si Page 317 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Did Lovie Smith ever have a moral compass?
Somewhere at the beginning of his head coaching career, Lovie Smith got the label of being a pretty good guy. Maybe it’s because he went to church. Maybe it’s because he has a soft delivery when he speaks. He certainly commanded respect from his players, though that’s not indicative of much. Lovie c...

Strikes and Balks: A list of things ailing Major League Baseball
Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire aren’t walking through that door....

Tiger bests Lefty again, wins PIP initiative
Sorry, Phil — Tiger might be out of the game for now, but you’re still sitting at second best....

Kliff Kingsbury has never accomplished anything
The Arizona Cardinals are a team on the verge of ruin, draped in Gucci. Their situation appears ideal from the outside looking in, but underneath the aesthetic of an exhilarating No. 1 overall pick and a stacked offense is a team who took a dirt nap after their 10-2 start. Going 1-5 in a crucial por...

The best NCAA Women’s Tournament teams at each seed
For the first time this year, the NCAA Women’s Tournament will expand to 68 teams, matching the men’s showcase, which expanded to that number of teams chasing a national championship in 2011. That’s more chances for a longshot to make a run and take down the sport’s elite....

Hear me out: Derek Jeter for MLB Commissioner
We’re going to be without big league baseball for the foreseeable future, launching a sport that’s already been on the decline into what feels like its death throes....

The Avs are really going to trust this to Mr. Darcy?
Once again, the Colorado Avalanche are the Showtime of the NHL. They were last year, though last season being what it was it doesn’t really count for evaluation/analytic purposes. But reverting back to an actual NHL schedule (or something closely resembling one) hasn’t slowed the Avs much. They pick...

Mike Zimmer fired partly for saying what Minnesota Vikings still refuse to admit
Wait, there’s still a debate about the quarterbacking abilities of Kirk Cousins? I thought we were past this, like the, “Is Joe Flacco elite?” argument. Apparently, new Minnesota coach Kevin O’Connell will continue living out a Twitter argument in real time....

Making a case for the Utah Jazz
It wasn’t supposed to go this way. This essay was going to make a case for why the Utah Jazz could finally win a championship this season. But when it was all written out, the facts just didn’t line up. Can the Utah Jazz do it? Can they win it all? It seems unlikely, doesn’t it? Especially with the ...

What in the hell is the WNBA doing?
The WNBA is apparently trying to compete with the MLB for how much it can hate its own players....

Sports Illustrated thinks the 49ers should trade George Kittle...explain yourself
San Francisco 49ers’ Twitter woke up this past Saturday and chose violence....

Nate McMillan’s tenure with the Hawks is downright Thibs-ian
The Hawks are lucky the Knicks are so disappointing or Stephen A. Smith would be melting down about them instead. The team that ended the Ben Simmons era in Philly, banished Julius Randle to a place from which he has yet to return, and competed with eventual NBA championship Milwaukee in the Eastern...

The raging debate over the size of Kenny Pickett’s hands
Sure, the 2022 QB class isn’t the best we’ve ever seen. There’s not a Trevor Lawrence to fight over or a Joe Burrow to trade picks for. But is it really so bad that we have to continue to manufacture drama over poor Kenny Pickett’s hand size?...

Why you never dance with devils
The reckoning has finally come for the sports organizations that have played footsie with autocratic nations. And not just FIFA and the International Olympic Committee, but for the Premier League, Formula One, and any sports league that has cashed checks from questionable international sources while...

There’s some historic goaltending going on in the NHL right now
The NHL would love for you to believe that Toronto’s 10-7 win/what-have-ya over Detroit on Saturday — and to a much lesser extent the hapless Devils and Hawks hurling themselves at each other to the tune of an 8-5 scoreline on Friday — as evidence that it’s goal-apalooza on the ice these days. The r...

A breakdown of everything wrong with Hue Jackson’s statement defending his hiring of Art Briles
You know you shouldn’t have hired someone if you have to release a statement days after you hired them to explain why you hired them....

Oh, damn, MLS started this weekend
Part of it was due to still being on vacation, and the other part was my general obliviousness. But I only realized at the last minute that MLS started its season this weekend, about 12 minutes after the last one ended with NYCFC’s manager in his undies in the rain in Portland, thanks to having to w...

March Madness gets a head start as top six teams, seven of top 10 go down
If Saturday was a precursor to March Madness, then all of our brackets are more doomed than usual. Seven of the AP top 10 teams fell in a wild day of upsets, including every top six team. No. 1 Gonzaga, No. 2 Arizona, No. 3 Auburn, No. 4 Purdue, No. 5 Kansas, No. 6 Kentucky, and No. 9 Texas Tech all...

The best NCAA March Madness teams by seed
The NCAA Tournament has become one of the most unpredictable, edge-of-your-seat sporting events of the year due to its knockout nature. It’s a clash of college basketball styles coming together as the calendar turns from winter to spring, pitting teams that usually never see each other on the same c...

De’Aaron Fox and his NFT debacle
Sacramento Kings’ guard De’Aaron Fox has been picking pockets both on and off the basketball court lately. After announcing his NFT program “SwipaTheFox” in December and launching it in January, it took less than two months for Fox to shut down the program with more than $1.5 million unpaid to its n...