mat Page 127 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Matt Bryant Went To His "Happy Place" Before His Game-Winning Kick
Every morning, the fine folks at Sports Radio Interviews sift through the a.m. drive-time chatter to bring you the best interviews with coaches, players, and personalities across the sports landscape. Today: The Falcons kicker is a Happy Gilmore fan....

H, Y, and Z Are Your Money Letters: How To Beat Scrabble's Flawed Points System, Using Google-Powered Math
This week the director of research at Google, a fellow named Peter Norvig, published on his blog the results of a fascinating deep-dive into the English language. If you're at all interested in letter frequency or word frequency, you owe it to yourself to at least skim Norvig's post. Essentially the...

Biggest Kid On The Court Makes Over-The-Head Buzzer-Beater
Exactly how they drew it up. This is eighth-grader Matt Demember making it rain in his Maryland church league, and he's got so much swag, his opponents get just as excited as Matt's teammates....

Who Was On The Ballots Of The Hall Of Fame Voters Refusing To Go Public?
For just the second time, the Baseball Writers' Association of America has given its voters the option of having their Hall of Fame ballots made public. Of the 569 voters who cast ballots, only 108 chose to reveal who they voted for. (Of course, many more discussed their selections in their own colu...

Who Wants To Sex J.J. Watt? Bengals-Texans, In Three Gifs
So, 23 years now, and a guaranteed extra 365 days (at least) on that 8,400 day playoff winless streak for the Bengals. Yikes! They sure do suck. Matt Schaub played just OK but still completed 29/38 passes, Arian Foster ran for 140 yards, and J.J. Watt continued to be a sort of revolutionarily good ...

Your NFL Wildcard Open Thread
Cincinnati at Houston (NBC), 4:30 p.m.: The Texans may have the superior record but they backed into the playoffs, losing three of their last four, while the Bengals haven't lost a game by more than one point since Week 9. Plus, it'd be more fun if they won, so root for them....

The 15 Most Surreal Moments From 2012's Sports-Related Next Media Animation Videos
Next Media Animation, the Taiwanese animation company that produces short cartoons recapping the news of the day, has its best muse in sports, where the lines between good and evil lend themselves to pictures of angry video game characters, and events are just cartoonish enough to spark the overact...

Inbounding From Half-Court, 0.7 Seconds Left: No Problem.
Mattoon (Ill.) High School, which counts editor emeritus Will Leitch as a notable alumnus, won its game against Rantoul yesterday off a last-second inbounds pass in a tie game. The Jared Pilson pass was so on-the-mark, Ryan Hutchinson's placement so perfect, that the Green Wave bench started to er...

Hideki Matsui To Announce Retirement, Will Have Plenty Of Time To Enjoy His Massive Porn Collection
According to multiple reports, former Yankees outfielder Hideki Matsui is set to announce his retirement from baseball. Matsui played seven seasons with the Yankees before making one-year stops with the Angels, Athletics, and Rays. He will always be remembered for collecting big hits in Game 6 of t...

Russell Wilson Is The Quarterback Darrell Bevell Always Wanted
Nineteen years ago, Darrell Bevell, a redshirt freshman transfer fresh off his Mormon mission, led Wisconsin to its first Rose Bowl win—an ugly 21-16 victory over UCLA that featured seven fumbles. Bevell's clinching touchdown came on a particularly un-balletic play. The video isn't online, but here'...

Megatron Breaks The Record And Lions Fans Aren't Sure How To Feel: Saturday Night Football, In Four GIFs
Atlanta 31, Detroit 18: The above moment of celebratory uncertainty came before Calvin Johnson broke Jerry Rice's single-season receiving yards record—it came during a Falcons timeout while the Lions were down, in fact, which meant the confusion was sort of understandable—but it's appropriate consi...

Matt Bush Chose An Extra Year In Prison Because He Can't Trust Himself To Stay Clean
Matt Bush, the first overall draft pick in 2004, never made the majors. A series of incidents and arrests derailed his career, culminating in a DUI hit-and-run this spring that left a 72-year-old man crippled....

ESPN Bent Over Backwards Not To Say "Pistol" During The New Mexico Bowl, Then Said "Shotgun" During The Idaho Potato Bowl
On Friday, ESPN senior vice president and executive producer Mark Gross sent a memo to his staff. It read in part:...

My 100 Concussions: Notes From A Terrified CTE Study Participant
Former football player and pro wrestler Chris Nowinski recently set up a massive research project with Boston University to examine the long-term effects of concussion damage on the human brain. Anyone can volunteer to have his or her brain posthumously donated to the study, and one anonymous Deadsp...

Giant Animatronic T-Rex Forces Australian PGA Championship To Relocate
Australia is a busy, unsettling place. It's not quite Fort Wayne (where else is, you know?), but there's still a lot going on there....

Chicago Man Stabs Bar Patron In The Neck, Throws His Own Shit All Over A Police Station
Having to go the bathroom at a bar is the worst. It always smells like piss and shit, everything is either soaking wet or sticky, drunk dudes always want to strike up a conversation, and sometimes crazy people jump out from the bathroom stall and stab you in the neck with a broken beer bottle. From...

Greg Hardy Tells The Falcons To Get The Fuck Off His Field, Gets Trolled By Matt Bryant
It was Week 4 when Matt Ryan told the Carolina Panthers to "get the fuck off of his field" at the conclusion of his team's dramatic victory over the lowly Panthers. Headed into this week's rematch, it became known that the Panthers were still agitated by Ryan's boasting, and were looking to get so...

Meet AJ Matthews, The 7-1 NBA Talent Playing At Farmingdale State Because No One Told Him About The SATs
Yahoo recently published a profile of AJ Matthews, Farmingdale State center and favorite for Division III player of the year. It shouldn't be surprising that he's kicking ass at Farmingdale State—he's 7-1 and athletic, a late-comer to basketball but also the recipient of a good deal of coaching sinc...

A Skeptic's Guide To The 2012 Heisman Trophy
Remember the lullaby afternoons of September, when we all figured we'd see a Heisman winner who merited the award? Maybe a Geno Smith, slinging the ball all over the yard, or even a Matt Barkley, who despite being named after Big Bird's dog had the right pedigree and weaponry (Robert Woods and Marqu...