samfels27 Page 2 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Florida Panthers are getting started early this year
Cat Scratch Fever has shifted up the calendar a couple months this time around. Last year, the Florida Panthers spent the first half of the season looking for a signal on their phone before closing the second half with a flourish to make the playoffs. That carried over into the postseason as they ch...
Have the Premier League’s financial rules kept Newcastle from being Newcastle?
While the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules might have lost a shade or two off their teeth with the news today that Everton have had their 10-point penalty reduced to six on appeal (though they have another charge to dodge), that doesn’t mean they’re not having an effect. The desolate...
Finally, one of Scott Boras’ strays finds a home
Even though spring training is now in full swing, games are being played and every player is hanging dong unintentionally, the major story in MLB remained the four Scott Boras clients that had yet to sign a contract. That number dropped to three, as Cody Bellinger will be fostered by the Cubs, who t...
There is no aspect of baseball that MLB won’t make worse for a nickel
We know that MLB owners have no problem making their actual product worse, because it’s cheaper. They’ve expanded the playoffs, making more teams comfortable simply aiming for barely .500. Many teams will use the facade of a rebuild to never actually try, and others will join them to avoid signing a...
How much is the NHL’s increase in scoring due to goalie pads or increased skill?
The NHL is always chasing goals. Sometimes to its detriment, as the league often confuses goals with action. What the league really wants is to assign the Dead Puck Era to the land of wind and ghosts forever, which it pretty much has. It wants a fast game showing off the skills of players and not th...
Finally, politicians tell a team owner to shove their new arena proposal
The stadium/arena swindle in pro sports has been going on for a couple decades now, but that kind of history couldn’t save Ted Leonsis’s plan for a new arena in Virginia for the Capitals and Wizards. Even with numerous studies and proof that publicly funded arenas or stadiums have no public benefit ...
Why are hockey 'tough' guys always the biggest cheap-shot crybabies?
For a sport that really loves to tout how tough its players are, hockey players don’t seem to have much tolerance for anything that makes them feel bad in the slightest. At least on the ice. Morgan Rielly of Toronto was just the latest to wet himself when an opponent reminded him just a little too m...
We are all lying to ourselves about Man City
It’s at this point in the Premier League season where fans of any competitor of Manchester City’s starts to pile up the lies to themselves. Especially after watching City never really get out of second gear to see off Everton, 2-0, and even more so in trying to ignore the symbolism in Erling Haaland...
Everyone’s good enough to lose to Patrick Mahomes
The big takeaway from Sunday night’s Super Bowl is that creep in your DMs might just be The Messiah. But then, that’s not really all that surprising, is it? Given what’s been done in his name lately? ...
In soccer, yellow mixed with orange now equals . . . blue?
There is a throughline to some joke about a player in the future being shown a blue card and then having an arduous and impatient wait to be released out of a penalty box/sin bin. I’m clearly too mature to make such a joke. ...
Read the room, USA Hockey
As you may have heard after considerable wailing from players and at least the Canadian fanbase who need anything to feel good about themselves these days, the NHL has finally reinstituted an international calendar for not only the Olympics but eventually a World Cup the next few years. The latter w...
An ode to Devin Hester, one of the few things about the Bears you can't mock
I have to sit here throughout the football season, and now even a month afterwards, and read all the other jackasses on this staff say stuff about the Bears. None of them are from here, most of it’s wrong, and even if it’s correct what gives them the right? Everyone’s got a goddamn thought and none ...
Edmonton can’t beat the team they want to beat most
With all apologies to the Vancouver Canucks, actually, no, no one should ever apologize to the Canucks for anything. They know what they are and what they’ve done. While they may be on top of the Pacific Division, the other teams in that division are still going to measure themselves against the Veg...
Baseball Prospectus' 2024 projections have fan bases losing their minds
It’s easy to tell when there will be leather popping and maple and ash cracking on some distant Florida or Arizona field. No, it’s not the fact that it doesn’t quite get dark at 4 pm anymore. Not even Valentine’s Day or President’s Day. Nope, spring training is always around the corner when the PECO...
The A’s move to Las Vegas gets worse every day
John Fisher, who might be the luckiest idiot alive because no dunderheaded maneuver he makes can seem to deprive him of the money that must’ve been chucked out of a moving car at him, has once again caught a break in that, with the Super Bowl being in Vegas this week, it’ll mask that the latest indi...
And the highest payroll in the AL Central goes to . . . the Kansas City Royals?
If there’s a surer sign that baseball has had a winter of discontent, at least for everyone outside the LA metro area, it’s that the highest payroll in the American League Central belongs to the Kansas City Royals. That’s after they inked star shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. to an 11-year extension that’s ...
The Rock is WWE’s biggest 'Hey, look over there!'
What to do when the name most associated with your company is accused of being one of history’s greatest monsters, as well as completely biffing the first meeting with the media after said accusations? Well, if you’re WWE and billions of dollars strong, apparently you call on one of the biggest star...
Virgil van Dijk and Alisson Becker saved Arsenal’s season
We spend a lot of time trying to unearth the little tactical nugget, or superlative performance from one player, or decoding the 3D art that most soccer matches at the highest level usually are to figure out why one team won or lost and why this team is higher in the table than the other. But someti...
Nikita Kucherov exposed NHL All-Star weekend for the farce that it is
There’s a fallacy out there that any All-Star Game is “for the fans.” That idea flew out the window long ago, especially for the NBA and NHL. The All-Star Game is merely a junket for the league’s biggest sponsors to get the chance to hobnob with the game’s top stars, a reward for their support of th...
The Orioles finally act like the big boys they are
Good to be an O’s fan these days. We have no idea what kind of owner David Rubenstein will be, and it could be he’s just as interested in the “ballpark village” that John Angelos secured the tax money for before selling up. But his status as “Not An Angelos” will provide Orioles fans with optimism r...