professional Page 26 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Stop putting athletes in danger to manufacture camera-friendly moments
Do you remember Monica Seles?...

Old Man Mickelson becomes oldest golfer to win a major
Before the 2021 PGA championship, Vegas gave Phil Mickelson 200-1 odds to win his sixth major. You probably didn’t give him much of a chance, either. Lefty came in 69th place in his last tournament and missed the cut at the one before. He couldn’t crack the top 20 at the 2021 Masters. Hell, he could...

How can you not root for ‘old man’ Phil Mickelson?
In a day and age where Phil Mickelson makes more money starring in advertisements about psoriatic arthritis than playing golf, you’d think his days of winning majors were far behind him....

Gimme an X! MLB’s 20,000th player reminds us what baseball desperately needs
In 1975, Bob Watson scored Major League Baseball’s one millionth run, an achievement which earned him one million Tootsie Rolls and one million pennies from the candy company, all of which Watson donated to charity....

On the 10th anniversary of his death, 10 awesome Macho Man moments
It’s impossible to do this as a “greatest” list because there were too many stand-out Macho Moments throughout the course of Randy Savage’s storied career....

Yes, WWE had zombies at Wrestlemania Backlash, and it’s probably fine
As a wrestling fan, it seems silly that there could be anything you could be told happened at a wrestling show where the reaction would be, “Oh that’s too stupid.” ...

With Alex Rodriguez as ownership, at least there’s a damn Latino in the room
Look at what it takes to get a seat at the table....

NFL schedule offers weird and wonderful highlights (and, oddly, a lot of Saints in primetime)
Football people are weird people, because we get giddy over something as simple as a schedule release. That giddy feeling happened last night, as the NFL (and it’s teams’ social media departments) released their full 18-week slate for the upcoming season, which will be the first in which every team ...

Women investing in women's sports is a game changer
There is a new financial model emerging in women’s sports, one that doesn’t depend on the traditional gatekeepers to coverage. ...

Cody Rhodes needs to f*** off more than anyone has ever f***** off in the history of f****** off
I should start all this with some boulder-sized caveats. Cody Rhodes is responsible for something a lot of us wrestling fans never thought we’d see, and that’s a genuine alternative to WWE on regular TV. Cody basically started AEW on a bar bet. He also is responsible for me becoming aware of compani...

Don’t look now, but the Lions are quietly having an incredible offseason
The Lions are somehow a comedy and tragedy at the same time. They’re like the Forrest Gump of NFL teams, if Forrest Gump didn’t entertain anyone. Despite several very talented players throughout their history, the Lions have never won a Super Bowl let alone played in one. Hell, they’ve only won one ...

Packers complaining about tampering is ridiculous
Aaron Rodgers is an outdated cry-baby and the Packers front office is equally bad. Apparently, the Packers are yelling “that’s not fair” and saying other teams, including the San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos, “tampered” with Rodgers by letting him know that they were interested in trading for ...

Browns fans have earned this Factory of Gladness
Take a bow, Browns fans. After years of torment, ridicule, bags over heads, a parade “celebrating” a winless campaign, and a Factory of Sadness, you have earned the right to be excited for this season, and the season after that, and the season after that. Yes, there was already excitement brewing in...

Ex-Bear Steve ‘Mongo’ McMichael is battling ALS and ‘declining quickly’
Former Bears great Steve “Mongo” McMichael is battling ALS — also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease — according to multiple reports this morning, including one from Dan Wiederer of the Chicago Tribune, who said McMichael is said to be “declining quickly.”...

Dream matches for Daniel Bryan if he were to leave WWE
WrestleMania 37 WWE Title contender Daniel Bryan said he’s open to change, which is music to the bipolar hearts and always open ears of wrestling die-hards....

It ain’t been a banner year for women’s hockey (and men’s ain’t been so hot either)
It’s not as if women’s hockey wasn’t facing enough obstacles in normal times. It fights for attention and funding at every level just like women’s sports have always done, and that’s a fight that is still very much a hard one. So what it doesn’t need is to have that be joined by self-inflicted wound...

Why the European Super League is terrible for soccer and bad for pro sports
I got a lot of texts and messages last night from my non-soccer initiated friends. It was surprising how big of a story the formation of “The Super League” became on every U.S. outlet. Obviously European soccer has become a big deal on these shores, but that it hit every major website near the top (...

Taiwanese baseball sets a new high bar for pregame antics tightrope walker
At this time last year, Taiwanese baseball was just about the only live sports happening on the planet, and as enjoyable as it was to see something that felt close to normal during the chaos of the early stages of the pandemic, the Chinese Professional Baseball League has receded to lesser global pr...

WWE misses another chance to release the right people
I could spend hours dissecting the ways in which WWE failed the very talented people that it released yesterday. But that’s usually the story whenever the company announces a raft of releases. There’s always one or two that most fans will be in disbelief at — both for their release and the lack of u...

Deadspin fixes the NFL Draft ... by getting rid of it
The NFL Draft is a moral disaster that should not exist. After playing three or four years of college football for no money, players finally get to enter the professional ranks, and upon getting there, find that their team and salary are dictated by the cartel that is the National Football League....