ick Page 249 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Congrats, Browns, you weren’t inept <em>and</em> unethical
Congratulations are in order for Jimmy Haslam and the Cleveland Browns. The NFL’s independent investigation into former head coach Hue Jackson’s claims that the team paid him to lose games found “no evidence” to substantiate those allegations, proving that the team did not intentionally lose games b...

Didn’t take long for the NHL Department of Player Safety to sour the playoffs
This train is never late. The NHL had a good night last night. The playoffs kicked off, and it’s hard to find a bad matchup anywhere (though Flames-Stars and Avs-Predators should be nothing more than ritual killings). And though there were only two competitive games of the four last night (the Canes...

Message to Jazz: Trade Donovan Mitchell to the Knicks... and other fire-sale moves
Before the Utah Jazz even began their first-round playoff series against the Dallas Mavericks, there were significant questions about their chemistry, viability as a winner, and ceiling. It was no secret that their two superstars, Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert, don’t care for one another. The ten...

When it comes to PED coverage, MLB faces a double standard
The news that yet another NFL player was both popped and suspended for using banned performance enhancing drugs wasn’t a shock....

FOX puts its college football crew in a tough spot by potentially bringing Urban Meyer back
When Urban Meyer first got hired to talk about football on TV for FOX, it was after he left Ohio State due to a scandal that he could have avoided if he weren’t such a trash human being. And since history loves to repeat itself, it looks like Urban Meyer is about to get hired to talk about football ...

Hot tamper?
There’s a misconception that USC has spent the first few months of the Lincoln Riley era dragging a golden bus across the country and purchasing college football stars at every stop. As of May 2, the Trojans rank second in 247 Sports’ Transfer Team Rankings, but most of those student-athletes are ea...

Jesse Marsch and Leeds might be in serious trouble
It’s hard to judge just how important it is that an American manager finally “makes it” in Europe. It would certainly be cool, but for what it means for men’s American soccer overall trails by miles to how players make it in the world’s best leagues. The US needs a load of players making a fist of i...

Before the playoffs start, we should take a sec to marvel at what the Blackhawks accomplished
No, that’s not being such a shitfuck organization that they’ve basically gotten themselves erased from NHL history or PR. Watch any of these ads for the Stanley Cup playoffs, and you won’t see one highlight or shot of a Hawk. Even though they won the Cup three times, or were the most popular team fo...

Let's jump the gun on the 2023 QB draft class
The talent pendulum swings between NFL Drafts at a dizzying rate. The 2022 NFL Draft was a mirage in the desert for teams thirsty for a franchise quarterback. Aside from Kenny Pickett and his leprechaun hands, teams distanced themselves from the top signal-callers, who were mocked as first-rounders ...

David Griffin is Executive of the Year
Before Feb. 8, New Orleans Pelicans executive Vice President of Basketball Operations David Griffin was getting dragged for the team’s sorry state he oversaw. The Pelicans were 21 and 32, headed toward another disastrous season until that point. At the same time, Zion Williamson avoided the team at ...

You should root for the Florida Panthers
I know there’s a lot of obstacles. First off, hockey is probably the most provincial sport we have, and once everyone’s team is out, those fans tend to not give a fuck about whatever happens next. We’ve spent so much time coming up with reasons to hate everyone else it’s impossible to change gears. ...

There were some outstanding performances in the first round of the NBA Playoffs, and those players deserve some recognition
The playoffs are not about individual accomplishments. This is the time where players make every single sacrifice from points to minutes without complaint — at least they’re supposed to. That’s why there aren’t any playoff awards except for Finals MVP and, of course, the championship....

Quarterbacks and Nakobe Dean fall in the NFL Draft. Also: Draft Matt Araiza, you cowards!
Well, the second round passed without a QB in sight, making this draft just the third in the past 30 years to only see one quarterback selected in the first two rounds. And perhaps even more surprisingly, Cincinnati’s Desmond Ridder went ahead of projected favorite Malik Willis, who the Seahawks pas...

2022 NFL Draft Day 2: Who are the best players available?
Round 1 is done, and it came with drama, surprise picks (you don’t see a Chattanooga guy in the first round to the Patriots every day), and some big names left on the board for Day 2. Before the second and third rounds kick off tonight at 7 p.m. EST, we’re looking at some of the best players left on...

NFL Draft Day provides a welcome rebuke to the NBA’s player empowerment era
It’s a widely known fact that Kyrie Irving is delusional. He’s a man of the people while walking among them unvaccinated. He thinks the Earth is flat, and has the NBA figured out even though he’s essentially a losing player without LeBron James. However, when he said he was going to keep “managing” ...

If Mark Davis ‘believes’ in Colin Kaepernick, why hasn’t he signed him?
Don’t talk about it. Be about it....

2022 NFL Draft: A few thoughts on each pick in the first round
The first 10 picks of the NFL Draft are the Oscars in reverse. The biggest honorees are rewarded first. Fans show up and shout insults at the host and bone-rattling contact with Roger Goodell is encouraged....

Gotta love the fashion at the NFL Draft
The NFL Draft, one of only two days on the NFL calendar that provides good endorphins for every single NFL fan. The other is when Scott Hanson returns to NFL Red Zone Week 1 to say for the first time nine months, “seven hours of uninterrupted football.” At both moments, there is no concrete knowledg...

Is there any real relationship between NFL Combine performance and long-term success?
Every year around this time, football fans get bombarded with numbers, scores, and facts about a player’s athleticism based on their combine drills. “This guy ran a sub 4.6 40!” “Did you see so and so’s vertical?” “Joey Donuts over there has enormous hands!” Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Too often t...

Laremy Tunsil is a visionary, turning public shame into NFT gold
One of the unfortunate results of new technology is that a person’s worst moments live on forever on video. Getting beat up used to only live in the memories of the people who witnessed it, but with camera phones, the entire world can now watch someone get clocked on demand. ...