si Page 611 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

This Will Probably Be The Slowest College Basketball Season Ever Played
You can't make many sweeping judgments early in the season, but one thing is nearly certain at this point: This will be the slowest-paced season that college hoops has seen. If it is, we're in for some really dire basketball this winter. ...

FIFA Announces Who Will Stand Next To Ronaldo When He Wins Ballon D'or
As inevitable as Cristiano Ronaldo's impending Ballon d'Or victory has been, this year's award campaign has been especially tedious. So we're happy that FIFA's announcement of the three finalists brings us one step closer to being done with the whole thing....

We're One Step Closer To A Concussion Brain Damage Blood Test
A group of researchers at Penn has evidence that a protein found in the blood, calpain-cleaved αII-spectrin N-terminal fragment (SNTF), can predict if a person who's suffered a potential traumatic brain injury will suffer concussion symptoms. Which is to say, this could be useful for athletes who wo...

Andy Dalton Dug His Team A Hole With An Early Interception
Whenever we round up the most highly leveraged plays every week using Brian Burke's WPA from Advanced Football Analytics, the list is usually littered with late-game turnovers and touchdowns. So it's interesting that Andy Dalton getting picked off by Tampa Bay's Johnthan Banks on the very first pl...

Hey, Matt Schaub Threw Another Pick-Six. How's He Keep Doing It?
Poor Matt Schaub found himself back in the funny pages yesterday. With Oakland already trailing St. Louis 42-0 in the fourth quarter, Schaub entered in relief of Derek Carr and promptly fumbled on a sack for a turnover, threw yet another pick-six on the following drive, and fumbled again for good me...

Valencia Fans Drill Messi In Head After Barça Score Last-Second Winner
Lionel Messi earned a yellow card for complaining to the referee after angry Valencia fans cracked him in the head with a thrown object as Barcelona celebrated a late added-time Sergio Busquets goal that gave them a 1-0 road win....

Ravens WR Marlon Brown Knocked Out Of Game With Concussion
Marlon Brown's day against the Chargers started off strong, with three catches for 25 yards. But the Ravens receiver's day is over after suffering a concussion on the above play that led Baltimore officials to declare him out for the game....

Bayou Classic Halftime Show Features Marriage Proposal In Formation
We make fun of Jumbotron marriage proposals a bunch, but using Southern University's Human Jukebox to propose? That takes some confidence....

Georgia Gets 99-Yard Fumble Return TD After Georgia Tech Stuffed
Georgia took a 14-7 lead on Georgia Tech after this Yellow Jackets attempt to sneak across the goal line got stuffed and officials held their breath rather than blowing the whistle. But did Tech get the ball across the goal line? We've enhanced some video so you can see for yourself:...

"Harvey Updyke For President": Your Iron Bowl <em>College GameDay</em> Roundup
College GameDay is in Tuscaloosa this morning, and the 'Bama fans brought their best Auburn insults for the occasion. Here are the highlights and lowlights of this morning's signs....

Club Banger: Vernon Davis Talking About His Favorite Thanksgiving Food
NBC asked 49ers tight end Vernon Davis last night to share his favorite Thanksgiving food. His answer? "Yams. Sweet potato yams." We improved upon his answer by turning it into a song....

Who Regressed More After His Rookie Year, RG3 Or Charlie Batch?
Since Robert Griffin's spectacular rookie season, there have been an previous few other things to talk about with regard to Washington—especially once he started to regress. Now there's speculation he could be traded. It's obvious his production has declined, but to what extent exactly? Is it as bad...

Here, Have Some Fantasy Football Lineup-Helper Visuals
Do you really have time to be setting your lineup for the Thanksgiving games? ...

The Warriors' Best Lineups Are Killing The Rest Of The League
By pretty much every metric, the Warriors are one of the best teams in the league. They're 11-2, a half-game out of the best record in the league, lead the league in opponent-adjusted net offensive/defensive rating, and are in lockstep with the Spurs for best defensive rating. They're really good. B...

Killer Mike's St. Louis Blues: Live From Tuesday's Run The Jewels Show
Fires, gas masks, rocks, riot gear, gunfire, smoke pouring out of the smashed windows of an Advance Auto Parts ... everyone saw last night's news, and many St. Louisans were wary of becoming part of it. But following a grand jury's decision not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for t...

J.J. Watt Is Still A Total Anomaly
There was a disturbance in the force over the weekend, when J.J. Watt spent much of the day lined up against backup lineman Marshall Newhouse in the Texans' 22-13 loss to the Bengals and didn't come away with any sacks. That's a little surprising, but only because J.J. Watt is understood to be unrea...

Here's An Interactive Visualization Of Every NBA Stat Ever
Here's an interactive made by Alex Bresler that starts off a little unwieldy, but is functionally a treasure box of NBA oddities. ...

The Bucs Found A Really Impressive Way To Blow The Game This Week
We normally go over the most highly leveraged plays, or some collection of them, when we round up Brian Burke's WPA from Advanced Football Analytics every week. The list is almost always bottom-heavy, comprising plays that just happened to occur in the fourth quarter, or long touchdowns, like Lata...

Few Teams Have Been More Mediocre Than Nebraska This Decade
There are two ways to go about being mediocre in college football. Strictly definitionally, a team can settle in somewhere directly between schools like Stanford and those like Eastern Michigan—finishing around .500 every season. But the more sneaky and much more frustrating sort of mediocre is the ...