ball Page 61 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

NFL scriptwriters couldn’t have penned a better ending to the regular season than Bills-Dolphins
Give the NFL credit. The league obviously hired writers from disparate backgrounds to arrange the season’s plotlines. On Sunday, the Week 18 finale will climax with an end-of-season clash of genres between the Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins, who couldn’t be more different. The Dolphins even have a...

NCAA-ESPN's new broadcast deal is great for women's sports
The NCAA and ESPN agreed to an eight-year, $115 million annual deal to broadcast 40 different championships including the women’s college basketball tournament....

Darvin Ham is not the reason the Lakers are losing
News flash: The Miami Heat are a better coached team than the Los Angeles Lakers. It showed in the fourth quarter of their Wednesday night matchup. Erik Spoelstra has been with the Heat organization since 1995 — its head coach since 2008. Following nine seasons as an NBA player, Darvin Ham was an as...

Atlanta and the Dodgers have opted for playoff-only starters
While Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery still wait for their free-agent payday, two powerhouses that were also in need of starting pitching have chosen other routes. Oh, the Dodgers did splash free-agent cash, it was just for one pitcher who’s never pitched in the majors (Yoshinubu Yamamoto) and one...

From Jerry Richardson to Dave Tepper, the Carolina Panthers have written the manual on trash owners
Three million dollars (total) in fines. Two atrocious owners. One franchise. The Carolina Panthers are a mess....

Why has MLB free agency ground to a halt?
We were told that once Shohei Ohtani signed, or promised to the Dodgers that he can take all his money after the ocean reclaims Los Angeles as a whole, the rest of the free agents would start to fly off the shelves. It’s now Jan. 3, spring training is about six weeks away, and most of the free agent...

Want to reduce college football Bowl opt-outs? Pay the players
The bowl opt-outs are a letdown, but we all saw what happened to Jaylon Smith. During the 2016 Fiesta Bowl — which was not a playoff game — his leg was mangled. A projected top-five pick fell to the second round. Since then, many star players have made the intelligent business decision to not play i...

What’s going on at Harvard with Claudine Gay is similar to how the NFL, sports, and America operate
Claudine Gay is the new Nikole Hannah-Jones in the same way that Eric Bieniemy is the latest version of Sherman Lewis. And while there’s a big difference between being a leader at an institution of higher learning and coaching football, the common denominator remains the same — excluding Black peopl...

This week in the NFL: Pledge allegiance or go cry in the corner
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....

Billionaire NFL owner gets $300K fine for Tepper Tantrum
Billionaire Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper received a slap on the wrist from the NFL Tuesday evening for his “unacceptable conduct” during the Panthers’ 26-0 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars. ...

The College Football Playoff semifinals felt like the glory days of the sport
From the moment that Pat McAfee, Desmond Howard and Joey Galloway breathed a sigh of relief after Rece Davis said “naysayers” on College Gameday, the College Football Playoff semifinals were off and running. With Michigan taking on Alabama and Washington going up against Texas, there were great expe...

The Bears are deluding themselves into thinking Justin Fields is their QB of the future
Near the end of Justin Fields’ triumphant win over the Atlanta Falcons, Chicago Bears fans serenaded him with a passionate “We want Justin” chant. The chorus reached a fever pitch on a night when Fields threw for north of 260 yards and one touchdown in a blowout win over the Atlanta Falcons. Through...

Why, exactly, does Omar Vizquel deserve a second chance?
If there’s one thing you can count on in sports, it’s the desire of a certain segment of the media to rehabilitate their favorite players and coaches, no matter the harm done. There was the infamous Adam Schefter softball interview with Greg Hardy shortly after he was accused of doing this to his th...

Chris Mortensen, Carl Weathers and the sports figures we've lost in 2024
Here is where we look at some of the athletes and sports figures we’ve lost in 2024....

Sports has an owner problem
There’s an owner problem across all professional sports. If you think the behavior of Carolina Panthers’ owner David Tepper was abhorrent, and it was, and needs to be eradicated from the game, and it should, wait 15 minutes until the next entitled billionaire gets fussy. ...

The wacky ways these NFL teams can make — or miss — the playoffs
As the NFL heads into the final week of the regular season, there are still division titles and playoff berths to be decided....

The Texas Longhorns’ season-long bank heist fell short at the vault
The horseshoe that’s been up the Texas Longhorns’ ass finally fell out Monday night. Hours after its claim at legitimacy flamed out, with Alabama squandering a seven-point fourth-quarter lead to a semi-lethargic Michigan team, UT repeatedly looked like frauds. ...

You, too, can help an Alabama Crimson Tide player in need
Alabama lost in the Rose Bowl to Michigan and the Crimson Tide’s NIL collective wants your money. ...

After defeating Alabama, only haters are still hating on Michigan
Michigan vs. Everybody isn’t just a catchy phrase on a t-shirt. It’s more than a rallying cry when the entire sports world is cheering against you. It’s a declaration that anybody can get it — line ‘em up and knock ‘em down. On Monday night, Nick Saban and the Alabama Crimson Tide got their names cr...
