champ Page 44 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

It’s the ones he didn’t make
This probably won’t apply if Tom Brady is doing all this for the attention and doesn’t actually retire. Quarterbacks have a habit of doing that. Brett Favre. Aaron Rodgers. Or maybe it’s just a Packers thing. Still, when you’re the centerpiece of a league that’s the centerpiece of the sporting consc...

A San Francisco 49ers win would give us something rarely seen in the Super Bowl: a rematch
We’re down to the final four teams left in the NFL postseason, and Championship Sunday is upon us. In the 56-year history of the Super Bowl, we’ve had seven rematches. That’s about 12.5% of the games being played between franchises that previously met on the big stage. This year there is an excellen...

James Harden might be realizing this Big 3 stuff ain’t all it’s cracked up to be
James Harden may be coming to the realization that the grass is not always greener on the other side when it comes to life in Brooklyn after last year’s failure and how this season has played out thus far. A recent report from Bleacher Report points out Harden being frustrated by Kyrie Irving’s par...

Crypto crash devastates salaries of stars including OBJ, Aaron Rodgers
It’s been a roller coaster of a season for Odell Beckham Jr., and the ride only continues — just as the Rams are headed to the NFC championship, his Bitcoin salary may have taken an enormous hit. In the midst of a cryptocurrency crash, the value of Bitcoin has been sent tumbling to nearly half of wh...

Sean Payton calls it quits
If you looked at Sean Payton’s search history, last night would show a Google query for “how not to cry during a speech.”...

It’s just not the same without Tom Brady here
First things first, this is not a complaint about Rams-49ers being the matchup for the NFC Championship Game. The upsets in the Divisional Round happened fair and square, and both California teams deserve to play for a spot in the Super Bowl....

Rams desperate to keep 49ers fans out of SoFi Stadium
Poor L.A. Rams. Their return to Los Angeles has been a rousing success. Yesterday’s chaotic win against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers put the Rams in the NFC Championship Game for the second time in four seasons, and this time they will play the game at home. Sounds like all the makings of a trip to the ...

For one evening, Mohammed Salisu was Gandalf
Usually, when one player dominates a game, bending it to his will, you think of hat tricks and thunder-bastard goals and everything offensive. After all, soccer is judged on who scores and who doesn’t. And that goes for pretty much every sport....

It almost happened again, Brady almost pulled off a second Super Bowl LI
There was no way this could happen again....

Jimmy G keeps on stinking but the 49ers keep on winning
Somehow the San Francisco 49ers did it again. They’ve gone on the road in the playoffs and come out the victor twice, despite subpar quarterback play from Jimmy Garoppolo. The Niners have shown that the dreaded “game manager” can still take a team deep into the postseason. For the second time in thr...

I don’t care if it’s loser talk
Generally as a fandom, when all you have is to delight in the follies of your rival, it means you have nothing of your own. The actual act is an admission of defeat, a lesser position. You’ve been beaten, humiliated, rendered to the sidelines, and all you can do is just watch and hope that the team(...

In the win-now bowl, the loser faces a fast-approaching, not-so-bright future
For the past two years, the Rams and Bucs have been operating like they’re LeBron James and they just got to L.A. While the Bucs signed their big-name QB, the Rams took out another mortgage on their future, trading quite a bit for Matthew Stafford....

Welcome to A.B.B.
Strange as it may seem, you get the feeling that many this weekend will be rooting for a certified underachiever over the most accomplished quarterback in NFL history....

Three years later and nothing has changed, the Lakers are still a mess
Looking back at the Russell Westbrook trade, it makes sense what they were trying to do. The Los Angeles Lakers’ 2020-21 season was cut at the kneecaps by injury. It was the second time that had happened in three seasons. They needed a third star so that if they lost LeBron James or Anthony Davis or...

Aaron Rodgers is about to give it one more try against the team that owns <em>him</em>, the 49ers
The Green Bay Packers have advanced to the playoffs 11 times since Aaron Rodgers became their starting quarterback. The only years that they didn’t make the playoffs were his first year as a starter in 2008, 2017 when injury cost him more than half the season, and in 2018 when he battled through a k...

What to make of Nick Kyrgios?
You wouldn’t have noticed two nights ago, or two mornings ago, as it tends to be with the Australian Open. Daniil Medvedev, currently the favorite to win the whole tournament, beat Nick Kyrgios in four sets. Kyrgios didn’t make it that easy on him, and won the third set while hitting some amazing sh...

Want to know who’s going to win this weekend? Just look at each team’s last game against the Bears
Sports betting is becoming more and more prevalent in the average sports fan’s life. In 2021, DraftKings saw a 60 percent increase in third-quarter revenue from a year prior. Compared to other countries with more mature gambling systems already in place like the UK, only four percent of gross gaming...

WWE veered a little close to Nazism last night
Bemoaning the impact of Vince McMahon and Bruce Pritchard on NXT has been done in many places, including this one. For some, it is truly sad to see what was once a unique and massively enjoyable product become yet another base for the boring, uncreative, and rote choices McMahon and Pritchard make w...

So this Romelu Lukaku thing is a problem, just not in the way we thought
Back in August, I wrote this. And it sure seemed that way, as Chelsea utterly destroyed Arsenal, spearheaded by Romelu Lukaku. These were the defending European champions, who had just added the best striker from Italy in Lukaku the previous season, and he seemed like the final piece for Chelsea to ...
