nit Page 33 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

USMNT gets to tussle with some real teams…kinda
Ah, the fresh hell of yet another international break. Club seasons are put on pause for a raft of qualifiers, be they Euro, or World Cup, that are pretty much foregone conclusions robbed of any real urgency, especially thanks to the expanded field for 2026. If not those, we get a helping of interna...

Brian Snitker was asleep at the wheel again
The symmetry is almost startling. It was three days short of being the exact date, one year later. Brian Snitker didn’t have an itchy enough trigger finger, or just fell asleep, and the Phillies teed off on a starter that shouldn’t have been on the mound. Which pivoted the division series to a 2-1 P...

Shouldn’t we be hearing more about Jim Jordan and the Ohio State wrestling team sex-abuse scandal ?
Jim Jordan wants to be Speaker of the House. ...

Buffalo really dropped the ball against the London-Jacksonville Jaguars
After putting a major league beatdown on the Miami Dolphins last week, it looked like the Buffalo Bills were taking a step toward separating themselves in a highly competitive AFC. One game after scoring 48 points against a hot Dolphins squad, the Bills couldn’t even muster up half of that in Week 5...

Cooper Kupp to make season debut for Rams alongside Puka Nacua
Los Angeles Rams All-Pro wide receiver Cooper Kupp makes his season debut in Week 5 after missing the second half of last year due to injury. Kupp’s return couldn’t come at a better time as LA hosts Philly. In his absence, a new and unlikely star in rookie WR Puka Nacua has emerged as another dynami...

Colin Kaepernick should absolutely play in the XFL
That Colin Kaepernick will never take another NFL snap should surprise no one, not after a six-year absence, an eight-figure settlement over the league’s blatant collusion to keep him off the field and especially not at his advanced age of 35, when arguably all but the luckiest, elite QBs have begun...

It’s going to be a good winter in Buffalo
Obviously, it’s never a good winter in Buffalo. And winter never stops, so I’m told. Anyway, the one thing that can make the time pass in the darkest months on the shores of Lake Erie is a hockey team worth watching. Kids, the Buffalo Sabres will very much be worth watching this season. So the resid...

Michigan State is pathetic for connection to Urban Meyer rumors
Despite the rumors, Urban Meyer isn’t going to be the next head football coach at Michigan State. Despite logic, let’s not act like Michigan State hasn’t turned itself into a place where many would welcome him with open arms. Drawing the line at Meyer after employing Larry Nassar and Mel Tucker isn’...

VAR performs its coup de moron
Whether VAR is still in its teething stages, and this is season five so it’s really debatable whether or not it should still be having growing problems, it will never be able to escape its fatal flaw. And that is it is still administered by humans. So it’s still going to be susceptible to human erro...

Comedy of Bear-rors: Justin Fields’ fourth-quarter routine has Chicago closer to the No. 1 pick
Courtesy of ill-time mistakes, Chicago remains the biggest joke in the NFL. Before kickoff, Chase Claypool was ruled inactive after complaining about his usage to the media, the last straw in an assembly line of Claypool’s missteps. Fortunately, Fields had a Cole Kmet and DJ Moore at his disposal....

First rule of team social media: Don’t s**tpost your own player
It didn’t take long for SSC Napoli to crash from the dizzying heights of their third-ever Scudetto last spring. First, manager Luciano Spalletti left the club and eventually took the Italian national team manager’s job. And then the team got off to a very wonky start this season in Serie A, collecti...

The NY Post and Phil Mushnick sink to a new low
No matter who you are, getting people to read your writing is tough. Ever since the internet was invented, beat reporters and columnists have all manner of competition for the audience’s eye. To combat the fire hose of content available to readers, journalists have employed all sorts of tactics to d...

Here are all the 40+ Home Run Seasons, by franchise, in MLB history
Immaculate Grid has been a hit with baseball stat geeks since its launch in April. While the stats puzzle has since expanded to basketball, football, and hockey, it’s still baseball that makes the game what it is. So if you need help filling out your daily grid, give these stats a look....

Black coaches must remain a priority in XFL-USFL merger
If you’re gonna do it, do it right. And, if the XFL and the USFL are on the verge of a merger, then the new league must continue the XFL’s trend of hiring and employing Black coaches....

Bobsledder Aja Evans is the latest Olympic athlete to accuse a trainer of sexual abuse
I was once discussing the Catholic Church abuse scandal with some friends. The main thrust of the conversation was this: Is there something about the Church that specifically causes priests to abuse children? Or are predators attracted to the Church because they know they can abuse there? We never c...

Boston College hit with hazing scandal
Boston College has placed its men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams on an indefinite suspension after the university’s leadership found there was rampant hazing in the program, the school announced Wednesday. ...

XFL, USFL wisely begin talks to merge leagues
Nearly everything Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has touched over the past 20 years in sports & entertainment has turned into gold. His Midas touch began in pro wrestling behind Vince McMahon and the WWF/WWE, then carried over to the big screen in Hollywood. Johnson revamped McMahon’s twice-failed XFL pr...

Is there any point in playing this Champions League?
Nope, not really! But my editors and management insist that these posts are longer than three words, so I guess I’ll have to explain. If Manchester City waltzed to last year’s trophy, only really sweating in the final for about an hour against a stubborn Inter, they very well may never get out of a ...

Manchester United are doing that thing again
Yes, we have been here before. It was the beginning of last season that Manchester United started like ass, got utterly thwacked by Brighton, manager Erik Ten Hag made them run a few more miles in training, and then it was fine for a while. It was mostly fine because Marcus Rashford turned into the ...

Here is what we kind of learned from the USMNT’s week
As we and many others stress, international friendlies are weird. Especially when everyone has to fly over from Europe for two games that don’t count for anything while trying to not get hurt. And for the USMNT, there weren’t really too many players trying to carve out a role, or a bigger role, with...