off Page 98 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

It’s time to admit that Jim Fraudbaugh isn’t the answer
Michigan football fans learned two things about their storied program on Saturday....

NFL Week 8 Takeaways: The NFL had a scary movie in Week 8, <em>The Day of the Backup QB</em>, staring Mike White, Trevor Siemian, and Cooper Rush
For the average NFL viewer, the true horror didn’t arrive on Halloween, it arrived in Week 7 with six teams on a bye week. Not only were there less games, but the ones that were played were much less entertaining than a Saw movie marathon....

The NBA is walking a fine line with new foul rules, but Draymond is into it
The NBA finally listened to the outcry and decided to turn back the clock on the game and make things more balanced where foul calls are concerned. The league is walking a fine line and must be careful not to reel the game back too far. Some of the more prolific scorers in the league have already be...

Welcome to hell, NHL! Your stay is long overdue
The NHL is not in a good place, and that’s good. For too long have victims of high-ranking members in NHL front offices gone unseen and unheard....

NFL Week 8: Hear me out… The winless Lions are not terrible
The Detroit Lions are the last remaining winless team in the NFL. Coincidentally, the Detroit Pistons are the last winless team remaining in the NBA, but that’s irrelevant right now. The fact is that, despite the Lions record starting with a zero, they’re one of the best terrible teams we’ve seen in...

NBA’s habitual foul seekers having a hard time finding fouls
If the world ended today (because that’s the only way the NBA season would end today, and I hate cliches, but this one is useful in this case), the NBA would finish with the fewest free throw attempts per game in the history of the league. Even though we’re only five games into the season and player...

Somehow the 'BuT-tHe-AmATeUR-MoDeL!' NCAA survived the beginning of NIL
We’re approaching the four-month mark since the NCAA officially approved name, image, and likeness rights for student-athletes and, somehow, the apocalypse has not come, the collegiate model has not collapsed, and Dabo Swinney is still coaching (to some extent, at least). As athletes, schools, spons...

In failing to properly protect John Doe’s identity, Chicago has allowed him to be victimized once more
A paltry $2 million fine for the franchise, less severe than the New Jersey Devils’ penalty for salary cap circumvention. Stan Bowman allowed to resign as general manager, rather than getting fired, with good odds that when hockey’s old boys network cranks up again, he’ll be a consultant or an assis...

The Blackhawks are forced to face their reckoning, 11 years too late
The details are always worse than you can imagine, even if the overall arc of the story is exactly what we all expected. And so it proved as the Chicago Blackhawks released the findings of their internal investigation into how the organization handled accusations of sexual assault and harrassment by...

I dare you to ask Mike Tomlin about the USC job
On Monday, former USC quarterback Carson Palmer appeared on the Dan Patrick Show. At the end of the interview, Patrick threw in a question about Palmer’s role in USC’s coaching search and it turned into the highlight of the interview. He said that USC is looking at several coaches, and mentioned a n...

Burrow, Bengals bash Baltimore, Chiefs drop stink bomb on Titans, and Colts go 2021 NBA Playoffs on 49ers
Did you know yesterday was National Tight Ends Day? Of course you did, because no one shut up about it...

Week 7 NFL Powerless Rankings: The Chiefs keep falling, the Jets are real bad
We’re about halfway through the 2021 NFL season, and at this point, we can pretty much separate the serious contenders from the pretenders....

Jared Goff has sweet-n-sour revenge on his mind heading back to Los Angeles
Anytime professional athletes are ushered out of town in favor of another player, the first meeting against their old team tends to bring out the best in the banished player. So, when Jared Goff and the Detroit Lions play the Rams in Los Angeles Sunday afternoon, you know Goff will be hell-bent on p...

Week 7 NFL Betting Primer: Best Over/Under, Spread, Teaser, and Prop Bets
It was only inevitable to endure our first below-.500 week of the campaign. The key is to put that behind us and move on....

<i>Thursday Night Football: </i>Broncos need to show they can be better than mediocre
The Browns and the Broncos play tonight in Ohio in what might be one of the most mediocre Thursday night matchups that we’ll see all season....

Can we make a ‘Habs-not’ joke real quick?
It was no secret that this season was going to be tougher for the Montreal Canadiens. They had to sneak into the playoffs last year when all they had to do was beat out the rest of the trash Canadian teams, and then went on a run because Carey Price was able to channel 2014 for a few weeks. ...

The Bills went for the win on Monday night, and don’t you dare judge them because it didn’t work out
The old saying, “playing not to lose, instead of playing to win,” was used in some of the most hypocritical ways in the past. It was used in football to shame teams that jump in the prevent defense too early, or run the ball three consecutive plays when leading at the end of a game to try and run ou...

Bret Bielema offers us a crash course in 'How to Lose your Locker Room' 101
Most people will tell you that one of the keys to any good relationship is honesty. Honesty builds trust. Trust builds connection. Connection builds loyalty. When it comes to being a football coach though, maybe honesty isn’t the route you should always take. ...

Did we learn anything from Friday night’s TV wrestling war?
While it’s been fun to project the battle between AEW and WWE as a TV war, the reality has been that they’ve really been separate. Sure, AEW has vacuumed up a lot of talent that WWE left out in the alley when it was perfectly serviceable or better (is this just a Chicago thing? Every one of us had a...

Who will succeed Bill Belichick/Logan Roy?
“Succession” is back, and everyone is amped to glorify rich assholes again. The fervor for its highly anticipated return is usually reserved for things like the McRib, mask-free vacations (still waiting on this one), the “Spider-Man: No Way Home” trailer or, as this post would have it, the NFL seaso...