The Wilf family that owns the Minnesota Vikings has emerged as a serious candidate to buy the Minnesota Timberwolves, NFL sources told ESPN.
Only recently did the Wilfs emerge as one of the groups bidding to buy the NBA team in their city from billionaire Glen Taylor, sources said. There are several bidders for the team, including metropolitan New York real estate developer Meyer Orbach, who bought a minority stake in the Timberwolves in 2016. Former Timberwolves standout Kevin Garnett also said he is forming a group to try to purchase the team.
But the Wilfs appear to be in a prime spot at this time to buy the Timberwolves, though a decision on the sale might not be made until September, sources said.
The NFL’s Washington football team has hired Julie Donaldson to oversee all of its broadcasts as senior vice president of media, becoming the team’s highest-ranking female executive, it was announced Tuesday.
Donaldson will be part of Washington’s radio team, but she won’t be doing play-by-play. Former play-by-play announcer Larry Michael retired last week amid allegations of sexual harassment, as detailed by the Washington Post.
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Donaldson isn’t directly replacing Michael, who held numerous roles in the organization, but she will be responsible for overseeing the broadcast operation. Her first task will be to hire a play-by-play announcer, and she will have power and input on content for the team’s various broadcast platforms.
“It is with great humility and sincere appreciation that I accept this new role,” Donaldson said in a statement. “This is a challenge I’ve been preparing and working towards for nearly 20 years in sports media, including the last decade in Washington. I am excited to join the organization as we begin a new era and I look forward to working with my new colleagues in making it stronger than ever.”
Donaldson will become the first woman to be a regular on-air member of an NFL team’s radio broadcast booth.
“Julie Donaldson is a trailblazing journalist who has worked on multiple award-winning shows and has a passion for sports in the DMV,” team owner Dan Snyder said in a statement. “She has contributed countless hours of her time to work alongside Tanya [Snyder] and WOW (Women of Washington) to help raise awareness for breast cancer. She has been a staple in the community and I can’t think of anyone better to lead our organization’s in-house media and content into this new digital age.”
Donaldson spent 10 years at NBC Sports Washington and was part of the pregame and postgame shows for the NFL team. She served a variety of roles with the station, including anchor, reporter and host.
LAS VEGAS — With the NFL leaving it up to individual teams and/or local municipality guidelines as to how many, if any, fans can attend games, Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis is leaning toward not having any fans attend games at Las Vegas’ new Allegiant Stadium this season.
If no fans are admitted, Davis said, he will not attend games, either. As the lone dissenting vote on the league owners’ recent decision to tarp off the first eight rows of seats from the field in each stadium and cover them with advertisements, Davis said the Raiders’ idea of leaving the seats for fans and erecting hockey-style plexiglass around the bottom of the stadium to separate fans from players on the sidelines was “shot down” before the vote.
“No one fan is more important to me than another, no matter if they paid for a $75,000 PSL or a $500 PSL,” Davis told ESPN.com Sunday night. “They’re all Raider fans to me. My mindset today is no fans [should attend games].
“I don’t even know if it’s safe to play. ‘Uncertainty’ is the word.”
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Regardless of fans at games, Davis said he sees three options for the NFL at the moment:
1. Go on as planned, with teams reporting for training camp over the next week, and see what happens.
2. Delay the start of the season until November and go to a 12-game season, cancelling each team’s four interconference games. (For the Raiders, that would mean games at the Carolina Panthers and Atlanta Falcons and home games against the New Orleans Saints and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.)
3. Cancel the 2020 season entirely.
“Everything is up in the air with the [COVID-19] virus and how it will affect our league and season,” Davis said, adding that his frustration about taking away the first eight rows of seats was exacerbated by the league’s leaving the decision on fans to the individual teams after an offseason of what Davis called “equity” among teams.
Having no offseason programs and only virtual meetings was based on “a worse-case scenario,” Davis said, so every team was in the same situation.
With the Raiders having sold out for the season, they have no room to move fans from those bottom sections.
“That’s the Black Hole,” Davis said. “It’s the people that want to be in the front row. Boisterous fans … now I’ve got to tell 8,000 people that helped build this thing that they can’t come to a game? I don’t have 8,000 seats to move them to. We’re sold out.
“The optics are terrible: advertising on top of seats belonging to people you’re telling they can’t come to the game. I’d rather have everybody pissed at me than just one person. I’ve got to make it up to them, and I will. This is all about safety and equity.”
The Raiders, who called Oakland, California, home since moving back there in 1995 after 13 seasons in Los Angeles, are in the midst of their move to Southern Nevada.
Davis said with no fans, it will be a “soft opening” for the team’s $1.9 billion, 65,000-seat domed stadium near the Las Vegas Strip, with an eye on going bigger in 2021, should the coronavirus pandemic subside by then.
“We want our inaugural season to be something special,” he said. “I don’t even know if we’ll light the [Al Davis] torch. These are all potentials and respecting all.”
In saying that he would stay away from games if he decides to exclude fans from Allegiant Stadium, Davis said only people “essential to the production of the game” should be in attendance.
“The only thing I’m essential for is after the game, yelling at Jon [Gruden],” Davis joked of the Raiders’ coach. “I can do that over the phone.”
NFL players took to Twitter on Sunday in a coordinated effort to urge the NFL to listen to its experts’ guidelines on safely opening training camps amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Many of the players used the hashtag #WeWantToPlay to accompany their tweets.
NFL Players Association president JC Tretter tweeted: “What you are seeing today is our guys standing up for each other and for the work their union leadership has done to keep everyone as safe as possible. The NFL needs to listen to our union and adopt the experts’ recommendations #wewanttoplay”