ew Page 1981 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

All the poor guys who got slapped with the franchise tag yesterday
The franchise tag deadline was yesterday and, without languishing too much over the fact that it’s an unfair practice that is designed strictly for the benefit of the team and not for the player, let’s get into what transpired yesterday. ...

ESPN rediscovers the NHL
For fans my age, the soundtrack of hockey, when we get wistful, can at times still be Steve Levy and Darren Pang calling yet another multiple overtime game. Or Bill Pidto hosting NHL 2night. It was eons ago now, but when ESPN launched ESPN2 “The Deuce,” one of its main tenets was that it was to show...

Tokyo Olympics to be held without foreign fans
Most Japanese citizens don’t want the large international event to begin with. But now, according to the Kyodo News, the Japanese government will not allow foreign spectators to attend this summer’s Olympics and Paralympic Games. The decision to bar overseas fans, according to the report, stems from...

Pepe Le Pew should be canceled, but Space Jam misses a huge opportunity
“Now they are canceling Looney Tunes characters!”...

Nearly a third of the NBA was in Miami for Atlanta’s All-Star Weekend
Roughly 150 NBA players were in Miami during All-Star Weekend, according to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst....

50 years ago a boxing match stopped the world, now the sport could barely stop traffic — could baseball be next?
Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of “The Fight Of The Century,” the first of three Joe Frazier-Muhammad Ali fights. Even though it took place a decade before I was born, anyone can glean the importance of it by listening to just about anyone who was alive at the time talk about it or even read a f...

Did ratings for Oprah’s Meghan Markle and Prince Harry interview measure up against the NFL postseason?
For years, I felt like the only person who didn’t watch Game of Thrones. On Monday mornings in the spring and summer, I would leave my friends and social media to talk about who got killed, who got screwed, or which dragon appeared....

It’s not like the NHL to make a reasoned argument
I’m not usually so happy to be wrong as I was on Saturday night, when the NHL announced that Tom Wilson is suspended seven games for his Friday night hit on Brandon Carlo....

CONMEBOL postpones World Cup qualifiers
It’s more about travel regulations and quarantine rules than the actual spread of the virus, but the postponement of this month’s South American qualifying matches for the World Cup serves as a stark reminder of how far behind the rest of the world the United States is and how badly we continue to m...

Julius Randle is the perfect New York Knick for right now
Kristaps Porzingis was great, but he wasn’t Julius Randle....

SEE IT: Devils’ epic power play whiff showcases pivot to neutral zone crap defense
Call them the New Jersey Evils, because they’ve abandoned any concept of “D.”...

Let's make some NFL free agency predictions
Someone in the NFL league office apparently doesn’t understand that March 17 is St. Patrick’s Day, because they decided to make that the day that free agency begins this year. Thinking about it a little more though, nothing goes together quite like Guinness and top-tier talent changing teams and cau...

Remembering Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America and the scene that made ‘In Da Face’ a thing
Frustrated by many erroneous foul calls on his star player Rik Smits, Dave Magarity found himself pacing up and down the sidelines at Madison Square Garden. It was another game, one of many for the Marist head coach. At the time, there was nothing remarkable about it. But what Magarity didn’t know w...

'Mentor,' your ass — report reveals Les Miles was a well-paid, predatory pig at LSU
Breaking news: Creepy entitled white guy in position of power does creepy things. I feel like I’ve written this story a few times already. Les Miles, the former head football coach at LSU, apparently has quite the list of very inappropriate behavior with female students at LSU, and the athletic depa...

Dennis Smith Jr. is quietly reviving his career in Detroit
Let’s first acknowledge that Dennis Smith Jr. is not all the way back yet. He’s not even shooting 40 percent from the field this season. But even if he’s not back to where he was as a top-10 prospect coming from the 2017 NBA Draft Class, he’s far above where he stood toward the latter half of his Ne...

We don’t need conference tournaments this year
What exactly are we doing here?...

Yankee skipper Aaron Boone takes immediate medical leave to receive pacemaker
Manager Aaron Boone is taking an immediate medical leave of absence to receive a pacemaker, the Yankees announced today. The manager is expected to receive surgery this afternoon at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa....

Joey Ryan might be the worst person in the world
That’s a highly contested honor these days, so I acknowledge the enormity of the statement. Still, you have to recognize when someone is putting in the effort to take that mantle, as disturbing as it may be....

Candace Parker’s basketball lesson confirms Shaq is a ‘casual’
WNBA superstar Candace Parker dropped knowledge on Shaq last night during their show and had the Big Fella looking real out the loop on national television. ...

NBA is granting two-way players postseason-eligibility, per report, which could help some teams
Suddenly, depth may become even more important in this year’s playoffs. ...