• Bears unveil $5bn proposal for new domed lakefront stadium
• Plan calls for $900m from Illinois Sports Facilities Authority

The Chicago Bears unveiled a nearly $5bn proposal Wednesday for an enclosed stadium next door to their current home at Soldier Field as part of a major project that would transform the city’s lakefront, and they are asking for public funding to help make it happen.

The plan calls for $3.2bn for the new stadium plus an additional $1.5bn in infrastructure. The team and the city said the project would add green and open space while improving access to the city’s Museum Campus and could also include a publicly owned hotel.

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Our writers take a look at the best prospects coming out of college, and which teams needs to nail their picks over the coming days

It feels like a lock that it will be LSU’s Jayden Daniels , thought I wouldn’t put it past the Commanders to fall in love with Michigan’s JJ McCarthy . Daniels is a funky prospect; he was a starry duel threat at LSU, but it’s tough to see whether the best elements of his game – his running, his deep ball – will smoothly transition to the NFL. He doesn’t possess Lamar Jackson-esque breakaway speed and has a brittle frame. As a thrower from the pocket, he has a snappy delivery but struggles to shift to his second and third reads. There is some RGIII to his game. Do Washington really want to tread that path again? OC

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The franchise has long been dismissed as backwards looking. But it is set to draft a star who happily pushes back on athlete stereotypes

Among the NFL’s heirloom franchises, the Chicago Bears are the still living in the last century – the pride of George “Papa Bear” Halas, a league founding father. From their neoclassical stadium to their 101-year-old owner-matriarch to their stubborn reverence for “Bear Weather” (ie: lake-effect winter conditions that only affect the other team), everything about the franchise is old-fashioned. Even the Bears being in position to select a quarterback with the first pick in this month’s draft has arrived about 30 years too late in a league where the passing game dominates. What’s notable is that the passer in their sights isn’t the second-coming of 1940s hero Sid Luckman or a Harvard man or some other statuesque golden boy. It’s Caleb Williams, Gen Z’s poster boy quarterback.

On paper, Williams would appear to possess precisely the resume that Virginia McCaskey, the owner-matriarch in question, might describe as “the cat’s pajamas.” He went to USC – a college football program that Chicagoland’s many Notre Dame fans at least respect. He won the Heisman trophy, putting him in a league with early Bears two-way star Johnny Lujack. And Williams played most of his college games in the LA Memorial Coliseum, one of the few stadiums left that can rival Soldier Field’s antiquity – so he shouldn’t be a snob about the patchy quality of the Bears natural home turf.

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• Initial release provoked debate over sexism in sport
• Athletes say they are comfortable with choices offered

In the moments before she fired off the Instagram comment heard around the world , Tara Davis-Woodhall could hardly believe her eyes.

The American long jumper and world silver medalist had just seen a photograph of one of Nike’s Team USA uniforms for this summer’s Games, a high-cut leotard barely covering the bikini line that was unveiled at a launch event in Paris last week. The running publication Citius Mag had posted an image of the slinky uniform on a female mannequin alongside a male one-piece kit with longer legs.

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• World No 2 has been vocal critic of Saudi-backed tour
• Viktor Hovland has also been linked with LIV move

Rory McIlroy has brushed aside reports he is considering a move to LIV Golf, and insists he is committed to playing on the PGA Tour.

The world No 2 has been a vocal critic of the Saudi-backed series but City AM this week reported he is considering a move to LIV worth $850m that would also give him a 2% equity in the tour.

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• LIV aiming to recruit more players from PGA and DP World Tours
• Defection would raise tricky questions for European Tour Group

Rising speculation that Viktor Hovland will be the next high-profile golfer to be coaxed to the LIV tour will increase the need for Ryder Cup Europe to apply a simple qualification process for golfers on the Saudi Arabian-backed circuit.

LIV is forging ahead with plans for 2025, which include new events and the recruitment of more players from the PGA and DP World Tours. The rate of turnover is likely to be increased by the number of golfers who had three-year contracts when joining LIV, which will expire at the end of 2024.

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City have not been at their overwhelming best this season, but they remain immune to the typical anxieties of a title run-in

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There are still only two points in it: Manchester City 73, Arsenal 71, Liverpool 71. It’s not over yet. If the three keep pace for the next five games, it will still be the first season since 1971-72 in which three different sides go into their final game of the season with a chance of winning the title. The hope for anybody seeking a dramatic run-in is that this weekend was just the beginning of a final month of twists and turns. But the sense is that the race has taken a decisive shift towards City and a fourth successive title for Pep Guardiola’s team.

It’s not just that City swept Luton aside 5-1 . You’d expect that; they beat them 6-2 in the FA Cup in February. Nor was it just the fact that Liverpool lost at home to Crystal Palace , the opponent Jürgen Klopp had beaten more than any other, or that Arsenal lost at home to Aston Villa , managed by their former manager Unai Emery, each detail twisting the knife in a little further. It was the way they lost, coming after the way Arsenal had played in drawing against Bayern Munich in the Champions League and the way Liverpool had played in losing to Atalanta in the Europa League .

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Girls are much more likely than boys to drop out of competitive sports. It’s little wonder when revealing kits are highlighted on the global stage

Paris has long been known for its avant garde fashion. Yet the couture scene would be hard-pressed to produce anything as confounding and controversial as the Team USA track and field kits that were unveiled in the City of Lights last week.

There was nothing to see when it came to Team USA’s men’s track uniforms: standard shorts and a tank top. But when it came to their female counterparts, there was everything to see, especially around the nether regions.

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The No 1 golfer’s edge around the fairways is knowing he has God at his back, even if he’s not actually carrying his bag

Whatever you may have thought watching it on TV, Scottie Scheffler didn’t win the Masters when he made that tricky birdie putt from 10ft on the eighth green, when he hit that lob-wedge to six inches on the ninth, or when he clattered that drive 340 yards down the middle of the 10th for his third successive birdie. No, he explained later, he won it about 2024 years before the tournament even started. “I believe that today’s plans were already laid out many years ago, and I could do nothing to mess them up,” Scheffler explained. And there you were thinking that God had bigger things to worry about right now than who won that green jacket.

Well, you scoff if you want to. But there’s no doubt that it gives a man a certain edge around the fairways to know he’s got the almighty at his back, even if he’s not actually carrying his bag. Scheffler has another passionate Christian, Ted Scott, to do that for him. Like Scott said, “having the God of the universe, the Creator, on your side just makes things a lot easier to deal with”. This was Scott’s fourth Masters victory, he had already won one with Scheffler and a couple of others with Bubba Watson, and he celebrated it by striding across the clubhouse lawn brandishing the flag stick from the 18th green like he was leading the crusaders into Jerusalem.

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