ale Page 78 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The new NBA CBA does nothing for the entertainment value of the game
The NBA this season is arguably more competitive than it has ever been. The Western Conference is up for grabs and the Eastern Conference has three heavyweights at the top, each capable of knocking out the other with a mighty blow. While there is no single dominant roster that the rest of the league...
UConn did not get the memo about March Madness
After everything this NCAA men’s tournament has had to offer. After all the one seeds fell. After an Ivy League school made the Sweet 16. After a Conference USA team made the Final Four. After 62 other schools lost, we get a blueblood in the title game. The UConn Huskies aren’t just advancing, they’...
What’s better than transcendent?
That felt like the March Madness we know and crave. Upsets are fantastic, certainly, and Iowa beating South Carolina was an upset, but only because of the Gamecocks’ perfect 36-0 record and 42-game winning streak overall. This wasn’t David beating Goliath. It was LeBron James taking Zydrunas Ilgausk...
The Hornets have replaced the Kings as the NBA’s most beleaguered franchise
The Sacramento Kings Beam season isn’t over yet, but success is relative. The Kings finally ended the NBA’s longest playoff drought. All it took was De’Aaron Fox straightening out his jumper, an offseason for Domantas Sabonis to get fully integrated into the offense, trading for Kevin Huerter and Mi...
Clay Travis is using a school shooting to promote transphobia
The reality of this world is that everyone with influence is not going to treat it with the respect that they should. Influence is a form of power. Of the many lessons I’ve learned in ⅓ of a century on this planet is that when people finally grasp a bit of power, many of them have only two goals: To...
The Women’s NCAA Tournament has reached a new golden era
It’s only been a few short weeks since Outkick’s David Hookstead blamed some non-existent woke-ism manifesto for the placement of women’s college basketball dominating ESPN.com’s front page. A few weeks before that, Jason Whitlock was frothing at the mouth over women’s basketball highlights leading ...
Amateur sports at higher education American institutions are dead
On Wednesday, the performative set of elected officials who gather in Washington D.C. to raise money and occasionally draft legislation held a meeting to discuss the future of Name, Image and Likeness....
How every MLB team will tank their seasons and break their fans' hearts in 2023
You can all give up the Rogers Hornsby quotes, already. We made it Opening Day, when hope springs eternal for millions of MLB fans across the country, a least for a few days/weeks. We’d all love to believe that our team has as much of a chance of winning the World Series as any other but, realistica...
Minor leaguers get a historic deal that will double their pay…which still isn’t enough
When you’ve been earning next to nothing, and you get offered double that or more, it would take some brass balls to turn it down. That would seem to be the lesson of the MiLB Players Union’s first-ever collective bargaining agreement with MLB. ...
Connor McDavid isn’t going to get a better chance
Every generationally great player, or every player that can safely say they’re one of the five best of all time, eventually bores the public with their greatness. Or at least fails to spike the EKG when news of their latest heroics crosses the wires. Connor McDavid is there. ...
With NFL players being allowed to wear 0, here are my favorite athletes to don the number
Look at the NFL trying to be looser as an organization. First, it relaxed restrictions on player numbers in 2021, and the league has decided that in 2023 a forbidden number will be allowed. Certain players will be allowed to wear the No. 0....
Does Roger Goodell even know when he’s lying anymore?
It’s never a good sign when John Mara, the answer to the question of what would happen if George Will ate paste, is the voice of reason. But that’s where the NFL, and Roger Goodell, found themselves at the owners’ meetings yesterday. Somehow, the owners were able to resist the urge to flex Thursday ...
Antonio Brown bought a football team — you’ve got to be kidding
Former NFL star Antonio Brown has been relatively quiet lately, not popping up on news feeds too much outside of our Jackass bracket tournament, for which he recently advanced to the Final Four. That should be considered a good thing because there hasn’t been any scandalous behavior out of AB this m...
Can the Arizona Diamondbacks come from the clouds?
When baseball writers get done complaining about how late their games are on, most of baseball’s attention this season will be on the San Diego Padres and the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Padres kneecapping the Dodgers in last year’s divisional round gave this tango some stakes instead of the Padres jus...
The USMNT wins its last game in the pre-Balogun era
International soccer, especially this season, is highly weird. So while the USMNT’s 1-0 win over El Salvador to clinch a spot in the semifinals of the Nations League doesn’t look like much — and it isn’t — one must consider that most of the squad has been run ragged with their club teams, had a Worl...
Hello darkness my new friend, because Aaron Rodgers likes it
I think New York Jets head coach Robert Saleh is taking that first line from one of the signature tunes of West Side Story too seriously. You know the one — “When you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all the way! From your first cigarette to your last dyin’ day!” With the team’s flirtation and outright “You u...
Charles Barkley hates the playa and the game, but he should look in the mirror
Every Cinderella story needs a bitter, jaded, elderly hater. Charles Barkley is college basketball’s evil stepmother analog. One of the most maddening staples of every March Madness is TNT loaning out Charles Barkley for CBS’ NCAA Tournament studio show coverage where he dissects college hoops with ...
Is there actually a reason to watch the Pittsburgh Pirates?
The Pittsburgh Pirates have been the prime symbol of everything wrong with MLB. They play in perhaps the league’s best ballpark. They have a passionate fanbase that is just screaming for a team worth their time, assuming they haven’t all been chased off (and they may need the Pirates soon given that...
Caitlin Clark stands on her own after stellar Elite Eight performance
There’s a big phenomenon when conversing about sports to find the next big thing, or who a younger athlete could become when she or he reaches their potential. Kobe Bryant or LeBron James having a Michael Jordan-like arch dominated conversations for over a decade. The name of baseball’s next great p...
The Sports Nihilist takes on the Sweet 16
Welcome to Deadspin’s The Sports Nihilist, where all is for naught and we are but accidental jolts of electrified meat stuck to the surface of a rock in an indifferent universe. Fuck you....