abl Page 20 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Grierson & Leitch's Bold Predictions For The Oscar Technical Categories No One Understands
Come Sunday night, you may embark on that annual ritual: Filling out the bottom of your Oscar pool entry, pretending you know the difference between Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing. Will and I will both offer our picks for the eight major categories tomorrow, but today I'm going to offer my...
Red Alert: Jim Nantz Compromised, Hacked E-Mails Contain The Whitest Sentence On Record
When a hacker found his way into our 41st and 43rd presidents' personal e-mail accounts, exposing records of correspondence among the former leaders of the free world as well as George W. Bush's haunting paintings of himself bathing, we all had a good laugh. Unfortunately, the hack had some collater...
The 15 Or So Most Watchable Teams In College Basketball: An Occasional Ranking
A weekly (or so) ranking of college basketball teams on the basis of watchability and with very little regard to how good they might be. ...
The Small Decisions That Cost The 49ers The Super Bowl
Super Bowl XLVII turned out to be a close game that hinged on a few critical plays at the end—shocking, given the score when the power went out. But it also hinged on decisions that didn't seem very significant at the time but ended up having an enormous effect on the outcome....
Last Night Was Probably The Closest We'll Ever Get To A Super Bowl Fair-Catch Kick, The Rarest Play In The NFL
When the Ravens intentionally took a safety, to give themselves better field position and run a few seconds off the clock, it brought the 49ers to within three points. It was the smart call, but it also raised the possibility of the rarest of all football plays—the fair-catch kick. It's only been at...
Expensive Cable Sports Are Always Expensiver Than Ever
Today the New York Times's Brian Stelter crunches the (preposterous) numbers and finds runaway sports-programming costs weighing down the cable bill of everyone in America, whether or not they give Shit One about sports. The phrase "impending $7 billion deal with the Dodgers" should give you an idea...
Stop Everything: Here's Chris Andersen And Mike Miller Performing "Ice Ice Baby"
Hot Hot Hoops took in Shane Battier's annual charity event in Miami Beach last night, and, I don't know, I guess some money was raised for a good cause or whatever. That's a distant second to the world-shattering levels of whiteness when Mike Miller and Chris "Birdman" Andersen cover Vanilla Ice's...
Joe Flacco, The Big-Armed Oaf Who Saved Baltimore
Joe Flacco has played five full seasons in the NFL, and in each one, he has thrown for less than 4,000 yards and completed less than 64 percent of his throws. He has never been sacked fewer than 30 times, and he has never thrown more than 25 touchdowns. Flacco turns 28 tomorrow. He'll be a free agen...
Fox Gets Conservative: Did The Denver Coach's Risk-Averse Strategy Cost The Broncos A Playoff Victory?
NFL coaches will often refer to "playing the percentages." But if there's one thing I've learned by studying strategic decisions, it's that coaches don't have a firm grasp of those percentages. And when anyone is uncertain of the odds, he'll fall back on the sure thing. That was the case with Bronco...
Dick Vitale Would Like To Know Whether "The Young Guy With The Wheelchair" That Stormed The Court At NC State Is OK [UPDATE: He Is]
NC State upset Duke today 84-76, bringing to a close Duke's undefeated run and perhaps ruining their number one ranking, but who cares, because this happened at the end of the game: A young man in wheelchair zoomed out on to the court with the rest of crowd to celebrate the win, and Dick Vitale ha...
The 15 Or So Most Watchable Teams In College Basketball: A Ranking
A weekly (or so) ranking of college basketball teams on the basis of watchability and with very little regard to how good they might be. ...
The Health Of An NFL Player Belongs To Everyone But The Player Himself
"Greatness is not given," Robert Griffin III says in his national Gatorade spot. "Greatness is taken, when the weak and distracted are resting on their reputations."...
In Defense Of Mike Shanahan
Three months ago, the head coach of a professional football team made a terrible, terrible decision. On Sept. 30, up by a point with less than two minutes to go, Carolina's Ron Rivera decided to punt the ball away to the Atlanta Falcons, even though it was fourth-and-1, even though his team was on A...
Robert Griffin III Twisted His Knee On A Dead Patch Of Sports Language
LANDOVER, Md.—After the Redskins' 24-14 playoff loss to the Seahawks, Washington's players and head coach talked about the "difference between being injured and being hurt," the importance of being there for your teammates, and how, in the words of Robert Griffin III, "you have to step up and be a m...
A Season Of Miracles In Washington: The Redskins Reappear, And The Owner Vanishes
Dan Snyder didn't even show up to his team's annual turkey giveaway before Thanksgiving. Somebody clearly told Snyder, the Redskins' unbeloved owner, that he couldn't win until his team won. And dang if he didn't listen. And dang if the team didn't win....
J.R. Smith's Reverse Alley-Oop Shouldn't Be Humanly Possible
The game was out of hand at this point—San Antonio, playing their fourth in five nights, had benched most of the starters, and the Knicks had followed suit. That doesn't take a thing away from the athleticism required to put home this reverse alley-oop, fired by Pablo Prigioni from about 15 feet a...
Ray Lewis Is A Complicated Problem Who Played Football With Simple Greatness
It’s easy enough to be cynical about Ray Lewis, after the 17-year veteran linebacker announced his impending retirement yesterday. In the foreground, there’s the recent image of Lewis, now that the years have reduced his ability to contribute on-field: the ridiculous, spasmodic dancing; the incessa...
On Further Review, Roger Goodell Fucked Up This NFL Season From End To End
Cowboys-Redskins was the biggest matchup of the year, a win-or-go-home game for two division rivals. It turned out to be the most-watched regular-season sporting event in 15 years. But one familiar face was missing from the FedEx Field suites: commissioner Roger Goodell, who found something else to ...
Andy Reid: Good Enough To Make You Hate Him For How Bad He Was
So of course when the clock at last ran out on Andy Reid in Philadelphia, nobody knew what the heck was going on. He was fired before the final game Sunday and coached anyway. No, he wasn't fired till after the game Sunday. No, not that either; he wasn't fired till Monday morning. One last utter cl...
The Black Monday Firing That Doesn't Make Any Sense: Lovie Smith
Romeo Crennel, Chan Gailey, Andy Reid, Pat Shurmur, and Norv Turner were fired on Monday for the usual reasons that coaches get fired. All of these guys either led franchises to horrible records (Crennel), disappointed their pitchfork-waving fan bases one too many times (Turner), led their franchise...