ball Page 78 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Jacksonville isn't quite ready to join the NFL's elite
Week 10 represented a tremendous opportunity for the Jacksonville Jaguars to show the NFL they were ready to be inserted into conversations with the big dogs in the league. Instead, they got steamrolled at home by the San Francisco 49ers, 34-3. This was an embarrassing loss, but it also had signific...

Week 10 NFL Takeaways: The wide receivers put on a show
If you thought the scores in your fantasy league — especially if it’s PPR — were unusually high this week, it’s not just you. The pass catchers of the NFL had themselves quite the Sunday in Week 10. All throughout the day, footballs were snatched out of the air from all angles, and for a great deal ...

It’s true: The Cleveland Browns are a force
Playing against the Cleveland Browns without OT Morgan Moses on Sunday was not an ideal scenario for the Baltimore Ravens. The Ravens would go on to lose their other bookend offensive tackle — Ronnie Stanley — in the fourth quarter and top cornerback Marlon Humphrey in the third. While this is far f...

The Giants are lucky they can’t be demoted to the XFL or USFL
If not for the logos on the helmets, you might not recognize the New York Giants as a pro football team. They were absolutely slaughtered for the second time this season by the Dallas Cowboys, 49-17, to fall to a paltry 2-8 record for the 2023 campaign. The G-Men are in quarterback purgatory with an...

The Texans' offseason work set rookie QB CJ Stroud up for success
C.J. Stroud is well on his way to the best rookie quarterback performance in NFL history. Usually rookie quarterbacks are limited by their lack of professional experience and/or their coaches’ lack of confidence in their grasp of the complexities of football at the NFL level. Through nine games, the...

Texas A&M needs to adjust expectations after handing Jimbo Fisher a golden parachute
Jimbo Fisher finally got the hook after six underwhelming seasons at Texas A&M. It’s not all bad. Fisher may never wind up in the College Football Hall of Fame, but his contract earned him a spot in the Gettin’ Paid Hall of Fame. He can probably start his own university and athletic program with wha...

What does a guy gotta do to get a college football upset?
With two weeks remaining before conference title games, there’s very little time for college football to have its weird week. The teams with one loss should have an opportunity to earn a bid with a conference title. There are nine Power Five teams with one loss or fewer — Georgia, Michigan, Ohio Sta...

Sherrone Moore is all Michigan fans right now
Turns out Michigan didn’t need a head coach or a quarterback to beat Penn State. In one of the more embarrassing losses since the Nittany Lions’ loss to Ohio State a few weeks ago, the Wolverines were content running the ball right at Penn State en route to a 24-15 win. ...

Big Ten declares martial law, rest of college football wonders if they can do that
The handling of the Michigan sign-stealing scandal has been a debacle from the start, and it culminated Friday with the Big Ten suspending coach Jim Harbaugh for the final three games. U-M filed a temporary restraining order against its own conference that it hopes can be expedited before kickoff at...

Wake me up when the NBA adds a Champions League or an FA cup
The first NBA in-season tournament kicked off Friday evening. If you were unaware, you’re less informed than most because the gimmick has only been beaten into our brains every day since the season tipped. It’s really a brilliant way to dress up a regular season game, and the courts are so obnoxious...

Zion Williamson is the NBA’s most polarizing talent
Zion Williamson is a series of contradictions. He’s a near-300-pound space mover who elevates like he’s in zero gravity. He’s both the mythic John Henry racing a machine and the steam-powered drill he beat in a race because it continuously broke down. Williamson has the build of a defensive end, but...

Will the Texas Rangers please <i>PLEASE</i> knock off the Astros?
Was it inevitable? One won the American League West, while the other led it for most of the season and was forced to go the wild-card route to make it to this stage. The Texas Rangers and Houston Astros share a state and are bitter rivals and will face each other in the postseason for the first time...

USMNT gets to tussle with some real teams…kinda
Ah, the fresh hell of yet another international break. Club seasons are put on pause for a raft of qualifiers, be they Euro, or World Cup, that are pretty much foregone conclusions robbed of any real urgency, especially thanks to the expanded field for 2026. If not those, we get a helping of interna...

Emphasis on 82-game schedule won’t solve NBA’s biggest problem
In case the NBA has not made itself clear over the last few months, the league office is fed up with load management. There are 82 games on the schedule, and players are expected to play in every single game unless they are actually injured. The NBA is going so far now as to claim it has data that t...

What’s to be done with these Los Angeles Dodgers?
You kind of knew it was over for the Dodgers the minute they acquired Lance Lynn. Lance Lynn? This is the Dodgers, for Christ’s sake! When they need help in the rotation, they go get Zack Greinke, or Yu Darvish, or Max Scherzer. They shop at the supermarket that plebs like you and I aren’t even allo...

The NBA is right about load management for the wrong reasons
OK, it’s time for Devil’s Advocate corner: The NBA’s stance on load management is a good thing, but not for the dumbass reasons Joe Dumars presented Wednesday. If you missed it, the executive vice president of basketball operations said there’s no proof that load management prevents injuries. Maybe,...

In a move that shocks no one, Kansas barely gets a slap on the wrist from the NCAA
Did anyone expect a different result? ...

Jared Goff is playing like the best quarterback in the NFL
Jared Goff’s time with the Detroit Lions began the same way that it ended with the Los Angeles Rams, disappointing. By Week 7 of his first season with the Lions, Dan Campbell looked at the media, took a deep breath, and criticized Goff during a postgame press conference. At that point in the season,...

Luka Dončić let the NBA down this week
The first-ever international exhibition on Sept. 8, 1978, is immortalized for the defending NBA champion Washington Bullets’ loss to Maccabi Tel Aviv by the score of 97-98. Since 2000, when the EuroLeague was founded, NBA teams are 75-17 against Europe’s top teams in exhibitions. Or 17-75 if you wan...

Give Georgia its due respect, and you might (think you) have a chance
Following a couple of games in which the Georgia Bulldogs looked semi-vulnerable, Kirby Smart’s team put it on now No. 24 Kentucky to the tune of 51-13. It was such a lopsided victory that it left UK coach Mark Stoops with an aftertaste no amount of Listerine will wash out. While I understand his fr...