port Page 146 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Lionel Messi coming to MLS has had the effect you’d think
One of the bonuses for both MLS and Apple TV having an exclusive streaming deal is that they’re not forced to tell us how it’s going. Or they can decide what they want to say. Without usual ratings to gauge how the revolutionary deal is fairing, we’re usually left guessing. There were whispers that ...

Ben Shelton's moment has arrived
I went to the US Open last night. First time inside Arthur Ashe Stadium and on the grounds in Flushing. It was also my first professional tennis event since attending the semifinals of the 2003 Legg Mason Tennis Classic and watching Andre Agassi lose in a third-set tiebreaker. The US Open dangles be...

Can the Detroit Lions live up to all the hype around them this season?
The Detroit Lions enter the 2023 NFL season on a wild hype train of high hopes and expectations after finishing strong last year, winning five of their final six games. Jared Goff looked like Detroit’s quarterback of the future, and Dan Campbell proved that he’s much more than a barbaric man who wan...

The Texas Rangers are backing up
For avid horseplayers, there comes a point in most races, especially when your steed has shot out to the lead from the opening of the gates, where it becomes pretty clear you’re going to lose. Somewhere on that far turn, your horse’s gait is shrinking, the jockey is working just a little too hard fo...

Breanna Stewart is the heir apparent to Diana Taurasi’s scoring crown
In a sport where offense sells, Breanna Stewart is a closer. On Tuesday night, the New York Liberty needed each and every one of Stewart’s 40 points on a panoply of turnaround fadeaways, driving finishes, post-ups, and off-the-dribble triples to put away the Dallas Wings 94-93. ...

Coco Gauff is proof that tennis is wack without Black women
They used to not want Althea Gibson’s “kind” around. Now we don’t know where tennis would be without them. That’s how you ace an opportunity....

Ben Shelton feels limitless
There’s been a lament, until recently, that on the men’s side American tennis just had a ceiling. And that ceiling wasn’t anywhere close to winning a Grand Slam. Which is a little unfair to Andy Roddick, who without the existence of Roger Federer would have been a multi-Wimbledon champion and probab...

Hard Knocks Finale: Robert Saleh ended the season with a winner
In some ways, being a head coach is like being a late-night host. Day and day out, for an entire season, this person has to perform. There may be only 17 games in an NFL season, but every single day a head coach is forced to perform for the media, the players, and bosses. So many speeches, PowerPoin...

Jerry Jones traded for Trey Lance and didn't even tell Mike McCarthy
Recently, Jerry Jones made a front-office move that shocked many around the NFL. The Dallas Cowboys owner traded a fourth-round draft pick to the San Francisco 49ers for Trey Lance. In the aftermath of that deal, what wasn’t reported at the time is that Jones made the swap without consulting his foo...

Is Deion Sanders ushering in a positionless era at Colorado?
Deion Sanders is an iconoclast, if nothing else. Sanders has gone against the grain by taking the rarely traveled SWAC route to a Power 5 coaching job, in addition to his use of the transfer portal, his braggadocious coaching style, his deals with Barstool and decision to sign with Colorado over mor...

What do the Cleveland Guardians want to be?
To hear Larry Dolan tell it, the Cleveland Guardians are the poster child for the unfairness in MLB. They can’t run with the big boys of the American League, even though there are no big market teams in the AL Central, at least when the Tigers suck eggs (and the White Sox will never act like they pl...

Mel Tucker gets paid too much to be this cavalier with his players
The college football season is back, and with it, negligent and dangerous coaching decisions. In East Lansing on Friday, senior receiver Alante Brown was knocked out while blocking on the first kickoff of the game. He was carted off, but somehow managed to return to action, taking a kick 16 yards be...

Maybe Dabo Swinney's success was tied to a string of good QBs all along...
This isn’t a referendum only on Clemson’s embarrassing 3-touchdown loss to unranked Duke. Things have been unraveling in South Carolina for nearly two years now and the signs of Clemson being brought down a few notches on college football’s hierarchy happens regardless of the result against Duke, si...

Arsenal are the Premier League’s new chaos masters and Chelsea can’t buy goals
It used to be Jürgen Klopp’s first Liverpool teams, and possibly the current one, that were considered the most raucous chaos merchants in the Premier League. They were equally capable of the most destructive football, going in both directions, equally capable of howitzer-ing their opponents or thei...

Team USA must play like this for the rest of the FIBA World Cup
Americans don’t care when Team USA wins non-gold medal games. But they do give a damn if they lose them....

The NCAA shortened football games only to shove more ads into broadcasts
College football is changing at such a rapid pace that it’s hard to keep track of every alteration. One example is the new rule that keeps the clock rolling after a first down. In recent years, it went from a full stop after moving the chains to pausing until the ref spots the ball. Now it only stop...

Stephen A. Smith reminds new co-host Shannon Sharpe that he's not Skip Bayless
Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless will forever be linked to each other because of their success on ESPN’s First Take. Even after seven years apart, the sports world still flashes back to when they made sports media debate shows the hottest ticket in the industry. Smith and Bayless are connected at t...

College football on Labor Day has always been a sick joke
Labor Day Weekend serving as the official kickoff for college football is still the biggest oxymoron in sports. For decades, college football was the most abhorrent, openly accepted form of free labor. Unlike their basketball counterparts, NFL-caliber athletes are forced to push themselves through t...

Why have there been so many WNBA broadcasting blunders this season?
Broadcasters in the 2023 WNBA season are mostly pronouncing players’ names right. Considering the frequency with which on-air talent mispronounced players’ names (or misnamed players) in recent years, this is a triumph....
