cia Page 180 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Newly Canned Valencia Manager Thinks He Was Fired For Winning A Trophy The Owner Wanted To Blow Off
Even for an infamously drama-filled club like Valencia, the decision to sack Marcelino this week, coming off back-to-back Champions League qualifications and a triumphant run to the Copa del Rey title last season, felt notably crazy from the outside. So imagine how absolutely insane Marcelino himsel...
Interminable Mike Pereira Rules Monologue Interrupted Several Times By Ghastly Football
The NFL’s got to clean this crap up. The Thursday night game between the Panthers and Buccaneers was already a hellish, dismal slog, featuring punchless, amateurish offense run by a pair of deeply disinterested quarterbacks. Then the fourth quarter rolled around, and what might’ve otherwise been at ...
Valencia's Owner Fired His Manager, Pissed Off His Players, And Might Have Ruined The Season
Despite securing a Champions League spot for the second consecutive year and beating Barcelona in the Copa del Rey final last season, Marcelino is no longer the manager of Valencia. The club sacked him on Wednesday, on the eve of two massive fixtures against Barcelona in La Liga and Chelsea in the C...
Referee Clock Boner Very Nearly Screws Saints In Monday Night Thriller
Monday night’s Texans-Saints game ended with two incredible late drives and a dramatic walk-off 58-yard field goal to put the home team over the top, 30–28. However you feel about the Saints and their fans, one positive takeaway from their victory is it managed to wipe out a pretty significant refer...
Why Is The NFL Giving Money To A Group That Believes Trump Needs To Save Chicago From Gang Violence?
One of the first major moves that the NFL and Roc Nation’s “Inspire Change” program will make is donate $400,000 to two Chicago groups that position themselves as local service organizations aimed at helping keep children in low-income neighborhoods off the streets, according to TMZ. The recipients ...
The Georgia Tech Defense Is Full Of Clout Sharks
College football gimmicks are fun. Everyone loves Miami’s turnover chain and touchdown rings; Florida State’s turnover backpack was ... okay, and who could forget Kennesaw State’s wonderful turnover plank? Unfortunately, it is possible that Georgia Tech killed the entire sideline gimmick industry du...
Adam Schefter Doing Ads For An NFL Sponsor Is So Embarrassing
ESPN’s Adam Schefter is a reporter who reports on the NFL. That implies certain things, or at least it used to, namely that a reporter should not have a personal financial stake in the NFL, a business they ostensibly cover objectively, making more money. This seems uncontroversial to me, and for dec...
In Mild Bummer, Jeremy Lin Is Headed To China
Perfectly serviceable rotation guard and tough-luck injury casualty Jeremy Lin was deeply bummed to find this summer that NBA teams had for the most part lost interest in him as a free agent. Now, a month later, Lin has made the decision to move on from the NBA and continue his basketball career els...
ESPN Baseball Broadcast Derailed By Unbearable Argument Over Lineup Optimization
In the third inning of Wednesday night’s Cubs-Cardinals broadcast on ESPN, play-by-play guy Jon Sciambi brought up an interesting stat about the lousy season-long performance of the second-base and center-field positions for the Cubs. This line of thought led fellow commentator Eduardo Pérez to brin...
The NFL Plans To Actually Enforce The Helmet Rule This Year
Soon after the NFL rolled out its controversial new helmet rule last year—which aims to penalize lowering the head to initiate contact on avoidable hits—the league realized it needed more time to figure out how to implement it, and for players, coaches, and officials to adjust to it....
Benches Clear In Rays-Yankees Over Grown Men Arguing About Not Talking To Each Other
The benches cleared briefly in the middle of the sixth inning of Tuesday night’s Rays-Yankees tilt in New York. No one was plunked or brushed back; there were no dirty slides; no catchers were trucked at the plate. Yankees pitcher C.C. Sabathia struck out Rays outfielder Avisail Garcia on a, hmm, cr...
Today's NFL Would Have Been Perfect For Doug Flutie
It’s been 14 years since he last played professional football, but Doug Flutie is suddenly relevant again. In the run-up to the draft, there was a big feature in the Washington Post, along with a 15-minute chat on The Rich Eisen Show. When I first reached out to ask about an interview, Flutie’s agen...
NBA Set To Add Coach's Challenges To Review System Next Season
According to a memo reportedly sent Friday morning, the NBA will be experimenting with adding a coach’s challenge to its current replay review system. The trial will begin with summer league basketball next month, but the league “anticipates using the rule during the 2019-20 regular season as part o...
Barcelona And Valencia's Goalkeeper Swap Looks Shady As Hell
Yesterday, Barcelona announced that they had sold goalkeeper Jasper Cillessen to Valencia, for a fee of €35 million. Today, Valencia announced that they had sold goalkeeper Neto to Barcelona, for a fee of €26 million with €9 million in add-ons. In doing so, Barcelona and Valencia traded goalkeepers,...
Again? Seriously?
I’m tired. Of officials blowing big, important calls in the playoffs, mostly, but also of having to write blogs about them that try to say something more intelligent than well, it’s bad to get these calls wrong in such big moments, but also being an NHL official is a difficult job and even the best ...
Texas High School Referee Who Was Very Racist On A Phone Call Defends Himself As A "Jokester" Who Watches BET
The Texas Association of Sports Officials has suspended a longtime high school football referee for the 2019 season after audio surfaced of him being racist on a phone call. We’re talking “hard-R” racist....
Craig Berube Works The Refs, Because Not Much Else Is Working For The Blues
Jordan Binnington will be back in net and the Blues believe his newfound porosity was a fluke, and Oskar Sundqvist will return after serving his one-game suspension, so not only are they ready to move past their Game 3 shitkicking, but they’re out of excuses for it. Mostly. Down 2-1 in the Stanley C...
What Happened To All The Interesting Refs?
One of the nerdier things a basketball fan can do at 9 a.m. Eastern Weirdo Time is to go to the NBA website and glom onto the identities of the officials who will work whatever game interests you True, NBA ref nerddom is an exceedingly small subset of Nerdvania, but let a thousand sets of hipster gl...
Avisaíl García Had Just The Absolute Dumbest Inside-The-Park Dinger
Avisaíl García, the disorienting ceiling at the Trop, and the atrocious eyesight of Randal Grichuk all combined to give the Rays’ DH an atypical, embarrassing, inside-the-park dong during the Toronto-Tampa game on Tuesday night. In the third inning, facing Clayton Richard, García hit a high fly int...
Manchester City Face Champions League Ban For Breaking UEFA's Dumb Rules
Things are moving quickly against Manchester City. After a report earlier this week that the back-to-back Premier League champions could face a ban from the Champions League, the New York Times reports that a ruling is imminent. All of this because Manchester City, the poster boys for the current fi...