ja Page 181 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Gary Player wants you to know that Phil Mickelson is ‘being crucified’
I debated between a Lethal Weapon 2 “Diplomatic immunity” joke and a “Maybe we should stop bringing the kids around grandpa” barb to start this story about Gary Player wearing a Saudi Golf League logo during the ceremonial opening tee shots at the Masters and then his telling a reporter that Phil Mi...

Chasing the Bengals' path to glory
The avalanche started with the fifth pick in the 2021 NFL Draft. The Cincinnati Bengals selected Ja’Marr Chase from LSU, reuniting Chase with national-championship teammate and Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Joe Burrow, Cincy’s selection with the No. 1 overall pick in 2020. Those were far from t...

We forgot about Trae
Led by Trae Young, the Atlanta Hawks began this season with more buzz than the city’s best lemon pepper wings. They were a quality young League Pass team who’d matured into an Eastern Conference heavyweight overnight. The 2021 postseason served as the setting for Young’s glow-up from empty calorie s...

Have to admit, the Play-in is adding a lot of intrigue
Everyone’s favorite time of the year is finally here. We’re just days away from the NBA’s Play-in Tournament as eight teams battle for the right to get their spines pulled from them in the first round. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of the Play-in when it was first introduced. I thought it water...

Just shorten the season, Chumley
One of the headlines coming out of the NBA yesterday was Adam Silver’s lament that the league’s star players don’t actually dress for enough games during the regular season. This has been a grievance lodged by the media and fans for a while now, ever since the term “load management” entered the lexi...

Can we please stop overreacting to players removing teams from their socials?
It’s becoming routine at this point. A player is up for extension. Their team refuses to give them said extension. The player publicly airs their frustration over social media. Fans of said team go crazy and start spouting out wild theories and accusations. The two parties come to an agreement and t...

Oh no MJ, please don’t even think about trading for Russell Westbrook
MJ, please don’t do this....

The Bills have entered win-now mode this offseason
The Buffalo Bills were 13 seconds away from advancing to consecutive AFC championship games for the first time in 30 years. Then the Bills fell apart on defense, squandering the lead and eventually losing in overtime, 42-36, to the Kansas City Chiefs...

Johnny Hockey is on one
Pacific time zone hockey tends to get ignored in the same fashion as west coast baseball. It’s hard to win an MVP or another award when your games are on at 9 and 10pm, as you’re cutting into hockey writers’ drinking time. You have to put on a world-class and ear-shattering whining campaign to get s...

Man United reportedly set to hire Erik Ten Hag, which raises more questions than answers
Perhaps the ink isn’t dry, but it sure feels like current Ajax manager Erik Ten Hag is going to be leaving for Old Trafford after this season. Which is funny as all the reports of his hiring started spilling out just hours after SI made it pretty clear that the Man United board wasn’t exactly blown ...

Notre Dame keeps highlighting HBCUs on national TV — who woulda thunk it?
Sometimes, olive branches can be extended from unlikely sources. ...

The Chiefs and Bills see a third playoff matchup down the line, and they're getting ready for it now
The hard-cap struggles of the NFL. How to improve, but yet stay financially flexible. It’s a dance every team does every offseason, but it’s especially important for those with generational quarterbacks. Sure the Los Angeles Rams defeated the Cincinnati Bengals in the Super Bowl, but I wouldn’t argu...

Welcome back, baseball
I spend a lot of time here pointing out everything that’s wrong with baseball. Maybe even most of my time. And for good reason. Baseball is broken, and the latest CBA doesn’t do nearly enough to address the problems. And those who are in a position to do anything about it aren’t interested in doing ...

Fictional Hooper Bracket: Billy Hoyle is the king of the silver screen
When Billy Hoyle told Sidney Deane he’s hustled players a helluva lot better than him, I was skeptical. How many times can you show up to a pickup game and aww shucks your way into a wad of cash? Well after six rounds and thousands of votes, it seems the scheme is still humming along....

Stop laughing at the Lakers for two seconds and give the Phoenix Suns a standing ovation
For those of you who were still awake when the Los Angeles Lakers sandcastle of a 2021-22 season finally washed away, we had a good time didn’t we? The jokes have been piling up all season with this new roster that improved on none of their weaknesses from last season and also had none of their stre...

Could the Kansas Jayhawks beat the G-League Ignite?
While TV talking heads and sports scribes fixated on Coach K and UNC, it took until the second half of the national title game for most fans to notice that Kansas was in the Final Four. College basketball’s 2022 National Champion hid under the radar all season. Not only because the Jayhawks are a va...

Deadspin’s 2022 MLB predictions: The good, the bad, the frustrating
You don’t need sportswriters to tell you that the Dodgers are going to be better than the Diamondbacks this year. You already know that. At the same time, it feels wrong to go into the baseball season without looking ahead at it, without trying to gaze into a crystal ball to make some kind of picks....

Breaking down the logjam for the No. 2 seed in the East
With three games remaining for Boston, Philly, and Milwaukee, and the three teams all squared up at 49-30 for the two through four seeds, The Race Not to Finish Fourth in the East has massive implications on who plays Phoenix in the Finals, who wins the MVP, and who likely faces Toronto in round one...

Put Frank Gore in the Hall of Fame
Over the weekend, the NFL’s third all-time leading rusher Frank Gore announced his retirement after 16 seasons. From just that sentence alone, you’d probably think Gore is a surefire Hall of Famer. It shouldn’t matter that Gore only averaged more than five yards per carry once in his career (2006). ...

Pete Carroll called out owners for not hiring Black coaches — he forgot to call out himself
When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote about his frustrations with the “white moderate” when he was sitting in that Birmingham jail, he was talking about Pete Carroll....