swan - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

This might have been the worst year ever for Super Bowl commercialsThe dirty little secret about Super Bowl ads is viewers can watch them before the Big Game, with companies (presumably) wanting to stretch the impact of their most expensive spots of the year. Why anyone would seek out commercials before they’re forced to watch them, I have no idea, but, uh, yeah, i...

Baker Mayfield has that mischievousness about him againThe Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ margin for error coming into the season was pretty high for a team that had low expectations and a quarterback the rest of the league passed on. They have a receiving corps that’s healthy, deep and full of playmakers to go with a defense that’s also healthy and rife with bi...

The real culprit in this Charissa Thompson mess is podcastsThis Charissa Thompson backlash, justified as it is, misses the bigger point, and if I may add 2 cents to the towering pile, it’s this: Podcasts are dumb. After two years of aggregating sports personalities saying stupid stuff, there’s more idiotic news made on podcasts than on social media at this ...

Julie Ertz, the USWNT’s most irreplaceable player, retires

I’m a sucker for a midfielder. Especially one like Julie Ertz. It’s not that I played there or anything. It’s just something about a player who sees all the angles on both sides of the ball before being anywhere near it that gets me, I think. Xabi Alonso is my favorite Liverpool player of all time. ...

Vlatko Andonovski was bad at a very tough job

If one didn’t want to kick dirt on Vlatko Andonovski as he recedes from the USWNT manager job, and kicking dirt is kind of what we do around here, it would be wise to point out the size of the task he was faced with. He took over a team that had won two World Cups on the spin, so there was really no...

The USWNT is extraordinary — don't pretend otherwise

Neither the US Women’s National soccer team’s past glory in Megan Rapinoe, nor its future in young phenom Sophia Smith, could defeat Sweden in the present. Both players skipped penalty kicks high over the goal after a 0-0 tie in regulation, clear misses of the target altogether, in a 1-0 loss that w...

Has the rest of the world finally caught up to the U.S. Women's soccer team?

For those used to the United States women’s national team dominating the globe, this edition of the Women’s World Cup has come as a shock. Those who don’t tune in every four years expected turbulence, but the level of bumps and lumps the Americans have taken in Australia and New Zealand has already ...

Women’s World Cup preview: The Americans will run into trouble in Group E

The most deceiving thing about the United States women’s national team’s chances of a three-peat isn’t that it has a major target on its back and therefore is part of the game plan to knock out from every other nation in Australia and New Zealand. That was true for the 2019 showcase in France. How’d...