I was sick and bloody tired of the spying, football-deflating New England Patriots 10 years ago, when the Helmet Catch and Eli Manning saved us from a 19-0 season by Dark Lord Belichick’s minions. I danced a jig when that one ended 17-14 to the Giants, in Glendale, Ariz., and everyone in the working press […]

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What is Landon Donovan doing? In short, he has decided, for a second time, to resume his soccer career. He first retired at the end of the 2014 Major League Soccer season, when he was only 32. He went out with a bang — with his sixth MLS Cup championship, the Galaxy’s fourth during his […]

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So, that’s why Nick Saban is such a big deal. A big enough deal to be getting paid more than $11 million by the University of Alabama in 2017. His Alabama team was down 13-0 to Georgia at halftime of the College Football Playoff championship game tonight, and instead of persevering with sophomore quarterback Jalen […]

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The Buffalo Bills and the Jacksonville Jaguars. Two generically hapless NFL teams meeting, astonishingly enough, in the NFL playoffs. For the Jaguars, it was a first playoffs game since 2007, a streak of futility “bettered” by only one team: Their opponents, the Bills, in the playoffs for the first time since 1999 — the longest […]

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So, there we were, feeling … well, not fat and sassy about the Los Angeles Rams’ chances in the first round of the playoffs … but reasonably confident. Worried about the placekicker, a little concerned about the defensive secondary, but in all pretty optimistic about their chances of defeating the Atlanta Falcons at the Coliseum. […]

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The Los Angeles Rams should be well-prepared for their first home playoff game since 1985. –As winners of the NFC West, they get to play at home, presumably before a capacity crowd at the Coliseum, just like the old days, before the Anaheim interlude and the stint as that St. Louis Club. –Having clinched a […]

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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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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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The moment the danger hit home was about halfway through the fourth quarter in Seattle, when a bunch of rowdy/giddy Rams posed on their sideline, celebrating what would finish as a 42-7 rout of the Seahawks. The expression “all but clinched” the NFC West ricocheted around the NFL, on Sunday, when mentioning the game. And […]

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The Los Angeles market has been slow to embrace the revenant Rams. Thousands of empty seats at the Coliseum, the Rams’ home again while the $2.1 billion stadium in Inglewood is built, can be seen in the background of TV shots. Late last week an L.A. podcast pundit sarcastically said, “I’m seeing tons of Rams […]

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