The NWSL’s board of governors is expected to vote later this month on whether to flip the league’s calendar to a fall-to-spring season, multiple sources told ESPN.

The NWSL season currently kicks off in March and ends in November, but a change — one that has been debated for years and previously voted down — would see the season start in late summer and end in late spring. That would align the NWSL with many of Europe’s top leagues and soon, with MLS, which will make the transition to fall-to-spring next year.

The NWSL’s board has debated changing the season footprint for at least three years, and a flip of the calendar was narrowly voted down in late 2024, ESPN previously reported. Intense debate over the topic has continued within league circles.

Another vote on the calendar could happen at the upcoming board meeting, sources said, although the agendas to such meetings change frequently, and the terms of potential proposals can be altered right up until voting begins, as they did in December with the implementation of the new High Impact Player rule.

Even if there is a vote that successfully passes a calendar change — which is not guaranteed, since support of the idea is not unanimous — it could take years to implement.

An NWSL spokesperson declined to comment on this story.

NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman said in November that “our ecosystem is on notice” about the league potentially changing its calendar.

“There are certainly opportunities that can be created with us not overlapping Major League Soccer, in that the schedule congestion for our summer calendar will be mitigated,” Berman said before the 2025 NWSL Championship. “On the other hand, there will of course be other challenges that it creates in terms of understanding and knowing stadium availability.”

Proponents of the change believe that aligning the NWSL’s calendar with Europe will improve transfer business and allow the NWSL to better operate around FIFA international windows.

Sources told ESPN that there is also a belief among some board members that there is less competition for prime TV time in late spring and that the NWSL playoffs could have a larger audience in that window. Maximizing revenue from the next media rights deal is the NWSL board’s current top priority, multiple sources have told ESPN over the past year, and Berman has spoken about the topic frequently.

Critics of a calendar change point to the NWSL’s many cold-weather markets and potential player safety issues around holding games in frigid conditions, although extreme heat is already an issue during the NWSL’s summer months. They are also concerned about how cold temperatures and potential weather delays would impact attendance, which dipped on average last year.

The NWSL’s board of governors will meet later this month. Any potential league vote is likely to result in a narrow decision in either direction, as was the case in 2024.

MLS owners voted in November to flip the calendar and mirror Europe. MLS will make the transition by playing an abbreviated “sprint season” next spring before switching to a full season for 2027-28. MLS will begin its new seasons in July, take a winter break from mid-December through early February and finish the playoffs in late May.

The NWSL could follow a similar path but on a delayed timeline.

The NWSL’s new collective bargaining agreement, which was ratified in 2024, accounted for a potential change by eliminating restrictions to preseason start dates and by adding an entire section (27.9) accounting for a schedule format change. That section requires the league to provide no less than one year’s notice to the NWSL Players Association if it intends to switch to a fall-to-spring format.

After that, the CBA calls for the league and the union to form a scheduling committee and allow for NWSLPA input, as well as bargain over necessary changes that conflict with the current CBA, “but the NWSL retains the discretion to make the format change.”

There are natural breaks in the calendar for the NWSL to attempt a transition. The 2028 Summer Olympics will be in Los Angeles (and the Olympics soccer event spread across the U.S.), and the 2031 Women’s World Cup is expected to be primarily hosted in the United States, although the formal approval of that uncontested bid has been delayed by FIFA.

Changing the calendar has the support of many sporting executives across the league because it will put NWSL contracts at the same cadence as those in Europe, where deals typically expire in the summer. That, executives have said for years, will make player transfers easier.

In ESPN’s first anonymous general manager survey in 2024, one GM said that the intense debate over the calendar was “actually the biggest question facing the league.”

Turning the summer into the offseason would also allow the NWSL to avoid one of its largest headaches: international tournaments. The league tried to play through the 2015 and 2019 Women’s World Cups despite missing swaths of star players before finally taking a five-week break for the 2023 edition.

Between the World Cup, the Olympics and continental tournaments such as the Euros, there are major international calendar conflicts three out of every four summers. (And this year, in the one down summer in that cycle, the NWSL instilled a monthlong break because of the men’s World Cup taking over many of its venues and markets.)

MLS and the NWSL currently mirror each other in operating seasons that start at the beginning of the calendar year (usually February or March) and end with playoffs that run until the end of the year. MLS and the NWSL have both kicked off their seasons early in the calendar year since their inceptions in 1996 and 2013, respectively.

The USL Super League, which is also sanctioned as a U.S. women’s first division alongside the NWSL, launched in 2024 and already plays roughly a fall-to-spring schedule, kicking off in August and concluding in May.

Azzi Fudd, the No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft, answered numerous basketball-related questions at her Dallas Wings introductory news conference Thursday, but one unrelated to the game overshadowed all the others.

Fudd and teammate Paige Bueckers, who will team in Dallas’ backcourt this season, went public about their relationship in 2025, and it was an often-discussed subject before this week’s draft.

But when Fudd was asked Thursday about both her relationship with Bueckers — the two overlapped at UConn and won a national championship together — and whether she would seek advice from other couples in the WNBA about navigating the relationship as pro players, the subject was quickly shut down.

“Understand why you have to ask that question,” a Wings public relations staffer interrupted. “We’re going to respectfully decline from commenting on our players’ personal lives.”

Fudd averaged 17.3 points on 47% shooting in her final season at UConn, which ended with the Huskies losing to South Carolina at the Final Four — their only loss of the season.

Bueckers, who was last year’s No. 1 overall pick by the Wings, averaged 19.2 points, 5.4 assists and 3.9 rebounds while winning the league’s Rookie of the Year award.

Wings general manager Curt Miller said the team never hesitated in its choice to draft Fudd as the team looks to take steps forward after tying for the league’s worst record last season at 10-34 and winning only nine games in 2024.

“Since the moment we secured the No. 1 pick, we set out on a plan to be deliberate, thorough, with intention on evaluating where we got to ultimately in picking Azzi Fudd,” Miller said. “We traveled all over the world watching this incredible draft class, but it all came back always to Azzi.

“Words that we heard over and over again in the investigation of her was, a winner, competitor, a hard worker, obviously the skill set speaks for itself, an incredible shooter — probably one of the quickest releases in the game today, a defender with a lot of competitiveness and toughness, and, ultimately, all the intangibles that goes along with Azzi in the locker room — being unselfish, being an incredible teammate, being a high-basketball-IQ player. [It] all pointed us through a very deliberate and thorough process back to Azzi Fudd.”

Kansas City Chiefs star receiver Rashee Rice isn’t the only one facing discipline for a March 2024 car crash in Dallas.

Theodore “Teddy” Knox, a former SMU cornerback and teammate of Rice’s in college, was driving a Corvette while racing Rice’s Lamborghini on a Dallas highway before it caused a multi-car crash.

Knox has been hit with a $2.88 million default judgment in a lawsuit from one of those crash victims, Kathryn Kuykendall, according to ESPN.

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Knox was ruled “grossly negligent” by Judge Kim Bailey Phipps, and a default judgment comes when a lawsuit has no response or a party does not appear in court. In this case, it was reportedly the latter.

“We’ve asked the court to grant the default judgment because we’re ethically required to as a matter of diligence,” Kuykendall’s attorney, Marc Lenahan, said in a statement to ESPN when the motion was filed. 

“Personally, it pleases us that Teddy hasn’t made further mistakes that we’re aware of. If a team gives him a chance to prove that he’s walking the right path now, we’ll be rooting for him.”

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This marks the third default judgment issued against Knox from the March 2024 crash. He was also ordered to pay $1.99 million to Irina Gromova and $1.63 million to Edvard Petrovskiy in combined damages.

Knox and Rice pleaded guilty to charges from the crash, and Knox was sentenced to 30 days in jail and five years of probation. Knox was charged with causing a collision involving serious bodily injury and racing on a highway causing bodily injury.

SMU wide receiver Teddy Knox on special teams during a game against the North Texas Mean Green  Nov. 10, 2023, at Gerald Ford Stadium in Dallas, Texas. (Chris Leduc/Icon Sportswire)

Rice had similar charges, receiving five-year deferred probation and 30 days in jail as a condition of the probation. His jail time was said to be flexible, according to the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office.

Rice was also required to pay the victims for their out-of-pocket medical expenses, which totaled around $115,000, as part of his plea agreement.   

Rice was also suspended six games for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy, which he served last season.

The 25-year-old receiver said in a statement issued by his attorney at the time of the league’s decision that he’s had “a lot of sleepless nights thinking about the damages my actions caused, and I will continue working within my means to make sure that everyone impacted will be made whole.”

SMU Mustangs wide receiver Teddy Knox (18) prepares to make a catch during a game between against the TCU Horned Frogs Sept. 24, 2022, at Gerald J. Ford Stadium in Dallas, Texas. (Matthew Visinsky/Icon Sportswire)

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Knox was suspended by SMU, and he hasn’t been in college football ever since. He began his career at Mississippi State before transferring to SMU.

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