They have the lowest payroll in the major leagues. They traded away half of their starting rotation at the trade deadline. They’re forced into using one game out of every five as a “bullpen day”, with no starter reliable enough to give at least five innings. And in spite of all that, the Tampa Bay […]
The Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers enter this season feeling the pressure. The Vikings made Kirk Cousins the highest-paid quarterback in the history of the NFL, hoping he can be the missing piece to put them over the top and win their first Super Bowl. The Packers have Aaron Rodgers back after injury in […]
Times for good for those of us who reside in Red Sox Nation. Boston comes into Sunday’s games on a pace to win 111 games. They’ve got a comfortable seven-game lead on a New York Yankees team that’s on a pace to exceed 100 victories themselves. The Red Sox are the 11-4 betting favorite to […]
The Pittsburgh Pirates have been a nice story this season, making a run at a winning record and having flirted with the playoffs for a longer stretch of time than anyone anticipated. The longshot bid for the postseason probably went by the boards for good with a crushing Friday night loss in Milwaukee. But at […]
What a difference a year makes. At this time last summer, the wolves were howling at the door for Michigan State head coach Mark Dantonio. The 2016 season had been a 3-9 disaster and the Spartans looked ready to fall irreversibly behind their Big Ten East rivals. Fast forward to this season. Sparty flipped its […]
There is a divergence of opinion between the media and the markets on prospects for the 2018 Wisconsin football program. The Badgers are soaking in the media love—ranked fourth in the AP’s preseason poll and even snagging a single vote for the top spot. The Las Vegas market is more cautious—Wisconsin’s national championship odds are […]
The Alabama football program is such a machine that the story is no longer what they might do during a given season, but who they’ll do it with. There’s no serious conversation about whether they’ll make their fifth College Football Playoff in the event’s first five years. That’s a given. The only question is what […]
Clemson’s bid for a fourth straight trip to the College Football Playoff is going to rest heavily on the defensive line’s performance. And that’s a litmus test that should be just fine for Tiger fans, because this front four is as good as it gets. Remember the names Clelin Ferrell and Austin Bryant on the […]
The city of Philadelphia has already had a fantastic sports year and there’s no sign of a letup as major league baseball heads into the final two months. The city that started the year with a historic Super Bowl-Final Four parlay behind the Eagles and Villanova, is now watching the Phillies gain steam. The city’s […]
West Virginia football has been reasonably predictable under Dana Holgorsen. They’ll put up points, give up a lot and be a threat to knock off Big 12 powers while not actually becoming one themselves. There’s excitement coming into this season surrounding quarterback Will Grier, an early frontrunner for league MVP and Heisman consideration. Can the […]
Penn State has gone to a New Year’s Six bowl game each of the last two years under James Franklin and last season’s Fiesta Bowl win represented just the second major bowl victory in two decades in Happy Valley. The losses the program faces this year are considerable, but so is the talent on hand […]
I like Notre Dame football. I’m not a hard-core Irish backer, but I enjoy watching Notre Dame games in the fall and root for them the vast majority of the time. But liking something is not the same as being blind, and this Irish team looks overrated heading into 2018. GREAT 1980s SPORTS MOMENTS Start […]
