Former NFL linebacker Darron Lee has been arrested and is being charged with the alleged murder of his girlfriend, police say.

According to the Hamilton County (Tennessee) Sheriff’s Office, deputies responded to a residence in Ooltewah, Tennessee, ‘to a report of CPR in progress.’

‘Upon arrival, first responders located a female victim and attempted life-saving measures,’ the police statement said.

The victim was pronounced deceased at the scene,

Named as the victim’s boyfriend, Lee was identified as a suspect and was taken into custody.

In 2023, Lee faced charges of misdemeanor domestic violence and misdemeanor assault.

Lee was drafted by the New York Jets in the first round of the 2016 NFL Draft, spending three seasons in New York before he was traded to the Kansas City Chiefs.

The Ohio State product also had stints with the Buffalo Bills and Las Vegas Raiders, and was last part of an NFL roster in 2021 with the Raiders.

• The 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics opening ceremony was broadcast from three separate locations across northern Italy.
• NBC’s broadcast featured Mary Carillo, Terry Gannon, and former snowboarder Shaun White as hosts.
• NBC’s coverage was noted for being an improvement over the 2024 Paris broadcast, despite logistical challenges.

LIVIGNO, Italy — Nothing will quite top the spectacle that was the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, where not even a significant rainstorm withered the parade down the Seine River.

The 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics have a much different reality to confront. With three separate clusters and six total competition sites across northern Italy, from the Alps to the Dolomites to Milan, these Games are the most spread out ever, which NBC made clear at the top of the broadcast, and made the show, naturally, difficult to conjoin.

The network was looking to bounce back after Peyton Manning and Kelly Clarkson stepped all over the Paris opening ceremony broadcast and made a mess of it, clouding what was a special scene. This time, there were no celebrity guest hosts, as the network had to look at its talent bench with most of its sports broadcasting group, including Olympic host Mike Tirico, in Northern California for NBC’s Super Bowl 60 production Sunday.

Savannah Guthrie was scheduled to co-host alongside Terry Gannon but had to step aside as she and her family deal with the disappearance and suspected kidnapping of her 84-year-old mother, Nancy.

Mary Carillo filled in admirably on short notice. She and Gannon adequately addressed Guthrie’s absence during the 20 minutes between NBC going on air and the ceremony starting.

‘We are certainly without a loved member of our team,’ Gannon said.

Joining Gannon and Carillo was three-time Olympic gold-medalist Shaun White, who represented the U.S. at five Winter Games as a snowboarder. He was in the booth for a brief introduction at the start of the show and bowed out until the Parade of Nations, when air time needed to be filled, a wise move by NBC executives. Certainly qualified, White had his moments and provided insight into the snowboarding athletes because he knows them. Every country that walked though became a chance to tell a personal story, though.

We get it, Shaun. You’ve traveled the world twice over. Whoever got in his ear at the start of his set to encourage him to lay off the number of times he said ‘amazing’ was keen.

White, for his faults, is natural on television and his inclusion is sensical, unlike Manning and Clarkson were in Paris. He excelled in adding a former athlete’s perspective, complete with an amusing anecdote about not being told to walk during the opening ceremony because of his competition schedule, only to return to the athlete’s village in the wee hours of the morning. He left plenty to be desired when he transitioned into sportwashing on behalf of Saudi Arabia. His promotion of the Snow League, White’s winter sports circuit in its first year (which of course has a deal with NBC), was mildly irritating.

Carillo at least tried to keep the trains on the track by talking about Lindsey Vonn. She asked questions that advanced the conversation. There was a lightness to her interjections that matched the event. She tried to supply humor. At times, Carillo sounded like she was analyzing an actual sporting event, and it kind of worked.

Gannon mentioned protests in Iran and the Carillo followed up by pointing out the third act of the ceremony is about peace. They fawned over the Ukrainian athletes. Yet there was no mention of Israel receiving boos inside San Siro Stadium.  

The Parade of Nations lacked luster because athletes marched in separate places – inside San Siro, around Cortina and at the snow park in Livigno. The graphics department should have been busier and informed viewers which cluster they were watching as the broadcast canvassed each one. Having a camera in U.S. flagbearer Erin Jacskon’s family’s home in Ocala, Florida, created a heartwarming moment.

NBC threw it to special correspondent Snoop Dogg early but only returned to him for the Jamaican bobsledders and an interview with U.S. flagbearer Frank Del Duca. After his talent became an epic success for NBC in Paris, it was interesting to see the network not give him a bigger role throughout the show. Perhaps there’s an element of not wanting to shoot all of the Snoop bullets at once, but how many people at home would complain about more Double-G?

What has made Snoop indispensable beyond his entertainment value and camera presence is that it appears he actually does his homework and conveys a legitimate investment in the athletes. NBC deserves kudos for maintaining the partnership.

It’s not like NBC didn’t lean into the celebrity angle. Twelve minutes into the broadcast, Taylor Swift appeared and gave her props to the athletes representing America. It felt random until learning she dropped a music video for ‘Opalite’ on Friday.

Another lowlight for NBC was its interview with Chloe Kim, as reporter Tina Smith left plenty of meat on the bone when it came to asking about her injured shoulder and instead acted more like a fan.

The ceremony began with a montage of what we the world loves about Italy, and what Italy has given the world: opera, music, literature, Renaissance art, espressos, vino, natural beauty and architecture.

The ceremony’s theme, in Italian, was ‘armonia,’ which translates to harmony. There was a self-aware paparazzi skit that morphed into somewhat creepy mascot-heads of famous Italian composers Rossini, Verdi and Puccini.

Gannon was solid with the narration, complete with a Jim Valvano – his former basketball coach at North Carolina State – shoutout that would have made the late paisan proud. Carillo was never heavy-handed with additions.

Mariah Carey sang, in Italian, Domenico Modugno’s ‘Nel Blu, dipinto di Blu,’ followed by one of her most iconic songs, ‘Nothing Is Impossible’ (in English). She hit the falsetto notes – no lip-syncing controversies this time.

The introduction of Italian president Sergio Mattarella was tasteful. NBC didn’t overdo it by lingering on U.S. vice president JD Vance’s presence two spots from IOC president Kirsty Coventry, and only briefly lingered on him and wife Usha with a mention from Gannon during the Americans’ parade entrance.

Much of what ailed the NBC coverage was beyond its control. Tragic, in one sense. The network deserves credit for realizing its error two years ago, being nimble given Guthrie’s situation and juggling another massive sporting event. It wasn’t perfect, but much like these Games portend, it was perfectly disjointed.

• Several Seattle Seahawks players, including undrafted free agents, arrive at the team facility before 6 a.m.
• Linebackers Pat O’Connell and Drake Thomas, along with safety Ty Okada, formed an early morning ‘breakfast club.’
• Quarterback Sam Darnold and receiver Cooper Kupp often joke with the trio about who arrives at the facility first.

SAN JOSE, CA – First in the building, last to leave. It’s an aged cliché, and certainly one any NFL team and its fans want to accurately describe their quarterback.

But while Sam Darnold has been instrumental in leading the Seattle Seahawks to Super Bowl 60, it doesn’t apply to him. Nor is it true of one of his top receivers, Super Bowl 56 MVP Cooper Kupp – a renowned, early morning football film junkie who was constantly in the facility at daybreak with Matthew Stafford when they were Los Angeles Rams teammates, a habit Kupp carried over with Darnold this season.

But in Seattle – or, more specifically, at the Seahawks’ suburban training headquarters in Renton, Washington – Darnold and Kupp, dedicated as they are to their craft and successful as they’ve been over the course of the 2025 season, are routinely battling to be the fourth and fifth players into the picturesque Virginia Mason Athletic Center on the shores of Lake Washington. Darnold revealed the reason why during the buildup to the Super Bowl showdown with the New England Patriots.

“When I show up at the facility,” Darnold said Feb. 4, “me and Cooper are always kinda the first ones to get there – besides Ty Okada and Pat O’Connell.

“They’re there at 5:30, and then they sit down and have breakfast for 45 minutes – so, never really understood that.”

Who, you ask? And what’s to understand?

Ty Okada, Pat O’Connell, Drake Thomas form Seahawks’ ‘breakfast club’

O’Connell, a linebacker, and Okada, a safety, are undrafted free agents finishing up their third seasons in Seattle. Neither played much during their first two years in the NFL, each cut at the end of training camp in both 2023 and 2024 before being re-signed to the practice squad and subsequently shuttling back and forth between it and the active roster.

But Okada started 11 games this season and was also a significant special teams contributor. O’Connell only had 56 defensive snaps but nearly three times that many on special teams during his nine appearances this season.

But they enjoy daily collective appearances before sunrise at VMAC, where breakfast is served at 6 a.m. And O’Connell immediately wanted it known that Darnold wasn’t accurate. Totally.

“It’s only like 30 minutes, he exaggerated a little bit,” O’Connell told USA TODAY Sports. “We’re just there talking ball and catching up, talking life and everything. We call it our little breakfast club. It’s just three guys hanging out, talking shop.”

And it is a trio. O’Connell was quick to note that Darnold omitted starting linebacker Drake Thomas, yet another undrafted free agent who joined the team in 2023 − claimed by the Seahawks that year after he was waived by the Las Vegas Raiders during the post-camp roster reduction.

So what exactly are they discussing hours before the sun comes up in Renton’s northern latitude?

“Anything imaginable under the sun,” Okada told USA TODAY Sports.

“I would love to say it’s a little bit more football than social, but I would say it’s probably the opposite way, right? We love to talk shop about everything going on. … Really, it’s just a great time for us to connect in the morning before our busy days start.

“(J)ust really grateful for that group and being able to experience it all together with them.”

And if it sounds a bit like the high school cafeteria before homeroom?

“One hundred percent, that’s really what it is,” Thomas told USA TODAY Sports. “Just chopping it up, eating breakfast, talking about life.”

Family, weddings and football

And life is coming at them fast. O’Connell has a young family, while Thomas and Okada are both getting married later this year.

“We talk a lot about weddings,” Thomas admitted.

But don’t misinterpret this as an unserious troika. Their day jobs are often the topic du jour, especially, says Okada, given it’s helpful for him to compare notes with linebackers and vice versa.

“We just talk about whatever’s going on in the building, wherever we’re at in the week. We still talk a lot of football,” said Thomas.

And while they may not be the biggest names heading into Super Sunday, don’t discount the possibility one of them winds up making a pivotal play. Thomas and Okada combined for more than 160 tackles during the regular season. Thomas’ fourth-quarter interception in Week 18 at Levi’s Stadium – where he’ll be playing again Sunday – on a pass from San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy that was bobbled near the goal line by superstar Christian McCaffrey before settling into the linebacker’s hands helped Seattle secure the No. 1 playoff seed that’s been so critical to the Seahawks’ Super Bowl run.

Thomas was ready for that moment and might well be for his next opportunity thanks to those early morning talks about life and football. After all, the “breakfast club” existed in Seattle two years before Darnold and Kupp arrived last spring – even if it’s also a source of fun now.

“Sometimes they’ll beat us, sometimes we’ll beat them – we razz each other a little bit,” Okada said of Darnold and Kupp. “It’s just funny to (tell them), ‘You’re late.’”

But Kupp had the last word, and maybe unsurprisingly took the side of his quarterback rather than his defensive teammates (who, for the record, all live near Bellevue, about 15 minutes from Seahawks HQ).

“Oh, their little club,” Kupp burst out laughing on his way to a mid-morning meeting Thursday when asked by USA TODAY Sports about the fellas who are a perpetual presence when they’re in Washington.

“So what they don’t tell you is that they actually don’t have houses. They actually just live at the facility – they just throw mats down on the locker room floor, I mean they just use other guys’ lockers for their clothes. It’s really cheating what they’re doing. They set an alarm – it’s like they’re in their own kitchen. It’s not the same.

“They’re cheaters.”

But cheaters Darnold and Kupp are happy to work with. Whenever they punch in.

Her love affair with ceramics started at the age of six, about two years before dad James introduced her to sliding sports in Lake Placid, New York. He was a bobsledder for the United States Airforce in the 1970s. She was his only daughter.

When James got sick – diagnosis: Stage 4 prostate cancer – Kirkby watched him deteriorate, delivering important messages from his deathbed. About how much he loved her. And how her little brother Matthew should walk her down the aisle.

Pottery provided an escape. Something to distract her mind and busy her hands as she confronted a future without her father. ‘I was a big daddy’s girl,’ she said. James died last summer.

Kirkby still works with clay, having purchased an open studio membership at Arts Center Lake Placid, so she can fit craftsmanship around training with USA Luge. She and partner Chevonne Forgan will compete in the Olympic debut of women’s doubles luge Wednesday at the Cortina Sliding Centre. Along with equipment and cold weather gear, Kirkby brought about 100 ceramic pins to trade at the Winter Games, a fraction of the 2,000-plus she’s handmade since July. 

She fancies herself ‘the MiCo ‘26 pin trading queen.’ What started as an outlet for her grief has blossomed into a dutiful enterprise. Each pin is stamped with the image of a women’s winter sport event or athlete (one exception being pins for Team Italy luger Dominik Fischnaller). Hilary Knight represents hockey. Kaysha Love and Elana Meyers Taylor represent bobsleigh. Mystique Ro represents skeleton. And Andrea Vötter and Marion Oberhofer of Italy represent doubles luge.

‘My sport is making its Olympic debut. How can I make the most of this moment to try and promote women’s sports?’ Kirkby said of the project’s origin. Having made ceramic gifts for family, friends and teammates most of her life, Kirkby also figured handcrafted mementos would prove most effective in advancing her cause.

‘Whenever I see someone again, someone I haven’t seen in maybe years, one of the first things they tell me is, ‘Oh, my God, I still have that cup you made me!’ … So this is definitely an item I can allow fans to have, and they aren’t going to forget. They will remember for years this item and how it affects them.’

Rabbi Alec Friedmann is another member of the Art Center’s open studio membership club. Like Kirkby, he found ceramics therapeutic. Fulfilling even. 

He is the product of two German refugees who fled their home for South Africa, where he was later born, during the Holocaust. His mother was an artist. Father was a metal worker. Following in his footsteps, Friedmann went to college for mining engineering and metallurgy.

While in school, he ‘got the calling” and decided to become a rabbi. 

‘Luck’ brought him to Lake Placid 33 years ago. After a stint as assistant to the president of Hebrew Union College, Friedmann started working as a chaplain for the New York State Department of Corrections. He did that for 20 years while also serving the Lake Placid Synagogue, which could only afford to take him on because he had another full-time gig. A dynamic, Freidmann said, that harkens back to rabbis of old. “They all had real jobs and did the rabbinic thing on the side.”

Freidmann started pottery at the Arts Center after retiring (or as he says, when one ‘take(s) off the old tires and put(s) on new ones’) from the Department of Corrections. It married his engineering background and his mother’s love of the arts perfectly. She worked with clay a lot, but never on a wheel.

After hearing about how Friedman used his 3D printer to replace a broken gear on the studio’s slab roller and to create a cutout for his kitchen tiles, Kirkby sought her own tool from him: A 3-by-4-inch cutout. She asked what he’d like in return. Just an espresso, he told her. Freidmann said, with a chuckle, he’s still waiting.

‘That just led to, ‘Well, can you do this?’ ‘Can you do that?’” Freidmann said. “And then she started thinking about the pins.”

Kirkby started her pin project at the end of July, rolling out slabs of clay, cutting out circles about the size of a silver dollar and stamping images of different sports onto them before firing. She gave Freidmann sketches of the art work, which he would take, reformat and upload to the CAD/CAM software used for 3D printing. The machine uses a thread of plastic 1.75 millimeters across to create whatever Freidmann asks it to. He said he can size the item within one hundredth of a millimeter.

The cutouts start about 29 millimeters, or just over an inch. After a bisque firing and a glaze firing, Freidmann said, they shrink to about six-sevenths of an inch. 

Pins are like currency at the Olympic Games. They can be exchanged for favors, used in place of real money or traded like at Disney World. On top of bringing a few hundred with her, Kirkby is selling pins on Amazon as well as local Cortina and Lake Placid shops Art House, Sparkle Jewelry and Gifts, USA Spirit Shop and Mt Van Hoevenburg, where Kirkby trains. Ten percent of proceeds go directly to the athletes whose names and images Kirkby used, while the rest ‘pay off the material cost and the minimum wage that I paid myself,” she said.

‘She’s very entrepreneurial, which is something that I admire,” Freidmann said. ‘And it’s really been a joy to just be a little piece of her adventure.’

Reach USA TODAY Network sports reporter Payton Titus at ptitus@gannett.com, and follow her on X @petitus25.

As you, the astute reader, are no doubt aware, there are a few events of note taking place in the sporting world this weekend. The conclusion of the pro football season and the start of the Olympic winter games in Italy will of course receive their share of the spotlight, but there are plenty of key contests in men’s college basketball over the weekend as well.

As luck would have it, there’s a Top 25 showdown in each of the five power conferences. A key tilt in the Big East gets things underway Friday night, and the Saturday slate includes one of the sport’s most intense rivalry games. Let’s delve into the Starting Five, shall we?

No. 3 Connecticut at No. 22 St. John’s

Time/TV: Friday, 8 p.m. ET, Fox

The Huskies quietly remain unscathed in Big East play, but the Red Storm can grab a share of the league lead with a win here at Madison Square Garden. St. John’s isn’t always the most efficient offensive operation, but forward Zuby Ejiofor’s work on the boards often makes successful possessions out of organized chaos. UConn gets great scoring balance with all its starters averaging in double digits, but if a big shot is needed it will usually be Solo Ball taking it.

No. 4 Duke at No. 18 North Carolina

Time/TV: Saturday, 6:30 p.m. ET, ESPN

Round one between these long-time ACC foes will be in Chapel Hill, where the Tar Heels have yet to lose this season. The Blue Devils, however, are looking to run away with the league race once again. While Duke’s national player of the year candidate Cameron Boozer rightly gets much of the attention, the Blue Devils are even harder to beat when Isaiah Evans is on target from the arc. UNC’s own standout freshman Caleb Wilson’s stats actually compare favorably with Boozer’s, but the Tar Heels will need better ball security than they displayed in their nearly disastrous second-half collapse against Syracuse in their most recent outing.

No. 6 Illinois at No. 10 Michigan State

Time/TV: Saturday, 8 p.m. ET, Fox

This week’s top-10 showdown in the Big Ten features teams heading in opposite directions. The Fighting Illini have won 12 in a row and are playing like Final Four contenders, while the Spartans have dropped their last two as some of the team’s on-court decisions have drawn the ire of opponents and coaches alike. Michigan State’s veteran floor leader Jeremy Fears is also likely to receive additional attention from game officials, so he’ll need to keep a level head. Illinois freshman guard Keaton Wagler will look to continue his hot shooting that has helped the Illini compensate for the absence of starting guard Kylan Boswell.

No. 16 Florida at No. 25 Texas A&M

Time/TV: Saturday, 8:30 p.m. ET, SECN

Kentucky and Tennessee are getting the main channel treatment from ESPN, but this one is actually for the outright SEC lead. That is still the case despite the Aggies’ close loss Wednesday at Alabama. They’ll be happy to be back at home, but the Gators have won seven of their last eight and appear to be peaking at the right time. There’ve been few answers for Florida’s interior trio of Thomas Haugh, Alex Condon and Rueben Chinyelu. The Aggies should have a depth advantage in the backcourt, but Ruben Dominguez and Rylan Griffen will have to be on target.

No. 8 Houston at No. 14 Brigham Young

Time/TV: Saturday, 10:30 p.m. ET, ESPN

The Saturday nightcap takes us to an all-Cougars showdown in the Big 12, where the host Cougars of BYU are trending the wrong way on a three-game skid. BYU’s issues have primarily been at the defensive end, which does not bode particularly well with Houston’s high-scoring guard trio coming to Provo. BYU will also have to keep Houston’s Joseph Tugler and Chris Cenac from controlling the boards, a more manageable task if center Keba Keita can avoid foul trouble.