draft Page 28 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Integrity is a funny word
The first rule for any professional sports athlete is that you can’t bet on the games. Technically it’s called Rule 21 and you can find it hanging in every Big League clubhouse. Pete Rose would walk past it every day for decades as a player and manager, paying it no mind, so his lifetime ban is the ...

The biggest NFL Combine busts
The NFL Scouting Combine starts this week, and top prospects from colleges throughout the country will travel to Indianapolis to perform a series of physical challenges and medical evaluations that may determine their future in the NFL....

The raging debate over the size of Kenny Pickett’s hands
Sure, the 2022 QB class isn’t the best we’ve ever seen. There’s not a Trevor Lawrence to fight over or a Joe Burrow to trade picks for. But is it really so bad that we have to continue to manufacture drama over poor Kenny Pickett’s hand size?...

NBA Power Tankings: Who's No. 1 (No. 30)?
Oh goodie, misery. The last portion of the NBA season kicked off Thursday, and that means Cancun is in sight for at least 10 franchises. With their seasons already in the blender, they might as well add ice, Cointreau, Casamigos, agave, and an FT of lime juice before kicking back in the training poo...

Paxton Lynch is rearing his ugly head again
The United States Football League held Day 1 of its inaugural player draft last night. With the league opting to keep its available player pool a mystery until draft day, it was kind of exciting to finally get to see which formerly big names in the NFL and college football we’d see take the field fo...

Threat of boycott made NFL ditch its plans for a ‘bubble’ at the combine quickly
The boycott lasted less than 24 hours before the NFL walked back their restrictions....

Super Bowl week in Los Angeles: The slow seduction of a consumerist hellscape
It started in what looks like an airplane hangar in the bowels of the Los Angeles Convention Center. There are tables, desks, some lonely coolers, and a section of booths off to the right. That’s where the media picks up their credentials for Super Bowl week. It’s a bit more of a process than norma...

Super Bowl Ads Roundup: More cameo than commercial
It feels like tweens put more effort into their TikToks than ad agencies put man hours into Super Bowl ads. Feature a celebrity endorsement — or six — into a commercial and we’re good, right? Don Draper called Peggy Olsen lazy for pitching a Joe Namath cameo in the ’60s, and here we are, 60 years la...

Enough of the Super Teams, it’s all Killer Bs
NFL America should root for the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday....

Prop bet season is here: Wacky Super Bowl wagers for you to lose some money
As legal gambling spreads further across the country, the Super Bowl is bigger than ever for betting, and of course that doesn’t just mean betting on whether the Rams cover the 4-point spread....

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(...

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...

Baseball season won’t start on time, and it’ll be mostly ruined when it does
It flew under the radar, which should be something the owners should notice, but MLB actually did make a proposal to the MLBPA yesterday, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan and Jesse Rogers. It was their first negotiation about the core issues of this lockout now six weeks in, which shows you just how ...

The NFL’s latest naked cash grab: Selling playoff ticket NFTs
NFTs are the latest craze in the world of crypto. These digital pieces of artwork use blockchain technology to help everyday people like you and I invest in an online setting. Ever since NFTs became a big thing, several athletes, like Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes and Rob Gronkowski, and a host of othe...

Week 18 Takeaways: This one day in the NFL in which every second truly mattered
That’s all folks. The sad moment of the year when Scott Hanson signs off and the final RedZone touchdown montage plays. You’re momentarily hypnotized by the best catches, throws, and runs of the day, and then one moment the Miami Dolphins are in a dogpile in the end zone, and the next Nicki Minaj’s ...

Help wanted: Bullpen catcher
Being a Major League catcher is tough. Not only do you have to squat in an uncomfortable position for over an hour everyday for six months while wearing big, heavy pads (the tools of ignorance) in the middle of summer, but you also need to be knowledgeable of your pitching staff and opponents so as ...

Changes are coming to the NFL scouting combine that are long overdue
Today is one of those days in which the NFL has made a good decision. It doesn’t happen often. The decision to add an extra game to the schedule in a sport that can cause brain damage, during a world-wide pandemic, might be a short term financial win, but it’s making the product worse and is ethical...

Aaaand we’re back to the start
This is my last Mourning After of 2021, and in some ways it feels like the first. Not that we’ve been running in place, so much as we sprinted around the track and ended up back where we started. Which is how Jerry Seinfeld described horse racing, I guess. “We were just here! What was the rush?!”...

The first surprise of the NIL era has arrived, and it’s Deion Sanders poaching No. 1 football recruit Travis Hunter
Deion Sanders has caused a shift of tectonic plates in the college football world. Since March 2020, Travis Hunter, the No. 1 overall football recruit in America, has been committed to Florida State. Hunter reiterated his commitment to the university in both September and October. The Tampa Times wr...