In Europe, the belief that soccer is more interesting to watch than American football is widespread. Approaching unanimous. If that preference is questioned, what often comes up is this: “American football has too many breaks in play. Soccer is continuous action.” The NFL RedZone package, however, turns that complaint on its head. It is the […]

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The Los Angeles Rams lost again today, 13-10 to the Carolina Panthers. That is four consecutive defeats for the lowest-scoring team in the NFL, at 16.2 points per game, a team that fell to 3-5 and looks doomed to post a losing record for the 10th consecutive season. A team already becoming irrelevant in Los […]

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The Cleveland Indians have been not-winning things for a long time. No World Series championships since 1948. Last appeared in a World Series in 1997 and lost Game 7 in excruciating fashion. But we must thank them for an important something already this October:

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I did not plan on making the Chicago Cubs a topic for two days running, but today it struck me anew that I really would prefer they not win a World Series for the first time since 1908 … Because I love, love, love long championship droughts, and when it comes to North American sports, […]

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Americans sometimes are surprised that few other people in the world are interested in the NFL. They have heard of something called the Super Bowl, but they overwhelmingly do not follow the game nor know very much about it. It isn’t as puzzling as it was 20 years ago because the NFL launched the Europe-based […]

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The LA Galaxy has been around for 21 seasons now, but it struck me today that never in that time had the soccer club had to fight for attention in its hometown with a local National Football League team. The NFL abandoned the Los Angeles market after the 1994 season, when the Rams and Raiders […]

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How hard is it on an NFL team to pick up and move? I was thinking about this after the Rams, having moved from St. Louis earlier this year, stunk it up in their second debut first as NFL representatives of “Los Angeles”. I had a memory of the Rams and Raiders having some difficult […]

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For the first time since 1994, the Rams played a game tonight with “Los Angeles” as part of their name. It went badly. Very badly. Final, from Santa Clara: San Francisco 49ers 28, Rams 0. And the scary thing is … the 49ers weren’t any good either, as some NFL writers noted. The Rams gained […]

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The opening weeks of their second stay in Los Angeles may not be going quite as well as the Rams would have hoped. Remember how they traded up to get the No. 1 pick in the 2016 draft? Ahead of their first season back in Los Angeles? The dramatic move clearly was intended to create […]

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Anyone who has attended a football game at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum knows you might face a long, steep climb to get to where you want to be. It could be a metaphor for the former St. Louis (and Cleveland) Rams’ return to Los Angeles. Making the decision to return to the stadium where they […]

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