On today's Tuesday Morning Quarterback podcast, columnist Gregg Easterbrook and guest host Chris Deaton discuss what's behind the boom in NFL offense and what may cause it to slow in the season's second half, Drew Brees's place among the stars, and the stars' place amid the construction of several…
Hosted by Charlie Sykes.
Hosted by Charlie Sykes.
As the season kicks off, Michael Nelson offers a roundup of new and forthcoming books
Hosted by Charlie Sykes.
With the National Football League punting on how to handle players kneeling during the national anthem to protest police mistreatment of African Americans, all the owners (and Commissioner Roger Goodell) may have done is trade one headache for another: Accelerating the pending labor Armageddon…
(And why Baker Mayfield was a great choice.)
Al Pacino plays Penn State’s ‘JoePa’ in an HBO movie about the rape scandal.
How Kirk Gibson inspired a bunch of future Nationals fans. Since it is Opening Day, we're going to have a few baseball stories. This one from 2016 by Rudy Gersten is worth checking out. It's about Kirk Gibson's's famous 1988 World Series home run, a ball that hit Gersten's aunt Pamela, a fact they…
This week on the TMQ Podcast, Gregg Easterbrook breaks down the Super Bowl with Philly Superfan special guest Jonathan V. Last. In case you missed last week's column, do read it here.
So here we are.
This week on the TMQ podcast, Gregg Easterbrook and Stephen F. Hayes preview the Super Bowl and discuss Gregg's most recent column. Who will win the Non-QB, Non-RB MVP? Should the Eagles go for it on fourth down?
Here’s an embarrassing admission from a longtime Patriots football fan: My childhood team was the Miami Dolphins.
As I said last week, it’s pretty clear that the Eagles are now America’s Team.
The Philadelphia Eagles are headed to the Super Bowl, and while the region is rejoicing, the city’s tourism board is no doubt cringing at antics of the legendary local fans, which are best summed up by the recent headline in the New York Daily News: “Another Eagles fan arrested for punching police…
On this latest episode, the Substandard tackles (so to speak!) the playoff picture. JVL soars like an eagle. Vic hates getting interrupted. Sonny recounts his basement-dwelling years. Plus a discussion of post-9/11 war movies and a review of 12 Strong.
I have fond memories of watching Jerry Lewis's annual muscular dystrophy telethon, even though, let's be frank: The event made for wretched TV, even by the standards of the 1970s. Jerry Lewis, rest his soul, would ramble interminably about the plight of people afflicted with the disease until it…
The Philadelphia Eagles routed the Minnesota Vikings 38-7 in the NFC championship game on Sunday, which means they will play the despicable New England Patriots in the Super Bowl in two weeks. They are America’s team now, and you should root for them. Here’s why:
This week on the TMQ podcast, Gregg Easterbrook and Stephen F. Hayes preview the AFC/NFC championship games, and discuss Gregg's most recent column.
There must be a specter of bad timing that haunts good athletes, like some ghost that breathes allergenic dark matter into a player’s airway and makes him cough up the moment. It appears in about two and a half seconds: Which is how long it took the ball to leave Mookie Wilson’s bat, bounce toward…
Cleveland, Ohio
“Sure you won two Super Bowls, but what have you done for us lately?”New Jersey Giants to Eli Manning, benchwarmer.
On Sunday afternoon, the College Football Playoff Selection Committee awarded the sport’s fourth and final playoff spot to Alabama over Ohio State. It’s clearly the most controversial pick of the committee’s four-year tenure. One immediate question is this: What four-team playoff field would the…
Over the weekend, Will Leitch had a very smart piece about the NFL in New York magazine. You can read it here. I like Leitch a lot and this essay if very much worth your time. He contends that a variety of factors have converged to cripple the NFL—safety, politics, oversaturation—and that football…
Greg Schiano will not get the head-coaching job at Tennessee. Indeed, he may never again get a top-level head-coaching job.
When Auburn upset #1 Alabama in the Iron Bowl on Saturday evening—a day after #2 Miami managed to lose by double-digits to #70 Pittsburgh (5-7)—it seemed like chaos was once again reigning over college football. And in a sense, it was. Yet, at the same time, Alabama’s loss actually helped shrink…
This week on the Tuesday Morning Quarterback Podcast, Gregg Easterbrook discusses his most recent column, and explains why teams should try more onside kicks. Plus, a discussion regarding why year-round football is a bad idea.
Every month, we eagerly anticipate the arrival of our GQ magazine. There are few other places where The Scrapbook can glean instruction on how to wear capri-pants-for-men without our calves looking chunky. This month is no exception. For fresh out on newsstands—assuming there is still such a thing…
The best regular season in sports is heading toward its climax. On Halloween, 17 teams still had a shot of making the College Football Playoff (CFP), and I predicted that many top teams would lose in the weeks to come. Two weeks later, the number of undefeated or 1-loss teams has dropped from 17 to…
Halloween marks the halfway juncture of the NFL regular season, and is a good time to assess who’s likely still to be suited up in January when most of the league has retired to the couch to drink boysenberry IPA and watch the playoffs. Tuesday Morning Quarterback proposes a new way to make this…
On Saturday morning, ESPN College GameDay host Rece Davis speculated about which conferences might not get a team into the College Football Playoff (CFP), saying, “I think the Big Ten is in a little bit of trouble if they don’t have an undefeated champion, or even if Wisconsin is the undefeated…
This week on the Tuesday Morning Quarterback Podcast, Gregg Easterbrook and Stephen F. Hayes discuss the role reversal of teams from '16 to '17 (Rams, Falcons), why the Football Gods are chortling, and lastly, why no London game this year seems to ever be any good.
What will become of the Packers now that Aaron Rodgers is injured? And why does Congress allow donations to college football programs to be tax deductible? Join Gregg Easterbrook and Stephen F. Hayes, as they discuss these and other questions on the latest episode of the Tuesday Morning Quarterback…
Perhaps more than any other major sport, college football revels in predictions. The sport’s preseason polls get a lot of attention, and the expectations they set continue to influence the rankings for much of the season. But at some point—like about now, with the season’s midpoint nearly upon…
This week on the Tuesday Morning Quarterback Podcast, Gregg Easterbrook argues in his column that, while we need more research of CTE, the relationship between brain injury risk and contact football before age 12 is clear. And that's why he thinks legislatures should ban youth tackle football.…
Vice President Mike Pence departed an NFL game Sunday afternoon in response to several players who knelt during the playing of the National Anthem, he said in a statement.
Last week, President Donald Trump picked a fight with the NFL, arguing that players like Colin Kaepernick who take a knee during the national anthem should be fired. As he has done so many times before, the president kicked up a hornet’s nest of controversy. Maybe the commotion will work to his…
Last week, President Donald Trump picked a fight with the NFL, arguing that players like Colin Kaepernick who take a knee during the national anthem should be fired. As he has done so many times before, the president kicked up a hornet’s nest of controversy. Maybe the commotion will work to his…
Is President Trump right about football being "crummy" or is this just the man who largely helped kill the USFL lashing out? Why put this on the front burner? Join Gregg Easterbrook and editor in chief Stephen F. Hayes as they discuss week three of the 2017 NFL season on the Tuesday Morning…
The Republican tax reform gets its big introduction on Wednesday by way of a presidential speech in Indiana. President Donald Trump will deliver an afternoon address in Indianapolis, joined by, among others, the state’s Democratic senator, Joe Donnelly.
Have a question for Matt Labash? Ask him at askmattlabash@gmail.com or click here.
Recent NFL seasons have begun with waves of negativity: the Ray Rice controversy to start the 2014 season, the assault on the airwaves by DraftKings and FanDuel at the start of 2015, the Tom Brady suspension in the first month of 2016. This year it’s President Donald Trump denouncing NFL players as…
I deployed to Iraq from 2006 to 2007, during a time when every single day you worried that a random IED, rocket, or mortar attack would take your life. (Al Anbar province was a bad place to be in those days.) Yet Sundays were special. Because on Sundays, the Armed Forces Network would broadcast as…
Where do things stand now that the great presidential football uproar weekend is over? Donald Trump’s comments in Alabama on Friday about NFL players—primarily former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick—protesting police by kneeling during the national anthem set people off in a most…
Many football enthusiasts are asking—what’s happening with quality of play? Join Gregg Easterbrook and editor in chief Stephen F. Hayes as they discuss week two of the 2017 NFL season on the Tuesday Morning Quarterback podcast.
Ye gods the Bills at Panthers game was awful to behold, and not just because no touchdown was scored. Dropped passes, missed assignments, overthrown receivers—these guys are paid millions of dollars a year and the owners wallow in public subsidies. How could the result be so crummy? The game is…
With the NFL about to start, predictions are everywhere. TMQ’s Super Bowl picks come at the end of this column—along with the disclaimer, All Predictions Wrong or Your Money Back.
All the Atlanta Falcons had to do was run straight ahead and they would have won the Super Bowl. Yet they got cute, and paid a price.
Like many, perhaps most, Americans, I had never heard of the professional football quarterback Colin Kaepernick until he became better known for kneeling before games than for throwing passes during games.
Since the turn of the 21st century, NFL ratings have steadily increased, and Tuesday Morning Quarterback has gotten steadily longer. Then a year ago this time, I took a year off to complete my next book. Untoward things happened in TMQ’s absence. Donald Trump was elected. Waffle-flavored Oreos came…
Stuart Stevens is something rare in politics: A campaign strategist who can write. Stevens has run just about every kind of campaign there is—he helped win elections for Bob Dole, Haley Barbour, and George W. Bush. He got the guy from The Love Boat into Congress and ran Mitt Romney’s failed 2012…
I don't know about you, but I'm still recovering from Sunday night.
Like a reflex hammer to a knee, it's now obligatory that any comment a celebrity makes in opposition to Donald Trump gets retweeted 10,000 times. As of early Monday afternoon, New England Patriots tight end Martellus Bennett was more than 99 percent of the way there.
Earlier this season the National Football League announced a $100 million initiative to do more to study and reduce the effects of concussions and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) on its players—an apparently sizeable figure for which it took a number of bows. While this appears at first…
I am a diehard Chicago Bears fan, but when they are not in contention (a common occurrence these days) I need someone else to root for. When I’ve made a wager on the game the task is easy, but failing that I tend to pick the team that has a uniform that most closely resembles what they wore when I…
In this week's edition of the Kristol Clear newsletter, editor at large William Kristol has announced another contest for readers with the potential for great prizes! (And be sure to sign up for Kristol Clear and our other great newsletters.)
The following is an excerpt from the Kristol Clear newsletter. Sign up for the weekly newsletter here.
You have to figure out, after a tough loss, how you are going to handle it. It has to hurt, but it is probably better if you don't let it show and, instead, heed these lines from Yeats:
You have to figure out, after a tough loss, how you are going to handle it. It has to hurt, but it is probably better if you don’t let it show and, instead, heed these lines from Yeats:
Tuesday night, the College Football Playoff Selection Committee will declare which four teams would make the playoff if the regular season were to end today. A week from now, the committee will decree what four teams will make the playoff for real. As with all progressive-style "elite" or "expert"…
When I watch a football game, here’s most of what I see: either guys going out for passes and quarterbacks throwing the ball in their direction or blockers trying to push defenders aside to create holes for runners to charge through. In other words, I see almost nothing. Multiply me by millions of…
When I watch a football game, here’s most of what I see: either guys going out for passes and quarterbacks throwing the ball in their direction or blockers trying to push defenders aside to create holes for runners to charge through. In other words, I see almost nothing. Multiply me by millions of…
The College Football Playoff Selection Committee is charged with deciding which four teams to invite to college football's postseason playoff. It's hard to imagine an easier scenario for the 12-person committee than for there to be only four major undefeated teams, one from each of the four…
The National Football League continues to serve up boring games for its fans who have responded by not watching them. I received a number of responses to my recent article on this lamentable trend and the "action" in the days following publication did not show much promise that things would be…
The game wasn't much fun to watch. It was one of those blowouts with things pretty much settled long before the fourth quarter was over. There were the usual penalties, with the officials meeting to discuss whodunit and what to call. These provided opportunities for what are described by the…
The game wasn’t much fun to watch. It was one of those blowouts with things pretty much settled long before the fourth quarter was over. There were the usual penalties, with the officials meeting to discuss whodunit and what to call. These provided opportunities for what are described by the…
College football's polls rank teams even before the season starts, speculating about how good teams will be before they ever play a down. But the Anderson & Hester College Football Computer Rankings (which I co-created) reward teams for what they've actually done this season, and only this season,…
Variations on the same basic conversation are, no doubt, taking place all over the country: people asking, rhetorically, “How has it come to this?" Agonizing over what, if anything, can be done. Wondering, "Does it really have to be one of these two?" Sooner or later you come to the dead-end…
There were seventy reporters credentialed to the New York Mets instructional league in Port St Lucie, Florida, this week. The 29-year-old college-football broadcaster, Christian evangelist and former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow was taking his first swings and shagging his first flies as a…
Over the weekend, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the national anthem at the beginning of an NFL preseason game. Predictably, this touched off a firestorm after Kaepernick explained at a press conference after the game that this was done to protest injustice in…
Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, the consistent but hard-luck gunslinger who will probably have broken more bones than records by the time his career is finished, was injured again Thursday night. In a preseason game against the Seattle Seahawks, Romo had scrambled out of the pocket and was in…
There was always something wrong about saying Buddy Ryan coached defense. The units that he sent onto the field may not have been in possession of the football, but there was nothing defensive about them. They were the aggressors. They didn't stop offenses; they routed them. Destroyed them.…
Well, Super Bowl 50 is in the books and the improbable has happened: Peyton Manning has still not officially retired. Forget about the game (pretty lousy), or the commercials (even worse), or the halftime show (about on par with this). The Peyton story is the only one that really matters coming off…
My friends accuse me of having a fetish for hopeless causes that interest no one and have no hope of ever being accomplished. Which brings me to my plan for fixing the Pro Bowl.
Stuart Stevens was Mitt Romney’s top political strategist during the 2012 campaign. He knows what it feels like to lose, and he can hardly talk about that loss with anyone who hasn't experienced a campaign from the inside:
Dear Lawmakers,
In the National Football League, it is the year of the orthopod. Football, the cognoscenti like to say, is a game of injuries, but this year, it sometimes seems as though that's all that it is. That, and the blown call, anyway.
The College Football Playoff Selection Committee's 4-team playoff field generated very little controversy this season, but the process—and the rankings that it yielded—raised two concerns for future seasons.
There are only two weeks remaining in college football’s regular season (three, counting Army-Navy), and it’s becoming pretty clear which teams still have a shot at making the 4-team playoff field. Last week, 16 teams still appeared to be alive. Now, with Houston, TCU, and Utah having lost, that…
With just three weeks remaining in the best regular season in all of sports—a regular season whose greatness largely results from the smallness of the playoff field to follow—various teams’ prospects for making the 4-team College Football Playoff are starting to take shape. Here’s a rundown of…
It's a little hard to find underneath the bright banners advertising football conference schedules, field hockey scores, and special video clips from recent games in a half-dozen different sports, but at the bottom of NCAA.com is a small menu entitled “About the NCAA,” which takes you to NCAA.org…
You quit or we don’t play. That is essentially what dozens of players on the University of Missouri football team told the president of the university. They had lost four straight games, five of their last six, including a 31-13 home loss to Mississippi State on Saturday night. But they won this…
For 16 years, the Bowl Championship Series focused fans’ and reporters’ attention on teams’ actual success in winning games against strong opponents. Just over a year into the new Selection Committee era (in which 13 people determine which teams will be invited to a 4-team playoff), it’s clear…
On a crazy college football Saturday that saw Michigan State pull out about the most improbable win since Stanford’s band came onto the field against Cal 33 years ago, the LSU Tigers beat previously undefeated Florida and claimed the top spot in the Anderson & Hester Rankings. In three weeks, the…
Pick Eddie Lacy. That was the advice of at least one expert back in the summer. Not a single play of the regular NFL season had been run, but it was already a busy time for those who play fantasy football and the gurus who advise them. “Lacy’s mix of stability and upside over a full season” is…
After all the media coverage and the judicial back and forth, the New England Patriots returned to the field Thursday night and won a football game. Tom Brady, who had been banned for throwing softballs, then re-instated by a federal judge (we pay those guys for that?), threw four…
How much do Americans love football? Enough that more of them will tune in to a meaningless exhibition game in August than viewed the Stanley Cup finals. As the Chicago Sun Times reports, last week's
SB Nation reports that New York Jets quarterback
Frank Gifford was the glamor face of professional football before the world learned that there was something glamorous about the sport. Before it became a national obsession. Before there were Monday night games and Super Bowls. Back when star players had off-season jobs because playing in the…
Needless to say, The Scrapbook was horrified last week to learn that Sean (Diddy) Combs had been arrested in Los Angeles and charged with assault with a deadly weapon, making terrorist threats, and battery. All of this took place on the UCLA campus, where Combs’s son Justin is a member of the…
They are a lousy team with perhaps the worst owner in all of professional sports, but the Imperial City wants the Redskins nonetheless. As Alex Gold and Ted Gayer of the Brookings Institute write:
What to do about Tom Brady? The consensus among the sports class seems to be that something must be done. You even hear people saying that he should be suspended for an entire season. Kieth Olbermann of ESPN did a rant recommending just such a punishment. (One day for the crime and 364 for the…
So it appears that Tom Brady did know that he was throwing softballs. As John Branch of the New York Times reports
In post-game remarks, Patriots owner Bob Kraft compared his team overcoming the scandal known as deflategate to when the Patriots won the first Super Bowl after 9/11:
Way back when, a Dallas Cowboys running back named Duane Thomas was asked, in the days leading up to the Super Bowl, what it was like to play in the “ultimate game.”
The New England Patriots are my guilty sports pleasure.
So did the New England Patriots actually cheat last Sunday when they beat the Indianapolis Colts in a 45-7 laugher? Well, the game was certainly important. Winning meant another trip to the Super Bowl for the Patriots. And, then, the Patriots have a history. Back in 2007 the team was busted by…
Football great Mike Ditka says that, if he had an 8-year-old son right now, he wouldn't let him play football. He made the remarks in an episode of HBO's Real Sports, which will air tonight.
While college football fans were riveted to the two playoff games on New Year’s Day (make that one-and-a-half playoff games, as the second half of the Rose Bowl was hardly must-see T.V.), some commentators could hardly wait to seize the moment to criticize the Bowl Championship Series (BCS),…
Not a lot of good news coming out of Michigan these last few years. Detroit went broke, people left the state for Texas and other places where they could find jobs, and the University of Michigan football team could not seem to beat Ohio State.
Growing up in Dallas, there is nothing better than living in Washington, D.C., on “Misery Monday”—the Monday after the Dallas Cowboys have whipped the Washington Redskins. And believe me, yesterday was a whipping with the Cowboys defeating the Redskins 44-17.
Can be seen in plain focus through the prism of the Washington Redskins and their miscalculations (some would say “delusions”) about quarterback Robert Griffin III. That, anyway, is the way Gabriel Baumgaertner writes it at Sports Illustrated:
Most college football fans are happy that the sport has adopted a 4-team playoff. The method of selecting those four teams, however, is another matter. This past offseason, McLaughlin & Associates asked self-described college football fans this question: “As you may know, college football will…
A few hours before kickoff, my wife and daughter and I went to Gladys Knight’s place in Atlanta for the chicken and waffles (can’t recommend the “Midnight Special” enough) and the room was full. It seemed like every third table was occupied by people wearing crimson or orange. When they caught…
For the past decade, the Bowl Championship Series unfailingly provided the matchup for college football’s national title game that reflected the public consensus. (In the six years prior to that, the BCS’s record was spottier, but after 2003-04, its formula was wisely streamlined, and its…
With just two weeks to go before it announces its 4-team playoff field, the College Football Playoff (CFP) Selection Committee is underrating teams from the two strongest conferences — the Southeastern and Pac-12 — and overrating those from the other three major conferences—the Big 12, Big Ten, and…
With three weeks to go in college football’s regular season, Alabama has vaulted to #1 in the Anderson & Hester Computer Rankings. The 1-loss Crimson Tide, which beat previously undefeated Mississippi State on Saturday to move up from #3, edged undefeated Florida State in this week’s rankings…
Does this week’s battle between Mississippi State and Alabama involve the nation’s #1 and #3 teams, or #1 and #5? Well, it depends whether you ask the College Football Playoff (CFP) Selection Committee or the Anderson & Hester Computer Rankings. Pretty much across the board, the former has a…
If you were a member of the Church of Political Correctness and watching ESPN’s Monday Night Football last night (say someone had tied you to a chair and forced it upon you) … well for whom would you have been rooting?
Half of this college football regular season (7 of 14 weeks) is now in the books, and neither of the two standout teams to date has won a conference championship, let alone a national championship, in the past half-century. Each played in a bowl game in Tennessee last year (the Music City Bowl and…
After finishing the season ranked #29 last year, the Arizona Wildcats — hot off their upset win at Oregon — have claimed the top spot in the inaugural 2014 Anderson & Hester Rankings. The second and fourth spots are held by two schools from Mississippi — #2 Mississippi and #4 Mississippi State —…
As the military prepares to take on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is ordering a review ... of the military's ties to the National Football League. This comes "in the wake of the scandal over how the league is handling domestic-abuse allegations against players,"…
Last night’s contest between the Chicago Bears and the San Francisco 49ers, in that team’s brand new stadium, was hijacked by the zebras. More penalties than plays, it sometimes seemed. And the ratings were off a little but still good enough to beat the Miss America contest. But if a ratings slide…
Scott Clement of the Washington Post reports that, on the question of what to call the NFL team identified with the city of Washington, D.C., a large majority is content to stick with the name “Redskins.”
The fight over television blackouts of NFL games is on again. The league, which may be the most successful, powerful, and popular sports conglomerate in history, is lobbying Congress for some of its famous protective services. The thing comes down to the issue of whether or not games that have not…
The white-hot issue of what to call the professional football team currently playing its home games in the vicinity of the nation’s capital just got hotter. Earlier this week, Senator Harry Reid said he wouldn’t accept comp tickets (truly a first for a sitting senator) to the team’s games so long…
As Paul M. Barrett at Businessweek writes:
Unlike you, I will be watching the Pro Bowl this weekend, albeit grudgingly.
Impossible to imagine American college football without Notre Dame. Rockne. “Win one for the Gipper.” The Four Horsemen. The Blue and the Gold. Heismans and national championships by the bushel. Rudy. Exclusive television deals. And now, as Kavitha A. Davidson at Bloomberg reports:
On the one hand, Barack Obama, speaking as a dad, says he "would not let my son play pro football." It's a reasonable judgment, one other parents have made and one they're entitled to make (though enforcing it on recalcitrant sons is another matter!).
There will be only two games this weekend in the National Football League. Down from four the previous two weekends as many as sixteen during the now-completed regular season during which 256 games were played. Many of these would be charitably described as “forgettable.” But what often seemed…
In an interview with Fusion's Jordan Fabian, a political consultant to the White House compared the rollout of Obamacare to last weekend’s memorable NFL playoff game between the Indianapolis Colts and the Kansas City Chiefs. The Colts, of course, pulled off one of the great, improbable comebacks of…
Has there ever been a better season of college football? The final game of the Bowl Championship Series, which ranks among the finest ever played, further confirms what has been clear for some time: This is the golden age of college football.
The last of the unsold tickets to the playoff game between the Cincinnati Bengals and San Diego Chargers were bought up on Friday, mostly by Proctor and Gamble. Call it a reverse corporate bailout. If P&G had not come to the rescue, Bengals fans who live in Cincinnati and its environs would have…
The Cincinnati Bengals won their division and made it to the playoffs but are having difficulty selling enough tickets to this weekend's game against the San Diego Chargers to avoid a local television blackout.
Temperatures in the high 40s, with some rain. That’s the forecast for Buffalo on Sunday when the Bills and the Dolphins kick it off. Balmy, then. So much so that the team from Miami can’t, should they lose, use the weather for an alibi. Likewise, the fans who choose not to pay sit in the…
The headline on this Bloomberg piece catches a certain, robust and current, strain of thought in Washington.
The team plays badly. The coach coaches badly. The owner owners badly. The fight song is revolting and the name is an offense against the laws of political correctness. But other than that …
These days, the only thing in Washington performing less ably and delivering more disappointment than Obamacare would be the Washington Re****ns, a facsimile of a football team that is long on controversy, short on competence, and overflowing in controversy. The Re****ns hosted the Kansas…
He had a real name but nobody knew it. He was known universally as "Bum" Phillips and he was one of the best loved football coaches never to win a championship. Never, in fact, to play in one. His teams came close. They were one game from the Super Bowl in successive years. After the second…
It was a fitting match, yesterday, in Pittsburgh. Kathleen Sebelius and her failing health care plan and the struggling Pittsburgh Steelers, whose coach has resorted to desperate measures such as banning:
Showing the good sense for which it is famous, the federal government—specifically the Obama Department of Defense—has announced its plans to cancel the nationally televised Air Force-Navy football game on Saturday, thereby jeopardizing millions of dollars (and inconveniencing a great many…
Seems the government is on the verge of shutting down. And just as it was about to provide affordable health care for all. How is that for bad timing?
There is much to lament about the rise of social media and the damage it has done to ordinary human activities and interactions. And now we learn that it is leeching away the loyalty of American college students for their football teams. Attendance in the student section is down in, of all…
ESPN reports that the NCAA has backed off and granted an indulgence to a recently discharged Marine and given him permission to play college football.
For some reason, the president will be honoring a football team at the White House today. It is not quite football season, yet. The team in question has not been a team for a long time, and there is no particular anniversary occasion. This is not the fiftieth year since it achieved glory or…
The NCAA might just as well become another department of the government and build a lavish headquarters building in Washington. Its bureaucratic culture would make it a perfect fit. The complexity of its rules would make for a seamless merger. And the high-handed, arrogant management style would…
College football fans may soon have another thing to lord over the NFL. The Hill writes, “Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Monday she is in talks with the NFL to help promote new insurance options under ObamaCare.” The report continues, “Sebelius said the football league…
He was supposed to be done, finished, out of football and perhaps headed to Australia to try rugby. Now, Tim Tebow is, as Mike Garofolo of USA Today reports, "... on his way to Foxborough to join the New England Patriots."
Richard Goldstein writes at the New York Times:
As Conor Orr reports in the Star-Ledger:
According to Sports Illustrated's Peter King, Tom Brady:
Last week, in a blog post titled, "Super Bowl City Leads on Energy Efficient Forefront," the Energy Department touted the Superdome's lights. The Superdome, in New Orleans, is hosting tonight's Super Bowl, where a power outage stopped play for more than half an hour.
A power outage disrupted play at the Super Bowl in New Orleans tonight. Here's video:
The Super Bowl is, as everyone knows, the biggest thing in sports. And television. Which are, increasingly, indistinguishable. The game is routinely the highest rated program of the year. Any year. In fact, three of the four most highly rated shows of all time are Super Bowls. And those would…
In an interview with the New Republic, President Barack Obama is asked, "I'm wondering if you, as a fan, take less pleasure in watching football, knowing the impact that the game takes on its players."
Tonight, the 15th BCS National Championship Game will cap yet another extraordinary college football season. College football is the only major American sport that emphasizes the regular season over the postseason, like baseball did in its glory days (when the two league champions went directly to…
“The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back. That's real glory. That’s the essence of it.”—Vince Lombardi Late Sunday night, the Washington Redskins defeated the Dallas Cowboys (that would be “America’s Team”) 28-18. The victory got them into the playoffs and made possible…
I'm as thrilled as every other red-blooded Washington-area resident by the Redskins' victory yesterday. Yes, I did "predict" a Cowboys victory on Fox News Sunday. But that was, as I said on the show, a prediction contrary to my hopes, and of course was really made in order to avert the evil eye…
The end does not appear to be nigh as the Mayans would have it. And what a relief. But Tim Tebow's career (if it could be called that) with the New York Jets is evidently over. After the Jets starting quarterback, Mark Sanchez, played miserably Monday night in a loss that eliminated any hope the…
Those who doubt the possibility of comebacks (Republicans, for instance) can take heart from the revival of Notre Dame's football fortunes, this morning's number one college team.
Whatever the reason for holding elections in November, it works out as a merciful thing. If your party loses, you’ve still got football to remind you of what is truly important in life. There is nothing like college football—not even politics—for passionate, irrational affections and loyalties. A…
On the evening before the big game, both candidates showed up on ESPN's Monday Night Football. And why not? You hunt where the ducks are. And on Monday night, that's where they are.
Sports fans in some important swing states this weekend will get a last-minute dose of politics with their football. Bankrupting America, a campaign project of the conservative group Public Notice, will be flying two banners over the fields at college and professional football games with messages…
What to watch tonight? There is the debate, of course, upon which hangs the fate of the nation if not the world. That's important. And, then, there is the seventh game of the National League playoffs, with the winner going to the World Series. And, on Monday Night Football we have the Chicago…
It wasn’t that long ago that the National Football League – the jewel of professional sports – appeared to be in serious trouble, if not real decline. The New Orleans Saints’ head coach, former defensive coordinator, and several players had been suspended for putting “bounties” on opposing…
The debate tonight between Representative Paul Ryan and Vice President Joe Biden could be a game changer ... or not. The usual media suspects are all over the debate with analysis and predictions that may, or may not, prove helpful. Hard to recall anyone who divined how the debate between…
Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway endorsed Mitt Romney ahead of Wednesday's presidential debate in Colorado.
Seems like everybody has now seen it, either when it happened (that would be in "real time") or on replay. Even players who benefitted from the call agree that the Packers got hosed. The remedy?
The White House weighed in on the blown call that cost the Green Bay Packers the football game last night against the Seattle Super Hawks. Via the pool report, from aboard Air Force One:
Fred Barnes reviews When Saturday Mattered Most for the Wall Street Journal:
The Dallas Cowboys defeated the New York Giants last night, in the first game of the NFL season. Like many millions of fans, I chose to watch the game instead of former President Clinton's speech. Having seen plenty of Clinton speeches, I knew his moves and was pretty confident that Tony Romo and…
This is Mitt Romney's big night. The people who understand American politics and make a living explaining its mysteries to the rest of us have said so, over and over, and it is hard not to agree. Governor Romney needs to go long with his acceptance speech and go into the campaign with momentum on…
Ephraim, Wisc.
A NewsCore report on the New York Post's website reported earlier that President Obama had arrived in Afghanistan to mark the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Tim Tebow attended a Yankees game last night at the Stadium (if you are a Yankees fan, there is only one "stadium") where the fans booed him. This, despite the fact that he was wearing a Yankees cap and did not, so far as the news stories go, take a knee or quote scripture or throw a wounded duck…
The Peyton Manning tour has evidently ended in Denver, where he will play for the Broncos, and one almost wishes it could have gone on a little longer. It was a nice relief from that other road show we hear so much about—namely, the presidential campaign.
So now they have gone and politicized the Super Bowl ads. Have they no shame?
Now this has to be a big relief to Eli, Butch, Gronk, Victor, and the rest of those studs. Not to mention Belichick and Coughlin. Shoot, even the commish has got to feel like a big weight has been lifted off his shoulders. Big Sis Napolitano, herself, has done a walkthrough of the stadium where…
When Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu suffered concussion-like symptoms in a recent NFL game, he did what any decent husband might do: He walked to the sideline and called his wife Theodora to tell her he was fine. Polamalu, like so many football players, has a long history of concussions,…
In Annapolis today, Air Force and Navy met on “the fields of friendly strife.” With 10:00 left in the game, Air Force led 28-10, having more or less dominated play for the first 50 minutes. With 2:09 left, the Falcons still led 28-17. Then Navy nailed a must-make 37-yard field goal, recovered the…
We may be witnessing a perfect Washington moment. For most of the workweek, attention has been focused on the collapse of a solar energy company that had received economically dubious–and politically motivated–subsidies of some $500 million. On Sunday, the city’s football franchise, the Redskins,…
Fred Barnes reviews John J. Miller's The Big Scrum in the Wall Street Journal:
Jim Cornelison sang the "Star Spangled Banner," yesterday, September 11, 2011, before the Chicago Bears kicked off against the Atlanta Falcons:
Well, Obama has done it again. Having rescheduled his super-great-amazing jobs speech for September 8, the president has set himself up to overlap with coverage of the NFL’s opening game. Despite the anticipation with which talking heads await the speech, I think NBC would be quite foolish, from a…
In response to the Justice Department sending a letter to the head of the NCAA, asking a few questions about why college football doesn’t have a generic playoff system in lieu of its highly successful Bowl Championship Series (BCS), Senator Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) encouraged the Obama administration…
Senator Russ Feingold, a leading voice for tight regulations on campaigns and elections, has been contacted by the National Football League today for using NFL footage without permission for a new campaign ad.