CNN
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Editor’s Note: This report contains graphic descriptions of sexual acts.

Shannon Sharpe has said he will temporarily take time away from his role on ESPN after being sued for assault, sexual assault, battery and sexual battery. He denies the allegations in the lawsuit filed Sunday by an anonymous woman and her attorneys.

Sharpe plays a prominent part on ESPN’s morning sports debate show “First Take.”

“I will be devoting this time to my family, and responding and dealing with these false and disruptive allegations set against me. I plan to return to ESPN at the start of the NFL preseason,” Sharpe said in a statement issued on Thursday.

The Pro Football Hall of Famer concluded by thanking his “family, fans, friends and colleagues” for their support.

Following Sharpe’s announcement, ESPN said in a statement, “This is a serious situation, and we agree with Shannon’s decision to step away.”

Sharpe’s legal representatives previously told CNN the lawsuit was an attempt to “shake down” the popular podcaster for millions of dollars and said he “categorically denies all allegations of coercion or misconduct.”

In the suit filed in a Las Vegas district court, “Jane Doe” accuses the popular host of the “Club Shay Shay” podcast of “manipulating and controlling” the plaintiff during a nearly two-year period that started in 2023 as a consensual relationship when the woman was 20 years old.

The civil complaint alleges Sharpe, 56, “violently sexually assaulted and anally raped Plaintiff,” in October 2024 and again in January of this year in Las Vegas, Nevada, “blatantly ignoring her requests for him to stop.”

The suit states: “After many months of manipulating and controlling Plaintiff — a woman more than thirty years younger than he — and repeatedly threatening to brutally choke and violently slap her, Sharpe refused to accept the answer no and raped Plaintiff, despite her sobbing and repeated screams of ‘no.’”

When asked if Jane Doe had contacted police during or after the alleged assaults, the plaintiffs’ attorney, Tony Buzbee, said he could not comment.

The attorney told CNN, “It takes a great deal of courage to stand up against those with power, fame and money. I look forward to pressing this case in court.”

Sharpe’s attorney, Lanny J. Davis, said the woman is attempting to blackmail his client and that the pair’s relationship was consensual and “sexual in nature — and, in many cases, initiated by her with specific and graphic requests.”

Davis said Sharpe “looks forward to vindication through due process and a judgment based on the facts and the law.”

The complaint is seeking compensatory and punitive damages of more than $50 million.

The Pro Football Hall of Famer was inducted as part of the Class of 2011. He was drafted by the Denver Broncos in 1990 and retired following the 2003 season as the NFL’s all-time leader in catches, yards and touchdowns by a tight end.

Sharpe won two Super Bowls with Denver and then another while a member of the Baltimore Ravens.

CNN
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The Oklahoma City Thunder fought back from a 29-point deficit in the second quarter to earn a 114-108 win over the Memphis Grizzlies in Game 3 and open up a 3-0 lead in their first-round series.

The Grizzlies’ capitulation was sparked by an injury to star guard Ja Morant, who suffered a hard fall after a foul by Oklahoma’s Luguentz Dort as he tried to finish a fast break.

Morant missed both of his free throws before immediately exiting the game with 3:14 remaining in the second and heading to the locker room. The Grizzlies later announced he had suffered a hip contusion.

The No. 2 pick in the 2019 NBA draft was later pictured on crutches when he returned to the Memphis bench.

Grizzlies interim head coach Tuomas Iisalo was unsure of Morant’s status for Game 4 on Saturday and said the guard is “going through further evaluations tomorrow (Friday).”

The Grizzlies extended their lead to 29 points on their next possession after Morant’s departure, but it was only downhill from there.

Oklahoma trailed by 26 points at halftime before going on to produce the biggest second-half comeback in NBA playoff history.

“I just thought out of halftime, we kind of reconnected to who we are,” Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault told reporters. “We were very out of character in the first half.”

Leading MVP candidate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored a game-high 31 points for the Thunder to go with four rebounds, eight assists, a steal and a block.

“They built a 29-point lead in a half, so we felt like all we had to do was build our own 29-point lead,” Gilgeous-Alexander said, per AP.

Jalen Williams, one of the breakout stars of this season, had 26 points, six rebounds, five assists a steal and a block, while Chet Holmgren scored 23 of his 24 points in the second half to help power the Thunder comeback.

“Mark changed the trajectory of the game,” Holmgren said about his coach, per ESPN. “Trusted me in calling a play for me to bomb one at the half after the s***storm I put up in the first half.

“Credit to him for that. Once I saw one go in, I felt good.”

Morant had 15 points and five assists in 15 minutes of action before his injury. In his absence, Scotty Pippin Jr. put up a team-high 28 points for the Grizzlies, while Jaren Jackson Jr. added 22.

Morant endured another injury-plagued regular season and managed to play in just 50 of his team’s 82 games.

The NFL draft is broadcast live on television every year as millions tune in and hundreds of thousands more attend in person to revel in the hoopla of it all.

It’s a far cry from the event’s humble beginnings, when the player picked first didn’t even know it was happening and soon walked away from the game without ever earning a cent.

Two-hundred-fifty-seven players will be drafted this week in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and anyone chosen in the first round – which begins at 8 p.m. ET on Thursday – will be set for life with guaranteed multi-million-dollar contracts. It was all very different in the first year of the draft back in 1936 when just 81 players were selected through nine rounds in the inaugural draft.

There was little doubt that University of Chicago halfback Jay Berwanger would go first that year. At 6-foot tall and 195 pounds, the standout player of his class had just received the first ever Heisman Trophy and been named as the Chicago Tribune’s Big 10 player of the year.

The Hartford Courant described the first draft as “no gala, more like a penny-ante poker game. Nine cigar-puffing, mogul wannabees, some of whom were paying their players with IOUs, stubbornly trying to salvage their dream of professional football.”

Berwanger told the Courant in 1994 that he was oblivious to the draft at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Philadelphia.

“I found out I was drafted by reading it in the newspaper,” he said, “I didn’t even know the draft was going on.”

Philadelphia Eagles owner Bert Bell had persuaded his peers to formalize a draft in order to cease the expensive and “self-defeating” bidding wars for college players and he’d proposed that teams should choose players in reverse order from the previous season’s standings. That meant the worst team, Bell’s own 2-9 Eagles, went first and chose Berwanger, quickly dealing his rights to the Chicago Bears. The Eagles didn’t think they’d be able to afford Berwanger’s salary demands, and the Bears owner and coach George Halas soon realized he didn’t have enough money, either.

According to the Courant, the two met in the lobby of a downtown hotel in Chicago.

“He asked what I wanted,” Berwanger recalled, “and I had my tongue in my cheek. I told him, $25,000 for two years. He looked at my date and said, `Nice to have met you; have a nice time tonight.’ And that was the end of it.”

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