sports Page 388 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Neil Olshey firing is only going to prolong the wait for your Dame dream trade
Let’s try an exercise. Something happens to the Portland Trail Blazers franchise, and they don’t immediately try to trade Damian Lillard. It’s to the point that I wouldn’t be shocked if media outlets have a pre-written template for Blazers stories....

Hey, remember Maryland? They used to be good and stuff
Mark Turgeon’s ouster at Maryland, just eight games into the season, is a good reminder of how quickly a college program can stumble into irrelevance, as well as the outsized influence of football in conference realignment....

Sports have a Gen Z problem, and it could take some experimenting to fix
In 2020, a survey of several Gen Z Americans revealed that only 53 percent considered themselves sports fans, and only 21 percent considered themselves to be “avid” sports fans. Both these figures are the lowest of any age demographic. Gen Z has shown a general disinterest toward professional sports...

Meep meep! Give UTSA a New Year’s Six spot, you cowards
If you watched Oregon get steamrolled again by Utah on Friday night, you were watching the wrong football game, because the Conference USA title game was where all the action was....

Burnt ends and burned bridges
All news is local, and The Columbian got a doozy of a local story out of now-LSU coach Brian Kelly’s sudden decision to bolt from Notre Dame this week....

Phoenix Suns’ solstice coming in part due to steadiness of coaching
On Nov. 4, ESPN published a report detailing the racist and misogynistic culture created by Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver within the organization, which had reached a point where one former executive was quoted as saying “there’s literally nothing you could tell me about him from a misogynistic o...

Even sportsbooks are tired of JB Smoove screaming ‘CAE-SARS!’
Do you remember the movie Thank You for Smoking? It was a satirical look at cigarette spokesman Nick Naylor (played by Aaron Eckhart aka Harvey Dent from The Dark Knight) who tries to remain a role model to his son despite promoting/defending lung darts....

Presenting Brian Kelly, Southern gentleman
Brian Kelly’s been down South for all of 72 hours and is ready to challenge every last person who said that he wouldn’t be a culture fit at LSU. You want a culture fit? How’s a brand-spanking-new Southern accent for a culture fit? As Kelly took the floor at halftime of the LSU basketball game Wednes...

NFL Week 13: Baltimore is better, but Pittsburgh has a good history in these types of games
Week 13 is normally when we start seeing the NFL playoff picture unfold. However, in 2021, we’re still unsure if there are even any good teams in the league. The NFL is so tightly knit nowadays that even the 0-10-1 Detroit Lions still have not been mathematically eliminated from the playoffs....

Down-and-backs never hurt anybody
In high school, I skipped my ninth-grade team and started on JV. It’s still – top to bottom – the most talented team I’ve ever played on. We were even better than the varsity team. But, in one game we were just going through the motions. At halftime, our coach made us do cardio in the locker room – ...

MLB teams want a 2021 Platinum Glove winner to change positions?
Stop the free agent talk! The lockout has commenced and with it there will be no more free agent signings until MLB and the MLB Players’ Association agree on a new CBA for the next five years. That being said, there are still several big-name free agents who remained unsigned through the Wednesday C...

No, Chet Holmgren isn’t too skinny to be great
Gonzaga freshman Chet Holmgren was the top high school recruit in his class and is the presumptive No. 1 pick in the 2022 NBA Draft. As such, he’s subject to a lot of scrutiny....

Who wants the Arizona Coyotes?
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but rumors have started that the Arizona Coyotes could be sold and moved to Houston. I know, it’s been a whole 12 minutes since the last one:...

Jordan is better than LeBron… eyes closed
It’s funny how much weight we give anecdotal evidence in arguments. Did LeBron ever eat a tainted pizza and win a title the day after? How many playoff buzzer-beaters does Curry have? Michael never beat a 73-win team in The Finals....

This was a disasterpiece
We can go through the numbers, but they don’t really tell the story. We can see that the Memphis Grizzlies beat the Oklahoma City Thunder 152-79, that nine different players scored in double figures for Memphis, that they shot 62 percent from the floor, yadda yadda yadda. It’s like counting how many...

Antonio Brown’s chef turns out to be a whistleblower!
Turns out the chef was telling the truth! Bucs’ wide receiver Antonio Brown has been suspended by the NFL for three games without pay after “misrepresenting” his COVID vaccination status to the league....

After another setback for Zion, the New Orleans Pelicans had better know what they’re doing
Today was supposed to be the big day for New Orleans Pelicans forward Zion Williamson. A fractured foot has kept him off the court for this entire season as the Pelicans have sputtered to a 6-18 start. Williamson was cleared on Friday to participate in full team activities, and The Athletic’s Shams ...

These are not your daddy’s showtime Lakers
As one of the cornerstone franchises in the NBA, it’s a rarity to see a Los Angeles Lakers game bumped from a scheduled National television slot the day before that game. But that’s what’s happened to the Lakers-Clippers matchup that was set to tip-off Friday night on ESPN. Instead, we get the remat...

There goes Brent Musburger again, making cringeworthy comments and being on the wrong side of race issues
You are looking live at Brent Musburger who once again is more riled up at the response to racism and misogyny than the actions that evoke a response. These days he’s the radio play-by-play person for the Las Vegas Raiders. He was talking on JT the Brick’s KRLV show about Jon Gruden’s lawsuit agains...

Cordarrelle Patterson, the RB/WR/KR/FS quadruple-threat
Versatility isn’t talked about enough in the NFL. We talk about minimally when evaluating defensive draft prospects. “He’s great in man and zone”, “he can stuff the run and drop back into coverage”, “he has the size to be an effective pass rusher, but also the speed to keep up with slot receivers”, ...