rons Page 6 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Like a comet streaking across the sky, a rare look into the personable side of Nick Saban
For the second time this season, we’ve been privileged to get a glimpse into the part of Alabama coach Nick Saban that’s not a myopic, grumpy, brooding football coach. In September, Alabama safety Jordan Battle told the media that Saban loves a good “deez nuts” joke, much to the chagrin of what soun...

This is what it can be
It is hard to remember in the moment, especially when that is the first moment of a qualifier like last night against Costa Rica and the USMNT is giving up yet another stupid goal before coming back for a 2-1 win and you haven’t even cracked that beer that you’re firing against the wall, that this w...

We said depth would be the main thing
If it feels like World Cup qualifiers are boomeranging right back into your consciousness after not much of a break from the last ones, you’re not alone. This is the normal calendar, you just had a year off from it thanks to the pandemic, but just wait until qualifiers are crammed into January and F...

Maybe the Manningcast works because they don’t meet with coaches
In this age of working from home, and the push-and-pull with companies around the nation at the moment about whether to return to the office or not, we can all find inspiration in Peyton and Eli Manning saying they want to analyze Monday Night Football but they don’t see why they should have to leav...

Your 2021-2022 Champions League Guide
Despite the attempt to kill it from Europe’s leading clubs last spring (and UEFA’s eventual success in doing so in the coming years), the Champions League returns today in its usual form. While it has become the nexus point in all that’s wrong with soccer and has certainly widened the gap between th...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times
At halftime last night, you could forgive any USMNT fan for thinking they had never left 1997. I know I did. Here we all were, too late on a school night, watching a US team getting paddled in Central America with the crowd going nuts and the American manager looking utterly clueless and his players...

We totally forgot that this USMNT hasn’t played very well
Perhaps I doomed them last Wednesday when I told my editor the US Men’s National Team would qualify for the World Cup easily. The power of the motherfuck grows every day. That won’t comfort anyone, especially me, as the US has certainly stubbed its toe in its first two qualifiers, even if it hasn’t ...

The Dodgers’ trade deadline was better than you think
Last night, the Dodgers’ Max Scherzer threw six innings of shutout baseball to lead his team to a 4-3 win. With that victory, coupled with a Giants loss to Milwaukee, the Dodgers took sole possession of first place in the NL West....

With World Cup qualifying imminent, let's check in on how many rakes Berhalter is stepping on
Good God, would someone take the air out Tim Ream’s tires or barricade his apartment door for a couple days so Gregg Berhalter will stop picking him for the national team?...

Hey, Pep — you old scallywag, you old so-and-so — come manage the USMNT
So you need a new challenge in a couple years, Pep? Seven years at Man City will be enough? I agree. Want to try yourself at the international stage? Really all that’s left for you at age 50. Not much left to prove at club level, other than maybe not shitting yourself in the latter stages of the Cha...

Steelers release David DeCastro, and I feel for Najee Harris
I’m a big fan of strong O-lines. A great offensive line can make an average quarterback good. It can make a bad running back look great. Consistent high-level offensive line play almost guarantees a playoff appearance. That’s why I always scratch my head when a team makes a move like the Steelers di...

How do you solve a problem like Weston McKennie?
There are about 400 lessons that fans could have learned about the U.S. Men’s National team last night. And they spread over the entire spectrum of endless hope of things we’ve never imagined to complete and total disaster we’re sadly all too familiar with. Projecting this team into the future, beca...

What are the Giants doing here?
The baseball world was all gaga over the seven-game rumble the Padres and Dodgers put together in the season’s opening weeks. The part of the story that got lost and ignored is that they’re currently 2nd and 3rd place teams. It seems while they were eyeballing each other, the San Francisco Giants we...

MLS is back, and I’m really going to try this time
MLS returns this weekend, and unlike most of the big soccer leagues in the world, it can do so in front of some fans. We won’t hear the sheer wall of noise we would usually get in Seattle, Portland, Atlanta, and Orlando, or in more and more places these days, just yet. But it will be a relief to hea...

Tanks a lot! Rockets going from 44-28 to 11-28 is putrid, but not most historic NBA drop-off ever
On Feb. 4, the Rockets went to Memphis and beat the Grizzlies by 12 points for their seventh win in eight games, moving to 11-10 for the season. Certainly, Houston was outperforming expectations after trading away James Harden, but nobody knew how bad things were about to get....

The day it all fell apart: Deadspin talks to journalists all over the sports world about what they remember when everything shut down
A year ago today was our last “normal” day. At least in the beginning. Only we didn’t know it....

Another armada of soccer-playing Yanks is heading to Europe
The January transfer window closed yesterday — sometimes it closes in February, sometimes it snows in April — and a plethora of American players left their MLS digs behind for European riches. Some will be back, some are real longshots, some have very bright futures. The fact that this has become so...

All Maya Moore Did was Walk Away From Her WNBA Career to Free an Innocent Man From Prison (Then Marry Him!)
Maya Moore helped free an innocent man who was wrongfully imprisoned for 22 years – and got a husband in the process....

Kirk Cousins Breaks the Universe With His Stupidity
In a podcast appearance, Kirk Cousins questioned the efficiency of masks and said he was “at peace” with getting COVID, even if he died from it....

Michael Jordan Could Have Made It In Baseball, Says His Former Minor League Manager Terry Francona
James Jordan always wanted his son, Michael, to be a pro baseball player. After James was senselessly murdered in a robbery gone wrong, MJ decided to fulfill his father’s dream, and try his hand at professional baseball....