If you were hoping for some increased drama in a dry National League playoff race, then this past week was a disappointment. The Arizona Diamondbacks visited the Cincinnati Reds with a chance to tighten up the wild-card picture. The four-game series on the banks of the Ohio River ended with three wins for the Reds and the increasing certainty that we already know the five teams that will be involved in postseason play.
The four-game series between the Atlanta Braves and the St. Louis Cardinals continues on Friday. MLB Network carries the Braves-Cards for the second straight night and the 8 PM ET game is the highlight of the daily sports agenda.
There are worse problems that the Houston Texans could be facing besides the challenge of pushing past the second round of the AFC playoffs. It was as recently as this time two years ago that we were wondering if the franchise would ever make the postseason at a
Would it be a bad pun to say the Indianapolis Colts had a lot of Luck in the 2012 NFL season? Yeah, it most certainly would, but it would also be accurate.
The NL Central race is the daily sports focus on the MLB Network today, starting with matinee action in Cincinnati and concluding with a big prime-time game in St. Louis.
It’s a big year of transition for the conference we used to know as the Big East. It’s now re-named the American Athletic Conference, a consequence of the split that took place between the football schools and the basketball-only members. Since the latter created and built the league’s brand, they will carry its name into the new era. As for football…we might have a fresh name and some fresh faces, but it will still be a year where an old era passes away.
There are six independents in the world of college football. Two of them (Idaho and New Mexico State) aren’t worth discussing until they prove otherwise on the field. Two more are very worth discussing, and Notre Dame and BYU have each gotten their own separate pieces in TheSportsNotebook’s college football coverage. And right in the middle are the service academies, Navy & Army, whom we look in on here…
The bid of BYU football to go independent and truly become the Mormon equivalent of Notre Dame football is off to a halfway decent start. The Cougars have made bowl games each of the two seasons they’ve been on their own, and last year’s 7-5 year capped off with a very nice 23-6 bowl win over a hot San Diego State team playing on its home field. This year, though, could be a more trying time, as our college football coverage focuses in on Bronco Mendenhall’s team…
Four schools packed up from Conference USA and emigrated to the old Big East, now re-named the American Athletic Conference. While none of the four look ready to challenge Louisville for conference honors, all four could have some fun in their new home this year, as TheSportsNotebook’s college football coverage looks at the quartet of emigrant programs…
This is the last hurrah for the old Big East football conference. Actually it’s the postscript to the last hurrah, since the conference has been re-named the American Athletic Conference, following the departure of the basketball-only schools to rebuild the Big East brand on the hardwood.
But this coming college football season is still a last hurrah in a different sense—even as four new members arrive, this is thThis e last season in the league for Louisville and Rutgers, and those two teams—particularly Louisville—along with Cincinnati, are clearly the tone-setters in the race for what’s still an automatic BCS bowl berth in 2013.
Brian Kelly finally woke up the echoes in South Bend, as Notre Dame football became relevant on the national stage for the first time since the departure of Lou Holtz following the 1996 season. The Irish went 12-0 in the regular season, won a big statement game at Oklahoma and reached the BCS National Championship Game.
At the start of this week, TheSportsNotebook featured the Baltimore Orioles and noted that they were starting an enormous 15-game stretch against good teams that could make or break their playoff chances. Two close losses at home to the Tampa Bay Rays are how that stretch has started out, so the stakes are high tonight in Camden Yards. And the cameras of ESPN2 are on hand, as Buck Showalter hands the ball to rotation ace Wei-Yin Chen to try and stop the bleeding in a 7 PM ET game.