sam Page 1 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
RIP the 12-team College Football Playoff
Hours after it was announced that the College Football Playoff would adopt a 5+7 format, the conference commissioners leaked that 14- and 16-team formats have been discussed. Jim Phillips, ACC commissioner and captain of a drowning vessel, said “At the end of the day, it’s about the right model.” Th...
Taking the Daniil Medvedev ride at the Australian Open
Most of my life, I have found tennis very easy and yet very hard to watch. It’s easy in that it’s a beautiful sport to gaze upon, the players’ ballet-like movements and the steady rhythm of the sound of the ball hitting the racket and then the court over and over can lull one into a lovely state of ...
Adrian Beltre and Joe Mauer are headed to Cooperstown, while Todd Helton snuck in Vincent Adultman style under their jackets
Wading into Baseball Hall of Fame debates is like diving into a pool full of eels, if the eels were up their own ass (personally, not physically, which eels might be able to do). Everyone’s got their own benchmarks, everyone hates your benchmarks, and never the twain shall meet. At the end of the da...
Novak Djokovic was the boulder, Taylor Fritz was Sisyphus
It has to be hard enough to work through the mental gymnastics it takes to take the court against Novak Djokovic, convinced you can win. That’s what professional athletes do, of course, it’s part of the job. But they’re also still human, and it gets hard to shut out the list that makes Djokovic the ...
This about sums up the Penguins season
Hockey can be infuriating. In no other sport can you do mostly everything right, but a little chinks in the armor can have an outsized effect if they’re spaced out correctly. Go 0-fer on the power play, or don’t get a save at the right time, or give up the wrong odd-man rush in the gimmick of overti...
The New York Islanders have lost their minds
The silver lining, we suppose, is that at least the Islanders are noticeable for a few minutes. The other one, possibly if you’re really stretching for them, is that if the Isles are going to have a dinosaur GM that the game has passed by, they might as well have (another) coach who is also a dinosa...
Liverpool finally find a win in third gear
The Premier League finished up their split round, in what constitutes their winter break. So let’s run through every game that went down Saturday and Sunday, which doesn’t even allow us to get to our usual five bullet points! It’s our break, too, we guess. And sorry to any Brighton or Wolves support...
The Bills played their role perfectly
Every great dynasty has its one foe that is there simply to be toppled and make that conquering force look all the more mighty. Michael Jordan had the New York Knicks. Tom Brady had Peyton Manning. The New York Yankees had the Boston Red Sox. And then the Red Sox had the Yankees. The Romans kicked a...
This year’s Australian Open is drunk
The Australian Open is already kind of geared for weirdos, at least on these shores, given that you have to sacrifice sleep and any usefulness the next day to enjoy it. But this year’s edition has been off the rails, making it even more worth it for those of us who are prepared to throw ourselves of...
The NHL Eastern Conference playoff race is a mess
We’re halfway through the NHL season, which is now meant as a device to make everyone look stupid. Or really, to make me look stupid, which isn’t all that hard, because I’m stupid. After 41 games, we should have an idea of who is what and who’s going where. But in the Eastern Conference, we really d...
Jerry Jones will continue to coach the Cowboys
When studying bewildering decisions that Jerry Jones makes — like deciding to keep the consistent playoff dry heave Mike McCarthy, the guy who could only get to one Super Bowl with Aaron Rodgers — it’s important to remember how he and the Cowboys got here. It was a long time ago now and a lot of NFL...
The Blue Jays need to be built on fact instead of myth
In a lot of ways, feverishly watching the flight route of a plane that wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be is a pretty nice metaphor for the Toronto Blue Jays’ offseason and outlook. The Jays knew Shohei Ohtani wasn’t on that flight, but their fans certainly didn’t. That doesn’t mean that the ...
Gio Reyna knows he needs to justify the noise
The funny thing about Gio Reyna, and more to the point, all the noise about him – the controversy with his family and Gregg Berhalter, the anticipation of any appearance with the national team, the confidence that he’s the country’s most talented player – is that it is built on such a tiny foundatio...
Can the Bruins win without any centers?
The Boston Bruins are the perfect team in the NHL to have the eternal-long fatalism vs. determinism debate. They sit atop the Atlantic Division and Eastern Conference once again, just as they did last year. Just as last year, David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand are two of the best players in the league...
The Man City monster rises from the sea
The Premier League has reached the portion of the season when it paws at having a winter break, splitting up the 21st round of fixtures over two weeks to give half the teams the week off this week and half the teams the week off last week. Unless they have a FA Cup replay. Or a League Cup semifinal....
Michael Jordan is to blame for Jerry Krause's widow being booed
Michael Jordan won a widow getting booed. My colleague Stephen Knox covered this yesterday, the booing of Jerry Krause’s widow Thelma during the Chicago Bulls’ Ring of Honor ceremony on Friday, and he isn’t wrong. It’s another “feather” in the “cap” of Jerry Reinsdorf, though he wouldn’t have been i...
They thought Matt Patricia was an answer
When you’re turning to Matt Patricia, it’s obvious you’re out of answers. You may not even know the questions....
Yankees, desperate for arms, sign pitcher who hates them
It says something about the state of the New York Yankees these days, this self-imposed state, that instead of shopping at the top of the market for someone, anyone, to join Gerrit Cole that isn’t made of dead bugs (Carlos Rodon) or terrible (pretty much everyone else, and Rodon) they’ll turn to a p...
Ken Rosenthal goes full <i>Minority Report </i>with latest Wander Franco take
Wanna see a whiff?...
This week’s award for grossest act goes to the ATP Tour players
It’s one thing when a sport either ignores or is oblivious to whatever is surrounding a certain player or individual. It’s quite another when they know and just don’t care. Such is the case with this week’s announcement that the ATP Tour players had chosen Alexander Zverev to their players’ council....