Falcons will play in Spain

MADRID (AP) — The Atlanta Falcons will play in the second ever NFL regular season game in Madrid this year.

The Falcons’ opponent will be confirmed when the full season schedule is released later in the year. The Falcons are expected to be the home team at Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabeu Stadium.

The Madrid game is part of a record nine international games in 2026, including new host cities in France, Australia and Brazil.

The Washington Commanders faced the Miami Dolphins in the inaugural game in the Spanish capital last year at the Bernabeu. The Dolphins won 16-13 in overtime before a crowd of 78,610 fans.

This summer, Spain’s national soccer team will play two World Cup matches at the Falcons’ Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

“We are incredibly proud to be part of an NFL regular season game in Madrid at the iconic Bernabeu,” Falcons president and CEO Greg Beadles said in the NFL announcement on Tuesday. “Atlanta and Madrid are a fitting match as we will host two of Spain’s group stage matches in the upcoming FIFA World Cup at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.”

It will be the Falcons’ fifth trip to Europe, and fourth in six seasons. Atlanta played in Toronto in 2013, London in 2014, 2021 and 2023, and Berlin in 2025.

The NFL announced in February it reached a multiyear deal to keep playing regular season games at the Bernabeu. The league said Spain was “an important market globally” with 11 million fans. It said it will also focus on developing the league’s flag football initiatives across the country.

The Dolphins, Kansas City Chiefs and Chicago Bears have marketing rights in Spain as part of the league’s global markets program, which awards NFL teams rights in areas outside the U.S. to “build brand awareness and fandom through fan engagement, events and commercial opportunities.”

The NFL has said it plans to increase the number of international games to a point where each team will get to play a game abroad every year.

The Gator chomp

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Florida coach Jon Sumrall has a new appreciation for the gator chomp.

Sumrall got hissed at and snapped at while posing for promotional pictures with a live alligator last week. It was enough to prompt Sumrall to backpedal like his college playing days at Kentucky.

“I’m pretty certain I’d look like Chubbs from Happy Gilmore if the alligator had gotten close to my hand,” Sumrall joked Tuesday following his first spring practice at Florida. “Yeah, that was cool, man.”

A little nerve-racking, too.

“In my mind, I had this visual image of we’re going to have like a little baby alligator, like a 1-foot alligator you might see on a riverboat cruise in Louisiana, mouth’s taped,” he said. “I walk up and there’s this 7-foot alligator.

“I’m like, ‘Hang on. What am I doing here?’ They’re like, ‘We’re going to take some pictures. You can get this close.’ I’m like, ‘Look, during COVID I wasn’t allowed to get this close to people. I don’t know about an alligator.'”

The alligator was named Helena and was from a nearby gator farm. She may have been relatively friendly, but she was far from trained. She walked in and out of shots while Sumrall flipped a football — and eventually turned on the former Troy and Tulane head coach.

“As soon as I started to get kind of comfortable … I’m like, ‘All right, this thing isn’t going to do anything crazy, I don’t think.’ I get 4 or 5 feet away and it starts to kind of hiss a little and it snaps,” he said. “I’m like, ‘What the hell is going on? I’m out of here.'”

He didn’t actually bail. Helena simmered down, and they got the photos done. But it was an experience Sumrall won’t soon forget.

“I’m not necessarily looking for when that’s coming up on my schedule again,” he said. “But it was a fun experience.”

U.S. Open hasn’t forgotten Ohio

(AP) — The USGA hasn’t entirely forgotten about Ohio when it comes to the U.S. Open.

Inverness Club in the far northwestern corner of Ohio will get the U.S. Open in 2045. It will be the fifth time Inverness gets a U.S. Open, but only after a 66-year absence. Hale Irwin won the the second of his three U.S. Open titles there in 1979.

The Donald Ross design went through an upgrade in 2018 by architect Andrew Green, who put back some of the design features that had been changed during an overhaul in the 1970s to prepare for the 1979 U.S. Open.

The announcement gives hope to clubs wanting the U.S. Open after the USGA announced its “anchor sites” that began filling the calendar. Riviera will get the 2031 U.S. Open after waiting 83 years, while Oakland Hills is set for 2034 after a 38-year absence.

The only other Ohio clubs to host the U.S. Open were Scioto in 1926 — 100 years later it will host the U.S. Senior Open this summer — and Canterbury in 1940 and 1946.