The Cincinnati Bengals have a young, unproven offense, and a fan base that had pored over All-22 film breakdowns long enough to demand the team draft an offensive lineman last April to shore up its future. Riding high off a Week 16 win over the Baltimore Ravens, the Bengals figuredContinue Reading
NASHVILLE — In some vocations, being merely average is neither advisable nor tolerated. Like neurosurgery. Or air-traffic control. But in the N.F.L., mediocrity isn’t just welcomed — it’s rewarded. Heading into the penultimate week of the longest N.F.L. season ever, three-quarters of the league remained in postseason contention. That groupContinue Reading
Georgia, the defensive mammoth, and Alabama, the perennial juggernaut, seemed to be on a collision course to the top of college football all season. They got a shot at each other in the Southeastern Conference championship in December — a game in which the Bulldogs barely resembled the behemoth they’dContinue Reading
Dan Reeves, a former Dallas Cowboys halfback who, as a coach, guided teams to four Super Bowls (although he lost them all), died on Saturday at his home in Atlanta. He was 77. The cause was complications of dementia, according to a family statement. Reeves played and coached with theContinue Reading
It was supposed to be Friday’s prizefight, the College Football Playoff semifinal showdown that might actually stay close. Then No. 3 Georgia, conspicuously recovered from its nightmare of a Southeastern Conference championship game against Alabama, showed up at the Orange Bowl and made most everyone remember how No. 2 MichiganContinue Reading
ARLINGTON, Texas — This was the moment the Cincinnati Bearcats had pined for all season. The roster is chock-full of local kids, overlooked by Ohio State in high school and largely underestimated now by the football elite, who put their place in the College Football Playoff down to a matterContinue Reading
Friday is the last day for voters in the Baseball Writers’ Association of America to submit their 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame ballots. Listed on those ballots are two players in their 10th and final year of Hall of Fame eligibility who truly dominated their era but haven’t been votedContinue Reading
In this malleable, ebb-and-flow pandemic world, there may be one certainty gleaned from the last nearly two years of living with the coronavirus: that here and there may not look very much alike. When New York City was all sirens, silence and grim isolation during the first wave of theContinue Reading
On Tuesday, Dec. 21, Charlie Brown Jr. was walking through the lobby of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas when he saw his friend Zylan Cheatham looking joyous. Brown could tell just by looking at him that he had good news to share. Earlier that day, CheathamContinue Reading
Trip Hawkins first met John Madden in the dining car of an Amtrak train traveling from Denver to Oakland, Calif., in 1984, after Madden had agreed to lend his name and football prowess to a football simulation video game. Madden, the legendary coach and broadcaster, quickly made it clear whoContinue Reading
