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.
Dodgers will win 2019 World Series
When the champagne pops once again in the Dodger Stadium clubhouse in just over a month, it will be sprayed in the home team’s clubhouse this time.
In an annual event that now seems as guaranteed as death and taxes, the Dodgers clinched their seventh-consecutive National League West division title last week.
Brown signing will make or break Pats
At at glance, the signing of Antonio Brown by the New England Patriots five hours after he was cut by the Oakland/Las Vegas Raiders on Saturday all but guaranteed the team would repeat as Super Bowl champions.
Then the Patriots came out on Sunday Night Football and removed all doubt. They made the Pittsburgh Steelers — nearly a playoff team a year ago — look like they belong in the XFL, bludgeoning them to the tune of a 33-3 score with Brown not yet in uniform.
Colts' Luck went out of NFL on top
Andrew Luck made the right decision to retire at 29 years old.
In fact, for a man with an architecture degree from Stanford, the timing made perfect sense.
Second time not a charm for NFL
Seemingly in a competition with itself for which professional sports league can have both the worst and most wildly inconsistent stance on domestic violence, the NFL decided July 19 not to discipline Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill in regard to allegations of child abuse.
This decision is baffling, and it speaks to a larger indictment on the NFL: The league cannot decide what its policy is on domestic violence, which is worse than not having one at all.