Sports
As the Clippers open their new arena, breaking down the true value of a new home
For Dan Kennedy, the odd thing about his homecoming was how it never quite felt like home.
When the goalkeeper was signed by Chivas USA in 2008, the club was one of the two Major League Soccer franchises in Los Angeles, and Kennedy was a local talent raised in Orange County who had later starred at UC Santa Barbara.
By the time Chivas folded six seasons later, no one had appeared in more games or played more minutes in its history than Kennedy. Yet in all that time, he said, he often felt more comfortable playing on the road.
The Galaxy, the original tenant in the Carson stadium that housed both teams, had two training fields to Chivas’s one. The shared weight room was painted in Galaxy colors. The Galaxy’s schedule featured prime-time dates, where Chivas played weekend matinees. Chivas branding was visible on match day, but quickly taken down.
“When they weren’t having success, I would say it was certainly less bothersome,” Kennedy said. “But when they were rolling and winning championships, we were trying to figure out what this club was even going to be — if it was going to continue in Major League Soccer. And it was so evident that we just didn’t have a home, and didn’t have identity, and we were just second fiddle.”
There’s a term for that kind of stadium-sharing: groundshare. Yet unofficially, such co-tenants often call it something different: a total drag.
The Clippers’ Cam Christie dunks the ball during a preseason game at the new Intuit Dome in Inglewood on Oct. 14.
(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)
Born out of convenience, the arrangements often lose their appeal for reasons that range from financial, logistical or cultural.
No one needs to explain that to the Clippers, who spent their first 40 years in Los Angeles as a roommate. After 15 years sharing the Sports Arena with USC basketball, the NBA franchise spent the last 25 as the third tenant at Crypto.com Arena, behind the Kings and Lakers in the pecking order for preferential dates.
Now, that is no longer the case. On Wednesday, the Clippers will host their first regular-season NBA game at Intuit Dome, in Inglewood, whose $2-billion-plus construction bill was footed by Steve Ballmer, the tech billionaire. Upon buying the team in 2014, Ballmer didn’t initially believe it needed new digs. Within a year, however, Ballmer began asking himself something that everyone involved in groundshare ponders, at some point.
What’s the value of having a home to call one’s own?
The answer can mean different things to different stakeholders. But few were even asking that question in the 1960s and 70s, as a new trend swept across the U.S.
From Seattle’s Kingdome to RFK Stadium in Washington D.C., cavernous, municipal-owned stadiums were erected that could house both football and baseball. It was a uniquely North American boom; in Europe, shared stadiums like the famed San Siro, where both of Milan’s top soccer clubs play, are the exception.
“It just seemed like the cost prudent thing to do,” said J.C. Bradbury, an economist at Kennesaw State University. “Hey, we’re going to build one for baseball and football, basketball and hockey. Boom, that’s done. And what happened is, you did end up with a lot of these second-class tenants in these facilities.”
By the 1990s, as the older stadiums’ decades-long leases came up, those tenants wanted out, and in the process, ushered in a new era of single-team stadium construction —– bespoke buildings of brick or steel, designed with just one team in mind.
To team owners who build such stadiums financed either in part or in whole by public money, the value was obvious: control over new revenue streams and design for buildings paid for using only a fraction of their own wealth. In one such case, according to a review of public policy toward stadium construction that Bradbury co-authored last year, the Atlanta Falcons received $200 million in bonds to build the new stadium it opened in 2017, as well as revenue from a hotel tax worth hundreds of million more it could keep even after the bonds were paid off.
For the public, the payoff was often murkier. Bradbury and his co-authors analyzed, in no uncertain terms, that “no economic justification exists for subsidizing professional sports venues at observed levels.” Looking for value beyond the bottom line, they also collected studies that attempted to measure intangible social benefits from living in a city with a pro team. That level of value-add that researchers were trying to identify was often difficult to quantify — property values near stadiums, one measure, didn’t soar — but also not non-existent.
In Columbus, Ohio, such value was evident from the start for Jamey Stang.
Stang grew up in Ohio as the son of soccer-loving German immigrants. He traveled around the Midwest watching his father play for a local German social group, and spent weekends in vain trying to find highlights of European games. By 1994, Stang was a recent college graduate when he heard Columbus had earned an MLS franchise, and was so enthusiastic that he went door-to-door to canvas for a tax levy intended to fund a new Columbus Crew stadium.
“I was going to get to watch true professional soccer in the city that I lived in,” Stang said, “and I was ecstatic about it.”
Two fans take a selfie outside the Intuit Dome, the new home of the Clippers, before a preseason game on Oct. 14.
(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)
For three years, the Crew temporarily shared Ohio Stadium, the home of Ohio State football, an experience that was both impersonal and highly personal. Even the Crew’s biggest games barely made a dent in the stadium’s capacity, and yet the city’s soccer community was so small, Stang felt he knew just about every supporter in the stands. After games, he and other fans mingled with players at a bar across the street.
The Crew’s new stadium, which opened in 1999, looked like a hunk of metal that lived up to its derisive nickname, “The Erector Set.” Located in a muddy lot on the state fairgrounds, it was far from downtown, restaurants and bars. But it had tailgating and built an intense connection between those who showed up, Stang said. In 2006, he began bringing his daughter, then 7, to sit together in the rowdy supporters section, where fan groups banged drums and held aloft a giant banner known as “tifo.” She took pictures with players like Brian McBride.
If the stadium had its drawbacks, it was also a pioneer — the first soccer-specific pro stadium in the U.S., one that kicked off yet another new wave of construction. (The Galaxy’s Carson home opened four years later.) When MLS started in the mid-1990s, its original business plan called for its teams playing as a secondary tenant in someone else’s stadium.
Flipping that expectation has helped grow the league’s popularity and keep it viable, MLS commissioner Don Garber told The Times.
“The ability to see the game the way that it’s supposed to be seen from the stands, and also the fact that other people who might not have been soccer fans saw the way that the investment was being made in the league, I think both those things together were able to help save the league,” Stang said.
The league’s desire to avoid a Chivas-level mistake was so apparent that when it folded and the league announced a new L.A. franchise, LAFC, it stipulated that the team wouldn’t begin play until its own stadium could be completed. At $350 million, LAFC’s stadium opened as the most expensive soccer-specific stadium in the league’s history. Of the 29 teams now in MLS, 22 play in soccer-specific stadiums. At July’s All-Star break, the league reported an average attendance of more than 23,000, the highest at that point in its history, with stadiums at a record 94% of capacity.
It was a four-mile move into a tiny stadium.
Jana Woodson remembers it as a huge deal.
In 2009, the University of Richmond’s football team left behind City Stadium, the 22,000-seat municipal field it had shared with a lower-division professional soccer team for 14 years, for an 8,700-seat home, built with $25 million in university and donor money, that was on-campus and all their own. The capacity was about 700 seats smaller than their previous season’s average crowd size, yet it sparked a surge in revenue, “greatly increasing the number of season tickets we got,” along with donations, said Woodson, an assistant athletics director for marketing and fan development.
When Woodson joined Tulane University as a deputy athletic director in 2017, she saw something similar happening. Three years earlier, the New Orleans university opened Yulman Stadium to return football to campus after 39 years playing at the city’s 83,000-seat downtown Superdome. In 2013, its final Superdome season, Tulane averaged 19,747 fans. As in MLS, college teams have left behind large stadiums for bespoke buildings that are described in the industry with a buzzword — “right-sized.”
An on-campus stadium isn’t a shortcut to on-field success. It took the Green Wave five seasons in their new stadium to produce a winning record. But in the last six years, the Green Wave have produced four winning seasons — as many as in their previous 21 seasons. In 2022, their 12-2 season finished with a Cotton Bowl victory over USC and a top-25 rankings for the first time since 1998. Woodson couldn’t directly connect the stadium to that turnaround, but did contend that its connection to campus life — the stadium shared a concourse with other athletic facilities — was reinvigorating.
Game days that once sent students and alumni three miles away from campus now brought them back to campus, where “people are excited to come because that’s where their heart is, right?” Woodson said. “College athletics is about, for alumni and fans, the university … and it’s nostalgic to come back.”
Continuing that momentum is hard. Just ask the Minnesota Twins and Minnesota Golden Gophers football, who shared the Metrodome with the NFL’s Vikings for decades before opening their own stadiums in 2010 and 2009, respectively. Both watched attendance spike in the first few seasons in their new homes, only to flatline to Metrodome-era levels.
That trend experienced by some teams hasn’t daunted others. In November, the University of South Florida will break ground on a 35,000-seat on-campus stadium that is projected to cost $340 million. Since the school started playing football in 1997, its home field has been about 11 miles south of campus at the home of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers. There, terms of their lease allow the Bulls to earn revenue from ticket sales and limited sponsorships, but not a cut from premium-seat sales, the parking lots, or concessions, said Michael Kelly, USF’s athletic director.
As with Tulane, playing in an NFL facility had been a selling point in recruiting, but sharing had lost its luster with the school and its board of trustees who watched as rivals such as Central Florida built their own stadiums and saw, in general, donations to those schools rise. Kelly hailed the new building as a “tool for engagement” for the school’s 400,000 alumni.
“I kind of keep thinking it’s like a 26-year-old still living in their parents’ basement,” Kelly said. “It’s fine, and save some rent and stuff but sooner or later you got to move out and do your own thing.”
Though the push for a new USF stadium began long before tectonic plates holding together college athletics began shaking — from rampant conference realignment to a House settlement that will soon allow schools to share revenue with their own athletes — Kelly acknowledged that it also doesn’t hurt public perception to have a shiny new stadium act as a billboard to either recruits or conference executives.
“To revenue share, you have to have revenues to share, right?” Kelly said. “And to be able to build the tools that we need to raise more money, to engage more with the community, to have the revenue streams like a stadium can provide, it will undoubtedly provide some of those economic engines.”
If groundshare is going out of style — the Dallas Mavericks and Philadelphia 76ers, who both share home stadiums with NHL teams, have made noise about opening new stadiums — it also is not dead.
Despite a push to build a stadium on Manhattan’s West Side two decades ago, the New York Jets, who have been co-tenants for their entire existence, still share MetLife Stadium with the NFL’s Giants. And in 2020, the Rams and Chargers left behind temporary but separate homes at USC’s Coliseum and the Galaxy’s Dignity Health Sports Park to move into Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium.
One year after construction wrapped on SoFi that brought together the NFL franchises, the Clippers held the groundbreaking for Intuit Dome just across West Century Boulevard, the first step in their downtown divorce from the Lakers and Kings. For 40 years, the Clippers lived a fragmented existence, with their business office downtown, a short walk from Crypto.com Arena, while their basketball staff worked and the team practiced 14 miles away, in Playa Vista. When it came time to build their own arena, the owner ordered up outdoor plazas and community spaces on the arena’s 26-acre site in an attempt to recreate the feel of a campus, where fans can and want to visit even on days without games.
The dome won’t be immune from what Bradbury called “spillover effects” on the surrounding area, such as increased traffic, noise or crime. But the economist said that when viewing a pro team as a private business looking to spur revenue through a new location, no different than a grocery store or restaurant, moving the team through private funding was the most “desirable” of options for stadium construction.
“Some of [moving the team to Inglewood] may be for the community,” Bradbury said. “I do think that when you’re fabulously wealthy and own a sports team, maybe you might just say, hey, my fans deserve better, and I got money to do that, why not? But I suspect, as in most cases, owners rarely make decisions that are not in their financial interest, and they normally end up paying off.”
Ballmer spent upward of $2 billion on the complex, but speaks of a payoff that is as much cultural as commercial. Inside the team, small customs such as walking into the building and giving a fist bump to the same attendant at the front desk, are talked about as the type of details that turn home -court into an advantage. Time will tell.
Fans play basketball outside the Intuit Dome, the Clippers’ new home, before a preseason game against the Dallas Mavericks on Oct. 14.
(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)
Kennedy felt that difference at the end of his MLS career when he returned to Los Angeles in 2015 to play for the Galaxy.
“You come into the same stadium, but yet have a completely different player experience,” Kennedy said.
He still wonders what might have happened had Chivas gotten its own L.A. stadium, a project Kennedy said Shawn Hunter, the president and chief executive of Chivas USA, was working on during their overlap at the club. (Through the minor-league baseball team he has since founded, Hunter could not be reached for comment.) Not having their own stadium didn’t lead to the club’s folding in 2014 alone, Kennedy said, but it certainly didn’t help.
“Pro sports in the United States now is a massive real estate play,” Kennedy said. “We’ve seen it time and time again: If you create a home atmosphere that’s special it just becomes a tougher place to play across any sport. You get a hot playoff team at home with great fan support, they’re going to have a little bit of an advantage.”
Sports
Olympic legend Kaillie Humphries signs with activist sportswear brand XX-XY Athletics amid political rise
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The most accomplished Olympic women’s bobsledder in history is now an official brand ambassador in the movement to “save women’s sports”.
Olympic bobsled legend Kaillie Humphries has signed with the activist sportswear company XX-XY Athletics, becoming the latest medal-winning Olympian to represent the brand.
“Being able to partner with a brand that believes in the same things I do, that’s willing to stand up and actively work on protecting the women’s space and women’s sports is huge,” Humphries told Fox News Digital.
Humphries first spoke out about her support for protecting women’s sports from biological male trans athletes in a Fox News Interview that went viral after the Milan-Cortina Olympics in February.
Humphries had just returned after winning bronze in women’s bobsled, marking her sixth career Olympic medal. She later revealed that she received backlash for coming out as a Republican with other conservative stances in that interview, but didn’t back down.
Humphries went on to be honored at a White House Women’s History Month event by President Donald Trump in March, and gave her Order of Ikkos medal to Trump, citing his actions to protect women’s sports.
“Being able to come back to the USA after the Olympics and then be able to make connections and meet some people, I was able to, when I went to the White House, I was able to meet people that were connected obviously in working with XX-XY and that’s how the conversation started,” Humphries said.
Humphries, who is originally from Canada and competed in her first three Olympics for Canada, moved to the U.S. in 2016 and then competed for Team USA at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
FEMALE ATHLETES ANXIOUSLY AWAIT SUPREME COURT DECISION TO TAKE UP TRANSGENDER PARTICIPATION IN WOMEN’S SPORTS
Kaillie Humphries, U.S. Olympic bronze medalist bobsled athlete, presents the Order of Ikkos to President Donald Trump during a Women’s History Month event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 12, 2026. (Al Drago/Bloomberg)
Just months after that, America was rocked by the news that male transgender swimmer Lia Thomas was winning championships for UPenn’s women’s swim team.
Humphries, who was following the story in the news, found it startling.
Now, as a California resident and the mother of a newborn son, she is energized to help combat the wave of trans athletes in girls’ sports in the state, as California has become the nation’s biggest hotbed for the issue.
XX-XY Athletics co-founder and former U.S. gymnast Jennifer previously told Fox News Digital one of her biggest goals for the brand was to land high-profile superstar women’s athletes as brand ambassadors, especially Olympic medalists.
Now, with Humphries, the brand has a three-time Olympic gold medalist and six-time Olympic podium finisher across her stints for Canada and the U.S.
Humphries joins Olympic silver medalist gymnast MyKayla Skinner and gold medal swimmer Nancy Hogshead on XX-XY Athletics’ growing roster of Olympians.
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USA’s Kaillie Humphries holds a USA flag after winning bronze in the bobsleigh women’s monobob heat 4 at Cortina Sliding Centre during the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Cortina d’Ampezzo on Feb. 16, 2026. (Marco Bertorello/AFP)
“Kaillie is the GOAT of her sport. She is the only Olympian to win gold for two different countries. She is an elite athlete and a courageous, fierce woman who has fought for female athletes to have equal opportunities in sport.” Sey told Fox News Digital.
“The women’s monobob event exists because of Kaillie’s leadership, and she has gold-medal proof that women have the skill, strength, and speed to compete at the highest level. She has driven meaningful change and expanded opportunities for women at the Olympic level — more female athletes represent Team USA because of Kaillie. And that’s exactly why we’re leading with her as we grow in how we support female athletes.”
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Sports
Cancer left him blind. When his son was diagnosed, ex-USC long snapper found Trojans had his back again
Former USC long snapper Jake Olson made college football history at the Coliseum in September 2017 as the first completely blind player to compete in a Division I college football game.
Eight years later, his not-quite-8-month-old son was having the time of his life crawling around on the same field.
The significance of the moment was not lost on Olson.
Rowan Olson plays with a football Sept. 5 on the field at the Coliseum.
(Courtesy of the Olson family)
“Watching Rowan crawl around out there on that grass, in that stadium that shaped so much of my story, was emotional in a way I didn’t expect,” Olson told The Times during a series of interviews over the phone and via email. “It felt like a full-circle blessing.”
It wasn’t the only blessing Olson, his wife, Audrey, and their son experienced during that trip to Los Angeles in September.
“We were actually out there for Rowan’s first checkup after finishing his last round of systemic chemo,” Olson said, “so the whole trip already carried this sense of celebration and relief.”
Rowan was born Jan. 17, 2025, with bilateral retinoblastoma, the same rare childhood cancer that had caused his father to lose both of his eyes by age 12. Since his diagnosis at 6 days old, Rowan has made monthly trips with his parents from their home in Jacksonville, Fla., to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the same place his father had been treated decades earlier while growing up in Huntington Beach.
During those hospital visits, Rowan underwent systemic and intravitreal chemotherapy and laser treatments designed to shrink the cancerous tumors in each of his eyes, stop the cancer from spreading and preserve his vision.
After six months of treatment, the tumors had become small enough that the systemic chemotherapy could stop. And now, according to Dr. Jesse Berry, chief of ophthalmology and director of the retinoblastoma program at CHLA, the laser treatment and injections into Rowan’s eyes are no longer needed as well.
“I think right now he is cancer-free,” Berry said. “We have no evidence that he has active cancer anywhere in his body, but he’s a kiddo that we will always watch closely.”
Rowan celebrates his first birthday in January. His doctor says he has “excellent vision” after months of chemotherapy.
(Courtesy of the Olson family)
The monthly visits to CHLA will eventually be spaced out, but Rowan will have to be monitored the rest of his life in case the cancer returns.
“There’s always a chance that small tumors pop up here and there over the next couple of years, which is normal for retinoblastoma. That’s why constant monitoring is so important,” Olson said. “As long as we stay on top of it, any tiny spot that appears can be lasered immediately and taken care of.”
Unlike Rowan, Olson was not diagnosed until he was 8 months old. His left eye was removed two months later, while the remaining cancer was treated with systemic chemotherapy. Olson was 12 when doctors decided his right eye needed to be removed.
“Retinoblastoma is very treatable — you know, you catch it early, it’s very treatable,” Olson said.
“I just don’t want [Rowan] to have a 12-year battle with this. Dr. Berry made that very clear up front that his situation is a lot different than mine, that we’re going to knock these things out, and he’s going to grow up with sight in both eyes and really never probably remember a lot of it.”
According to Berry, Rowan has “excellent vision.”
Olson’s ophthalmologist at CHLA was the late Dr. A. Linn Murphree, a pioneer in ocular oncology who later served as Berry’s mentor.
After Rowan was diagnosed, the Olsons didn’t hesitate in choosing a hospital more than 2,400 miles from home for their son’s treatment, both because of its reputation as a leading retinoblastoma center and because of the special care Olson received there throughout his childhood.
Dr. Jesse Berry holds Rowan Olson while standing between the newborn’s parents, Audrey and Jake, in early 2025.
(Courtesy of the Olson family)
“I texted [Berry] — at what was 6:30 in the morning her time — and she responded within two minutes, encouraging us and confidently telling us that she will take the best care of Rowan,” Olson said. “That’s just a glimpse into who she is and the culture Dr. Murphree built.”
At the time, Berry was dealing with hardship of her own. She and her family had just lost their Altadena home in the Eaton fire and were considering leaving the Los Angeles area to rebuild their lives. She said a call from Olson about his newborn son helped her decide to stay.
“Jake called and said, ‘I just had a baby, and I’m sitting in a doctor’s office and they think he has RB, and I want to come see you.’ And that was the same week as the fire,” Berry said. “And so I said, ‘OK, we’ll see you next week.’ He and his family were a real anchor to keeping us set in L.A. and really focused on the greater mission.”
Once back at CHLA, Olson experienced an intense feeling of deja vu.
“We walked into the same waiting room I used to sit in, the same exam rooms, hearing the same vocabulary I hadn’t heard in years. It was like being thrown straight into the deep end of my past,” Olson said.
“The hardest moment was going to the part of the hospital where my last surgery — the one that took my eyesight — took place. Even though I couldn’t see it, my body remembered. I had to fight back panic I didn’t even know I was capable of feeling. But I had to stay steady for Audrey and for Rowan. That was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
But the location of the monthly treatments came with an extra benefit.
“When we found out that [Rowan] had this tumor, we immediately flew out to California and were surrounded by Jake’s family, who had gone through this and had the experience, the wisdom and knowledge around the disease,” Audrey Olson said.
Audrey, Jake and Rowan Olson take a family selfie after a long travel day from Florida to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles in May.
(Courtesy of the Olson family)
“So I really leaned on the support of the family we were surrounded by. And then I also just leaned on Jake, who I know lived a major life after losing his sight and battling his cancer. We definitely leaned on each other a ton and could not have done it without each other.”
USC football has been a major part of Olson’s life since childhood. Upon learning he would be losing his eyesight, Olson became determined to watch as much of the Trojans as he could before his surgery. Then-coach Pete Carroll heard about Olson and allowed him to hang out with the team in meetings, in the locker room and on the sideline. His last day with sight was spent at a USC practice.
It wouldn’t be Olson’s last time in that environment. Not even close. After years of learning the techniques of a long snapper, Olson earned a first-string spot at the position for Orange Lutheran and joined the Trojans in 2015 as a walk-on player.
Two years later, on Sept. 2, 2017, then-coach Clay Helton called on the 20-year-old long snapper for an extra-point attempt following a USC touchdown against Western Michigan. Olson’s snap, as described by The Times’ Bill Plaschke at the time, was “perfect” and the kick was good, sealing a 49-31 Trojans victory.
USC long snapper Jake Olson conducts the marching band after the Trojans’ 49-31 win over Western Michigan on Sept. 2, 2017, at the Coliseum.
(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)
“You just never know what’s going to come from adversity and from situations, like the miracles that can come from what we think are tragedies. And that miracle for me was playing football at SC,” said Olson, who played in a total of three games during his time with the Trojans. “Honestly, I don’t know if I ever would have done that if I kept my eyesight or never had cancer. So for me, being able to play at that school was a pinnacle of everything I’d gone through that had led me there.
“I don’t know what Rowan’s pinnacle is going to be, but there’s going to be miracles that come from this. … There’s a level of excitement to that, just hope and knowing there’s going to be something special that comes from this. For me, it was playing at USC, and I think that’s just indisputable evidence of that. And we’ll see what that is for Rowan.”
As news broke about Rowan’s recovery in recent weeks, Olson said he received a text from current USC coach Lincoln Riley.
“He sent a really, really special message that just let us know he’s praying for us,” Olson said. “Trojan football has helped me get through so much in life. It did last year, is going to this year and for every year to come. And if, Lord willing, Rowan will one day wear that helmet too.”
Former USC long snapper Jake Olson holds son Rowan on the football field at the Coliseum on Sept. 5, 2025.
(Courtesy of the Olson family)
During his family’s visit to the Coliseum last fall, Olson introduced his wife and son to Helton, now the head coach at Georgia Southern, whose team was practicing ahead of its game against the Trojans the next day.
“That alone felt special,” Olson said of meeting up with the coach who had helped change his life. “But then, we were able to walk out onto the exact yard line where I snapped from.
“Standing there with my wife and son, on the very spot where I had shown so much resilience myself, felt like seeing the fruits of ‘Fight On’ in real time. It acted as a reminder and encouragement for why I was still fighting on now through this new cancer journey. It was surreal and sacred at the same time.
“If it weren’t for the Coliseum and USC football, I genuinely don’t know if Audrey or Rowan would be in my life. And if it weren’t for me learning how to fight on through all that it took in order to get to that 3-yard line, I don’t know how I would be fighting on as a father or a husband now. So to have both of them there, on that field, taking it all in for the first time, it meant the world.”
The Cleveland Browns, rumored to be willing to trade down from their No. 6 overall selection in the 2026 NFL draft, did just that Thursday evening when the traded the pick to the Kansas City Chiefs.
Cleveland traded the sixth overall pick in the first round of the 2026 NFL Draft to the Chiefs, in exchange for the ninth overall pick, as well as pick No. 74 in the third round and No. 148 in the fifth round.
The Browns now hold the No. 9 and No. 24 picks in the first round of the draft. They have a total of 11 picks in the 2026 NFL Draft.
Quarterbacks Shedeur Sanders and Deshaun Watson of the Cleveland Browns watch from the sidelines during a game against the Cincinnati Bengals at Huntington Bank Field in Cleveland, Ohio, on Sept. 7, 2025. (Jason Miller/Getty Images)
So the Chiefs gave up three picks in making the first trade of the first round.
BROWNS EXECS RAISE EYEBROWS WITH REACTIONS AFTER DRAFTING SHEDEUR SANDERS FOLLOWING HISTORIC SLIDE
And we know what the fan bases of both clubs were thinking prior to the selection:
Chiefs fans were thinking we know something they don’t. And then the Chiefs selected cornerback Mansoor Delane from LSU — a move no doubt forced by the club’s trade of Pro Bowl cornerback Trent McDuffie to the Los Angeles Rams earlier in the offseason.
So, the Chiefs fill a major need, assuming Delane is indeed the quality corner they believe.
LSU Tigers CB Mansoor Delane celebrates a defensive stop against the Clemson Tigers at Memorial Stadium in South Carolina. (Ken Ruinard/USA TODAY Network)
GREG OLSEN’S ADVICE FOR NFL DRAFT FIRST-ROUND PICKS ON HANDLING HIGH EXPECTATIONS
ESPN’s Mel Kiper didn’t like the pick, by the way. He had Delane as the 14th best player in the draft.
“It was a necessity,” ESPN analyst Louis Riddick, a former NFL defensive back, responded.
Browns fans weren’t thinking that way.
BROWNS MAKE STUNNING KENNY PICKETT TRADE TO RAIDERS AS BACKUP QUARTERBACK ROLE REMAINS WIDE OPEN
They were probably thinking something akin to “We screwed up.”
This is understandable because they’re Browns fans and this could have been the Browns Browning.
Well, the Browns, moving down three slots, gave up a shot to draft linebacker Sonny Styles of Ohio State to the Washington Commanders, receiver Jordyn Tyson to the New Orleans Saints and then the Browns got their chance with the newly acquired No. 9 pick:
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Offensive tackle Spencer Fano of Utah.
Cleveland Browns general manager Andrew Berry speaks at the NFL Scouting Combine at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis, Ind., on Feb. 24, 2026. (Kirby Lee/Imagn Images)
Fano is good. And he makes the Browns offensive line instantly better because he’s going to likely start at left tackle for them.
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So what will Browns fans think of this pick?
They’ll probably wonder why the Browns didn’t pick Miami’s Francis Mauigoa, who went with the No. 10 pick to the New York Giants and promised “to die for” Jaxson Dart if necessary. They’ll wonder this because Browns fans expect the worst.
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