abc Page 1 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
James Harden finally found a restaurant willing to carry his wine
Are you looking for traditional flavors with a Japanese flare, a stunning lounge with a live DJ, bowling lanes, exotic hookah, a nightclub, and bottomless J. Harden Wine prosecco all in one convenient, classy one-stop shop? Well look no further than Thirteen Houston, James Harden’s new restaurant ve...
What does it say about America that random NFL games dominate the most-watched TV list?
The sports world was reminded of two important things over the last few months. One, Taylor Swift’s presence is a game-changer. Two, the people who once claimed they’d never watch the NFL again because Black players kneeled, are bonafide liars....
Jenny Cavnar becomes first woman to get full-time MLB TV play-by-play gig
For the first time in MLB history, a woman will serve as the leading play-by-play announcer for a major league team. NBC Sports California announced Tuesday that Jenny Cavnar will serve as the primary play-by-play announcer for the Oakland Athletics. ...
Looks like Taylor Swift didn't ruin the NFL after all
Maybe talk of the decline of the NFL at the hands of Taylor Swift and the Deep State was premature. CBS announced Monday that their Super Bowl LVIII broadcast drew 123.4 million average viewers across all platforms. The broadcast metrics included audiences that watched on CBS, Paramount+, Nickelodeo...
Dear Santa: All I want for Christmas is my sports suggestions taken seriously
By and large, sports are pretty awesome. I have learned to keep my childhood favorite teams at a healthy distance and I advise all Chicago sports fans to do the same. I spend most of the year in awe of the artistic displays of the most brilliant athletes in the world. ...
The NBA's In-Season Tournament takes from soccer but isn’t a cup
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 t...
For one week, at least, Monday Night Football regained its crown as king of must-see NFL action
I have lived long enough to be aware that there are people who have no idea of the enormity of Monday Night Football. The Brady-Manning Bowl of 2005 was an MNF broadcast. For three and a half decades, there was no bigger regular-season NFL stage than that primetime matchup on ABC. ...
Welcome to the toilet, home of the Columbus Blue Jackets
Give the Columbus Blue Jackets this. They don’t wait around to dive right back into the dumpster that they’ve lived in for their entire existence. No hope for whatever is left of their fanbase, no annoying stories about how things are turning around that come straight from the PR department, no leav...
Mike Babcock sets a land speed record for being fired for being Mike Babcock
It has to be asked what did the Columbus Blue Jackets think they were going to get by hiring Mike Babcock? ...
Mike Babcock is seemingly at it again, though it's surprising he knows how to use AirPlay
Hockey doesn’t even need to start to be stupid, especially when it comes to a needlessly recycled coach like Mike Babcock. If you don’t recall Babcock since he got fired from the Leafs, you may remember him from such episodes as making Johan Franzen’s life an utter hell or tricking Mitch Marner into...
The NBA can try all it wants, player rest is impossible to stop
Remember when the Dallas Mavericks concluded an embarrassing 2022-23 season by not dressing Kyrie Irving and Luka Dončić instead of attempting to qualify for the Play-in Tournament? The Mavericks were fined $750,000, and I think that the NBA reached a breaking point in its never-ending saga of star-...
Where are all the women in NFL studios?
This hasn’t been a great weekend for women in sports. Disgraced Baylor coach Art Briles somehow made his way onto the field of an Oklahoma game to celebrate a win with his son-in-law, Sooners’ offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby. Lebby then had the nerve to get indignant when asked why Briles was on th...
After the ESPN shakeup, we still have Hubie Brown to keep teaching us basketball
Following its highest-rated NBA Playoff in two decades, ESPN decided to take a hatchet to its game coverage of the league. Gone from the network entirely are Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy. Replacing them on the No. 1 commentator team alongside Mike Breen are Doris Burke and Doc Rivers. Ryan Ruocco...
Don’t be cowards, Notre Dame. Save the Pac-12
Amid various upheavals and tectonic conference shifts, one of the nation’s most prominent college football brands has maintained its neutrality. Notre Dame is the Joel Osteen of college athletics as a football megachurch without a conference denomination. Notre Dame basketball is the garnish, but fo...
Doris Burke, Mike Breen, and Doc Rivers are a match made in…something
Weeks after ESPN split up the NBA’s quirkiest broadcast TRIO by inexplicably laying off Jeff Van Gundy, the suits in Bristol had a high bar to reach for the new three-man-weave in its NEXT lead broadcast team. Mike Breen was a certified starter as the voice of the Worldwide Leader’s play-by-play NBA...
The NBA's mid-season tourney is coming — and the league is better for it
After years of flirting with the idea, Adam Silver finally did it. He finally implemented the in-season tournament he’d teased for years. Frankly, the NBA’s in-season tournament setup could have been worse. Richard Jefferson cheesing his way through an over-the-top infomercial like a Buick salesman ...
ESPN breaks up its broadcast superteam-in-slacks as Jeff Van Gundy enters NBA free agency
As ESPN reaches the end of its fiscal year today, the Worldwide Leader has commenced its semi-annual purge of top talent. On Wednesday, the pink slip Russian Roulette landed on Jeff Van Gundy, after 16 years with the network....
The Columbus Blue Jackets hate their players
In the discussion of most irrelevant franchises in North American sports, the Columbus Blue Jackets would be high on the list, if not on top of it, if anyone could remember them enough to add them. You’d think they’d take some inspiration from one of their former fellow whos-its, the Denver Nuggets,...
Mark Cuban tries to get NBA fans to narc on themselves
Being the businessman that Mark Cuban is, sometimes he would like information directly from the public. The people in the big office chairs may not give credence to what the masses think. If they want to remove the most highly-regarded name in the history of television from an app they will, despite...
The NBA Playoffs have earlier start times from here on out — God is good
In 2015, I was in Los Angeles for the annual Online News Association Conference. It meant that as a Michigan native, I was up at 9:00 am PST to watch the Wolverines obliterate BYU 31-0 in a college football game that had a noon kickoff on East Coast time. That was also the day that I understood the ...