The week in random sports news: Mbappe could be gone, the Bears, well, are the Bears and what were the Yankees thinking?

In the end, the Chicago Bears screwed up what could have been something historic. Last week they managed to be the first team to lose while winning the turnover battle by three and holding the ball for 40 minutes. They had the chance to do it two weeks in a row and live forever. Instead, they’re just the galaxy’s joke on all of us who continue to watch them every week because it’s how we were raised. Anyone can do that. Read More

On the one hand, the architects of this PSG team probably should be applauded for actually taking the time to step back and try to create a team instead of collecting players. Messi left, Neymar decamped for Saudi Arabia and PSG didn’t chase whatever shiny thing they could find to plug the holes, not of the functioning team, but of the fame and allure those players provided. PSG have gone young. Four starters in yesterday’s 1-1 draw with Newcastle were 25 or under and another three came off the bench. That doesn’t even include Warren Zaire-Emery, out until the new year with injury. Read More

I feel I write these too often, so in the spirit of fairness it should go mentioned that there was a lot of great action on the ice this holiday weekend, such as the New York Rangers solidifying their spot in the NHL’s aristocracy with a 7-4 win over the Boston Bruins, or the Buffalo Sabres managing just 11 shots on Saturday night against the New Jersey Devils (my boss is currently stripping the “Hockey Expert” label off my desk. Yes, I have one. You are what you manifest). Read More

I’ll give the NBA this, as a soccer fan. It’s the only league to take notice of soccer’s consistently rising popularity and attempt to capitalize on that by co-opting some element of it. This is where anyone like me has to fight a blinding urge to scream about promotion and relegation, and earlier today I strained a quad just sneezing, so to tamp that down could well be fatal. But I’ll do it. Read More

There is probably a long treatise on how a crumbling empire of a baseball team wants to honor Henry Kissinger, the architect of American exceptionalism being an excuse to do whatever that country wants around the world that only led to this crumbling empire, but quite frankly I’m too tired and incapable in half a dozen other ways. Read More