ale Page 68 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

NBA doing everything it can to marginally disrupt player empowerment
The NBA league office prolonged the current stalemate between the Portland Trail Blazers and Miami Heat over a deal for Damian Lillard. A memo was circulated to all 30 franchises Friday saying that any player, or agent, who makes public comments about an unwillingness to “fully perform the services ...

Denver Broncos' HC Sean Payton hates on Hack, New York Jets
Sean Payton knows a little something about reclamation projects. Nearly two decades after he rescued Drew Brees’ career following a torn labrum in the QB’s throwing shoulder, Payton has turned his attention to the revitalization of Russell Wilson. Like Brees, Wilson is an undersized passer, who thri...

Miami Dolphins' key offseason acquisition Jalen Ramsey injured at camp
One of the worst things that can happen to an NFL player is to be taken off the field due to injury. Even worse than that is for it to happen before the season even begins. That’s the situation Miami Dolphins cornerback Jalen Ramsey is in after being carted off the field with an apparent left knee i...

World Cup Day 8: The Aussies step in it
This tournament started with how every organizer wishes it would, with both hosts getting wins to up the energy and buzz around the whole thing. World Cups and big tournaments are just better when the hosts are relevant and getting the home fans excited. But now both Australia and New Zealand are up...

The USWNT gets out of medium security jail
The pregame chatter mostly centered around Netherlands manager Andries Jonker’s quotes in the Matchday -1 press conference. It certainly had USWNT followers getting a little tight in the seat. In full:...

No, $262.5M doesn’t mean more pressure on Justin Herbert
Like Jaylen Brown of the Boston Celtics on Tuesday, Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert became the highest-paid player in his league, inking a five-year $262.5 million extension with the team. The initial takeaway is largely the same even if the metrics by which they’re measured are diff...

World Cup Day 7: It’s easy when you’re big in Japan…and Spain we suppose
After Group A decided to keep everyone alive with some truly weird (and awful) soccer on Monday night, it was time to send some teams to the land of wind and ghosts on Tuesday, as Costa Rica, Zambia, and Ireland will make it home before the postcards. Let’s make it happen, captain!...

Maybe I’ll just give up on the AEW Women’s Division
On Friday night, Athena and Willow Nightingale had one of the best matches, not just women’s matches, of 2023 on Ring of Honor’s Death Before Dishonor PPV. Not only was it the culmination of a three-match trilogy through both ROH and AEW, or the budding of a rivalry that will probably last years, bu...

Arthur Smith’s Falcons are riding the Bijan Robinson train in an age of aviator offenses
Arthur Smith migrated to the Falcons after laying down the railroad tracks for the Tennessee Titans’ 2020 AFC Championship berth. One would hope he isn’t trying to put his spin on the Derrick Henry cloud of dust offense he conducted for two years, but with Bijan Robinson. An essential part of buildi...

World Cup Day 5: We cannot run from who we are
Day 5 of the World Cup was probably the most rewarding, and a great example of how football is football no matter who is playing it, no matter where they come from. We do our best to not compare or relate the women’s game to the men’s, as they’re two different sports. But Sunday night’s fare was per...

World Cup Day 4: Not much more than a feeling
If the story of the first three days of the World Cup was that the tournament favorites were kind of inching their way through their first matches, nothing changed on Day 4. Sweden, Holland, and especially France all had an air of trying to figure out what all the buttons do and what the lights mean...

When is the worst time to hassle an athlete for an autograph?
I’m not a big signed memorabilia type of guy. Personally, I’d rather take a picture. It lasts longer, is less labor intensive and I feel like less of a goofball displaying it. The parasocial connection between autograph seekers pressuring athletes to sign comes with the territory though. This week, ...

World Cup Day 3: A demolition to start the United States’ three-peat campaign didn’t happen
The last time the United States women’s national team opened a World Cup, it scored 13 goals against Thailand. That pile-on isn’t typical and wasn’t a drubbing for the sake of sticking it to Yul Brynner. There was no downside to putting up the unanswered baker’s dozen for the sake of goal difference...

Without Deion Sanders in attendance, Pac-12 Media Day might as well pack it up and go home
Things have grown so dire for the Pac-12 that they’re one cycle away from returning to tape delay airings. The Left Coast’s elite has always found themselves at a disadvantage in cuing up interest for its football campaign. Cue the beat of Deion Sanders drum. ...

World Cup Day 1: It’s their party and they’ll win if they want to
And we’re off. World Cup 2023 finally kicked into gear, and while it’s a bit disorienting to watch an event on a cold winter night from a summer morning locale as the sun comes up, we here tend to do our best work when we’re disoriented. Both hosts started the tournament, and both exited the day wit...

How to completely crap on your legacy, by Jordan Henderson
It’s my fault. I know better than to buy into it, but being so cynical, and assuming that every athlete that seems like he’s above the usual morass isn’t much of a way to live. I wanted to believe in Jordan Henderson, and still do in a lot of ways. ...

World Cup Group H Preview: Why can’t there be more like Morocco?
The women’s World Cup should be, and still is in a lot of ways, a celebration of how far the game has come from where it was even just four years ago. The attention is more, the players, and teams are better, the quality of play keeps rising, the anticipation grows, as does the appreciation when it ...

Deadspin predicts the Women’s World Cup
How was the USWNT’s Megan Rapinoe being thrust into the forefront of sport and society while helping the United States women’s national team lift a second straight World Cup title four years ago? No matter how long ago it feels, the next edition of the global showcase is here, with 32 teams competin...

Is Sam Howell the next great Tank Commander or Kirk Cousins redux?
Renewed hope for the Washington Commanders is on the menu in 2023. New ownership will have an opportunity to leave their imprint on the organization eventually. But for now, the direction of the Commies 2023 season rests in the relatively small hands of its anointed Tank Commander Sam Howell. Tank c...
