red Page 117 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Put MacKenzie Gore in the All-Star Game!
Voting for the MLB All-Star Game opened yesterday. While the fans have all the power to send their favorite position players to the Midsummer Classic, pitchers will once again be determined by each of the league’s managers: Houston’s Dusty Baker and Atlanta’s Brian Snitker. While each of them will f...
The waiting is the hardest part
The Colorado Avalanche are waiting. And waiting for a Stanley Cup Finals opponent hasn’t treated those favorably in returning from mini-vacations in the past. We’re finishing up the 35th NHL postseason in which first-round games are contested as a best of seven, starting in 1987 and featured every y...
Who’s going to win (lose?) the Rudy Gobert trade extravaganza?
Rudy Gobert is this offseason’s CJ McCollum in that every GM is going to call about the star player and get counteroffered with the secondary player. Yes, we know you called about Donovan, but for the low price of a couple draft picks and a salary dump, you can have Rudy at $38 million to $46 millio...
The odd construction around Shohei Ohtani certainly didn’t help Joe Maddon
With every passing year, the pressure on the Angels ratchets up just a little more as Mike Trout ages. It’s now common thought that the Angels have basically wasted the career of perhaps the best player of all time, and there’s a breaking point somewhere in the future but getting bigger on the horiz...
Rays of darkness
Remember, not so long ago, that one of the reasons it was thought the Colorado Rockies couldn’t win is because the whole organization was dead set on being a weird religious cult? That’s quieted down in recent years, and it just turns out they’re more of a run of the mill, backward, nepotism lousy g...
Notre Dame drags fight song into the 21st century
It’s official — 50 years after Notre Dame welcomed the first cadre of female undergraduate students to its campus in 1972, the university has officially changed the fight song, Victory March, to reflect the addition of women....
We found something sports-related that Mike Trout can’t do
Mike Trout being the worst commissioner in sports is not the development I expected from 2022. On the field, the Los Angeles Angels star is finally attaining similar levels of individual and team success. The Angels are competing for the American League Wild Card, their pitching is much-improved and...
Fight fire with fire, burning with fear
You have to hand it to Avalanche coach Jared Bednar. He does have one of the best checking centers in the NHL at his disposal in Nazem Kadri. It would be easy, explicable, and defensible to just toss Kadri over the boards every time the Oilers put Connor McDavid out there, and be done with it. After...
I feel great about not trusting the Hurricanes again
The problem with upping the degree of difficulty on your playoff run is that no matter how good you are, eventually you’ll push yourself off the cliff. The NHL playoffs are hard enough as is without trying to navigate them like they were a bar bet. The Hurricanes didn’t bother to win a road game in ...
The top 5 underachieving teams in MLB, so far
It’s about the quarter mark of the MLB season, with most teams surpassing 40 games played. There’s still a looooooong way to go this season and the trade deadline is still two months away so a lot can change, but now seems like an apt time to compare teams’ records to their preseason expectations....
What are the unwritten rules for slapping another man over a fantasy football feud?
Athletes: they’re just like us! They play fantasy football, they get pissed over fantasy football, they physically assault each other over fantasy football — you know, just guys being dudes!...
International stars are here to stay on All-NBA Teams
Thirty years after the Dream Team introduced the NBA to the world at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, the league has transformed into something that the late David Stern would be proud of. Basketball has truly become an international game....
Dan Snyder’s Commanders are a failed state
The Washington Commanders are a crumbling empire. The once thriving franchise has been reduced to something worse than a laughingstock over the last two decades. The Houston Texans, Jacksonville Jaguars and New York Giants are a joke. Dan Snyder’s dysfunctional Washington Commanders are a waking nig...
Nebraska football: Holding onto dead traditions since 1999
One of the saddest traditions in college sports is on hiatus as Nebraska football suspended its home game custom of releasing balloons after the first Husker score. For a long time, children could barely get to their seats before letting go of the plastic, red helium-filled orbs. Now, Big Red faithf...
Jets and Lions fans battle for delusional offseason preeminence
Two teams who had top four picks in the 2022 NFL Draft and still have long histories of imbecilic incompetence are getting loads of love for their offseasons. If you listen to the way some media personalities present it, the Detroit Lions and New York Jets have a chance to not send their fans into a...
The Dallas Mavericks turned into pumpkins
When I wrote the Dallas Mavericks were a mess earlier this season, it was right after they traded one terrible contract in Kristaps Porziņģis for two terrible contracts in Spencer Dwindiddle and Davis Bertans. My argument was not that the Mavs had made the wrong move in ditching the Latvian bum. Nor...
Old Football Man hates those sissy rules that protect players
Cue the “old man yells at cloud” Simpsons headline — Hall of Fame coach Bud Grant, who turned 95 yesterday, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he thinks the “boring” parts of football, including fair catches, kneels to end the game, and touchbacks, should be removed from the game. Now, to you an...
Baseball is less fun when NO ONE MOVES THEIR BACK ROW
Sporting leagues should enact a per game minimum of fun-yet-stupid plays attempts. For the NBA, each squad should be required to take at least 15 30-foot plus jumpers. There should be at least two trick plays per team in NFL games. I don’t know what it is for soccer or hockey. Maybe it’s something a...
Tale of the tape: Battle of Alberta vs. Battle of Florida
The second round of the playoffs worked, in part, the way that the NHL dreamed up when it went to this postseason format of divisional brackets. You can question the wisdom of it happening in the second round, but we’re getting the Battle of Alberta and the Battle of Florida now....
