Locker Page 49 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
It's the end of Urban we’d all hoped for
Most of the time, the things you think will go badly don’t go badly in the way you hope. We all have an urge to watch something burn, if only for a short time, but rarely do we get the flaming wreckage we seek. A lot of times we get the conclusion, but not the show in between....
Here’s a dumb baseball argument
Before we get into this at all, it has to be stated that Dan Szymborski, and his ZiPS computer projections, have changed the way most people watch and evaluate baseball. They are revolutionary, so to call him to the mat isn’t really fair. It’s what ESPN asked, he did his job. But this latest piece, ...
How are they gonna get this back in the tube?
Feels like we’ve been here before. The headlines from yesterday, they certainly have a familiar ring....
Cris Collinsworth sees the very, very best in Aaron Rodgers
Everyone who had to slog through the Sunday night game between the Packers and Bears probably has a favorite piece of Cris Collinsworth mouth-diarrhea that plopped from his maw when it came to Aaron Rodgers. Maybe yours was the “honest” part. Or the downplaying of the “vaccinated/immunized affair” l...
Please just let Zion Williamson’s body work
Zion Williamson’s setback in his recovery from foot surgery, which means the former No. 1 overall pick will see “the volume of his training … reduced for an extended period to help allow for further bone healing,” is just a straight-up bummer....
Replicating Pickett’s fake slide? No Ken do
If you liked Pitt quarterback Kenny Pickett’s fake slide on the way to a 58-yard touchdown run in the ACC championship game last week, you’ll need to savor it, because you’re not going to see it again....
Somehow this Coyotes story got dumber… and better
Maybe I should have waited a day. Because nothing with the Arizona Coyotes fails to get better, or funnier, or more abstract when you give it more time. As the layers get unpeeled, the aroma that wafts through the air really defies belief. It is both hilarity and bafflement, mixed in with old people...
Does the NHL vet its owners?
I wish I could write stuff like this as fiction. But unless you wrote it as Mel Brooks-ian farce, I don’t know how you’d make it believable. And I have to say that I really want to see the city of Glendale actually chain up the doors to Gila River Arena when Coyotes players attempt to show up for a ...
At least the IOC is admitting its lies, in a way
The IOC admitted yesterday that the charade they tried to pull was pretty much full of shit, without saying it was full of shit, to try and save whatever face it could. You see, the IOC doesn’t want anything to hurt its precious Games that are just two months away and in Beijing, even if that means ...
Biden’s diplomatic boycott of Olympics in China is about as empty as his presidency
It’s not that anyone should have expected the Joe Biden administration to pull the big card and keep U.S. athletes away from Beijing in February. It would have led other nations to do the same, and might have actually been the rare instance of someone standing up to China for all the atrocities it c...
A Hall of Fame announcement we can all get behind
In the past, I’ve tried to remove myself from Hall-of-Fame debates. Because at the end of the day, they’re really no more useful or material than the Oscars or Grammys. You’re basically debating someone’s opinion. And because of the esteem these things have gotten over the years, you’re debating the...
Clock ticking on Big Ben
The news that Ben Roethlisberger “expects this to be his final season playing quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers,” as Adam Schefter reported, is some big-time “duh” stuff....
Burnt ends and burned bridges
All news is local, and The Columbian got a doozy of a local story out of now-LSU coach Brian Kelly’s sudden decision to bolt from Notre Dame this week....
Even sportsbooks are tired of JB Smoove screaming ‘CAE-SARS!’
Do you remember the movie Thank You for Smoking? It was a satirical look at cigarette spokesman Nick Naylor (played by Aaron Eckhart aka Harvey Dent from The Dark Knight) who tries to remain a role model to his son despite promoting/defending lung darts....
This was a disasterpiece
We can go through the numbers, but they don’t really tell the story. We can see that the Memphis Grizzlies beat the Oklahoma City Thunder 152-79, that nine different players scored in double figures for Memphis, that they shot 62 percent from the floor, yadda yadda yadda. It’s like counting how many...
Rob Manfred is fertilizer
I can’t say that Rob Manfred is bad at his job, at least not entirely. Because his job is to make sure that all 30 owners squeeze the sport for every last dollar possible, and he’s done that. It doesn’t really matter if he kills the league in the process, because his bosses don’t care. It’s simply a...
Baseball's fake deadline nears
And so MLB heads into the final jump today, with the current CBA expiring today at 11:59 p.m. It’s important to remember that the owners don’t have to lock out the players when it expires. They can keep talking, and both sides would if both sides felt there was progress being made. Apparently, they ...
Brian Kelly broke up by text after the second date
If you’re a Notre Dame fan, and I assume you’re done trashing your underground hovel and listening to your entire Bob Seger collection, you can look forward to the fact that you’re only about 10 months away from watching Brian Kelly getting his brains beaten in by various SEC schools. It’s a cold wo...
Why did anyone think an ex-Lion would help?
In some ways, NFL teams and fanbases can be a lot like that friend you have who makes terrible romantic choices. No matter how many times you explain to them that no, they can’t “fix” that person, or “save” them, they still try. And it always ends in tears when said romantic prospect turns out to be...
Suns keep rising, maybe now you’ll notice
So, you look up one day, and the Phoenix Suns have won 16 straight games....