eck Page 23 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Demaryius Thomas’ CTE case a stark reminder that all football players, regardless of position, are at risk
No one is shielded from CTE exposure once they first put on the pads and a football helmet....

Get to the net, Taylor Fritz!
American tennis, on the men’s side, has been a desolate wasteland for over 20 years now, pretty much. Since Andy Roddick took the U.S. Open in 2003 and then spent the rest of his career getting clubbed by Roger Federer in the biggest matches of his career, no Yank has taken a major. No Yank has even...

Chet Holmgren and NBA Summer League overreactions
Here’s a story about how boatloads of fans and media members annually exaggerate offseason performances as if they’re indicators of what basketball players will and won’t be for the duration of their careers. We’ve reached that moment now as the No. 2 overall pick in last month’s draft had a good ga...

Where will Kevin Durant go?
Just when you thought the 2022 free agency period was going to be an Ambien pill, the Brooklyn Nets soap opera returned to inject an adrenaline needle to the vein....

No one ever gets the ending they want
It’s hard to imagine that’s how Serena Williams would end her career. There’s always the U.S. Open, where she won her first Grand Slam, where she’s rightly worshiped, where some of her biggest wins have come. And yet, it’s hard to see how the U.S. Open will go much better than Wimbledon, where she l...

No WR has ever won league MVP...until 2022, that is
The NFL’s MVP Award has been around since 1957. In that time, fullbacks have won the award four times. Two defensive players have been given the honor, and even a kicker has taken home the hardware. Zero pass catchers have won the award though, and for the most part, none have gotten particularly cl...

LGBTQ+ representation in women’s athletics is more than just something men’s sports can aspire to
So much inclusion in sports can be attributed to Title IX. The passing of that law gave women inroads into sports, and they have used those routes to bring added representation of not only women but also women who identify as LGBTQ+. From Megan Rapinoe and Abby Wambach in soccer to Diana Taurasi, Su...

A Father’s Day gift that’s better than a few sleeves of Pro V1s
Finding a Father’s Day gift is difficult, especially when you have a dad like mine who keeps every tool and gadget — outside of that marble-headed Coors putter he broke that was a real life Billy Baroo and the only club of his I coveted — in pristine condition. If there’s an oil or a treatment for i...

Make it a best of 13
Usually, especially in a Stanley Cup Final, you need at least a few games before the level of play truly takes off. Coaches and teams want to try different things, chase their matchups, or keep things tight as they can to preserve already exhausted players until there is absolutely no choice. No one...

Cody Rhodes will get your attention, even if it kills him
It doesn’t feel right coming out of my lips, or out of my fingers as this case may be, but WWE ran a pretty enjoyable PPV Premium Live Event last night with Hell In A Cell. It didn’t hurt them to start it off with a 20+ minute, three-way banger between Asuka, Bianca Belair, and Becky Lynch, who are ...

The Steelers’ lack of spending on offense is...worrisome
Heading into 2022, there are 14 teams whose biggest cap hit on offense is their quarterback. There are seven teams whose biggest cap hit on offense is an offensive lineman. Six teams are spending the most on a wide receiver. Three on a tight end (JAX, MIA, NE) and one on a running back (CIN). That m...

Gregg Popovich’s coaching tree is monopolizing the NBA Finals
Gregg Popovich is the winningest head coach in NBA history with 1,344 victories. Along with having the most wins for any coach in league history, we’re beginning to see another part of Popovich’s legacy take shape. The four head coaches involved in the last two NBA Finals have a tie to coach Pop, ha...

Upcoming sale of the Trail Blazers could partially atone for team not hiring Becky Hammon
If the recent sale of Chelsea FC taught us anything, it’s that sports franchises are as valuable as ever. The English Premier League club sold for $5 billion, and there was no shortage of suitors. That should make Portland Trail Blazers’ fans sleep better in the coming months as a sale of the team i...

The Nuggets are Kroenke’s side piece, but still, a little more effort could go a long way
The Denver Nuggets are an NBA executive factory. Some of the best front-office talent in sports has come through that organization, and hopefully that’s because they have a development system like the San Antonio Spurs, because they continue to lose talent. On Monday the Minnesota Timberwolves hired...

Sasha Banks thinks Ronda Rousey sucks, too
The fallout from Sasha Banks and Naomi walking out of WWE Raw continued over the weekend. With this drip-fed style of news, the overall feeling is still that there’s something much bigger floating beneath the surface and has been there a while, and it may be some time, if ever, that we get to the re...

WWE works its way into shooting itself in the foot
WWE just made things worse with Sasha Banks and Naomi. Much worse. What were the options considered by Vince McMahon and discarded? I can’t think of how Friday’s actions on Smackdown! make things any more amicable after two of the company’s standout performers walked out, due to bad creative plans, ...

No, Sasha Banks wouldn’t see AEW as a better opportunity
We’ve all done it the past couple days. Even though it’s pretty much impossible, we’ve all dreamed of WWE executives losing their minds, or Sasha Banks finding some loophole in her contract, and somehow instantly getting out of it. And then at Double Or Nothing, Thunder Rosa successfully defends her...

No more excuses: 2022 needs to be Tua time in Miami
Year Three will be a make-or-break year in Miami for Tua Tagovailoa. While the former Alabama QB has been decent for the Dolphins, he’s yet to lead them to the postseason. There’s absolutely no reason that shouldn’t change in 2022 with how the team has been restructured to focus more on the offensiv...

Messi to MLS could be a reality
For most of his career, it was impossible to picture Lionel Messi in any other jersey than the blue and maroon of Barcelona. Nine months into his stay with Paris Saint-Germain, transfer talk for one of the best to ever lace up a pair of boots is surfacing once more, with a report coming out on Tuesd...

It’s time for the yearly symposium on whether this is finally it for the Penguins
This is yet another distasteful side effect of the NHL’s salary cap. Fans and observers of a certain team, especially a successful one, have to start judging just how much sand is left in the hourglass. They have to weigh the age of the best players, salaries of those players, when contracts run out...