The best college football bowl game names this year
The final College Football Playoff rankings will be released Sunday, at which point some combination of LSU, Ohio State, Clemson and a fourth team — either Utah or Oklahoma — will be squaring off for the national championship.
Almost as exciting are the nearly 40 other bowl games that will take place to celebrate the teams that were good, but not quite great, this year. But the best part of the bowls are the names of the games.
Jackson’s MVP run a true underdog story
Coming into the 2019 NFL season, Baltimore Ravens second-year quarterback Lamar Jackson was given 50-1 odds by the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook to win the 2019 NFL MVP.
These odds were actually cut in half from when he opened at 100-1 in June.
NFL’s PI challenge a complete blown call
It’s time for the NFL to bid farewell to its most recent and most significant rule change of the offseason: allowing coaches to challenge pass interference calls, or the lack thereof.
The league simply has decided that it will change a call about as often as you will go 80 miles an hour down the freeway in LA.
Australian soccer gets equal pay U.S. deserves
The United States prides itself on both being a world leader and on equal rights for all. However, in the case of equal pay for the U.S. women’s national soccer team, neither is the case.
On Nov. 6, a deal nearly as historic as the invention of the wheel was made in Australia. A four-year collective bargaining agreement between Football Federation Australia and Professional Footballers Australia was struck to allow the Australian women’s national team, the Westfield Matildas, to earn the same as their male counterparts, the Caltex Socceroos.
Sports superstitions are stuff of legends
The NFC East-leading Dallas Cowboys were down 9-3 in the second quarter of Monday night’s game against the lowly New York Giants when suddenly out of nowhere, a black cat ran onto the field.
It would have been a cat-astrophic loss for the Cowboys, but the animal seemed to jinx the Giants. After the animal long associated with curses ran onto the field, Dallas outscored the G-Men by 25 points the rest of the way to earn a 37-18 victory.
Will Brees and Brady meet in Super Bowl?
With the 2019 NFL season at the halfway mark, we have two undefeated teams and two winless teams remaining.
The undefeated New England Patriots and San Francisco 49ers are pacing the league, while the winless Cincinnati Bengals and tanking Miami Dolphins are gunning for the No. 1 pick in next year’s draft.
But a Patriots-Niners game is not what we’ll see in Miami in February.
NBA season preview: Embrace the parity
Sports reporting is often a hot-take business. In fact, many television and radio personalities have made a career off of predictions. However, this year, we should all embrace a level of competition for the title not seen in more than a decade.
No fewer than four teams, and as many as eight, have a legitimate chance to win the NBA championship this season.
Lakers go as far as injuries allow
At the end of the 2019-2020 NBA season — which tips off Tuesday — we could easily be talking about the Los Angeles Lakers raising the Larry O’Brien Trophy. But we could just as easily be talking about a Lakers loss in the early playoff rounds.
The success or failure of the team’s season all depends on one simple x-factor: injuries.
Fair Pay to Play Act is only fair
California took one small pen stroke, but one giant leap toward college athletes being compensated when Gov. Gavin Newson signed into law Senate Bill 206 on Sept. 27 on HBO’s “The Shop.”
The Fair Pay to Play Act was officially signed Sept. 30. Though it will not go into law until Jan. 1, 2023, California made the right move in setting the ball rolling toward athletes being paid for their names, images or likenesses.
Safety is not NFL's priority
Lost in the recent off-field crimes and allegations against players such as Kareem Hunt, Tyreek Hill, Antonio Brown and, well, Antonio Brown, is an on-field issue that is equally critical in and of itself: player safety.
The league was reminded of this problem again Sunday with a hit that was utterly disgraceful.
Injuries, benchings usher in new QB era
The wave of the future is here, and it’s not self-driving cars or artificial intelligence. It’s the first and second-year NFL starting quarterbacks: the New York Giants’ Daniel Jones, Jacksonville Jaguars’ Gardner Minshew II; and of course Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs and Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens.