mat Page 42 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The stars come out in the NHL
Hockey followers love to taut that not only is hockey the ultimate team game — everyone gets a shift after all — but that the playoffs highlight this. It’s somewhat true, though it’s usually a top-end player or goalie taking home the Conn Smythe as the playoff’s most valuable player when all is said...
Can we get a more bingeable NBA Playoffs, please?
As we near the halfway point of the NBA Playoffs, it’s a good time to take inventory of what’s working, and what’s driving viewers to dive for the mute button any time they hear Lizzo’s “Now here go!” at the top of that commercial for cruise ships. While I could do an entire post about how I’d rathe...
COVID-19 is still the biggest X-factor of the NBA playoffs
The fat lady may be singing, but the coronavirus and all of its variants are still dancing like the party just started....
It isn’t Barry Trotz, it’s Lou Lamoriello
There’s no question that Barry Trotz has a shelf life with any team he coaches. His high-intensity defensive style is never going to be something players are going to want to do year-after-year, especially now when more and more teams are crashing in goals left and right. He was in Nashville forever...
It comes down to minute levels of control
The Premier League title chase took a massive turn this weekend. Liverpool dropped points at home to Tottenham, drawing 1-1 on Saturday afternoon. Buoyed by watching that, and in the wake of trying to recover from their Champions League collapse, Manchester City rubbed Newcastle’s ass in the moonshi...
The Dallas Stars, the piss in the cereal
The NHL playoffs haven’t had the most amount of drama so far. There’s only been two overtime games in the eight series combined, and not too many more that have been all that close or in doubt in the closing minutes of the third period. Some scores have been blown up by multiple empty-net goals, but...
The Falcons played with Matty Ice and got burned
Matt Ryan is a Falcons’ legend. He’s the franchise’s all-time leader in passing yards (by more than double the next closest), passing touchdowns (by more than double the next closest), and Approximate Value. He also led the team to one of their only two Super Bowl appearances and won the franchise’s...
How every team will lose in the 2022 NHL playoffs
As the chase to the Stanley Cup begins, the Eastern and Western Conferences have completely different outlooks. Colorado or Calgary look the part to be the Western Conference champions, and I’m not sure there’s anything the rest of the field of six can do about it. The Eastern Conference is as wide ...
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 ...
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” ...
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...
A’s President Dave Kaval seems a little bitter about attendance
It’s no secret that the Oakland A’s are struggling with attendance. They’ve been struggling in that department for years. 2022 is a whole different monster for the A’s, though. After two series on the road to open the season, the A’s came back home to a modest crowd of 17,503. That number dropped dr...
If only these protestors at Minnesota Timberwolves games cared as much about Philando Castile and George Floyd as they do chickens
In Minnesota, chicken lives matter more than Black ones....
Dennis Quaid as Stan Kroenke will haunt your dreams
The annoying after effect of the Los Angeles Rams winning the Super Bowl is we have to pretend that everything they do is cute or cool. Matthew Stafford’s appearance in an AT&T commercial was the first ad I can remember seeing him in, and now I have to laugh at him winking at the camera until the NB...
Vince McMahon was just waiting for the dust to clear
It is hard to miss that Monday Night Raw has been built around, in large part, Riddle and Austin Theory of late. Riddle is one half of the wildly popular RK Bro tag team champs with legend Randy Orton, and appears to be on his way to headlining the company’s next PPV. You might wonder why he isn’t “...
Maybe Jack Eichel just isn’t that guy
If you’re trying to blow your own face off and fall down a sewer for comedic effect instead of securing a playoff spot, you’d have to give the Vegas Golden Knights an Emmy for their performance last night. Needing just about every point they can get to pass the Dallas Stars for the last wildcard spo...
The Mocking 2022 NFL Draft: Which realistic picks would anger their fans the most?
If you’ve followed this NFL Draft closely, you know that consensus isn’t exactly a thing. There’s no quarterback prospect worth lusting over, and even if that won’t stop teams from reaching on one, we won’t have a storyline until Chicago actually drafts Mitch Trubisky with the No. 2 overall pick....
2022 NFL Draft: Here are the worst fits for each of the big-name quarterbacks
We’re exactly six days away from the NFL draft, and yet we still aren’t sure what the first round is going to look like. Perhaps Deebo Samuel, A.J. Brown, and/or Terry McLaurin are traded in the next few days and shake up the first round. Maybe the Panthers make a move for Baker Mayfield. And I don’...