Former Manchester United winger Ryan Giggs has been charged with assault against two women, police and prosecutors said in statements on Friday.

Giggs, 47, has been charged with causing actual bodily harm to a woman in her 30s and common assault of a woman in her 20s, as well as one count of coercive and controlling behaviour between 2017 and 2020.

Until Friday, Giggs was manager of the Wales national soccer team, but the Football Association of Wales said after the charges were made public that it would replace him with Robert Page for this summer's Euro 2020 tournament.

Last November, Giggs missed a number of international fixtures after allegations of assault. He denied the allegations at the time.

Giggs is due to appear at Manchester and Salford Magistrates' Court on April 28, the Crown Prosecution Service said in its statement.

Giggs said he would plead not guilty to the charges against him.

"I have full respect for the due process of law and understand the seriousness of the allegations," Giggs said in a statement. "I will plead not guilty in court and look forward to clearing my name."

Greater Manchester Police said in a separate statement that both counts of assault relate to the evening of Nov. 1 2020, when police were called to reports of a disturbance and a woman in her 30s was treated for injuries at the scene.

The Football Association of Wales said it would convene a meeting to discuss the impact of the developments on the national team.

"The FAW will not be making any further comment at this current time," it said in a statement.

Giggs made 963 appearances over 23 years for Manchester United as a player, a club record, winning a haul of honours including 13 Premier League winner's medals and two UEFA Champions League winner's medals.

He represented Wales as a player 64 times between 1991 and 2007 and took over as national coach in 2018.

It's been a seismic week for soccer. After the hasty unveiling of the Super League on Sunday -- with 12 top clubs around Europe announcing their intent to form a breakaway competition in which they'd compete, consequence-free, outside the UEFA Champions League -- and its rapid collapse Tuesday as teams pulled out in the face of intense public scrutiny, the attention now turns to talk of punishments, reckonings and high-level discussions about how to plot a meaningful path forward.

- Marcotti: Why clubs pulled out and what's next
- Darke: What now for 'Selfish Six' after Super League climbdown?
- How fan revolt helped bring down the Super League

Though UEFA voted on Champions League reforms, the road map remains unclear and there are lots of issues to unpack. From how UEFA uses its new-found leverage over the "rebel clubs" and how it actually reworks European competition, to England's top clubs attempting to assimilate back into the Premier League's power structure, there are issues everywhere.

Jump to: UEFA, Champions League | England's "big six"

The challenge for UEFA and the Champions League reforms

OK, so now what?

Forty-eight hours after the collapse of the Super League, UEFA find themselves pulled in opposite directions. In Britain, the government is studying the possibility of introducing something akin to Germany's "50+1" model, whereby no single entity can own a majority of the club and a supporters' supervisory board sits at the top. Already, the Champions League reforms passed on Monday -- with their Swiss model and expanded schedule -- are coming under attack, and many inside the game would like to see them rolled back to the current set-up.

On the other hand, the narrative, especially in Spain and Italy, was this: "Well, having places not awarded on merit is wrong, but UEFA need to get back to the negotiating table and listen to the clubs." The simple answer to this is that they've been listening to the clubs -- including the very clubs, especially Juventus, Real Madrid and Manchester United, who tried to set up the Super League -- for six months, which is how we ended up with the expanded Champions League in the first place.

UEFA will need to reconcile those opposing viewpoints and resume the balancing act that his kept this whole thing together. And make no mistake about it: this is a balancing act.

Think of UEFA as a government with elected officials that runs a society (European football competitions). Some in that society have fancy "white-collar" jobs -- bankers, industrialists, tech giants -- and generate lots of money. Others have blue-collar jobs -- taxi drivers, factory workers, etc. -- and generate substantially less, while others still generate nothing, perhaps because they are uneducated or because they have no marketable skills.

UEFA's job is to collect all the money and redistribute it. In doing so, they have to consider whom to give the plum business opportunities to (i.e., on what basis to admit clubs to the Champions League) and, most importantly, how to divide up the pie.

Divide it all equally and -- the thinking goes -- the guys with no marketable skills who produce nothing will be rewarded whereas the talented folks with white-collar jobs will be disincentivized to work hard. And since they are most skilled at what they do, you want to reward them because they, more than anyone, can grow the pie. Equally, if you give too much reward and too much opportunity to the white-collar folks, there will be no social mobility: the blue-collar guys might give up because they've got very little hope or opportunity to rise to the top. Same for the guys at the bottom who aspire to a blue-collar life.

That tension has been at the heart of UEFA vs. club power relations since the Champions League was created nearly 30 years ago, and it still is today. Over the years, that balance has shifted further and further away from an equal split and increasingly towards the big clubs from the big nations, both in terms of Champions League places (opportunities) and the way revenue is divided (reward).

Right now, in the wake of the failed Super League, UEFA hold all the cards. The rebel clubs -- or rather, the people at the very top of those clubs -- return to the fold shamed and humiliated. Popular sentiment is against them, but the challenges that took them to this point remain. You can call it greed or an unwillingness to face the realities of past overspending, but the fact is many are hurting: because they have bigger grounds and bigger sponsorship deals, they bore the brunt of the $6.5 billion to $8.5 billion they say the European game as a whole will lose between last season and this season.

Simply giving them more money is not just unpopular, it's also foolish, unless it's accompanied by serious spending restrictions.

For all the negativity generated by Financial Fair Play -- and it does have its flaws -- we did go from aggregate losses of $1.8 billion before its introduction to two consecutive seasons of profit in just seven years, pre-pandemic. It will be tweaked and reintroduced.

In order for it to work, two things have to happen. First, it can't be so rigid so as to discourage investment, particularly when there is a change of ownership. Some clubs, like AC Milan, changed owners twice in three years, leaving the current owners in a deep hole not of their making that has stunted their growth. Second, where there are breaches, punishment has to be clear, firm and fully transparent. That obviously didn't happen in the past and indeed, the fact that Manchester City could receive maximum punishment and then have the ban overturned a few months later by the Court of Arbitration for Sport did little to restore trust.

That word -- trust -- is paramount. One of the reasons U.S. sports leagues are profitable is that the owners neither attack each other in public, nor encourage others to do so. Where there is confrontation, it happens behind closed doors and gets resolved, usually quietly. When "Spygate" happened, you didn't hear the Dallas Cowboys' owner argue that the New England Patriots ought to be thrown out of the league. That was left to the commentariat.

Those owners understand they're not just "stakeholders" -- they're business partners. And they trust each other (OK, maybe it's "trust, but verify," but still). That's what the clubs need to rebuild with UEFA, with each other and with the fans. -- Gab Marcotti

The situation with English clubs

After the Super League unraveled every bit as quickly as it was proposed at the start of the week, the English teams -- Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham -- are now tasked with repairing the bonds broken by their attempted split. They face challenges of reconciliation on several levels, too.

How clubs rebuild trust with fans: This week has seen unprecedented displays of contrition from the owners of the "Big Six." Liverpool principal owner John W. Henry apologised to the club's fans in a video message, while Joel Glazer made his first direct communication with Manchester United fans since buying the club in 2005 to "apologise unreservedly for the unrest caused" and admitting "we got it wrong."

Those mea culpas, and others by owners of fellow rebel clubs, have done little to assuage anger among supporters, however. United fans broke into the club's Carrington training ground on Thursday with protest banners, while Liverpool fans' group Spion Kop 1906 wrote a letter to club owners demanding "change, not patronising apologies" and calling for a meeting to discuss representation on the board.

- Darke: What now for "Selfish Six" in Premier League?
- Ogden: Fans forgotten in Super League effort
- Olley: On scene as Chelsea fans reacted to Super League collapse

The Football Supporters' Association are backing a fan-led review of football governance, announced by the UK government in the wake of the ESL collapse, which will investigate potential changes to ownership models and strengthening of tests to assess the suitability of prospective new owners. But while regarded by many as an ideal outcome, fan ownership of clubs is unlikely due to the value of the Big Six. A 50% stake in United, based on their current share valuation, would cost £1.5 billion, a level of funding that would be virtually impossible for fans' groups to secure and manage.

Open dialogue, concessions on ticket prices and kick-off times would all help mend broken bridges, but fan discontent remains high and protests are being organised for games involving this Big Six this weekend. United and Liverpool supporters are also planning a joint protest ahead of their Old Trafford clash on May 2.

Fixing broken relationships with clubs, leagues: One source at an "Other 14" club has told ESPN that the events of the past week have given the smaller teams a chance to clip the wings of the six teams that tried breaking away and ensure a more equitable share of power within the Premier League. But another source at a Big Six team says that the smaller clubs have been a constant handbrake on reform and exploring new revenue streams due to self-interest and fear of investing in projects in which they will see no benefit.

"We wanted £1m from each club to fund research into tapping into the market in India," a Big Six source said. "But we couldn't get it off the ground because the other 14 know that three of them will be relegated, so they wouldn't finance something that may end up giving them nothing in return. That's what we're up against."

Such seemingly petty squabbles are a regular occurrence within the Premier League, and it is why the broken relationships may never be repaired -- the reality is that they were never healthy even before the ESL plans came to light.

Talk of punishment and sanctions for the Big Six is likely to prove to be nothing more than bluster due to the reality that those clubs drive the commercial revenue from which all 20 benefit. Hitting them hard would only store up resentment, with one Big Six source telling ESPN that smaller clubs would quickly find themselves having to pay much bigger fees to sign players from those six teams if any sanctions were imposed to damage their earning potential. In turn, the smaller teams know that they have little real power to rein their bigger rivals in.

In short, don't expect any real rapprochement. It has always been the Big Six vs. the Other 14, and nothing has changed.

The way forward for the Big Six and the rest: One Big Six source told ESPN that one of the biggest frustrations of the ESL plan was the failure to deliver the message that all clubs would earn more from the proposed new competition. "Our PR was a disaster from the start," the source said. "Under the Super League plan, the consolidation payment to Premier League clubs would be €160m a year -- more than ten times what they get from the Champions League -- but we were never in a position to get that across. It was all about how we would leave the rest behind, but this was about safeguarding the whole game for years to come."

There is also a view from within the Big Six that many angry voices from the other clubs are largely being aired to suit their audience, when in reality, there is a shared determination to increase revenue in the years ahead. The challenge now is for the 20 teams, in their two clear factions, to work together in an uneasy truce, with neither side trusting each other.

Ultimately, it will come down to the Big Six dragging the 14 along financially. If the top teams are able to boost income that benefits all of the clubs, resistance from the others is likely to subside. Both sides know that they need each other, but it always been an unhappy marriage. Right now, though, they can't live without each other, so they will have to continue as they always have -- by putting up with the friction and tension for the greater good. -- Mark Ogden

Big picture

Both the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Rajasthan Royals have plenty of cream in the middle, but their top orders are squishy at best. After their designated opener Ben Stokes was sidelined from the tournament, the Royals bumped Jos Buttler up to the top, but he has been dismissed twice in three innings inside the powerplay. His opening partner Manan Vohra hasn't lasted beyond the fourth over in four innings. In IPL 2021, no team has lost more wickets in the first six overs than the Royals (ten) and their powerplay run rate of 6.75 is also the worst among all teams in the league.

With Liam Livingstone, a potential top-order replacement, also returning home after citing bubble fatigue, the Royals are scrambling for reinforcements. Yashasvi Jaiswal or Anuj Rawat, who is uncapped in the IPL, could displace Vohra from the top.

The Knight Riders haven't been too flashy in their powerplay either, losing three wickets fewer than the Royals during this phase. While Nitish Rana bounced back from Covid-19 to start the tournament strongly, Shubman Gill continues to lack enough punch in the powerplay. In their last game, even an Andre Russell-led comeback couldn't save them against the Chennai Super Kings.

With both sides languishing in the bottom half of the points table, they can't afford another meltdown at the top, especially on one of the better batting pitches in the IPL.

Team news

England quick Jofra Archer has been ruled out of IPL 2021 after being advised by the ECB to focus on his rehab after having undergone a finger surgery.

The Royals have lined up South Africa batter Rassie van der Dussen as cover. The 32-year-old has never been part of the IPL before but has had stints at the CPL and Global T20 Canada.

Likely XIs

Kolkata Knight Riders: 1 Nitish Rana, 2 Shubman Gill, 3 Rahul Tripathi, 4 Sunil Narine, 5 Eoin Morgan (capt), 6 Dinesh Karthik (wk), 7 Andre Russell, 8 Pat Cummins, 9 Kamlesh Nagarkoti/Shivam Mavi, 10 Varun Chakravarthy, 11 Prasidh Krishna

Rajasthan Royals: 1 Jos Buttler (wk), 2 Yashasvi Jaiswal/Anuj Rawat, 3 Sanju Samson (capt & wk), 4 Shivam Dube, 5 David Miller, 6 Riyan Parag, 7 Rahul Tewatia, 8 Chris Morris, 9 Jaydev Unadkat, 10 Chetan Sakariya, 11 Mustafizur Rahman/Andrew Tye

Strategy punt

• The Knight Riders have opened their attack with spin in all their four games this season, but against the Royals, who have lost all their ten wickets in the powerplay to pace, there is a case for them to give the new ball to Pat Cummins and Prasidh Krishna.
• The Royals could consider replacing Mustafizur Rahman with Andrew Tye, the slower-ball specialist who can now bowl out-and-out pace as well. If the Knight Riders throw Sunil Narine into the opening mix, Tye could counter him with his excess pace and bounce. Even otherwise, Tye could be matched up with Rana, who like Narine, isn't comfortable against short balls at speeds north of 140kph. So, Jaydev Unadkat slotting in for Shreyas Gopal and Tye for Rahman could potentially give their seam attack a new dimension and prepare them for life in the absence of Archer.

Stats that matter

• The Knight Riders have won just one out of their nine IPL games at the Wankhede Stadium.
• Chris Morris has a fine head-to-head record against Russell in T20 cricket. He has got Russell three times in 23 balls while giving away 34 runs.
• Eoin Morgan has scored 243 runs in five innings against the Royals at an average of 81 and strike rate of 157.79 - his best record against an IPL side. Morgan is also 43 runs away from 7000 in T20 cricket.

There is no plan to shift the IPL 2021 matches scheduled for Delhi, despite that city being one of the worst affected by the current Covid-19 wave. The city recorded more than 300 deaths and 26,000 new cases on April 22, and currently faces an acute shortage of hospital beds and oxygen supplies.

Four IPL teams - defending champions Mumbai Indians, the Chennai Super Kings, the Sunrisers Hyderabad and the Rajasthan Royals - are scheduled to play eight matches there from April 28 to May 8. It is understood that Mumbai would be the first team to land in Delhi, on April 24, followed by the other three teams, who are scheduled to reach by April 26.

The Delhi & Districts Cricket Association (DDCA), which in charge of the Feroz Shah Kotla ground, is putting its faith in the bio-secure bubble created for the IPL. "It is on schedule," DDCA president Rohan Jaitley told ESPNcricinfo on Friday. "The bubble is absolutely intact. If I am not part of the bubble, I can't meet anybody [inside it]. It is absolutely safe."

Jaitley confirmed that all the relevant personnel, including groundspersons, are part of the bubble. "There is a health and safety protocol that is already in place where teams move around in bubbles, they stay in bubbles, practice happens in a bubble, and any and every person who comes in contact is part of the bubble. There is no one who is outside the bubble."

ESPNcricinfo understands that the IPL governing council has not had any discussion internally or with the franchises about having a rethink on the Delhi leg.

As of Friday morning, as per the official data released by the Indian government, Delhi had over 91,000 active Covid-19 cases, including 13,193 deaths. That the city is in uncertain waters has been explained in public by its chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, who said that almost every third person who has been tested in the capital had returning a positive result. In the past week, Delhi has also been dangerously close to exhausting its oxygen reserves, even as hospitals have run out of space.

While the BCCI is confident that the ground situation in Delhi - as in other cities where the pandemic is raging - would not have any bearing on the IPL, the franchises remained wary. It is understood that some of them have been asked by their medical experts to double-mask at all times and travel wearing full PPE kits.

The players themselves have not expressed any concerns in public yet, though England allrounder Chris Woakes, who represents the Delhi Capitals, has said that it wasn't an ideal situation. "It's a shame with the situation at the moment with the people all around the world having to deal with Covid, which isn't ideal," Woakes told AFP. "Within the bubble, we are trying to stay positive. We are very lucky that we still get a chance to play cricket and entertain people on the outside."

South Africa's sports minister Nathi Mthethwa is on the verge of derecognising Cricket South Africa (CSA), and if that happens, CSA will not be the body that officially runs cricket in the country. That is exactly as big a deal as it sounds like, and it's been a long time coming. Here, we try to make sense of what's happened and why.

Is it the end of cricket in South Africa?
It's possible, at least for a while. If the government gazette containing the minister's proposed interventions is published, then CSA will no longer be officially recognised as the game's governing body in the country, and can no longer claim to be in charge of national teams or to hand out national colours.

So South Africa won't have national cricket teams anymore?
Potentially, yes. If CSA is no longer recognised, then existing structures, as we know them, would cease to exist. Another governing body could, possibly, be formed but it would need to be recognised by both the South African sports ministry and the ICC in order to represent South Africa in international cricket.

That sounds… massive!
Yes, because this could, for example, mean sponsors and broadcasters walk away and once they do, it's going to be difficult to get them back even if cricket does manage to get itself back on its feet. And the ripple effect will ultimately be felt not only by the players but by the broader community that makes a living off cricket. Think the stadium security guard or vendor or schools' and development coaches.

Who's going to run cricket in the country if not CSA?
Who knows? It's difficult to know how things will work if the governing body is not recognised. This has not happened to a sport in South Africa to date and is not something cricket has dealt with at its highest, most prominent levels.

Hang on, remind me - why is this happening?
Essentially because some administrators are against having a new CSA board, which has a majority of independent members. Specifically, there are five presidents of provincial associations on the members' council, who do not want to agree to having this majority independent board and have not fully explained why.

You're losing me. What is the members' council?
There are two centres of power in CSA: 1. the board of directors, who resigned last year and have been replaced by an interim board put in place by the government, and 2. the members' council, which is made up of the 14 provincial presidents and has the highest decision-making authority in the organisation. Some of these presidents also sat on the resigned board and will sit on a new board (but not all of them). Following?

Just about. Go on.
Now, prior to the board's resignation, seven of the members' council sat on the board, which had five independent directors. The new proposal for the composition of the board - which dates back to 2012, when CSA had another governance review following the Gerald Majola bonus scandal - suggests four members' council presidents and seven independents. In short, the members' appears to be unhappy that their representation on a new board is cut and is trying to cling to that power, though we don't know for sure because they haven't explained much. Probably important to note at this point is that board members earn Rand 450,000 (US$ 31,500 approx.) a year for attending meetings and enjoy several privileges including traveling to games.

Okay, so it's a power struggle in which the government has now gotten involved.
Long story short, yes.

Hasn't this been going on for a while?
Forever, it would seem.

That long story is that the problems stem from the failed T20 Global League in 2017, which saw the exit of then-CEO Haroon Lorgat. Enter Thabang Moroe, under whom CSA spiralled into several crises including a high-profile disagreement with the South African Cricketers Association, issues with broadcasters, and various governance issues. A forensic report found that Moroe had spent large amounts of board money on alcohol and service providers who did not deliver those services. Moroe has since been dismissed and the board that appointed him resigned (though some of them are still part of the members' council because… see above). But the effects of his time in charge remain. CSA is facing serious financial losses that will run into millions of Rands.

In trying to sort out this mess - with the involvement of the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committtee (don't ask, but this might help) - South Africa's sports minister Nathi Mthethwa has intervened. Last November, he imposed an interim board on CSA, which was tasked with, among other things, putting in place the framework for a majority independent board. Which brings us back to today.

You said something about a government gazette needing to be published for this to happen…
Yes, in theory, CSA continues to be the officially recognised governing body for cricket in South Africa until the gazette carrying the minister's acts is published. That usually happens on Fridays, which means that April 30th (next Friday) is the date when CSA could officially ceases to be recognised. Things could change between now and then, of course, because it's possible that the members' council agrees to that board composition within the week, but we're right at the very edge.

Pakistan's struggles with middle order were laid bare in Harare on Friday as the team slumped to a 19-run defeat, with Zimbabwe bowling them out for 99. Wobbles in the middle order had been a worry for much of Pakistan's tours of South Africa and Zimbabwe, but the side had, by and large, escaped paying for it until now. Pakistan captain Babar Azam was sufficiently alarmed by Pakistan's showing with the bat to warn solutions had to be found swiftly, with time running out before this year's T20 World Cup.

"It's a very painful performance," Azam said. "In South Africa, we had chased down 200; similarly here, we should have won this game comfortably. But unfortunately, we played poor cricket and continued to struggle in the middle order. Today, it was not just the middle order but our batsmen right through couldn't perform the way we expect them to. It was a collective collapse and we lost as a group. But credit to Zimbabwe who came back so strongly today."

Zimbabwe beat Pakistan for the first time in T20I cricket in their 16th attempt, registering their first T20I win at home since 2016. The three-match series is currently level at 1-1, with the final game being played on Sunday.

Pakistan have tried Danish Aziz, Asif Ali, and Haider Ali in the middle order since the South Africa tour, but none of them has had the desired impact. With the top order doing much of the scoring of late, opportunities to put the middle order to the test had been few and far between, though it was notable they had struggled whenever put under pressure.

Azam refused to make excuses for the defeat. "The wicket was similar to the other day but it was suitable [for batters] and that is not an excuse anyway. As a professional, you adapt to every condition but I think we as openers didn't give a good start from the top and then our middle order was struggling to step up. The World T20 is closing in and we have to sort this out as soon as possible. The next game we will come back and make a good combination."

With the middle order under scrutiny, Shoaib Malik is one of the prospects for the slot but has not played for Pakistan since the England tour last year. His name has often been floated in the media as a possible answer to Pakistan's woes, but the selectors have so far opted against picking him. That Malik would like to make a return is well known, with the veteran playing in T20 leagues across the world during this time. After Pakistan's defeat, the normally reserved 39-year-old took to Twitter to express his opinion.

"Unacquainted decision makers need to take a step back; Babar and chief selector need to call the shots," Malik tweeted. "In my opinion, we need an international white ball coach who understands cricket inside out & grooms our captain whilst giving clarity to our players for coming time. When your management relies on likes & dislikes especially when your cricket is just in surviving mode, then what else do expect as a nation? On top of that, when you don't let your captain take decisions this is bound to happen."

There has been no official reaction from the PCB to Malik's tweets yet, but as the fallout from Pakistan's defeat grows, there are signs a man who made his debut in 1999 may yet be relevant to them in 2021.

Pittsburgh Steelers cornerback Justin Layne was arrested Friday morning.

Layne was arrested on suspicion of felony transportation of a firearm inside of a vehicle, according to jail records in Lake County, Ohio. He was also charged with two misdemeanors -- driving with a suspended license and exceeding speed limits. Layne was booked just after 3 a.m. Friday.

Police said they initially stopped Layne for going 89 mph in a 60 mph zone.

"We are aware of the incident but still gathering information," the Steelers said in a statement. "We will have no further comment at this time."

Pittsburgh drafted Layne in the third round of the 2019 draft out of Michigan State. The 23-year-old appeared in 16 games last season and had 22 total tackles. Layne's arrest occurred less than 20 miles northeast of Cleveland, where he went to high school.

Layne was granted release on a personal bond. His next court date is scheduled for May 5, according to court records.

While continuing to reiterate its support for the current four-team format, the College Football Playoff management committee this week was presented with possibilities for future expansion, including options ranging from six to 16 teams, the CFP announced on Friday after two days of virtual meetings.

A working group within the CFP management committee, which comprises the 10 FBS commissioners plus Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, discussed "some 63 possibilities for change," according to a news release from the CFP. Those included models of six, eight, 10, 12 and 16 teams, each with a variety of different scenarios.

CFP executive director Bill Hancock told ESPN that nothing is imminent.

"There will not be a new format this season or next season," Hancock said. "The timetable is certainly an important detail, but it hasn't been determined yet. It's too soon to predict the timing, but even if the board decides to alter the format, it may well not occur until after the current agreement has expired, which isn't until after the 2025 season."

The CFP has set up a working group of four management committee members -- Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and Notre Dame's Swarbrick. They are expected to make a report to the entire management committee about the future format at the CFP's next meeting, which could be this summer. If there is a model the entire group supports, the committee will present it to the CFP board of managers, who have the ultimate authority over the playoff format.

For the playoff to change, those 11 presidents and chancellors would have to approve it. The CFP is entering its eighth season of a 12-year contractual agreement. All parties involved would have to unanimously agree to change the contract before it expires.

"More and more people -- not just fans, but the 10 commissioners and Notre Dame who have a vote in the matter -- are saying, 'It's time to look at expansion,'" Thompson told ESPN in January. "Does that mean two years from now? Does it mean after the current 12-year contract expires? I think it's somewhere between there. I think we could accommodate expansion before the 12-year contract expires -- one man's opinion."

While Thompson told ESPN he thinks expansion is "inevitable," possibly no commissioner has been more publicly supportive of it than American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco.

"I think it has to happen because there's just too much dissatisfaction with the current system," he said. "Ultimately, I think there will be support for it because not only would the [Group of 5] obviously want it, but clearly there are [Power 5] guys being left out who would like a shot."

The Pac-12 champion has been left out five times in seven seasons, with Oregon and Washington the only teams to represent the conference, with a 1-2 record and no national titles. Before the Pac-12 season began in November, commissioner Larry Scott suggested expanding the field to eight teams this season, given the inconsistent scheduling caused by the pandemic. Scott, who announced he will leave his role in June, is still a part of the CFP management committee. His replacement has yet to be determined but will be an influential voice in the discussions, along with another first-year commissioner, the ACC's Jim Phillips.

"There will not be a new format this season or next season ... even if the board decides to alter the format, it may well not occur until after the current agreement has expired, which isn't until after the 2025 season." Bill Hancock, CFP executive director

Colorado chancellor Philip P. DiStefano said that the Pac-12 presidents and chancellors don't want college football to become a two-semester sport but that he "likes the idea" of having the league's new commissioner explore the possibilities.

"I'd really like to see the pros and cons and weigh those before making a final decision," DiStefano said, "but I do think that expansion is probably going to happen in the near future."

Hancock also said the 2021 playoff in Indianapolis will resume more of a normal look after a season in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Stadium capacities will be determined in the fall by the CFP, along with health and safety officials in the host city.

"We are planning to have marching bands, cheerleaders, mascots and the rest of the wonderful traditions at the CFP games," Hancock said in a prepared statement. "We are optimistic, but, of course, everything will depend on the circumstances this fall."

This year's CFP semifinal games will be at the Goodyear Cotton Bowl and Capital One Orange Bowl.

In a major trade between AFC powers, the Baltimore Ravens sent Pro Bowl offensive tackle Orlando Brown Jr. to the Kansas City Chiefs on Friday in a deal that landed Baltimore an additional first-round pick, sources told ESPN's Adam Schefter.

The Ravens acquire three picks in next week's NFL draft -- a first-rounder (No. 31 overall), a third-rounder (No. 94) and a fourth-rounder (No. 136) -- as well as a fifth-round selection in 2022.

The Chiefs get a starting left tackle in Brown along with Baltimore's second-round pick in 2021 (No. 58 overall) and a sixth-rounder in 2022.

Baltimore had been open to trading Brown since he tweeted on Jan. 29: "I'm a LEFT Tackle." Brown, who filled in for injured left tackle Ronnie Stanley for the last 11 games last season, indicated that his late father wanted him to play left tackle and that he wanted to fulfill that dream.

After trading Brown, the Ravens are expected to replace him at right tackle with free agent Alejandro Villanueva, sources said. Any deal likely won't become official until after the draft, when free-agent signings don't count against compensatory picks. Villanueva, a six-year starting left tackle for the Pittsburgh Steelers, visited the Ravens on Thursday.

Brown, who turns 25 on May 2, has started 42 games for Baltimore since being a third-round pick in the 2018 draft. He allowed no sacks or quarterback hits in 700 snaps at left tackle last season, according to Pro Football Focus.

He is one of four offensive tackles selected to the Pro Bowl in each of the past two seasons, along with David Bakhtiari, Terron Armstead and Laremy Tunsil. And, according to ESPN Pass Block metrics powered by NFL Next Gen Stats, he has a pass block win rate of 91.3% over the past two seasons, 12th among all offensive tackles.

Brown got a ringing endorsement on his way out of Baltimore from defensive end Calais Campbell, who tweeted, "Chiefs are getting a straight up beast. Great teammate. The kinda guy you look forward to going to battle with."

The Chiefs now will have a completely new starting offensive line from last season's opener. Previously, they signed Joe Thuney, Kyle Long and Austin Blythe as free agents. They also expect Laurent Duvernay-Tardif and Lucas Niang back this season after they opted out in 2020 due to COVID-19-related reasons. All will at least compete for starting spots.

One thing is for certain: Brown will start at left tackle. The Chiefs had a hole at that position since releasing longtime starter Eric Fisher earlier in the offseason.

They tried in free agency to sign veteran star Trent Williams to play left tackle, but he re-signed with the San Francisco 49ers instead.

ESPN's Adam Teicher contributed to this report.