cia Page 183 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Matt Patricia Is Always Late
Bill Belichick’s gnarled, stunted coaching tree—a coaching krummholz, really—ultimately reflects well on Belichick. He’s not, apparently, succeeding solely by surrounding himself with hypertalented assistants, as we’re seeing every few years when one of those assistants gets a head coaching gig and ...

Dwayne Harris Is A Special-Teams Genius
In the NFL, if a player on the punting team touches the ball first before it lands in the end zone, a player on the return team can scoop it up and advance it without worrying about a fumble; the turnover wouldn’t count against them. Raiders return man Dwayne Harris is quite familiar with this rule,...

NBA Officials Ruined Two Great Posters With Two Soft Techs
Jaylen Brown and Lauri Markkanen each had an incredible posterizing dunk in their games on Friday night. Each player looked at their respective victims and gave a slight flex in victory over their athletic accomplishment. Shortly after, each player was assessed a technical foul for their “unsportsma...

The Real Star Of Mike Piazza's Doomed Foray Into Italian Soccer Is His Wife
Over at The Athletic, author Robert Andrew Powell wrote an entertaining and comprehensive story about Mike Piazza’s disastrous two-year tenure as owner of third-tier Italian soccer team Reggio Emilia, and it has everything: Piazza’s obvious desire to recapture the thrill of his playing days (Piazza ...

It Must Suck So Hard To Be A Manchester United Fan
Try, if only for a moment, to go inside the mind of a Manchester United fan....

Officials At Army-Navy Needed 8 Minutes To Review A 2-Yard Run
The Army Black Knights held a 10-0 lead against their bitter rivals, the Navy Midshipmen, heading into the fourth quarter of the 119th game between the two academies. Faced with a fourth-and-two situation, and having used the break between quarters to mull things over, Army coach Jeff Monken elected...

NFL Puts Referee Who Allegedly Called Bills DE Jerry Hughes A "Bitch" On Administrative Leave
In keeping with the recent trend of only reviewing problems that that have been caught on video, the league has decided to place referee Roy Ellison on administrative leave while reviewing an incident between the official and Bills defensive end Jerry Hughes, according to Ian Rapoport....

Bears Take Giants To Overtime With Buzzer-Beating "Philly Special"
It’s been nearly eight months since the Eagles pulled off their brilliant trick play against the Patriots in last year’s Super Bowl, and teams are still having a hard time seeing it coming. Having used all of their timeouts, the Bears had just one more opportunity—and one more yard—to send their gam...

Spectacular Touchdown Grab Rescued From Nonexistence By NFL's Updated Catch Rule
An extremely cool touchdown catch survived the crucible of rulebook scrutinization and was hauled back from the brink of nonexistence in this afternoon’s surprising Browns beatdown of the Bengals. Baker Mayfield, who is torching the Bengals defense, lobbed a fade to Nick Chubb, operating against sin...

Lawsuit Accuses Bad Football Dad Of Dressing Like Referee At Son's Playoff Game And Bragging Online About Influencing The Outcome
We’ve got controversy in the Illinois High School Association Class 7A football playoffs, folks. Two controversies, in fact. One is a fairly mundane case of disorganization in high school football. The other involves costuming and bad parenting and a lawsuit, and a father boasting on social media ab...

This Shit Is Corny
You may have seen a quote from Giants star receiver Odell Beckham Jr. going around this morning, about the New York Giants’ chances of winning the rest of their games and making the playoffs at 9-7. “Six games left, it’s really only crazy until you do it,” Beckham told reporters, as if he were in a ...

Matt Patricia Made The Lions Practice In The Snow For No Good Reason
The Bill Belichick coaching tree has produced a bounty of dullards and faux hardmen, and it’s beginning to look like former Patriots defensive coordinator and first-year Lions head coach Matt Patricia is the juiciest offering yet....

Malcolm Gladwell Goes On Bill Simmons's Podcast, Delivers Sweaty Monologue On Nigerian Basketball Superiority
Malcolm Gladwell appeared on Bill Simmons’s podcast today to advance the claim that Nigerians would be the best possible basketball team composed of members of any one race. He began by arguing that being Nigerian depended on the player’s parents’ country of origin, and then kept building from there...

Lions Loss Leaves Kelly Stafford Defending Her Husband And Matt Patricia Struggling For Answers
The Detroit Lions are not the worst team in the NFL. Their 3-5 record has them out of the playoff picture but also out of the league’s subbasement. Their point differential, while not very good at -30, is a mere fifth-worst in the NFC, and it’s far more respectable than Buffalo’s -145 or Oakland’s -...

Coach Who Always Looks Like A Pile Of Dirty Laundry Scolds Reporter For Slouching
Lions head coach Matt Patricia got testy with a reporter in today’s presser after being asked a question about how trading Golden Tate made the franchise better. The inquiry apparently didn’t bug him so much as the posture of the person asking it....

The NFL Actually Fired An Official
Outside of the confusion about roughing-the-passer calls (which falls as much on the diktat from New York as on those tasked with enforcing it), it feels like NFL officiating has generally been pretty good this year—that is to say, it’s been largely unnoticeable. Which made this blatantly missed fal...

NBA Admits Refs Were Suckered By Joel Embiid's Theatrics
Joel Embiid got Andre Drummond ejected during the final minute of regulation in Tuesday night’s eventual overtime Pistons win, by throwing himself on the floor like a big old goof after incidental contact with Drummond’s hand. The two behemoths have spent the hours since chirping at each other throu...

Michigan State's First Score Comes From "Philly Special"-Type Play
Michigan State showed a national audience on Saturday that their in-state rivals, Michigan, were doing something else the Sunday of this year’s Super Bowl. On a 2nd-and-goal situation on the four-yard line, the Spartans ran their version of the famous “Philly Special” trick play to put up their firs...

Orlando Arcia Is Hilarious
It was amusing when Brewers shortstop Orlando Arcia, one of the very worst regular-season hitters in the league and a guy Milwaukee sent to the minors multiple times in 2018, guided them to a Game 163 victory over the Cubs with four hits. What he’s done since then is downright hysterical....

Report: Untrained Pac-12 Exec Was Allowed To Reverse Controversial Targeting Penalty
According to internal documents obtained by Yahoo Sports’ Pete Thamel, a Pac-12 executive who is not a trained official put his thumb on the scale and personally overruled what should have been a targeting penalty. On the final play of the third quarter of Washington State’s Sep. 21 loss to USC, WSU...