This depresses me — the notion of legal betting on sports in most, if not all, U.S. states. It could happen, perhaps as soon as next year. The Supreme Court this week decided to hear the state of New Jersey’s appeal on legalized sports gambling — which Jersey, always a leader in taste and good […]

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The draft. Whichever you want to talk about … is very much an American thing. The rest of the world, you collect players in a youth system and watch them develop. You keep a few, loan some others, release the rest. Especially the case in world soccer. In the U.S. however, talent is typically distributed […]

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Many Americans seem to think the NFL’s Super Bowl is the world’s most-watched sports event. To be sure, 114 million television viewers, thereabouts, is a big crowd. But the Uefa (European) Champions League final easily wins the “most viewers” statistic with what has been around 380 million watchers, in recent years. Tonight’s final pits soccer […]

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Maybe it’s just me, but I have trouble differentiating between Tom Brady and Matt Damon. No, really. (And the photo, above, in which Damon is wearing Brady’s uniform, makes things worse.) To me, they are pretty much the same guy. If asked, “Who starred in all those Bourne Identity movies, I might well pause and […]

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If I could ask Aaron Hernandez one question, it would be this: “Why?” But I will never have that chance, and no one else will, either, going forward … And I’m not sure he could answer that question. The “why?” Hernandez, the former New England Patriots tight end with a $40-million contract, hanged himself in […]

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The Oakland/Los Angeles/Oakland Raiders and Las Vegas. They deserve each other. This is the franchise that embraced a reputation as an outlaw NFL team … and a desert town that occasionally is still called Sin City. But then the Raiders missed out on the Great Los Angeles Migration (the Rams and Chargers beat them to […]

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The mystery of Tom Brady’s missing Super Bowl jersey has been solved as well as resolved. A Mexican national with a media credential apparently snatched the No. 12 Patriots jersey after New England’s dramatic 28-25 victory in Super Bowl 51, but the jersey is back in the U.S. along with what appears to be the […]

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Think of it as a sort of cosmic balancing of the scales. The fat kids who played in the line in high school are more highly prized in the NFL than the fast guys who got all the attention. At least, when those fast guys are running backs. The first few days of the NFL’s […]

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Or fastest over 40 yards, anyway. In a run that began with a human starting the clock. John Ross, a receiver out of the University of Washington, was timed at 4.22 seconds today over the NFL’s preferred test distance, breaking an NFL Combine record of 4.24, set by running back Chris Johnson in 2008. (Johnson […]

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By the time the Rams left Southern California for St. Louis, ahead of the 1995 NFL season, they had shifted from their traditional white-and-blue uniforms to a blue-and-gold look. In St. Louis, it got more so, with the blue trending toward a dark blue, producing a uniform that looked as little as possible like the […]

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