NFL

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

Ex-NFL receiver Anthony Gonzalez’s impressive political debut in the suburbs of Cleveland, Akron, and Canton.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

Plus, why Gavin McInnes is a baddie.

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.

Just Do It™. Whatever it is.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

Colin Kaepernick, the former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, has signed a deal with Nike in which he will appear in some of the company’s “Just Do It” advertisements. Kaepernick of course pioneered the practice of protesting racial injustice by kneeling during the national anthem. The…

The league uses patriotism to sell tickets and merch, but Roger Goodell doesn't care at all about the people for whom the national anthem means something.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

President Trump takes petulance to a new level.

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…

Hosted by Charlie Sykes

On Wednesday that NFL announced that they had come up with a solution to their Kaepernick dilemma: They announced that players could stay in the locker room for the national anthem if they wanted to, but if they came onto the field for the "Star Spangled Banner," they had to stand.

(And why Baker Mayfield was a great choice.)

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, Gregg Easterbrook joins host Charlie Sykes to discuss the latest Tuesday Morning Quarterback column previewing the NFL draft, tackling cheerleader pay and time travel.

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…

Farewell, Mostly Weekly! My good friend Andrew Heaton’s web show at Reason comes to an end, like all good things do. In the final episode, Heaton takes on creative destruction, and then destroys his own show. Creative!

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.

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.

In this latest mega-episode, the Substandard discusses the works of director Paul Thomas Anderson—JVL reveals himself to be a PTA scholar. Sonny reviews Phantom Thread. Vic reveals his favorite bathroom in D.C. JVL is writing Eagles fanfiction. And Sonny still hates coconut.

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…

This week on the TMQ Podcast, Gregg Easterbrook and Steve Hayes discuss the cost of the NFL moving to Las Vegas. Will gambling ruin the NFL?

Cleveland, Ohio

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…

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.

At 12:30 p.m. Thursday, the NFC North-leading Minnesota Vikings (8-2) will visit their lone division challenger, the Detroit Lions (6-4). It will be the only hour of the day it can be said that Thanksgiving football is better than Thanksgiving basketball.

It was a busy news week.

In the midst of the current "take a knee" crisis in the NFL and the reaction of fans by lessening their support of pro football, football legend Y.A. Tittle passed away on October 8, 2017. Millions of fans remember his triumphs and gallantry, as player and as coach, especially decades ago when his…

Thousands of people work on National Football League coaching staffs and in front offices. Millions of Americans pretend to do these roles in fantasy leagues, or simply fantasize about running an NFL team. Everyone wonders: What is the secret to NFL success?

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…

Few if any Americans are associated with more apocryphal quotes than Thomas Jefferson, but the false notion that he said, “dissent is the highest form of patriotism” is among the easiest to dispel. Because Jefferson never would have said something so idiotic. Of course dissent can be patriotic, but…

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.

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…

Here's a joke. It's from the late Mitch Hedberg: "I write jokes for a living, I sit at my hotel at night, I think of something that's funny, then I go get a pen and I write it down. Or if the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain't funny." Mitch's jokes tended to…

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Michael Warren talks with host Eric Felten about how the President has only succeeded in reviving what had been a fading NFL protest movement.

Some assorted thoughts on Trump versus the NFL:

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.

Should the Texans be panicking? Who is Tom Savage? It's September, so the inevitable is still in the future . . . Join Gregg Easterbrook and editor in chief Stephen F. Hayes as they discuss week one of the 2017 NFL season on the debut episode of the Tuesday Morning Quarterback podcast.

About that iPhone presentation... It's been 10 years since Apple deployed its first overhyped phone, so how about a reunion of sorts. (How much money have you given Apple in the last 10 years? Maybe don't overthink that ...) In January of 2007 the iPhone debuted, and Steve Jobs gave a public hype…

Trumpism corrupts, Kurt Schlichter edition. I hope Jonathan V. Last will forgive me, but I'd like to add another case to the "Trumpism Corrupts" dossier. It's Townhall.com's Kurt Schlichter. A former Army colonel and a trial lawyer who was a little-known writer in the late 1990s and early 2000s,…

For the last three days the NFL has been vacillating over what to do about this weekend’s game featuring the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at the Miami Dolphins. The problem is that Hurricane Irma, with its torrential rainfall and 150 mph winds, is forecast to make landfall near Miami around game time…

All hail the price gougers. As Irma bears down on Florida, people are stocking up on bottled water. Let's recall not but a week or so ago when, in the wake of Harvey, people were using social media to shame those who sold bottled water at a price they were not used to. Or, now, let's look at social…

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…

Big news: We are pleased to announce the relaunch of Tuesday Morning Quarterback, the celebrated weekly NFL column by Gregg Easterbrook. Easterbrook will debut on THE WEEKLY STANDARD website next Tuesday, Aug 22.

The great day has arrived, at last. And how have we ever managed to endure waiting to learn who will be selected in the first round of the National Football League's annual draft of college players? By 7:55 p.m. ET on Thursday, the tension will have become well nigh unbearable. And then, the…

Days after the Super Bowl in Houston, the NFL is warning Texas that legislation requiring individuals to use public bathrooms in accordance with their biological sex could cost the state future opportunities to host the big game.

New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick was not going out of his mind when he told his team after its first playoff victory this year: “A big day for Rutgers!" Three of the Patriots' players—Devin McCourty, Logan Ryan, and Duron Harmon—had gone to college there, and all three had intercepted…

During an erudite discussion of the NFL playoffs, Golden Globes, and actors becoming directors, a bottle mishap nearly derails the episode. Plus JVL dismantles the Skins Bandwagon. Sonny breaks down the Fourth Wall. And Vic mentions The Big Hunt for no apparent reason. All on this week's…

The following is an excerpt from the Kristol Clear newsletter. Sign up for the weekly newsletter here.

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…

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…

As the 2016 Republican National Convention began, GOP chairman Reince Priebus spoke with confidence about the coming transformation of presumptive nominee Donald Trump. "He knows the pivot is important," Priebus said. "He has been better and I think he's going to be great moving forward." Priebus…

The NFL ran an ad at last night's Super Bowl encouraging "Super Bowl Babies."

The National Football League has hired a former White House press secretary in the Bill Clinton administration. Joe Lockhart was named today the league's new executive vice president of communications.

I'm not a Rams fan. This is because I do not respect football teams that play indoors, a practice (rightly) mocked by my people: Cleveland Browns fans. Not that we have much to brag about other than our terrible weather.

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.

In the president's Labor Day speech today in Boston, Barack Obama used New England Patriots' quarterback Tom Brady to make the case for unions. 

He was the hope and the future of the franchise, the toast of the city, just three years ago. The Redskins had themselves a rookie quarterback who would return them to glory. And he did actually get them into the playoffs in his rookie season.

Wikipedia defines “startup accelerators” as “fixed-term, cohort-based programs that include mentorship and educational components and culminate” in a “demo day” on which hopeful entrepreneurs make pitches to prospective funders. On August 4, President Obama hosted his own demo day, recasting it to…

A friend with political experience who's also a sports fan writes:

By happy accident, the city of Philadelphia has been blessed over the years with a number of sports stars who embody the city’s general temperament: pugnacious, diligent, and impolitic. The town has little love for professional athletes in the movie star or gentleman mode. Instead, Philadelphians…

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.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen Hayes on the bad week for the Obama White House and the NFL.

The New York Giants faced the Baltimore Colts, and the winners would be the champions of the National Football League. But while it was a championship game, it did not sell out, meaning television was blacked out in the city where it was played. The Giants had the better record so the game was…

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. 

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?  

For many, the Adrian Peterson child abuse case spanning Texas to Minnesota has been tough to grasp as, up until several weeks ago, he was viewed by most people who knew anything about him as a good man, not just a great football player for the Minnesota Vikings. Compounding matters is that the…

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,"…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Geoffrey Norman on his recent blog item on the NFL controversies, and what the NFL should do fix its image.

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…

First Lady Michelle Obama plays a sideline reporter in a video with NFL star-turned White House chef Richard Sherman in a video promoting healthy eating:

The NFL commissioner is headed to the White House to dicuss concussions in sports, the Washington Post reports. He'll join President Obama and "200 sports officials, medical experts, parent activists and young athletes Thursday for the first White House summit on sports concussions," the Post…

There was a lot of hullabaloo last week over Michael Sam, who, after being drafted in a late round by the St. Louis Rams, is poised to become the NFL’s first openly gay football player. Sam was the SEC defensive player of the year, so a chance to play in the NFL seems well merited, regardless of…

Fifty members of the United States Senate haved signed a letter to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell urging the league to "endorse a name change for the Washington, D.C. football team," known to the rest of us as the Washington Redskins. The name, the undersigned argue, is a "slur against Native…

Unlike you, I will be watching the Pro Bowl this weekend, albeit grudgingly.

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!).

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.

The National Football League recently "issued a rule to deny entry to any off-duty police officer who brings a concealed firearm to one of its stadiums  …”  And, as Eric Katz of Government Executive reports, it is being challenged by the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association which represents…

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:

Portland city commissioner (as city councilmen are known in the Oregon city) Steve Novick may have been elected only last year, but he’s wasted no time in using his public office to indulge his personal crotchets. Drawing on his extensive experience running a business–which is to say, absolutely…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on his recent story in the magazine, Lipstick on the Obamacare Pig.

Philip Klein reports that the NFL will not help the Obama administration promote Obamacare:

The two top Republican senators, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and John Cornyn of Texas, have written letters to six professional sports organizations, warning them not to work with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to promote Obamacare. The letters were addressed to the top…

According to a recent Gallup poll, 42 percent of Americans believe that the Affordable Care Act will make their family's financial situation worse.  Almost half of those surveyed believe that it will make the nation's overall health care situation worse.

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:

In a press release, CBS claims that 108.41 million Americans tuned in for last night's Super Bowl:

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.

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."

“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…

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…

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…

Jay Carney tells reporters aboard Air Force One, "It's a great day for America."

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 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…

Here's one of the commercials played during last night's Super Bowl, from the Center for Union Facts:

Can the Giants front-four get to Brady and—as the fastidious football locution puts it—disrupt his timing? That is to say...pound him into wet, pink pulp.

Rick Perry ain't backin' down on his tough Turkey talk.

Ted Leonsis, the owner of the NHL's Washington Capitals, the NBA's Washington Wizards, the WNBA's Washington Mystics, and the Verizon Center in downtown Washington, D.C., has had enough of President Obama's class warfare rhetoric. Here's Leonsis's take, from his personal blog: 

Reuters: Jon Kyl says he'll leave the super committee if it wants to cut defense spending further.

Not a parody: "NFL players need Obama's support"

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.