Today is Saturday, June 7, the 158th day of 2025. There are 207 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On June 7, 1998, in a crime that shocked the nation and led to stronger state and federal hate crime laws, James Byrd Jr., a 49-year-old Black man, was hooked by a chain to a pickup truck and dragged to his death in Jasper, Texas. (Two white men were later sentenced to death and executed for the crime; a third was sentenced to life in prison.)

Also on this date:

In 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia offered a resolution to the Continental Congress stating “that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent States.”

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In 1892, Homer Plessy, a Creole of color, was arrested for refusing to leave a whites-only car of the East Louisiana Railroad. (Ruling on his case, Plessy v. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld “separate but equal” racial segregation, a concept it renounced in 1954.)

In 1929, the sovereign state of Vatican City formally came into existence as the Italian Parliament ratified the Lateran Treaty in Rome.

In 1942, the Battle of Midway ended in a decisive victory for American naval forces over Imperial Japan, marking a turning point in the Pacific War.

In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Griswold v. Connecticut, struck down, 7-2, a Connecticut law used to prosecute a Planned Parenthood clinic in New Haven for providing contraceptives to married couples.

In 1976, New York magazine published an article by journalist Nik Cohn entitled “The Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night,” which inspired the film “Saturday Night Fever,” which in turn sparked a nationwide disco craze. (Cohn admitted in 1997 that the article was actually a work of fiction.)

In 1979, Texas became the first state to recognize Juneteenth as an official state holiday. (Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021.)

In 1982, Graceland, Elvis Presley’s Memphis mansion, was opened to the public as a tourist destination, five years after Presley’s death.

In 2006, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of al-Qaida in Iraq, was killed by a U.S. airstrike on his safe house.

In 2021, Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and her son Paul Murdaugh, 22, from a prominent South Carolina legal family, were found shot and killed on their family’s property. (Alex Murdaugh, Maggie’s husband and Paul’s father, would be found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison.)

Today’s Birthdays:

Filmmaker James Ivory is 97.
Singer Tom Jones is 85.
Actor Liam Neeson is 73.
Author Orhan Pamuk is 73.
Author Louise Erdrich is 71.
Music producer L.A. Reid is 69.
Musician Juan Luis Guerra is 68.
Former Vice President Mike Pence is 66.
Rock musician-TV host Dave Navarro is 58.
Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., is 53.
Actor Karl Urban is 53.
TV personality Bear Grylls is 51.
Basketball Hall of Famer Allen Iverson is 50.
Actor-comedian Bill Hader is 47.
Actor Michael Cera is 37.
Rapper Iggy Azalea is 35.
Actor-model Emily Ratajkowski is 34.
NFL running back Christian McCaffrey is 29.

Addison Barger hit a two-run home run, Bo Bichette had a go-ahead two-run single in the fifth inning and the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Minnesota Twins 6-4 on Friday night at Target Field for their fifth straight victory.

Trevor Larnach homered two batters into the first off rookie Paxton Schultz to give the Twins the lead and tie him for the team lead with 10. Kody Clemens had a run-scoring ground out, and Christian Vázquez hit a two-out RBI double to make it 3-0 in the second.

Bailey Ober hit Vladimir Guerrero Jr. with a pitch to begin the fourth and then gave up his first hit when Barger homered to right field to get Toronto to 3-2.

Five of Barger’s seven homers have come in his last seven games.

Ernie Clement singled leading off the fifth, and Andrés Giménez doubled before Bichette blooped a single to center for a 4-3 lead.

George Springer hit his ninth home run — a solo shot off Ober to make it 5-3 in the sixth.

Guerrero doubled leading off the eighth and scored on Alejandro Kirk’s single for a 6-3 lead.

Ober (4-2) retired the first eight Blue Jays before walking Andrés Giménez on a full count. He allowed five runs and five hits in seven innings.

Eric Lauer (2-1) replaced Schultz to begin the third and allowed a hit in 2 1/3 scoreless innings to get the win. Fluharty and Yariel Rodríguez both got four outs, and Jeff Hoffman pitched the ninth for his 14th save in 17 opportunities.

Royce Lewis went 3 for 3 for Minnesota, which was coming off a 5-5 road trip.

Key moment

Lewis had a two-out RBI single in the home eighth off Brendan Little to get the Twins within two runs, but Little left the tying runs stranded when Clemens grounded out.

Key stat

Toronto is 236-193 all time against Minnesota, but the Twins have won the season series in six of the past seven years.

Up next

Blue Jays RHP Kevin Gausman (5-4, 3.82 ERA) starts Saturday against Twins RHP Chris Paddack (2-5, 3.58).

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Twins pull away from Athletics for third straight win

A federal judge signed off on arguably the biggest change in the history of college sports Friday, clearing the way for schools to begin paying their athletes millions of dollars as soon as next month as the multibillion-dollar industry shreds the last vestiges of the amateur model that defined it for more than a century.

Nearly five years after Arizona State swimmer Grant House sued the NCAA and its five biggest conferences to lift restrictions on revenue sharing, U.S. Judge Claudia Wilken approved the final proposal that had been hung up on roster limits, just one of many changes ahead amid concerns that thousands of walk-on athletes will lose their chance to play college sports.

The sweeping terms of the so-called House settlement include approval for each school to share up to $20.5 million with athletes over the next year and $2.7 billion that will be paid over the next decade to thousands of former players who were barred from that revenue for years.

The agreement brings a seismic shift to hundreds of schools that were forced to reckon with the reality that their players are the ones producing the billions in TV and other revenue, mostly through football and basketball, that keep this machine humming.

The scope of the changes — some have already begun — is difficult to overstate. The professionalization of college athletics will be seen in the high-stakes and expensive recruitment of stars on their way to the NFL and NBA, and they will be felt by athletes whose schools have decided to pare their programs. The agreement will resonate in nearly every one of the NCAA’s 1,100 member schools boasting nearly 500,000 athletes.

The road to a settlement

Wilken’s ruling comes 11 years after she dealt the first significant blow to the NCAA ideal of amateurism when she ruled in favor of former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon and others who were seeking a way to earn money from the use of their name, image and likeness (NIL) — a term that is now as common in college sports as “March Madness” or “Roll Tide.” It was just four years ago that the NCAA cleared the way for NIL money to start flowing, but the changes coming are even bigger.

Wilken granted preliminary approval to the settlement last October. That sent colleges scurrying to determine not only how they were going to afford the payments, but how to regulate an industry that also allows players to cut deals with third parties so long as they are deemed compliant by a newly formed enforcement group that will be run by auditors at Deloitte.

The agreement takes a big chunk of oversight away from the NCAA and puts it in the hands of the four biggest conferences. The ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC hold most of the power and decision-making heft, especially when it comes to the College Football Playoff, which is the most significant financial driver in the industry and is not under the NCAA umbrella like the March Madness tournaments are.

Roster limits held things up

The deal looked ready to go since last fall, but Wilken put a halt to it after listening to a number of players who had lost their spots because of newly imposed roster limits being placed on teams.

The limits were part of a trade-off that allowed the schools to offer scholarships to everyone on the roster, instead of only a fraction, as has been the case for decades. Schools started cutting walk-ons in anticipation of the deal being approved.

Wilken asked for a solution and, after weeks, the parties decided to let anyone cut from a roster — now termed a “Designated Student-Athlete” — return to their old school or play for a new one without counting against the new limit.

Wilken ultimately agreed, going point-by-point through the objectors’ arguments to explain why they didn’t hold up.

“The modifications provide Designated Student-Athletes with what they had prior to the roster limits provisions being implemented, which was the opportunity to be on a roster at the discretion of a Division I school,” Wilken wrote.

Winners and losers

The list of winners and losers is long and, in some cases, hard to tease out.

A rough guide of winners would include football and basketball stars at the biggest schools, which will devote much of their bankroll to signing and retaining them. For instance, Michigan quarterback Bryce Underwood’s NIL deal is reportedly worth between $10.5 million and $12 million.

Losers, despite Wilken’s ruling, figure to be at least some of the walk-ons and partial scholarship athletes whose spots are gone.

Also in limbo are Olympic sports many of those athletes play and that serve as the main pipeline for a U.S. team that has won the most medals at every Olympics since the downfall of the Soviet Union.

All this is a price worth paying, according to the attorneys who crafted the settlement and argue they delivered exactly what they were asked for: an attempt to put more money in the pockets of the players whose sweat and toil keep people watching from the start of football season through March Madness and the College World Series in June.

What the settlement does not solve is the threat of further litigation.

Though this deal brings some uniformity to the rules, states still have separate laws regarding how NIL can be doled out, which could lead to legal challenges. NCAA President Charlie Baker has been consistent in pushing for federal legislation that would put college sports under one rulebook and, if he has his way, provide some form of antitrust protection to prevent the new model from being disrupted again.

___

AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports

St. Cloud Cathedral 7, Hawley 2

Sophomore Kyah Koenig hit a 3-run blast to cap off a five-run third frame that powered the Crusaders (26-2) to their first-ever state softball title in the Class 2A championship game at the University of Minnesota.

Tayla Vought drove in a pair of runs for fourth-seeded St. Cloud Cathedral, while Sadie Meyer scored twice.

Keira Alexander threw a complete game, allowing just one earned run.

Hannah Stotts had two hits, driving in both runs for sixth-seeded Hawley (26-3).

United South Central 2, Badger/Greenbush-Middle River 0

United South Central ace Mariah Anderson threw a complete game, two-hit shutout to lead the top-seeded Rebels (26-1) to the Class A championship, their first in program history.

The junior completed a dominant season by striking out 19 batters to go with zero walks. The two hits for sixth-seeded Badger/Greenbush-Middle River (19-7) both came off the bat of Quinn Vacura.

Kailey Hanson allowed just two hits for the Gators, but the Rebels scored twice in the bottom of a third inning that featured one hit, two walks and two errors.

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