• NFL, players disagree on who should oversee talks: A day after the judge handling the NFL lockout lawsuit urged the sides to go “back to the table,” the players and owners both expressed a willingness to do so. The hitch: Each offered to meet for talks in a setting the other finds unpalatable. A lawyer representing MVP quarterbacks Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and other players suing the NFL wrote U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson on Thursday to say they’re willing to engage in mediation overseen by her federal court in St. Paul, Minn. And the NFL sent its own letter Thursday to Nelson and to lawyers for the players, proposing to resume talks about 1,000 miles from that courthouse — instead returning to the Washington office of federal mediator George Cohen. Since filing suit in Minnesota on March 11, the players repeatedly have said they only are interested in meeting with the league to discuss settling the litigation. And since the lockout began at midnight later that night, the NFL repeatedly has said it only is interested in returning to mediated bargaining.

• Roethlisberger confirms plans for July wedding: Ben Roethlisberger will marry a 26-year-old physician’s assistant whom he said he met during training camp in 2005 and has been friends with ever since, the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for a story in Thursday’s editions. Roethlisberger, speaking publicly for the first time since the Steelers’ loss to the Green Bay Packers in the Super Bowl, talked about his fiancee, her family and the impact their engagement has had on everyone involved since it leaked out in various media outlets late last year. The 29-year-old quarterback also addressed the scrutiny he faced after he was accused of sexual assault in a Georgia nightclub in March 2010 and said his engagement is not a ploy to rebuild his public image.