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One of the great aspects to spring football leagues is seeing players dominate and earn their spot on an NFL team. This year, in the UFL, there is a player for the Michigan Panthers who is turning heads. His name is Jake Bates and he is … a kicker. 
As any football fan knows, kicker is one of those positions where the player doesn’t usually get a ton of press, but having a consistent kicker is a true weapon. Having a kicker who can consistently drill bombs is a massive advantage over almost any opponent. 
With that in mind, check out what Bates is doing during the UFL season.

Donovan Mitchell added to his playoff resume with a 39-point effort as Cleveland erased an 18-point deficit in the first half for its first series win in six years.

Though six games, Orlando Magic forward Paolo Banchero’s first playoff series has been a rousing success.
The numbers tell all: in three Magic wins and three Cleveland Cavaliers wins in the first round, Banchero has averaged 25.2 points, 7.2 rebounds and 4.3 assists per game. His play has Orlando on the cusp of its first playoff series victory since 2010.
In the first half of Game 7 Sunday, however, Banchero went to another level. The Duke product exploded for 24 points against the Cavaliers—the most by a player 21 or younger in a Game 7 in the history of the NBA.

Like race car drivers and opera singers, pitchers need to summon another gear in pivotal moments. It is how Jack Flaherty in 2019, at just 23 years old, joined Clayton Kershaw and Roger Clemens as the youngest pitchers in the past 48 years with a league-leading WHIP under 1.00. Averaging 93.8 mph with his heater, Flaherty, then with the St. Louis Cardinals, could hit 97 when he floored it.
The complement of two sharp breaking balls also made him the best young pitcher in the game. Riches and awards were to follow as surely as they did for Kershaw and Clemens.
His ascension never happened.

During the NFL offseason, Micah Parsons is trying out some other, less conventional athletic pursuits.
While on a tour of Asia alongside Houston Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud, the Dallas Cowboys edge rusher went one-on-one — twice —with a sumo wrestler in Tokyo. In his first attempt, Parsons was easily tossed out of the circular dohyo.
Stroud taunted the All-Pro linebacker with a “too small” celebration followed by a cradling baby gesture, which the wrestler then imitated. But Parsons wasn’t going out like that.
“Run it back,” he responded.

Photo by Clive Mason/Getty Images
The Alpine F1 Academy driver swept the weekend at the Miami Grand Prix
MIAMI — At the moment, the title for the most dominant driver here at the Miami Grand Prix does not belong to Max Verstappen.
It belongs to Abbi Pulling.
The Alpine junior academy driver pulled off the double on Sunday, winning the second feature race in dominant fashion. Pulling started Sunday’s race on pole position, and led wire-to-wire for her second win of the weekend, and her third of the F1 Academy season.

For 11 consecutive years, Bundesliga was the fiefdom of Bayern Munich, which won every German league title from 2013-23.
That is not true anymore—and Bayern Munich’s dominance has been undone in record-breaking fashion.
Bayer Leverkusen—the already-crowned champions of Germany—crushed Eintracht Frankfurt 5-1 Sunday to run its unbeaten streak to an astounding 48 games.
With the victory, the Leverkusen-based club tied the record for longest all-competition unbeaten streak by any European club since pan-European competition began in the 1956 season.

Brooks Koepka became the first player to win four times as part of the LIV Golf League, shooting a final-round 68 at Sentosa Golf Club in Singapore on Sunday to beat Cam Smith and Marc Leishman by two strokes.
His timing wasn’t bad, either.
A few days after offering concern about his game in light of a poor Masters performance, Koepka stepped up and won the LIV Golf Singapore even to give himself a boost heading into the defense of his PGA Championship title in two weeks.
The year’s second major begins on May 16.

One of the biggest problems for LIV Golf players right now is that their events don’t earn World Golf Rankings points like PGA Tour players do. That shuts many of the competitors out of the four major tournaments. Phil Mickelson posted a warning to those tournament organizers, but then appears to have quickly deleted it.
The gist of Mickelson’s now-deleted post on X (formerly Twitter), which was saved for posterity by others on X, is that the major tournaments need LIV Golf players more than the LIV Golf players need to play in the major tournaments.

Before he made the TD Garden crowd jump out of their seats on Saturday night, David Pastrnak’s own seat was rather hot.
The 10-year NHL veteran—and two-time All-Star—was called out by Boston Bruins coach Jim Montgomery following his second straight scoreless effort in Game 6, also Boston’s second straight loss in the series.
“Your best players need to be your best players this time of year,” Montgomery said. “I think the effort is tremendous and they need to come through with some big-time plays in big-time moments.