review Page 719 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Everyone Needs To Relax With Their NBA Previews, Please
We at the Deadcast are not in the business of telling you not to care about things. We are more or less in the business of being wrong and flippant about things, but you can and should absolutely do what you want. If you’re excited about the fact that the NBA regular season begins comparatively soo...

<i>Free Solo</i>, The Alex Honnold Documentary, Is The Year's Most Disturbing Movie
Over the first 12,000 or so years after Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan wall was scoured out by glaciers, no human had ever climbed up it without a rope. Then, last year, Alex Honnold scaled the 3,000-foot monolith without assistance of any kind. It is an utterly elemental human achievement, and...

Are The NHL's Mini-Dynasties Dead?
Until the Capitals broke through to win their first Cup, the Penguins, Blackhawks, and Kings dominated the NHL as the most effective triumvirate since Roman times. Instead of ending with stabbings and civil war, the modern NHL version collapsed for more mundane reasons involving salary caps and agin...

A 2018–19 NHL Season Preview Of Every Team, From Best To Islanders
Hell yeah, hockey is back! After suffering through three months of sports that do not involve ice, and night after night of 90-degree temperatures with no A/C (though that one might just be me), the most beautiful and fun game in the world has returned to save you from five-hour ALDS games and lopsi...

All You Need Is Spite: A Very Emotional NHL Season Preview
Boys and girls and babes, we all learned so much during the 2017–2018 NHL season. For example, I learned that chaos rules the universe, sports predictions are horoscopes but less accurate, and hockey games are won by pure, defiant, you-said-I-couldn’t-do-it spite and very little else....

Umpires Needed Almost Four Minutes Of Video Review To Blow This Call
Last night’s Astros-Red Sox game featured a play that pulled every replay-based nightmare out of the shadows: an interminable review process, a call that gets blown anyway, and a game result that hinged on that very same blown call....

32 Paragraphs About 32 Teams: A Thinking Fan's Guide To The NFL Season
The following is excerpted from the team chapters of the always-excellent Football Outsiders Almanac. Buy it here as a PDF, or here in print....


Can James Rodríguez One-Up Himself And Lead Colombia Even Deeper Into The World Cup?
Colombia have talent all over the pitch. Their back line is led by two young and already studly central defenders, their midfield options offer a good mix of defensive solidity and experience with attacking verve and youth, their striker is great and so is their right winger. So it’s not like James ...

Panama Have Already Reached The Promised Land
For most teams in the competition, the World Cup is an opportunity. Once a team has qualified for the big tournament, they then set their sights on what success at the World Cup would look like, and then they endeavor to go realize that success. What counts as success of course varies from country t...

Germany Aren't Very German, But They Are Still Amazing Anyway
National identities in soccer are real. Mostly they emerge from the styles of play and the youth coaching methods that predominate in any given country’s soccer setup, and the values those styles and methods reflect. There is a reason why Brazil are almost always led by graceful and expressive attac...

(Almost) Everything You Need To Know About World Cup Group G, In (Almost) One Minute<em></em>
The 2018 World Cup has now commenced. Just because the USMNT blows and didn’t make the tournament, that’s no reason for you not to pay attention to the best sporting event on the planet. Here’s everything you absolutely must know about Group G, all in one neat little video....

(Almost) Everything You Need To Know About World Cup Group F, In (Almost) One Minute
The 2018 World Cup has now commenced. Just because the USMNT blows and didn’t make the tournament, that’s no reason for you not to pay attention to the best sporting event on the planet. Here’s everything you absolutely must know about Group F, all in one neat little video....

(Almost) Everything You Need To Know About World Cup Group E, In (Almost) One Minute<em></em>
The 2018 World Cup has now commenced. Just because the USMNT blows and didn’t make the tournament, that’s no reason for you not to pay attention to the best sporting event on the planet. Here’s everything you absolutely must know about Group E, all in one neat little video....

(Almost) Everything You Need To Know About World Cup Group D, In (Almost) One Minute<em></em>
The 2018 World Cup has now commenced. Just because the USMNT blows and didn’t make the tournament, that’s no reason for you not to pay attention to the best sporting event on the planet. Here’s everything you absolutely must know about Group D, all in one neat little video....

Poland Just Need To Fire Away And Hope For The Best
It’s probably too strong to say Poland are enjoying their own Golden Generation, on par with the likes of France and Belgium, but the current iteration of the squad is looking better than it has since the mid-80s....

(Almost) Everything You Need To Know About World Cup Group C, In (Almost) One Minute
The 2018 World Cup has now commenced. Just because the USMNT blows and didn’t make the tournament, that’s no reason for you not to pay attention to the best sporting event on the planet. Here’s everything you absolutely must know about Group C, all in one neat little video....

Will Japan's Experience Be Enough To Spring A World Cup Upset?<em></em>
The Japanese national team is built around an extremely solid core group of 30-somethings who have all proven themselves at the highest levels of European soccer. This is probably their last shot at World Cup glory, though they have a steep road ahead of them if they want to qualify past Colombia, P...

Senegal Have Little History, But Enough Talent To Make Some More
Despite regularly producing players who are good enough to play in top European leagues, Senegal will be making just its second-ever World Cup appearance this year. This is good news for fans who want to see extremely cool players do extremely cool things, because there are some fun guys on this sq...

The Hater's Guide To The 2018 World Cup
The World Cup: truly a tradition unlike any other, except I guess for the Olympics which it is kind of like in the sense that a bunch of people who only care about a thing every four years suddenly care about it so much. Most of the world, of course, cares about soccer a great deal all the time, but...