This is not an exercise in academic rigor. I did not have someone sitting with a note pad writing down literally the first 10 facts I could recall pertaining to sports in 2017. But … it is a fairly accurate recreation of a fairly quick trip through my brain to see what stuck from the […]

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This is mostly an NFL thing, though I see it on the college level, now and then. Wherever it is allowed, it is objectionable. That would be the four-five-six-etc.-man clot of players who push their way into what usually begins as a one-on-one, open-field tackle and ends as something rather like a rugby scrum. (Here […]

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Two of the top quarterbacks potentially available for the 2018 NFL draft attend Los Angeles schools. UCLA’s Josh Rosen and USC’s Sam Darnold. Each has college eligibility remaining — one year for Rosen, two for Darnold. Each is mulling whether to make himself available for the draft or to stay in school for another year. […]

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George Weah was an outstanding soccer forward from Liberia who excelled in the 1980s and 1990s with some of Europe’s biggest clubs — AC Milan, Paris Saint-Germain, Monaco, Marseille, Chelsea … In 1995, he was named Fifa Player of the Year and won the Ballon d’Or, making him the first (and still only) African player […]

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Back before the Los Angeles Rams went on their two-decade sabbatical to St. Louis, in 1995, I would have been opposed to this: Sitting many of their best players for the final regular-season game — to ensure they are as healthy as possible for the club’s first playoffs home game in Southern California since 1985. […]

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Rich Dauer has made plenty of news during his lifetime in baseball. He was part of NCAA national championship teams at USC in the 1970s and the second baseman for the 1983 World Series-champion Baltimore Orioles. On a local-local, hometown level the Colton native was the oh-so-cool young (35) field manager of the attendance-record-smashing 1987 […]

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It is an exhibition, not a tournament. Something just north of hitting on a practice court. No matter. Serena Williams‘s return to a tennis court with an elite opponent on the other side of the net, with paying fans in the stands and someone keeping score … may be the biggest sports story in UAE […]

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* – L.A. Rams only The last time a team named the “Los Angeles Rams” won the NFC West division title? In 1985. In the one and only season of the Dieter Brock Era. A long time ago, then. A very long time — 32 seasons, actually. Which means fans of the current, L.A.-based Rams […]

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We don’t see much college football, in France. Our TV package includes stations with college matchups, but the West Coast games rarely begin before 10 p.m., Paris time, ending at 2 a.m. or so … and night games on the West Coast? Well, it’s an up-all-night thing, over here. But we happened to find Army […]

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It was Abu Dhabi’s idea, and not a bad one. Take the tennis-free final weekend of the year and jam into it a three-day, six-player competition grandiosely titled “World Tennis Championship”. Target the highest-ranked players in the world by offering fat appearance fees for a few days of action in the Gulf sun, with another […]

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