The Mourning After Page 4 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
There is nothing wrong with Shohei Ohtani's salary deferment
The numbers finally came in on Shohei Ohtani’s deal with the Dodgers and the Dodgers finally announced it themselves, and it’s a bit of a doozy. Ohtani will be deferring $68 million of his $70 million annual salary until the 10 years after his 10-year deal. The $2 million salary is fine for him give...
I’m sorry your wide receiver is a moron, Patrick Mahomes
While it’s hard to resist the temptation to point out noticing when a team that has Matt Nagy anywhere near it is melting down, because I know it oh, so well, the Kansas City Chiefs have bigger problems than that. When everyone is blaming the refs over a totally correct call, it’s pretty obvious the...
Jayden Daniels’ eye-popping stats enough in a season short on Heisman moments
Congratulations to Jayden Daniels on his Heisman win. He, and the abysmal LSU defense, were the reasons why the Bayou Bengals were so much fun to watch this season. As was the case in 2022-23, the winner of college football’s most prestigious award was accompanied by poor coaching, bad defense, or b...
If it’s not good news, let’s just not talk about Zion Williamson
It’s open season on Zion Williamson. The New Orleans Pelicans big man was the subject of various takedowns Friday after his team’s woeful showing in the semifinals of the In-Season Tournament to the Lakers, 133-89. J.J. Redick, Shaquille O’Neal, the Times-Picayune, and even an X account dedicated to...
It’s fight night at the Winter Meetings, maybe out of boredom
I had sort of bought into the magic of the Winter Meetings there for a second, and I know better. These haven’t been a thing for some time and yet many a writer show up thinking that deals will take place in the lobby or the bar where they can witness them come together over drunken arguments betwee...
If the Bengals and Jags fall in the forest, do they make a sound?
Ever watch two teams, at the same time, trapped in a simulation, a pantomime, merely a dramatization of a football game? Either with the full knowledge that they are trapped within the parameters of a social experiment that they cannot escape? Or unaware of the boundaries placed upon them?...
If the NFL wanted good refereeing, it would have it
You do have to appreciate that the officiating crew on the league’s Sunday Night game, supposedly the marquee matchup of the week where the entire NFL world tunes in, was able to pack in so much moron-acy into one final drive. The density of clueless officiating in the last minute of Kansas City Chi...
The year’s CFP selection process is an omen of things to come
For those of you who think the decision facing the College Football Playoff committee is proof that expansion is needed, this is only a taste. Regardless of who gets left out of the final four, it’s going to be hilarious. Anytime you get to laugh at Alabama, Texas, or Florida State, it’s a pleasure....
Washington is giving Pac-12 football a beautiful swan song
The finality of the Pac-12 is depressing. The Washington Huskies beat the Oregon Ducks, 34-31, on Friday night, and looked like a title contender doing it. Michael Penix had his full array of receivers, with Jalen McMillan returning to grab nine balls for 131 yards. Husky running back Dillon Johnson...
Who else but the Yankees would release a statement about Henry Kissinger dying?
There is probably a long treatise on how a crumbling empire of a baseball team wants to honor Henry Kissinger, the architect of American exceptionalism being an excuse to do whatever that country wants around the world that only led to this crumbling empire, but quite frankly I’m too tired and incap...
The NBA's In-Season Tournament takes from soccer but isn’t a cup
I’ll give the NBA this, as a soccer fan. It’s the only league to take notice of soccer’s consistently rising popularity and attempt to capitalize on that by co-opting some element of it. This is where anyone like me has to fight a blinding urge to scream about promotion and relegation, and earlier t...
It's tough to watch, but PSG is doing the right thing
On the one hand, the architects of this PSG team probably should be applauded for actually taking the time to step back and try to create a team instead of collecting players. Messi left, Neymar decamped for Saudi Arabia and PSG didn’t chase whatever shiny thing they could find to plug the holes, no...
You think Monday night was bad? I watch these Bears every week
In the end, the Chicago Bears screwed up what could have been something historic. Last week they managed to be the first team to lose while winning the turnover battle by three and holding the ball for 40 minutes. They had the chance to do it two weeks in a row and live forever. Instead, they’re jus...
The NHL seems to want it both ways when it comes to supporting minorities
I feel I write these too often, so in the spirit of fairness it should go mentioned that there was a lot of great action on the ice this holiday weekend, such as the New York Rangers solidifying their spot in the NHL’s aristocracy with a 7-4 win over the Boston Bruins, or the Buffalo Sabres managing...
The Cardinals appear to want to assemble the worst starting rotation
The 2023 season for the St. Louis Cardinals was an absolute disaster. Though they entered it as the NL Central favorites, even if by default, they lost 91 games as pretty much everything went wrong. The epicenter of their collapse was their starting rotation, which contained pitchers that couldn’t s...
The Phillies are betting on Aaron Nola to bounce back
The numbers add up for the Phillies to hand Aaron Nola a seven-year deal with an average of $24 million or so per year. Losing him would have meant a hole in the No.2 spot of their rotation. at the very least, and the Phillies aren’t chasing down Atlanta (even if at this pace their 40-man roster mig...
USC and UCLA prove why home and away jerseys are a thing of the past
USC and UCLA haven’t been relevant, in terms of a national championship status, in years. I can’t even remember when, but mostly because my brain turned to muck long ago. They tell me that USC has a prime QB prospect in Caleb Williams, and yet every time he shows up in a big game he appears to do no...
The real culprit in this Charissa Thompson mess is podcasts
This Charissa Thompson backlash, justified as it is, misses the bigger point, and if I may add 2 cents to the towering pile, it’s this: Podcasts are dumb. After two years of aggregating sports personalities saying stupid stuff, there’s more idiotic news made on podcasts than on social media at this ...
The USMNT shows mettle, and a lack of depth
The scoresheet will say that the USMNT got a 3-0 win over Trinidad and Tobago. And because it’s the Nations League, and more importantly the qualifying round for next summer’s Copa America, the result lords over all. Manager Gregg Berhalter will probably say something about the patience and fortitud...
Jerry Reinsdorf has McConnell’d half of Chicago
I and many other Chicagoans used to sit in our simple Midwestern homes, huddled by the coal stove or whatever people picture us doing in the winter (it’s not that far off, it’s just huddled at the bar), and have a good chuckle at how New Yorkers were sentenced to a life with James Dolan. Here was a ...