We thought we had buried the XFL after one limp and forgettable season, in 2001. But now it is back, a ragged zombie out of the grave, with wrestling impresario Vince McMahon planning to take another whack at the 11-on-11 game two years from now. McMahon promises a “re-imagined” game … and I imagine it […]

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Here are the kickoffs for the NFL’s conference championship games tomorrow. That is, if you live under the umbrella of Pacific Standard Time. New England at Jacksonville, 12:05 p.m. Philadelphia at Minnesota, 3:40 p.m. Convenient, as a viewer, no? Well, yes, and you should know it is not like that everywhere. If you have lived […]

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I am, at turns, amused and exasperated by sports gamblers. How can they participate in a system in which the “house” never loses? How do they convince themselves that they are smarter than most other gamblers? How can they witness how totally random NFL games (well, just about any game ever played) can be? Take, […]

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I was made aware today of this video, which is based on the Barcelona midfield standout Andres Iniesta showing “There is a first time for everything” by trying something new — American football. It is an advertisement for an online foreign-exchange trader known as UFX, and the notion of the elfin Iniesta (5-foot-7, maybe 130 […]

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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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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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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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