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There isn’t anyone more desirable at this year’s MLB trade deadline than Juan Soto. He’s a 23-year-old slugger with more potential than a boulder sitting at the top of a steep hill (that’s a science joke for all the professors out there). It was clear that several teams were going to call the Nationals about Soto as…Read more...

“Sixteen just seems to be out there,” Gene Smith, Ohio State’s athletic director, said at the Big Ten media days. “You can’t ignore it.”

Most English fans, if not all of them, would have been nodding their heads when the final whistle of W Euro 2022’s second semifinal sounded. Because it signaled that Germany would be waiting at Wembley in the final for England and the only thing between the English and the women’s team’s first major trophy. This is…Read more...

Max Scherzer being a little too intense for his own good has rarely been in question. He would tell you his intensity and downright borderline psychosis when on the mound is what makes him the surefire Hall of Famer that he is. One wonders if that’s true. But that’s how he is. No changing it now.Read more...

Brittney Griner has been detained in a Russian prison since her arrest in February of this year, while simultaneously existing in limbo as negotiations have taken place to free her. As Griner’s high-profile trial has played out in public view, the negotiations to end her Russian captivity have progressed behind the…Read more...

The Dodgers have a few glaring holes on their roster.

One of the more annoying things in life is when a person thinks a job title denotes leadership. Whether it’s newly-promoted assistant manager Greg trying to rally the staff during the lunch rush at Jimmy John’s, a CEO expecting underlings to laugh at all his jokes, or quarterbacks buying their offensive linemen gifts,…Read more...

Now that the Saudi Golf Tour has announced a $405 million purse and 14 tournaments for 2023, those see-through excuses and talking that defecting golfers have been tossing out at press conferences are even weaker than they were before — a feat that we honestly didn’t think was possible.Read more...

The New York Mets are currently 60-37 — first place in the NL East — despite the fact that their best pitcher, two-time Cy Young Award winner Jacob deGrom hasn’t pitched a single game for them all year. DeGrom has been nursing a series of injuries, particularly with his shoulder, for more than a year now. The light at…Read more...

Chris Carson’s penchant for putting his head down and plowing through defenders’ chests with the brute force of a medieval jouster made him one of the NFL’s most intimidating runners. As the perfect spiritual successor to Beast Mode, he made a career out of crashing through and over would-be tacklers. When he was able…Read more...

Finally, the Texas Rangers’ front office is attempting to position the franchise out of American League irrelevance. The team hasn’t won a postseason game since 2015 and, in the seven years since, Texas has tried to revamp its roster multiple times with players like Ian Desmond, Mike Napoli — eligible for the Hall of…Read more...

It’s pretty standard now, bordering on canon, that Tony Khan will spit out a great pay-per-view whenever he needs to. And now it’s with multiple companies. Last Saturday, it was Ring of Honor’s turn, with “Death Before Dishonor.” And by any measure, it was a banger. Not perfect — rarely is a show ever perfect — but…Read more...

During the spring of 2019, New York Giants’ former general manager Dave Gettleman made a declaration during the pre-draft process after falling in love with a certain prospect. “After the three series I watched, I saw a professional quarterback. So that’s when I was in full-blown love,” he said about Daniel Jones at…Read more...

College football is changing faster than it can handle. There are no playbooks or 100-level courses for what’s next in the sport. It feels like when I took a journalism business class after the Recession, and the professor was asking the students for suggestions.Read more...

It is not very English to win semifinals at major tournaments. Glorious defeat is kind of their thing, and has been for decades.

Julio Jones is joining forces with Tom Brady.Read more...

Stick with me here.

The 2022 Hall of Fame class was loaded. When Jimmy Rollins, Tim Hudson, and Prince Fielder are some of the low-end first-years, and two of them don’t even receive five percent of the vote, you know it’s an insane class. Between Álex Rodríguez, David Ortiz, Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens, 2022 was one of the most…Read more...

Top 10 NFL lists are typically there to incite a reaction. But Mike Sando’s 2022 QB Tiers List thwacks you upside the head over and over. The exclusion of Lamar Jackson from quarterback top 10 lists this offseason is standard operating protocol, but the disdain for the league’s top black quarterbacks slipped through…Read more...

Kyler Murray has found himself in detention — or, at least, the NFL’s version of it. As details of his new $230 million contract extension with the Arizona Cardinals come out, the rockiness of his offseason relationship with the team suddenly makes a whole lot more sense.Read more...

I can’t believe what I’m about to say: The Angels have to trade Shohei Ohtani.

Stop calling it a retirement. Without the details of alleged hush payments skyrocketing well beyond $12 million to keep various women quiet, now-former WWE Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon would still be in unquestioned power. He didn’t leave his post of 40 years unprovoked or out of humility to transition the…Read more...

The biggest hurdle Bronny James will have to clear to make the NBA might be one that his dad can’t boost him over. Partially lost in NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s many comments during the summer league a couple of weeks ago was his support for lowering the age limit from 19 to 18, something that needs to happen prior…Read more...

Welcome to the new Big Ten! As a lifelong Midwesterner, I have a certain fondness for the conference, and I wanted to preserve some major rivalries while keeping an open mind for expansion to new markets.

This new ACC is all about the show. We kept a couple of rivalries but our main goal is to entertain you. There are Hurricanes, Badgers, three different Tigers, and some of the most annoying people on the planet wearing their stupid scarlet. So lean back in your drop top, and turn on the 8 Ball & MJG, because this…Read more...

Nostalgia doesn’t fix everything. Looking at a photo of your ex won’t bring them back. They’re likely off with Claude, galavanting around the South of France.

Picking in the middle of the rounds made strategizing to keep rivals together a challenge, but we’ve got the finances to thrive once we’re inevitably forced to categorize student-athletes as employees.

With the snake-draft format, I was the only one forced to make every selection in pairs. I focused on the rivalries that make college sports great to a fault, which got harder as the draft went along. I more than held my own, starting with a heavy hitter and securing one of the most underrated rivalries in college…Read more...

It’s the kind of trade that’s only cooked up at the bar, and almost certainly not before midnight. It’s only then and there that the right kind of desperation can be tuned into, as fans of whatever team it may be, try and live in denial for just a little while longer that their window of contending hasn’t slammed…Read more...

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Five years after Michael Jordan infamously told the world that “the ceiling is the roof,” his team looks to still be as confused as we are.

It was a familiar refrain, somewhere around 2016 or 2017, when the Black N’ Gold version of NXT was arguably at its zenith, and arguably the best wrestling going on the planet at that moment. Any fan would watch yet another banger of an NXT Takeover and think, “Man, when Hunter (Triple H) takes over creative from…Read more...

When Nolan Arenado bitched his way out of Colorado, every baseball fan understood. Arenado had signed a monster extension with the team on the back of two straight playoff appearances, and the Rockies looked at least stable for the first time in a long while, if not completely on the upswing. Part of signing that…Read more...

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The Boston Celtics have reached their offseason garden of forking paths. After falling short in the NBA Finals, they now seem willing to break up their young tandem, and potentially a fulcrum of their asphyxiating defense.Read more...

The first 12 months of NIL have taught us a valuable lesson — that a lot of college football coaches are “pocket-watchers.”Read more...

Aaron Judge has quieted down the pen-protector, analytic geeks.

NBA stars have largely disappeared from the Rucker Park, Barry Farms and Drew League runs of the past they used to regularly lace up for. LeBron James’ 42-point show at The Drew League a week ago was a clarion call for his NBA peers. After two years of being disrupted by the pandemic, the Drew League is back on the…Read more...

It’s always a good idea to consider all answers when an athlete opts to give a boneheaded response to a reporter. In some instances, the player goes off the rails on their own volition. In other cases, it’s a lose-lose situation, and Karl-Anthony Towns is forced to pick between getting scorched by the media for…Read more...

As the eulogies for Vince McMahon’s career pile up in the wake of his not-in-any-way-forced retirement on Friday, they follow the usual script of any powerful and ungodly wealthy man’s career coming to an end. His offenses, crimes, and responsibility for the misery and violation of basically countless somehow come in…Read more...

Now that the Warriors have returned to glory post-Durant, NBA fans just survived one of the most unbearable periods of the NBA. One filled with superteams and razor-thin parity between the three to four coastal teams with stacked talent (Warriors, Lakers, Nets), and the rest of the small-market teams jockeying for…Read more...

If there’s one position where American soccer players have routinely found success overseas, and not had any “Yankee” stigma follow them around, it’s at goalkeeper. Several United States men’s national team goalkeepers have had long stays in Europe, especially in the Premier League.

Turnovers are a pretty luck-dependent stat. It doesn’t matter how great your cornerbacks can cover opposing receivers or how hard your middle linebackers can hit. Most of the time, turnovers are nothing more than being in the right place at the right time or having a series of fortunate events fall into your lap. In…Read more...

Let’s paint a picture for a moment. It’s two, maybe three years from now. The Saudi Golf League has taken off, gotten its sponsorships and TV deals, and superstar commitments. It’s expanded its tournaments, the majors are now allowing defectors to return, and — all in all, it’s a success.

It appears the jig is up — as if it hasn’t been for some time — and it’s clear there’s actually enough money to pay student-athletes. The thing about alleged educational institutions unapologetically trampling tradition en route to exorbitant TV deals is people notice.

There was a lot to be ashamed of from a Red Sox point of view Friday night. Allowing a single-game franchise record 28 runs to the Blue Jays, who set the Toronto single-game scoring output mark, is going to make the first five minutes of SportsCenter, if not lead the show. Obviously, there are a ton of stats to sift…Read more...

Black helmets, no matter what dumbass twist you put on them, aren’t alternates. It makes sense for the Carolina Panthers because their mascot is a black panther. The Jets and Eagles, however, have no reason other than merch sales to don the black.

In 2021, with the help of Davante Adams, Aaron Rodgers threw for 37 touchdowns and just four interceptions. Those 37 touchdowns were tied for fourth-most in the NFL. Rodgers didn’t have much help outside of Adams. While Adams did catch 11 of those touchdowns (29.73 percent of Rodgers’ total), that’s less than the…Read more...

It’s over.

Bo Jackson, the former MLB and NFL star considered by many to be one of the greatest athletes of all time, donated to help cover the funeral costs for the 19 children and two adults murdered at Robb Elementary School in after the Uvalde, Texas in May.