fl Page 13 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Perfect Wrestler
By March 2015, wrestler Kyle Snyder was used to winning. He had gone 179-0 against high school competition and won the world under-20 championships at just 17. Then, in 2015, his freshman year at Ohio State, Snyder lost the NCAA 197-pound* final to Iowa State senior Kyven Gadson. Immediately afterwa...
The NCAA Is Gaslighting You
In last month’s antitrust case in Oakland challenging the artificial caps on athlete compensation, the NCAA’s defense included the restatement of an imaginary economic principle that is fundamental to its existence: College athletes shouldn’t make money, the NCAA argued, because if players were paid...
I Am The Youngest Pro Shuffleboard Player In Florida
It’s 9:05 a.m. While my friends and pretty much everyone my own age are getting settled behind desks and spreadsheets and scheduling the day’s meetings, I’m surrounded by senior citizens, about to make the first shot of my pro season. It’s already 90 degrees and my bald head is pouring sweat into my...
What Can We Learn From Four Stadium Deals That Don't Suck?
Whenever professional economists are asked about stadium and arena deals, they invariably explain, for the hundredth time, that these “almost never” work out to the benefit of the public. (Look, here are a bunch saying so just a few weeks ago!) Between the price tags in the hundreds of millions of d...
Things I Lost In The Fire
My parents lost their house during the Northern California wildfires that ignited exactly a year ago. I was visiting when it happened. Mere minutes elapsed from the time a panicked sheriff’s deputy banged on our front door telling us to leave right now to the moment we drove away from my childhood h...
Fame And Fantasy In The Heavyweight Battle Of The Atlantic
A note before starting: Much of this was written before the Saturday, Sept. 22nd heavyweight title fight between Anthony Joshua and Alexander Povetkin held at Wembley Stadium in London, hence the two parts to the piece—before Wembley, and then upon arrival and afterwards. There is a lot of specula...
Are The NHL's Mini-Dynasties Dead?
Until the Capitals broke through to win their first Cup, the Penguins, Blackhawks, and Kings dominated the NHL as the most effective triumvirate since Roman times. Instead of ending with stabbings and civil war, the modern NHL version collapsed for more mundane reasons involving salary caps and agin...
Rhea Butcher's Podcast Is For Baseball's Overlooked Fans<em></em>
Before the 2014 postseason, Rhea Butcher had barely watched baseball in the 21st century. It was the 1997 World Series that did it: Butcher was 15 when the Cleveland Indians, division champions for the third consecutive year, squandered an early Game 7 lead and lost to the Marlins in extra innings. ...
All You Need Is Spite: A Very Emotional NHL Season Preview
Boys and girls and babes, we all learned so much during the 2017–2018 NHL season. For example, I learned that chaos rules the universe, sports predictions are horoscopes but less accurate, and hockey games are won by pure, defiant, you-said-I-couldn’t-do-it spite and very little else....
The Baltimore Orioles Have Been Even Worse Than They Look
In 2005, the Baltimore Orioles shocked the world with a 42-28 start, good enough to keep them in first place in the AL East into mid-summer. This was before Rafael Palmeiro, fresh off his 3000th hit, lied to Congress and tested positive for steroids; before ostensible ace Sidney Ponson was arrested ...
Can Matt Patricia Break The Belichick Curse?<em></em>
Many of the modern NFL’s legendary coaches have impressive coaching trees. Hefty branches that bore much fruit. Assistants that became successful head coaches and who then mentored younger coaches to do the same. Bill Walsh coached Dennis Green, who coached Brian Billick, who coached Jack Del Rio, w...
Pro Wrestling Is Great, And You Should Try Watching Less
The problem with entertainment options these days—TV shows, sports, books, blogs—is that there are too many of them. This especially applies to professional wrestling....
Oakland A's Fans Love Their Team, But Don't Trust Its Owners
Sixteen games into the Oakland A’s historic 20-game win streak back in 2002, Mike Davie realized how cheap team ownership truly was....
I Did Not Buy 6,500 Pairs Of Nikes To Send To The Dump, But Thousands Of Idiots Think I Did
First off, let’s get something out of the way: I did not purchase $1.3 million dollars’ worth of Nike Air VaporMaxes (White/Varsity Purple/Metallic Silver/Aqua, size 9.5) with the intent of shipping them to the Glendale city dump....
God Bless The Capitals' Party Dummies For Partying Harder Than Any Team Is Allowed To Ever Again
After 44 years without a championship, the Washington Capitals nabbed the franchise’s first Stanley Cup in June. And then they partied about it. They partied, you guys....
Darren Sproles Is Everything He Shouldn't Have Been<em></em>
The start of any given NFL season features plenty of players returning from major injuries; violence is an inescapable part of a game built on armored super-athletes ramming into each other. This year’s list of comeback hopefuls, though, feels especially lengthy, and its members especially prominent...
The Browns And Lions Share A Whole Lot More Misery Than Just 0-16
It wasn’t just thousands of Browns fans that braved single-degree temperatures in January for the “Perfect Season Parade” after the Browns went 0-16 in 2017. There were a smattering of Steelers fans who came to point and laugh—all they can do for what was once one of the NFL’s great rivalries. There...
How Maple Bats Kicked Ash And Conquered Baseball
As Barry Bonds pursued the single-season home run record in 2001, no detail went uninterrogated....
The Big Ugly Battle Over The World's Largest Rubber Duck
SANDUSKY, Ohio — There is more than one enormous rubber duck. I did not know this when I decided to travel to Sandusky to see one, but I can’t unlearn it now. Though there was once a bigger duck in Saint-Nazaire, France, the monstrosity anchored in Sandusky comes with a registered trademark: it is t...
All It Takes To Make A 49ers Game Fun Is A $12,500-A-Year Field-Level Leather Recliner<em></em><em></em>
A floor seat at a basketball game has a powerful cultural weight. It helps that it’s the best and most exciting way to watch a basketball game, but it’s appeal goes beyond that. Those seats are where celebrities and investors go to see the game and be seen watching that game—a badge of wealth and pr...