ball Page 327 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

It’s almost time for college football’s most vacuous tradition: Bowl season! We tell you which bowl games are worth watching and why
Christmas approaches quickly, but college football fans are acutely aware that the real late December holiday is bowl season. Just when visions of the CFB content stream finally slowing to a crawl is dancing in your head, the NCAA presents the most meaningless postseason tradition in American sports...

The Dallas Mavericks are struggling and Luka Dončić deserves some of the blame
For the second straight year, this pipe dream of Luka Dončić being NBA MVP seems to be going up in flames already. Dallas started the season well, but now they’re a game under .500 (11-12) and have lost eight of their last 10 games. It’s not so much Luka’s statistical production, although his shooti...

Here’s what Cooper Kupp was talking about
The Los Angeles Rams demolished the Jacksonville Jaguars last Sunday. I guess the Rams were tired of losing after going winless through November. The Rams took their frustrations out on rookie head coach Urban Meyer and rookie quarterback Trevor Lawrence. Matt Stafford threw for three touchdowns in ...

Major League Soccer has a better ‘Rooney Rule’ than the NFL
Eighteen years ago, the most prejudiced sports league in American professional sports (Major League Baseball is a close second) created their version of “affirmative action” when they came up with the Rooney Rule — named after the legendary Steelers owner Dan Rooney — in hopes of helping diverse can...

A cover letter template for the college coach trying to leave a program near you
Coaches pushing their services like politicians trying to nab a presidential bid is my favorite part of any busy offseason. The season isn’t even over, and schools and coaching are already rushing to ship each other for that rose to keep them on The Bachelor: Sex Island....

Oregon picking over suspect Thanksgiving coaching leftovers after flurry of hires
Mario Cristobal is taking his talents to South Beach and is out the door at Oregon after Utah hit him in the ass with it. (Looking at the judges to see I get credit for two cliches in a lede. And… yes, “taking his talents to South Beach” qualifies.) The hire for Miami is seemingly a home run because...

You’re a fool if you think Belichick doesn’t trust Mac Jones
Monday night, we saw a familiar outcome in the NFL: the New England Patriots beating the Buffalo Bills. Despite horrid weather conditions and having to play on the road, the Patriots continued their dominant play as of late, thus lengthening their lead in the AFC East and doing so while having their...

Spare thoughts for the former Gil Hodges Lanes
I don’t really know what I was expecting, going to a bowling alley that’s two names removed from what it was called when my grandparents used to take me there, and thinking that maybe there would be something special about the fact that the old namesake, finally, many years late, had been elected to...

Russell Westbrook is tired of hearing about his alleged phone call to Kawhi Leonard in the summer of 2019
The Lakers’ Russell Westbrook-LeBron James experiment hasn’t exactly worked out how everyone in Los Angeles had hoped coming into the season. But if Westbrook had been able to persuade Kawhi Leonard to bring him along on his way to LA a couple of years ago, Westbrook would have been a Clipper and no...

The Jose Mourinho cycle has gotten ruthlessly efficient
Life is about evolving, and economy of motion is one of those things we strive for. How do we do the things we have to do every day in the cleanest way possible? Mostly it’s about financial budgeting, but there comes a part in everyone’s life when you decide what you really need in your house and in...

These Bulls are so much goddamn fun
I won’t lie to you, dear reader. Things are pretty bleak around here in Chicago, sports-wise. And actually beyond sports-wise, but I’m not qualified to discuss those things, really. Our center, the Bears, are an elaborate prank played on all of us by a trickster god, or at least they’d better be. Fi...

Another bad hit and look for the NHL
Once again, the NHL headlines will be dominated by an incident of a player using the vulnerability of another to excuse trying to end his night, season, maybe career. This one isn’t as cut and dried as Sunday night’s chicanery, though no less ugly....

The New England Patriots still rule the AFC — deal with it
Bill Belichick is the AFC’s Thanos. He’s inevitable. ...

Football at all levels needs to take a look at this
Pittsburgh Panthers quarterback Kenny Pickett had college football fans and the internet buzzing over his fake-QB slide and subsequent touchdown run in a 45-21 smashing of Wake Forest. Let’s be honest, in real-time, this might be one of the illest plays of the college or pro football season. But the...

2021 Rookie QB Rankings: It takes two to make a thing go right
It’s Week 13 of the NFL season, and rookie quarterbacks are front and center, with some living up to the hype and others not as much. With that, let’s look at how the 2021 rookie class fared in Week 13....

So it really wasn’t necessary to blow up the Dolphins a second time after all
It was all over for the Miami Dolphins after the trade deadline. They were willing to sell all of their credibility and goodwill to trade for Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson, despite the whole “Tanking for Tua [Tagovailoa]” hashtag in 2019. The No. 5 overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft did ...

Divock Origi, the club legend who never plays
Every fandom has their cult heroes who seemingly drop in out of the sky and provide a lifelong memory. Phillies fans have Matt Stairs. Bulls fans have Steve Kerr, to an extent (Kerr was a fine player but he does seem an odd choice from the gods to hit a title-clinching shot, no? Then again, he did i...

Rockets are stuck in a staring contest with John Wall and there’s no end in sight
If you want to know who has the sweetest gig in America right now, look no further than John Wall of the Houston Rockets. Wall isn’t rehabbing an injury for the first time in years, he’s supposed to be 100 percent healthy, yet he has not suited up for one of Houston’s first 23 games this season....

Quinn Ewers – the finesse king
They got played by an 18-year-old....

The Philadelphia Union got screwed, but there was probably little MLS could do
We don’t think any of the current seasons taking place now as “COVID seasons” like we did of the previous ones played in empty stadiums/arenas or in weird, neutral venues altogether. But it still very much is, which the Philadelphia Union learned the all-too hard way yesterday....