The Cincinnati Bengals placed the franchise tag on receiver Tee Higgins, which likely will keep him with the team at least one more season, the team said Monday. If the Bengals can’t reach a long-term agreement with the 25-year-old Higgins before July 15, he’ll play the 2024 season with the Bengals for a salary of $21.8 million, which is the franchise tag amount for receivers.

Higgins, a second-round draft pick in 2020, couldn’t reach a long-term deal before the final year of his rookie contract.

Higgins has played in 58 regular-season games for Cincinnati and has 257 receptions for 3,684 yards and 24 TDs. He had more than 1,000 receiving yards in 2021 and ’22, becoming one of five players in team history to reach that mark multiple times in his first three seasons.

MEMORABILIA

In this undated photo provided by Heritage Auctions, a case of old hockey cards, uncovered in a Canadian home, has fetched more than $3.7 million. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions/The Canadian Press via AP

AUCTION: A case of old hockey cards possibly containing the game’s Great One has fetched more than $3.7 million after it was discovered in a Regina home.

Heritage Auctions says the winning bidder bought the case of 16 sealed boxes of O-Pee-Chee’s 1979 hockey card collection, amounting to more than 10,000 cards. The auctioneer says the case could include 25 or more highly coveted Wayne Gretzky rookie cards.

A man in Regina had kept the case in a packed storage room. The auctioneer says the longtime collector asked to remain anonymous.

SOCCER

PREMIER LEAGUE: Jarrod Bowen scored his first English Premier League hat trick for West Ham as they beat Brentford 4-2 and eased pressure on coach David Moyes on Monday.

The Hammers’ first win in 2024 ended an eight-game winless run in all competitions. West Ham jumped from 10th to eighth in the league, behind Brighton only on goal difference.

• A first-half hat trick from Coventry’s Ellis Simms helped to end Maidstone’s FA Cup fairy tale 5-0. Maidstone, was the first sixth-tier team to appear in the fifth round since 1978.

• Everton has regained four points in its latest bid to avoid relegation from the Premier League.

The northwest club’s record 10-point deduction for breaching the league’s financial rules has been reduced to six following an appeal, the competition said Monday.

The change in the sanction lifted Everton — an ever-present in England’s top division since 1954 and a nine-time English champion — two places in the standings to 15th, five points above the relegation zone.

OLYMPICS

FIGURE SKATING: Four appeals filed at sport’s highest court in fallout from the doping case of Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva are set to delay awarding medals from the 2022 Beijing Olympics yet again.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport said Monday it registered three appeals from Russia and one from Canada, to challenge how the International Skating Union amended the result of the team event held two years ago in Beijing because the court disqualified Valieva one month ago.

The separate Russian appeals from the national Olympic body, the national skating federation, and the skaters including Valieva who were victorious teammates in Beijing, ask the court to reinstate their team as gold medalists. The single Canadian appeal seeks to get bronze medals ahead of the Russians, who the ISU downgraded to third place instead of fourth once it had removed Valieva’s points scores.

CYCLING

U.S. TEAM PUNISHED: American women’s cycling team Cynisca was punished by the sport’s governing body Monday for trying to enter an international race by deceiving organizers.

The International Cycling Union said a team official told a mechanic “to wear a rider’s clothes and a face mask” and pretend to be feeling ill so the team could have the mandatory five racers sign an entry list at the start of the one-day Argenta Classic in Belgium last year.

The Cynisca team, staff and riders “were therefore all found to have participated in a fraud,” the UCI said publishing the judgment of its disciplinary panel.