To “sort out” is Brit-speak, and it commonly is used when referring to soccer and describes the process by which good defenses deal with attacking players.
It implies a sort of impudent coming forward of small men with high-skill … for whom the antidote is a few hard men of limited finesse but grim countenance, and […]

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It has been a rough, oh, coupla-three decades for Long Beach State alumni who care about the major sports. The football program was killed, and the basketball program, which was one of the nation’s best for a half-dozen seasons straddling 1970, generally wasn’t very good.
So, as a 49ers alumnus, I was quite pleased to read […]

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Going on 17 months now that we have been out of California — and out of the United States.
I feel as if I have kept fairly good track of several American sports. Others, however, I hardly realize I haven’t been paying any attention until I blunder into some online story and realize that I not […]

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I wrote about the BCS championship game for the Monday editions of The National. Keep in mind, probably 90 percent of our readers are unclear on the concept of American football … never mind college football … not to mention the states of Oregon and Alabama. (How many Americans know where Sussex is? Or the […]

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Received an e-mail from the Los Angeles Galaxy today about roster moves the club has made.
“LA Galaxy Acquire the Rights to Juan Pablo Angel and Frankie Hejduk”
I know Juan Pablo Angel, a goalscoring machine, is supposed to be the big news here. Which is why he was listed first.
But what I am interested in … […]

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I liked Kevin Love from the moment I saw him. A big lumpy kid who couldn’t be as good as everyone said he was … but was.
As I mentioned just a few days ago, I saw a lot of the Bruins during that stretch of three-straight Final Fours … and Kevin Love played for two […]

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Sometimes we “experts” in the world of sports journalism get one wrong. Way wrong.
Russell Westbrook is a recent example.
He is the second-best player for the Oklahoma City Thunder, a team with Kevin Durant and a huge upside. Some of us same experts now believe OKC could finish the season with a better record than the […]

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As a kid, I preferred UCLA over USC. The Trojans were big and bad, but UCLA was little and lithe and a little smarter than your average oafs, and I liked that.
Terry Donahue played defensive tackle at 205 pounds. Bob Stiles was 5-foot-9 and and 175 pounds, but he stopped Michigan State’s huge fullback just […]

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Part 3 of the series in The National about the best sports venues in the world. Broken out by continent.
In Monday’s editions: North America!
Interesting, how the voting went.
I will tell you who won: Augusta National. Even the Brits in the room know about “the course like no other” or whatever it is network TV gets […]

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We again interrupt this travelogue to muse about sports events back home, this time the Day of Reckoning at the University of Southern California.
Anyone who has been around the American college sports scene for any length of time could see this coming. To spend any time around Heritage Hall at USC was to pick up […]

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