Month: September 2024

In the old days, they were known as big plays. Or maybe long plays. It’s not clear when, or why, football people started to refer to them as “explosive plays” or just “explosives.” It was probably around the time football people started referring to position groups as “rooms.” The football people also can’t quite agree […]

Deepdale was the venue of English football’s most interminable penalty shootout on Tuesday night. After playing out a 1-1 draw in normal time during their Carabao Cup third-round tie, Fulham and Preston North End took a record-breaking 34 penalties between them, with an astonishing 31 finding the net. Excluding FA Cup qualifiers, this was the […]

What does the old Nationwide Insurance commercial say? “Life comes at you fast.” Indeed it does. Just ask Bryce Young, the quarterback once heralded as the savior of the Carolina Panthers. Sunday afternoon, despite another poor outing from the 2023 No. 1 pick, Panthers coach Dave Canales pledged loyalty to Young. Less than 24 hours […]

The Grand Slam season is over, and the WTA and ATP Finals are rapidly approaching. These next two months can be a strange period for tennis — especially in an Olympic year — with some players keeping their powder dry for the following season while others desperately try to finish the year strongly. Here, The […]

The Champions League is back, with a new format, more games and lots more goals. There were 28 scored across six matches, with blistering Bayern Munich scoring almost a third of that total. In fact, in Champions League history, only one more night (in October 2014) has seen a higher goals-per-game ratio than the 4.7 […]

Texas is back … at No. 1. For the first time in nearly 16 years, the Longhorns are atop the Associated Press Top 25, surpassing Georgia when the latest poll was released on Sunday. That achievement has little tangible meaning now for the Longhorns; how they fare in their inaugural season of SEC play will […]

It is the week when Manchester City begin another assault on the Champions League against the backdrop of a legal battle with the Premier League, yet Rodri, the club’s star midfielder, managed to take the conversation in an unexpected direction on Tuesday. A question on the increasing demands being placed upon Europe’s elite players brought […]

Two games into the 2024 NFL season, there’s been some necessary reshuffling with the QB rankings. The initial rankings were essentially a composite look at the way key evaluators viewed the 32 starting quarterbacks. Now, there’s more to balance. The Athletic’s Week 3 QB rankings There are several key considerations when sorting out the rankings, […]

Wittenberg University, a Division III school located in Springfield, Ohio, has canceled all athletic events through Sunday because of security concerns on campus, it said Tuesday. The university did not specify the concerns but said the threats were “ongoing.” The university also announced all classes will be remote for the remainder of the week. On […]

All these years later, Bjorn Borg is getting another chance to make a proper exit. It didn’t go great the last time around. For those not familiar with one of the more notorious tennis walk-offs, after Borg lost in the U.S. Open final against John McEnroe in 1981 – his third consecutive loss to McEnroe […]