Category: words

The kicker for NFL Seattle missed a 55-yarder a few minutes ago, and time ran out. In ’91, NFL Buffalo waived their kicker after he missed one that cost the Super Bowl. It’s the dream scenario, but in dreams, they make the field goal. Bob Etter, my friend at bridge tables, kicked for WFL Memphis […]

Here’s what I loved about the Great Alaska Shootout semifinal between Eastern Kentucky and Alabama-Birmingham: The host team Anchorage wasn’t involved. Therefore, the place was near empty, while the video coverage was unaccompanied. No games on the floor or Jumbotron to entertain the crowd at timeout. No cheerleaders, no band, no canned music or public […]

Each year around this time, I have to ask myself how much I want to put into basketball. I can ponder some related questions around the clock. Is there a future in this? Prospects for the future diminished over time. Making a career change at 60 sounds absurd, while sports media has grown more and […]

You know that obnoxious fanspeak “you haven’t done this behavior, or gained this knowledge, so you lack legitimacy as a fan’”? I think my friend Rebecca could beat anyone at that game. She could talk to God, and there’d be something about the WNBA Rebecca knows and God doesn’t. I’m choosy about the items in […]

It wasn’t the news that Missouri forward Sara-Rose Smith entered the portal that grabbed me as much as the photo. Missouri’s athletic department reported attendance of UT-Martin at Missouri 11/17/22 as 2107. I’ve never liked the practice of reporting tickets sold as bodies in attendance, but it’s become one of those things nobody thinks about. […]

Mississippi Valley State is where Jerry Rice went to college, which is all I know about it. I was working for the Concord Express, a small newspaper that’s never heard of you, either, in 1985. On NFL draft day, its editor — fellow named Tom Beaudin, I recall — seemed thrilled that the San Francisco […]

I was smug following the NCAA tournament that we’d lose no one. Who’d want to leave?! I said. The Utes lost two post-season games, to the winner of the Pac-12 tournament, and to the winner of the national championship. No graduation losses (er, Palmer graduated yesterday, but I don’t consider her a flight risk), and […]

perhaps the couldn’t-miss team didn’t need as much help from the officials as they received. Their decisions to tag Clark and Cinzano with their fourth fouls at 1:0x left the third were,at best questionable. I said a number of times that I was tired of watching the parade float that is LSU celebrate, so the […]

I wrote to General Mills to suggest Caitlin Clark be put on the Wheaties box. Clark and the University of Iowa Hawkeyes are on the verge of an NCAA women’s basketball championship — Coach Bluder called them a team of destiny — while Clark is the Naismith national player of the year AND the Academic […]

One of them survives to reach the round of 4, in case UCLA can’t keep the conference afloat against South Carolina.