In a way, Peyton Manning and I go way back. To 1996, when I made the trip to Knoxville to see UCLA play Manning and No. 2-ranked Tennessee. We were in the same stadium, anyway. The two of us and 100,000-plus other people, most of them wearing orange. Tennessee won 35-20 before the usual Neyland […]

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I cannot recall if I always loathed all things Boston. Perhaps I did. Being a Lakers fan in the 1960s would have been enough to sour a right-thinking person on Boston. The Celtics: Good, but also really lucky. If I were ambivalent about the Boston Red Sox, the Boston (now New England) Patriots and the […]

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Maybe this is a sign that I have been out of the country for too long. Or maybe for long enough. I really don’t care what happens in the National Football League.

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I knew Pat Haden, a little, more than three decades ago. I covered the Los Angeles Rams for four seasons for the San Bernardino Sun, and Haden was in his second season when I got on the beat, in 1977. Haden was great to work with. Bright and accessible and honest. And, of course, a […]

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It has been explained here how difficult it is to follow college football, and what little of it could be seen, easily, is now gone. Leave the country for four years, you realize most of college football you can get along without. With some exceptions. Your own team. Maybe your team’s league. A few of […]

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A few years ago, we splurged on the slightly slicker version of the cable TV package. The one with all the Al Jazeera sports stations and, more important, the one with three ESPN stations. Yes, here in Abu Dhabi. ESPN, ESPN America and ESPN Classic. Those three were the primary lifeline, in the UAE, back […]

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Andy Murray won the “gentlemen’s” singles championship at Wimbledon today, the first Briton to do so since Fred Perry in 1936. Yes. Seventy-seven years ago. And there went another great losing streak. I am on record expressing support for the continuation of all prominent losing streaks. They give context and shape to teams, people and […]

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Interesting story. The New England Patriots are offering to take back Aaron Hernandez No. 81 jerseys. That would be the Aaron Hernandez who has been arrested on suspicion of murder. At first blush, it seems like an upright and decent thing for the Patriots to do. If anyone brings in a Hernandez jersey, the Patriots […]

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Watching American sports live, from the UAE, takes some extra effort. Not that things are not available. They are, if you pay a little bit extra — maybe $50 a year — to augment your basic cable package (most of which is not in English) with a set of stations that includes ESPN, Fox and, […]

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The origins of fandom are elusive. Perhaps the most common notion is a kid, hand in hand with his or her father, going to a ball game. It wasn’t quite like that for me in the mid-1960s. My father was not much of a sports fan and I wasn’t pointed at this or that team, […]

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