state Page 112 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Old coach yells at cloud, shakes fist in air
In the past week, the NHL news around here has been excessive violence, more excessive violence, the Flyers being hellaciously awful, and the latest lunatic turns in the decade-long saga of the league trying to make fetch happen in Arizona....

Replicating Pickett’s fake slide? No Ken do
If you liked Pitt quarterback Kenny Pickett’s fake slide on the way to a 58-yard touchdown run in the ACC championship game last week, you’ll need to savor it, because you’re not going to see it again....

Give Justin Jefferson his flowers (and a QB) you cowards!
Lost in Minnesota trying to kick their fans in the junk again Thursday night like they have so many times this season — or last — was the performance of Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson....

The Miami Hurricanes and Chicago Bulls have put the pedal to the metal, but don’t expect them to be what they were in the past
The young, promising Chicago Bulls are in second place in the Eastern Conference, and the Miami Hurricanes have high hopes after hiring a new football coach — it’s like it’s 1989 all over again. Fans of both teams have great reason to be excited....

NFL Week 14: The battle at the bottom of the NFC playoff picture
Most NFL fans will tell you that in recent years the AFC has been a better conference than the NFC. Despite an NFC team winning the Super Bowl last season, they also had a 7-9 team (Washington) reach the playoffs by winning their division, along with an 8-8 team (Chicago) as a wild-card. Meanwhile, ...

Former Broncos wide receiver Demaryius Thomas dies at age 33
Former Denver Broncos wide receiver Demaryius Thomas died in his home Thursday at 33 years old. ESPN reports that his family believes his cause of death to have been a seizure. Thomas played at Georgia Tech and was picked in the first round of the 2010 NFL draft. He played in the league for nine yea...

Somehow this Coyotes story got dumber… and better
Maybe I should have waited a day. Because nothing with the Arizona Coyotes fails to get better, or funnier, or more abstract when you give it more time. As the layers get unpeeled, the aroma that wafts through the air really defies belief. It is both hilarity and bafflement, mixed in with old people...

I can’t be the only one who thinks the Giants are an odd choice for Russell Wilson
Per reports, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson would strongly consider waiving his no-trade clause for the New Orleans Saints, Denver Broncos, or New York Giants. ...

Pac-12 commissioner accurately refers to CFB scheduling games years in advance as ‘insane’
The new Pac-12 commissioner is ready to shake up college football scheduling, and thank God he is. George Kliavkoff entered the world of college sports just this summer, so maybe it’s his outsider perspective that’s allowing him to think outside the box, but he has put forward the suggestion that pe...

Sorry, Sports Illustrated, but Time got it right — 2021 is the year of Simone Biles, not Tom Brady
Time Magazine has blown out Sports Illustrated in ranking its athlete of the year by a score of 45-10. Sports Illustrated decided to go with Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady as its “Sportsperson of the Year.’ It’s easy to see how they made that choice. He’s 44 years old, and still playing ...

TNF Week 14: For Mike Zimmer, tonight is a must-win
It’s easy to look at the Minnesota Vikings less than a week after handing the Detroit Lions their first victory of the season and see a huge trash can. Losing to the Lions is a harder pill to swallow for a fanbase than losing to Nick Foles in the 2018 NFC Championship Game. However, that loss last w...

What a surprise, Mark Emmert said something tone deaf: College presidents 'have hardest jobs'
Mark Emmert’s greatest value to the NCAA as president is the fact that he can say just about anything with a straight face, no matter the ridiculousness of his statement. In March of 2012 he said paying college athletes is “so antithetical to what college athletics is.” He made that remarkt in Houst...

Does the NHL vet its owners?
I wish I could write stuff like this as fiction. But unless you wrote it as Mel Brooks-ian farce, I don’t know how you’d make it believable. And I have to say that I really want to see the city of Glendale actually chain up the doors to Gila River Arena when Coyotes players attempt to show up for a ...

Make way, internet, Oklahoma senator has some fake outrage over Lincoln Riley
Oklahoma Sooners fans are mad, including Oklahoma state Sen. Bill Coleman, who is looking to “honor” Lincoln Riley with by renam — wait what?! Say that again, internet, Coleman (R-Ponca City) is an Oklahoma State fan? And his planned backhanded slight of renaming a desolate 3-inch stretch of highway...

Major League Soccer has a better ‘Rooney Rule’ than the NFL
Eighteen years ago, the most prejudiced sports league in American professional sports (Major League Baseball is a close second) created their version of “affirmative action” when they came up with the Rooney Rule — named after the legendary Steelers owner Dan Rooney — in hopes of helping diverse can...

Oregon picking over suspect Thanksgiving coaching leftovers after flurry of hires
Mario Cristobal is taking his talents to South Beach and is out the door at Oregon after Utah hit him in the ass with it. (Looking at the judges to see I get credit for two cliches in a lede. And… yes, “taking his talents to South Beach” qualifies.) The hire for Miami is seemingly a home run because...

Gardner Minshew may have had <em>Top Gun</em> on the brain, but he needs to operate the Eagles like a 747 today
America’s favorite hipster quarterback is making his return to the field today. Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts is out with an ankle injury, so for the first time since Week 14 of the 2020 season, Gardner Minshew II will be starting in an NFL game....

CFP is as easy as 1-2-3… or 2-3-4
For weeks, we’ve been dissecting, diagramming, and divining what the College Football Playoff might or should look like at the end of this zany season, and then Saturday’s conference championships came along and made everything pretty darn clear....

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....

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...