open Page 5 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
This about sums up the Penguins season
Hockey can be infuriating. In no other sport can you do mostly everything right, but a little chinks in the armor can have an outsized effect if they’re spaced out correctly. Go 0-fer on the power play, or don’t get a save at the right time, or give up the wrong odd-man rush in the gimmick of overti...
In the headlines: History for Michigan sports; Jim Dolan sex assault case; Insanity at Australian Open
Sports are about numbers, and that isn’t just because scores are kept. A player’s height and weight matter, they’re ages, too. But the best moments are when things occur that haven’t happened in a long time, as sports are also a marker of time. We just witnessed the best seven days that a place with...
This year’s Australian Open is drunk
The Australian Open is already kind of geared for weirdos, at least on these shores, given that you have to sacrifice sleep and any usefulness the next day to enjoy it. But this year’s edition has been off the rails, making it even more worth it for those of us who are prepared to throw ourselves of...
A Draper not named Don threw up in a trash can on Monday
For fans of the iconic series Mad Men, seeing a person named Draper throwing up isn’t that much of a surprise. But unlike his alcoholic TV namesake, British tennis player Jack Draper didn’t have a drop of booze in him on Monday. ...
In honor of Martin Luther King Day, here are some of the best HBCU athletes to make it in the pros
We’ve already highlighted some of the famous Black celebrities who are HBCU alumni, but what about the athletes?...
Naomi Osaka has returned to tennis, but will tennis treat her right this time?
Naomi Osaka is a lot of things. She’s a woman. She’s a mom. She’s great at her job. She’s Black. She’s Asian. And when you’re more than what simple people can comprehend, they usually don’t know how to treat you. Here’s to tennis learning from their mistakes when it comes to Osaka — but we shouldn’t...
It’s fun to watch MLS get smacked down
We get pretty used to sports leagues doing whatever they want, and whatever they want is usually not in any interest of the fans. It’s almost always about control and profit, which runs in direct opposition to fans’ desire to see competition, accessibility and the game we remember that got us all he...
MLS proves once more it is a deeply unserious league
The Friday news dump has been generally found out for what it is. A way for slimy organizations to try to sneak another piece of larceny or incompetence or just generally distasteful act past the goalie of our awareness without the normal level of scrutiny. By now, the actual act of releasing news a...
Sports Illustrated has become its own Sidd Finch in the age of AI-Generated journalism
The rapid integration of artificial intelligence into every corridor of society has created a surreal state of journalism in 2023. In its infancy, everyone is feeling around in the dark, stumbling over AI-generated content. A bevy of outlets, this site included, have dabbled in AI-generated content....
Lexi Thompson’s PGA Tour debut comes with a chance at history and to pierce through golf’s sexism
In the modern history of golf, no female has made a cut on a PGA Tour event. Only Babe Didrikson Zaharias has done it ever, playing all four rounds at the 1945 Phoenix Open, and Tucson Open. And as Lexi Thompson becomes the seventh woman to play in a PGA Tour event next week, on a sponsor’s invitati...
Our national nightmare is over, the San Diego Padres won a game in extra innings
What gets to the heart of baseball, and to the heart of a baseball season, is that 162 games is supposed to be enough for any anomaly or bit of screwiness a long enough timeline to flatten out. Anyone can get hot, but no one can get unreasonably hot for 162 games and six months. Every team is going ...
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...
Novak Djokovic is tennis' unquestioned GOAT. Is there anyone who could catch up to him?
It isn’t a question as to who the male tennis GOAT is anymore. In recent years Novak Djokovic’s almost-robotic dominance as he continues to age has pushed him ahead of his contemporaries and predecessors. One of Djokovic’s greatest challengers to the crown conceded the throne recently when Rafael Na...
Dustin Johnson needs to stop whining and reap what he's sown
You reap what you sow. And Dustin Johnson has no one to blame but himself for not making the United States Ryder Cup team. Once he sold out to Saudi-backed LIV Golf last year for a reported $125 million, his margin for error to make golf’s premier team event became razor-thin. And it shouldn’t be a ...
Djokovic and Gauff were machines at the US Open
There are a lot of ways to win in tennis. Novak Djokovic has found all of them. Coco Gauff may yet one day, though she found the one for this US Open. While Djokovic has had to vary his game at various points to overcome various challenges, at the base of it all remains the same truth as the day he ...
Where are all the women in NFL studios?
This hasn’t been a great weekend for women in sports. Disgraced Baylor coach Art Briles somehow made his way onto the field of an Oklahoma game to celebrate a win with his son-in-law, Sooners’ offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby. Lebby then had the nerve to get indignant when asked why Briles was on th...
Coco Gauff will write her own story
When Coco Gauff beat Venus Williams at Wimbledon in 2019, a flood of expectations followed considering she was 15, American, Black, and had just ousted tennis royalty. The talent and potential was obvious enough, yet there are too many variables and unknowns to account for that calling anything a fo...
It's one franchise QB, how much could it cost? $10?
Sports has reached a level of spending that makes Joe Burrow’s record contract look cute. The Cincinnati Bengal quarterback’s $275 million deal is laughable if it wasn’t all too real. English Premier League clubs spent $2.97 billion in the most recent transfer window. Tiger Woods was reportedly offe...
Anti-fossil fuel protestors disrupt Coco Gauff U.S. Open semifinal
There were some folks in the stands during Coco Gauff and Karolína Muchovás semifinal showdown at the U.S. Open who were quite concerned about climate change....
The US Open has been a tough watch the past few days
The US Open used to bill itself as “The World’s Toughest Tennis.” It’s New York, which has to bill anything having to do with itself as the “biggest and toughest” or the city will collapse in on itself. But the Open was on hardcourt, it was at the end of summer so it was hot, and they used to make p...