Hank Aaron, the baseball great who smashed records and racial barriers, died on Friday at the age of 86, his family said. Aaron held the Major League Baseball home run record for 33 years and entered the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982. Born Henry Louis Aaron in 1934 in Mobile, Ala., he began his career with a brief stint in the Negro Leagues before joining the Milwaukee Braves in 1954. Three years later, he had his best season, logging 44 home runs and 132 RBIs and leading the Braves to a World Series championship.

In an October interview with ESPN, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver described the summer of 2020 as “an extraordinary moment” in U.S. history that justified allowing some on-court activism by players.

“My sense is there will be somewhat a return to normalcy—that those messages will largely be left to be delivered off the floor,” Silver said. But last week brought another extraordinary moment when a group of Trump supporters rioted at the U.S. Capitol, and the NBA showed it’s not ready to go back to normal just yet.

Hall of Fame baseball manager Tommy Lasorda died of a heart attack at his home in Fullerton, Calif., on Friday. He was 93. Lasorda had a 71-year relationship with the Los Angeles Dodgers as a player, scout, manager, and executive. He had a short career as a major league player in the 1950s but achieved stardom as a manager, leading the Dodgers to World Series titles in 1981 and 1988. He had a lifetime win-loss record of 1,599-1,439.

Top-ranked Alabama and third-ranked Ohio State convincingly won college football playoff semifinals on Friday. Alabama dominated the Rose Bowl, defeating No. 4 Notre Dame 31-14. Quarterback Mac Jones threw for 297 yards, receiver DeVonta Smith caught three touchdown passes, and running back Najee Harris ran for 125 yards to lead Alabama. In the Sugar Bowl, Ohio State defeated No. 2 Clemson 49-28, as quarterback Justin Fields set a Sugar Bowl record with six touchdown passes. Ohio State running back Trey Sermon ran for 193 yards.

No one could have predicted 2020’s crazy sports season.

Governing bodies at all levels of sports truncated, canceled, or postponed events and even entire seasons due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Teams competed for championships before mostly empty venues. Separately, athletes protested and teams dropped controversial nicknames in the name of social justice.

Against that backdrop, here are five sports predictions for 2021:

Kendall Hinton, who plays wide receiver for the Denver Broncos practice squad, had never thrown a pass in an NFL game before starting as a quarterback in Sunday’s game against the New Orleans Saints. The NFL had ruled out the team’s entire quarterbacking squad due to COVID-19 concerns. The Saints won 31-3. The Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers, originally slated to play Thanksgiving night, will play Tuesday night instead. More than 20 Ravens players have either contracted the virus or been exposed to it.

Irina Krush, the only American female to achieve the title of chess grandmaster, lives an unassuming life for someone who has won the U.S. women’s championship eight times.

Krush, 36, lives in a modest apartment in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, the neighborhood she grew up in after her Jewish parents immigrated from the Soviet Union when she was a child. As she did her daily walk in November around the bay where swans patrol the waters, she ran into her landlady, who was also her high-school French teacher.