Baseball’s spring training season is a spring cleaning of sorts. Players are knocking rust off and brushing up on fundamentals, managers are polishing lineups and fans are soaking up sunshine. However, baseball might want to consider cleaning out its vacuum hose because players are still having trouble...

News of the record-breaking five-hour-53-minute Australian Open final match greeted me this morning as I checked email.  I still can’t wrap my mind around such an intense competition lasting that long.  Can you even imagine? The marathon showdown delighted fans around the world, and rightfully...

  I was listening to sports radio on the drive to work the other day—The Dan Patrick Show. Patrick said he was going to interview Todd Marinovich later in the hour. Marinovich is a former NFL quarterback recently featured in an ESPN documentary, “ROBO QB: The Making of the Perfect Athlete.”...

Nobody seems willing to state the obvious, so I guess that responsibility falls to me. As usual. Football has peaked. The only direction left to go is down. There. I said it. Now, I realize that there exists “out there” thousands of proponents of conventional wisdom, wisdom that posits this: “Football...

He won 409 games, but he didn’t do enough. He contributed more than $4 million dollars to Penn State, much of which went towards the founding of the Paterno Library, but he didn’t do enough. He spent over 45 years of his life as the head coach of Penn State, rebuffing repeated efforts by NFL teams...

When I first saw the National Championship winning quarterback who wore Bible verses under his eyes, I didn’t like him. When he began starting for the Broncos, I confess, I looked forward to watching him fail. And when he started winning and “tebowing” on the sidelines, I disliked him even...

Hugh Freeze is the new head football coach at Ole Miss. Before you ask, “Hugh?” (sometimes pronounced “who?”), just think of The Blind Side. The goofy high school coach at Memphis’ Wingate Christian School who answers his cell phone on the sidelines during a game is a fictional representation...

“Say it with me, Royals’ fans. Let’s ‘Play ball!’” The stadium announcer says it every game right before the Royals take the field. Those two words are key to the start of a game. When it was my turn to pitch in ball games growing up, I remember the umpire shouting, “Play ball!” and...

Last year, Chad Gibbs flew me out to Birmingham, Alabama to see a football game between his beloved Auburn Tigers and the West Virginia Mountaineers.  Ostensibly, Chad was doing this for his book, God and Football – Faith and Fanaticism in the SEC.  He claimed he wanted a perspective from...

Michael Vick’s life is unfolding like a Disney movie, just not one with talking dogs, thank you very much. At the time of this writing, Vick possesses the highest quarterback rating and has not tossed a single interception all year. His Eagles are poised to make a run for the NFC East Division Title...