the Page 331 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Jackie Robinson died unhappy with baseball
There was no Jackie Robinson Day in 1972. On the 25th anniversary of him breaking the MLB color barrier on April 15, 1947 the league hadn’t retired his number. In fact until June 1972, the Dodgers had never retired a number. They would do so for him, Sandy Koufax, and Roy Campanella. The league didn...

Ukraine set to resume chase for World Cup spot, could play US in Group B
Russia’s brutal war isn’t stopping the Ukraine national football team from returning to competition. With the 2022 FIFA World Cup starting in November, the Ukrainians are one of seven teams vying for the final three unclaimed spots in the tournament with three hailing from Europe....

The Houston Texans are trying so hard to change their image that they’re donating to HBCUs
Hateful people run the same plays when they’re up against the wall. Misogynists tell us they have daughters. Homophobes claim they “love everyone” as God instructed. And racists surrounded themselves with people from the community they’ve discriminated against....

Farewell to my first and last
The generations of sports fans who grew up learning and loving a sport and team through the radio are disappearing these days. Another one came to a close on Thursday night in Chicago, though this one was a little different. We were a group out of place and time, which we came to identify ourselves ...

Baker Mayfield is doing himself no favors with this woe-is-me act
Baker Mayfield hasn’t done himself any favors since learning of his official demise in Cleveland after the Browns traded for his replacement, DeShaun Watson. The 22 civil cases for sexual misconduct still pending for Watson weren’t enough to scare the Browns away, which meant the end of Mayfield’s c...

Don’t do this FOX - don’t make Urban Meyer relevant again
If I ever became President (let’s hope that’s never the case), my first executive order would be to make it illegal to say “Urban Meyer” and “NFL” in the same sentence, unless of course that name and organization are separated by either the phrase “does not belong in...” or “does not belong anywhere...

Only the NBA has teams in all three of Atlanta, New Orleans and Memphis and the league is much better for it
At Smoothie King Center in New Orleans they serve frozen daiquiris, at State Farm Arena in Atlanta there is a barbershop, at FedExForum in Memphis they regularly play, from the Oscar winning film Hustle and Flow, “Whoop that Trick.” ...

Zion Williamson got to show off his dunking ability, too bad he’s not playing
The fans who tuned into ESPN’s pregame coverage of San Antonio and New Orleans Wednesday night got a little extra treat. There was a Zion Williamson sighting on the court. Before the game, Williamson did some on-court work and put on a show for those in attendance, mostly team staff....

The Brian Kelly-Notre Dame breakup gets even messier
We’ve got a new rivalry on our hands — the tension has been brewing all off-season between LSU and Notre Dame, and it escalated this week when former Tigers head coach Ed Orgeron was photographed observing a spring practice in South Bend. ...

Gabe Kapler backing over the unwritten rules all the way to the bank
The buddy cops driving the MLB’s unwritten rules squad car last night were Bob Melvin and Eric Hosmer of the SDPD. The Padres’ manager and first baseman respectively took issue with a bunt single by Giants’ utility man Mauricio Dubón in the sixth inning with San Francisco up nine runs....

Who pissed in Stefan Savić’s pregame Gatorade?
Trying to help his team become the second from the Spanish capital to qualify for the UEFA Champions League semifinals, Stefan Savić went from composed center back to savage at the drop of a hat....

Here’s a solution for college coaches pissed off at the transfer portal
College coaches griping about the transfer portal and NIL deals turning college athletics into the Wild West is the new salmon crudo, aka a dish that’s so popular and served so often that Padma and Tom made fun of its omnipresence during an episode of Top Chef....

The XFL having more Black coaches than the NFL is why Brian Flores is suing the league
No one knows how long this iteration of the XFL will last, but the league has already proven that NFL owners are liars....

It’s math time with Chris Pronger boys and girls!
As one of my editors pointed out yesterday, maybe we should just be relieved that Chris Pronger can type at all given how his career was ended. That’s generally the hope for any hockey player, as forlorn as it may be. And perhaps Pronger was trying to do the right thing and illustrate how so many fo...

Oklahoma softball would like, nay, DEMANDS everyone’s attention right now
Thirty-six wins, zero losses. That’s what the Oklahoma softball team’s record is right now, breaking the all-time Division I record previously set in 1999 by UCLA at 35-0. Now, with a streak this absurd, this dominant, you’d think there have been hiccups. Perhaps there were a few games where Oklahom...

Evander Kane’s ex contributed to Ryan Hartman’s NHL fine…for fighting with Kane
Sometimes, the best part of sports is the pettiness that we get to witness on a public scale....

Staying quiet about Brittney Griner hasn’t worked
For the past two months, people around Brittney Griner and the WNBA have been low-key. The idea was that any loud calls to have the basketball star released from her Russian prison as Vladimir Putin launched an assault against Ukraine would only upset the authoritarian, and so the wise course was to...

Obnoxious loudmouth Patrick Beverley showed us why he’s been a staple in the NBA for more than a decade
Patrick Beverley showed out on Tuesday night against the LA Clippers. He may have shown his whole ass after the Timberwolves’ 109-105 play-in game win. But Beverley also showed us how players like himself hang around the NBA for a decade....

Watch Aaron Rodgers get mad about a kids’ flag football game
Oh, Aaron Rodgers. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — we’ll stop writing about the guy when he stops giving us things to write about. The latest from the Green Bay QB is a video that was filmed a month ago making the rounds on Twitter of him playing football with some kids at Jserra High Sc...

Women tries, fails to glue herself to NBA floor
The animal rights protestors never fail to keep us entertained (remember when they wanted to rename the bullpen in baseball?), and Glue Lady is no different. Late in the second quarter of the play-in game between the Timberwolves and the Clippers last night, the cameras cut away from a Minnesota fre...