Thursday Morning Headlines & Highlights 12-17-20

The Morning Line covers the sports topics to help you start your day the right way with Wayne, Bryan, and Jeff.

The New England Patriots practiced indoors yesterday in preps for their game in Miami against the Dolphins Sunday. And Julian Edelman was at practice in his first appearance after being on the injured reserve list.

Normally this would be the annual NFL Owners meetings in Dallas, this year it was held virtually. Yesterday the owners decided to wait before making a decision on creating a 17 game schedule for next season.

Yesterday was the start of the college football early signing period, and UMaine received commitments from 8 players to become Black Bears, three are transfers, the other five are coming directly from high school.

Yesterday the NCAA Division I Council granted a waiver to allow all Division 1 transfers to play immediately this year, and it covers all sports.

Charlotte’s Gordon Hayward is hurt again. The former Celtic has an avulsion fracture of the fifth metacarpal on his right (shooting) hand.

In 1969 a special committee on Baseball records excluded the Negro Leagues from consideration of baseball stats in a review dating back to 1876, and used six other baseball leagues but ignored the Negro League numbers. Yesterday Major League Baseball announced they will reclassify the Negro Leagues as a major league and will include those statistics and awards in all-time records.

The NCAA plans to stage the Men’s and Women’s basketball tournament in one geographic area, the Men in one city, the Women in another, but all teams and all games would be played basically at one site location.

Hockey East is changing their plans for the postseason for this year, and this week announced all eligible teams in the conference will qualify for the Hockey East tournament for both Men and Women.

You can get caught up on all of the sports topics, news and notes each weekday on The Morning Line with our headlines and highlights at 6 and 7am.