”

Since playing her last game of competitive tennis at the 2022 US Open, Williams has expanded her investment portfolio, and last month announced that she was joining the ownership group for the WNBA’s Toronto Tempo, an expansion franchise that will start playing in 2026.

On top of her involvement in the Tempo, the 43-year-old is also a minority owner of the National Women’s Soccer League’s Angel City FC and Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s TGL, while also owning a part of the Miami Dolphins alongside sister Venus.

Speaking with Time about potentially returning to tennis, Williams said that she “just can’t peel herself away” from her two children, Olympia and Adira.

“Another reason I had to transition (away from tennis) was because I wanted to have more kids,” she said. “And I look at Adira and I’m like, ‘Was it worth it?’ I literally thought about it the other day. I was like, ‘Yeah, it was definitely worth it.’”

She added, however, that she misses tennis “a lot” and still feels healthy after not overplaying during her career.

Programming note: Watch the full interview with FIFA president Gianni Infantino on CNN’s “World Sport” airing on CNN International at 8:30 a.m. ET and again at 5:30 p.m. ET.

CNN
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FIFA president Gianni Infantino told CNN Sports the governing body is keeping player health at the forefront as the soccer calendar expands with more intense summer competition during what is usually the sport’s off-season.

With the worldwide players union filing legal claims over the expanded Club World Cup this summer and next year’s World Cup, Infantino told CNN that FIFA is “always concerned” about the soccer calendar and highlighted the Arsène Wenger-led player welfare task force the governing body announced in October.

“(He) is one of the top, top coaches, managers of soccer in the world and he’s analyzing all of that when it comes to the FIFA Club World Cup,” Infantino said.

“It is a competition which takes place once every four years. The winner plays seven games – which is like one game and a half, almost, more a year – so it doesn’t have a big impact.

“What happens in world soccer is that there are many games for very few teams, very few players. Those who reach maybe the final stages of all competitions – which again is very rare because usually a team wins maybe one competition but doesn’t win them all – so, all in all, it balances itself out quite a bit.

“But we’re very careful about the calendar and about the health of the players. I mean, we want to do everything for the players to be in the best conditions to perform in the best way … and that’s what many players tell me as well, what you want is to play rather than to train, right?”

The first edition of the newly expanded and reorganized Club World Cup takes place this summer in the United States from June 14 to July 13 as something of a warm-up event for next year’s World Cup, hosted in the US, Canada and Mexico. The new tournament ensures a maximum of seven additional games every four years for the two clubs that make the final. It replaces the FIFA Confederations Cup as the tournament taking place in the World Cup host nation a year before the World Cup.

This year’s tournament will feature 32 teams compared to seven from previous editions, plus group and knockout stages.

In October, FIFPRO filed a complaint to the European Commission over what it describes as an “oversaturated international football calendar” that “risks player safety and wellbeing,” among other concerns.

That complaint came after June’s legal claim against FIFA’s decision to “unilaterally” set the sport’s calendar, which includes the expanded World Cup and Club World Cup. The October complaint also said FIFA faces a “conflict of interest as a competition organizer and governing body.”

The previous format – which hasn’t been removed from the calendar but renamed as the FIFA Intercontinental Cup – was a single-elimination, knockout tournament that took place over just 10 days compared to a month.

Of course, there has to be a shiny new trophy up for grabs for this new glitzy tournament – if the $1 billion dollar prize pot wasn’t enough motivation for the players.

Infantino describes the new trophy, which uses a key to open up from a flat plate into something that resembles a gold-plated gyroscope, as the “coolest trophy in all of sports.”

Infantino adds that the expanded version of the tournament will allow fans to see more of the world’s best players in one place, with Vinícius Jr., Kylian Mbappé, Lionel Messi, Erling Haaland, Rodri, Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane, among others, set to take part.

Plus, he says, it will help settle the debate between fans about which team can call itself the best.

“We created a new World Cup because soccer, the way it’s organized, on one side you have the countries and on the other side you have the teams, the clubs,” Infantino explains. “We have a World Cup for the countries, and we didn’t have a World Cup for the clubs.

“And we thought it’s actually quite good to know which team is the best in the world. When you win the Super Bowl, right, you are the world champion because you are the best in the world, but in soccer, this doesn’t exist.

“So we created a new Club World Cup, the World Cup for the 32 best teams in the world, from Europe, from South America, North America, Africa, Asia, everywhere in the world. And we will determine in 63 games, it’s 63 Super Bowls in one month … which of those teams is the best in the world.”