Tony La Russa hasn't managed a baseball game since Game Seven of the 2011 World Series, except for last year's All-Star game. Maybe that's because his style isn't in vogue in baseball today, where coaches are expected to smile and go with the flow. More»

Nick Saban keeps being referred to as Satan, not just by his SEC rivals but by former assistants and, tellingly, even Alabama football fans. Is there more to this nickname than just a letter switch in his last name, or is Saban just a football coach? More»

In an age of constant stimulation, the break that halftime is supposed to provide us is anything but. After soliciting suggestions on Twitter, we ranked the most entertaining halftime shows in basketball. (In GIF form, of course.) Enjoy! More»

Twitter makes it easier than ever to discover hateful comments, and the Internet trend is to gather them for a public shaming -- a practice that doesn't help anyone. In reality, the world isn't as bad as the Internet makes it look. More»

Context matters when evaluating professional athletes, which is why it's impossible to ignore how much money they make. No matter how well Vernon Wells plays, he's still the guy who will forever be known for his ridiculous contract. We can't help it. More»

Does Sergio Garcia's collapse at The Players Championship make him a rival for Michelle Kwan's title of biggest choker in sports history? Not even close. But what does our collective love of the "choker narrative" say about all of us? More»

Josh Hamilton showed admirable restraint when asked whether the Bible mentioned how to hit more home runs. Of course it doesn't, and of course athletes aren't saying God favors them over anyone else when they thank God for their successes. More»

There's something about missing a call on replay that feels a thousand times worse than missing a call in real time. And that's exactly what Angel Hernandez did when he cost the Oakland A's a game-tying home run. But it's hard to argue with a brick wall. More»

In almost every aspect of baseball, the pursuit of objective analysis and practical solutions should be seen as progress. Except during no-hitters. We all know we can't actually affect the no-hit bid of someone like Matt Harvey, but it's part of the fun anyway. More»

The recent incident when a high school track team was disqualified for a mild celebration is an extreme example of pro and amateur sportsmanship policing. But it's still not right. And to attempt to push behavior modification on such an instinctive activity is madness. More»

Twitter loves controversy, and being outraged over the one mystery vote that denied LeBron James the first unanimous MVP in NBA history is just the type of social media storm at which the 140-character platform excels. More»

Mike Breen is the best broadcaster working right now, and just watching him attend a sporting event, it's easy to see why. You wouldn't even notice him, if you weren't looking for him; and he's there, but only when you need him to be. More»

Sure, fans of the Knicks are running scared, while citizens of both New York and Boston are having flashbacks to a certain other 3-0 playoff series involving those two cities that became historic. But man is that comparison stupid -- in the plainest possible way. More»

When Jason Collins told the world he was gay, he was embraced by just about everyone. Some skeptics actually criticized him for trying to enhance his profile. To which I say: Fantastic. That's the best signifier of how much progress we have made. More»

It's not just progress that Jason Collins came out to support, it's the end goal. Collins' announcement that he was gay was met with fanfare, plaudits and conversations about heroism, and that was that. I bet it will be nothing but a positive for his career. More»

In the second quarter of the Lakers' Game Four loss to the San Antonio Spurs, one fan decided to get the attention of Spurs forward Matt Bonner, to the annoyance of everyone around him. Should you ever find yourself in a similar plight, here's a guide to help. More»

A large portion of the NFL draft coverage has been devoted to pitying Geno Smith for not getting picked in the first round. Of course, gawking at young players as they have their dreams crushed has become a tradition. Best advice for them? Just stay home. More»

Which MLB fanbases are the most fully mature, loyal, devoted and reliable? Which ones have the most bandwagon-ers? Which ones are sleeping giants, waiting for a stretch of winning to bring them back to prominence? Let's rank 'em all. More»

It takes time to grow a fanbase. Washington Nationals fans are improving along with their team, but they're still learning. And in Brooklyn, new Nets fans are enjoying themselves, but they have a long way to go before they can match the Knicks. More»

Kobe Bryant has unexpectedly embraced social media, offering a rare display of personality and revealing himself in a way Michael Jordan never would. So why did we have to ruin things and make his tweeting during Game 1 of Spurs-Lakers into a big issue? More»

We were all Red Sox fans on Saturday. We're not anymore, though, and that's OK. One of the best things to do after a tragedy is to try to return to normalcy. In most of America, that means rooting against the Red Sox -- just the way their fans would like it. More»

The NBA playoffs are starting, and Derrick Rose, who is supposed to be at the center of all of it, won't be a part. It feels wrong not having him here even if, for now, it's the right thing. A look at how the star --ascendant a year ago -- has now faded from view. More»

Wrigley Field is this columnist's favorite place to see a baseball game. But recent comments by Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts makes him wonder what will happen to baseball's most precious diamond. it's possible all you'll recognize in five years is the ivy. More»

The sad truth about Monday at the Boston Marathon is that it's sort of amazing that attacks on sporting events don't happen more often. But that doesn't mean we have to live in fear. As Americans, we'll return to normal quicker than we think, because that's who we are. More»

We are a culture that is obsessed with youth, with preciousness … with prodigies. And the scrutiny on them doesn't usually end well. It's too early to tell how it will turn out for 14 year-old Tianlang Guan -- but let's just hope he has the strength and poise to handle it. More»

We are experiencing the Bryce Harper ascent. He can do no wrong at the moment. But this, much like the LeBron James ascent, cannot last, and soon enough fans will turn on the phenom. So I'm going to enjoy Harper as much as I can right now. More»

As horrific as Kevin Ware's injury was during the Louisville-Duke game, don't blame sites like Deadspin and Buzzfeed for showing a replay of it in GIF form -- blame human nature for wanting to watch. This writer is trying his hardest to resist. More»

As Tiger Woods reclaimed the No. 1 ranking in golf, a new ad by Nike has rankled some. But while opponents may bristle at the message, they can't deny the inherent truth: More than anything else, we love a winner. It's time to be honest about that. More»

My beloved Illini weren't favored to beat Miami, but they were up by one and had played one of their best games of the season. Then something ruined the game. Umpires and referees try their best, but that's just not good enough anymore. More»

Sit back, relax, and get ready to enjoy the best 96 hours of the year. Forty-eight games in four days, during which there's bound to be breathless moments, buzzer-beaters and fans living and dying with every shot. More»

Apologies to the World Cup, but the two scariest teams coming out of the conference tournaments are both here. Also here: A team most expected would get a No. 1 seed and a school that has made the Final Four three times in the last eight years. More»

Louisville's comeback win over Syracuse for the Big East championship launched it to a possible top overall seed heading into the last Sunday of the season. With only a handful of games to play, we make our final NCAA tournament projections. More»

Ready for what should be a crazy Selection Sunday? Despite plenty of opportunities (we're looking at you, Kentucky), few teams on the NCAA tournament bubble helped themselves out. Our latest S-Curve attempts to view the shape of things to come. More»

Teams that win the regular season title, but blow it in their conference championship tournaments, are arguing for a second chance, but where's the drama in that? We stand behind teams like Bucknell that get it done in tournament week. More»

British boxer Curtis Woodhouse showed up at the apartement of someone who harrased him on Twitter. It's natural to react with anger, but when you put yourself in the public sphere, you have to recognize you'll have enemies and just forget about it. More»

For someone like me, who had never seen a fight in person, Bernard Hopkins becoming the oldest boxer to win a major title at Barclays Center was a perfect introduction to the world of boxing, which is nothing like "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out" at all. More»

This year, for the first time, Dick Vitale will broadcast a Final Four game -- for ESPN International. While his shtick can get tiring, it doesn't change the fact that his enthusiasm and positivity are genuine, and I still get excited when he calls one of my team's games. More»

Keith Olbermann wants to return to ESPN. That's an awful idea, and I'm pretty sure ESPN agrees with me. While I'd love a reason to watch "SportsCenter" again, if only because I slow down for car crashes, the Big Show of Olbermann and Patrick is long gone. More»

Of all the criticisms levied against sabermetricians, the one I understand the least is the idea that they somehow don't like watching games. The opposite is true, and the folks at Baseball Prospectus love the game and have changed it for the better. More»

The Nationwide NASCAR crash at the Daytona International Speedway was a vivid video to watch on YouTube -- only NASCAR made the site take it down. Then something unusual happened that could be a game changer in the future: YouTube fought back. More»

Hockey exists only for the diehards. There is no posing, no ulterior motive, no nothing other than obsession with the game itself. There's a manic look in the eye of a hockey fan that doesn't compare to anything you see in the other three major North American sports. Hockey is all there is, and hockey is all that matters. More»

The ascendance of Bleacher Report is one of the more depressing developments in sports, but also one of its most inevitable. It culminated Sunday night, when Reggie Miller mistook a Bleacher Report aggregation of ESPN's Michael Jordan story for the real thing. More»

While the ESPN Baseball Today podcast has recently been revamped and is now more TV without pictures than inside scoops for the ardent devotee and amateur sabermatrician, it still ranks among my top podcasts for all sports. More»

Darren Rovell does not understand that he is hated, or even recognize that people find his forthright shilling for corporations, belittlement of fans, and obsession with Twitter not just "polarizing" but downright obnoxious. More»

As the sports media world evovles, the Internet has opened the doors for new ways of thinking and writing about sports. For people like Grantland's Zach Lowe, there is no need to draw a line between new and old media when covering the NBA. More»

As embarrassing as it was for the NFL and New Orleans that the power went out for 34 minutes during Super Bowl XLVII, it's not even close to how humiliated CBS should feel. The 49ers saved CBS's bacon making it a good game. More»

Following in the footsteps of the popular NFL RedZone, ESPN's Buzzer Beater channel is fun for what it is, but from its somewhat limited scope to problems with news judgment, the programming is still clearly a work in progress. More»

The Super Bowl is the ultimate corporate convention for the people in the world of sports who are less interested in sports and more interested in separating money from your wallet. More»

The absurdity of the Manti Te'o saga isn't going away, but interest appears to be waning. Te'o and his parents appeared on TV for the first time with Katie Couric on Thursday, and it might be time to move on with our lives. More»

The Te’o story -- no matter how it turns out -- is pretty much the most jaw-dropping, stunning, sports story in recent memory, but we’re all busy sanding down its edges and turning it into something dull, normal and manageable. Everyone has decided the narratives and we're waiting for one to stick. More»

Rather than pile on Lance Armstrong after watching Part One of his interview with Oprah Winfrey, I decided to do some math. And one thing is surely becoming clear to Armstrong: Oprah helped prove that he can no longer control the conversation. More»

To think that the Manti Te'o debacle is the first time a narrative has been concocted for maximum tear-inducement is to be as naïve as we are now expected to believe Te’o was.The surprise is not the story itself, but that it doesn't happen all the time. More»

In order to best convey the experience of watching Pete Rose on a reality show, I decided to simply describe everything Pete does in the pilot episode, “The Family Hustle,” factually, no embellishment, no fancy writer tricks. Here are the hits and misses from the first hour of "Hits & Mrs." More»

We are a culture that documents everything, and we now have this massive, bottomless pit of space that we call the Internet that can organize it for us. There has to be someone who recognizes ESPN Passport’s potential and tries to do something with it. More»

I have no issue with athletes drawing attention to themselves. They are entertainers. But I am not sure this should be a qualification for quality football analysis, and that seems to be the major qualification behind Ray Lewis's new career in the booth. More»

There's plenty of programming on the new NBC Sports Network for sports fans, starting with an alternative to ESPN's SportsCenter that actually airs sports scores and highlights -- even from soccer! Just watch out for those hunting and fishing shows. More»

Hall of Fame voting, and the subsequent discussion, is becoming grueling. Everybody loves a good sports debate, but what’s happening with the Hall voters isn’t a debate: It’s people taking intractable stands and then yelling. We need to change this. More»

From Herman Edwards' extreme Tim Tebow love to the dumbing down of sports talk on "First Take," we pick the seven media personalities that had an especially lousy year -- or, worse, made our year lousier than it had to be. More»

I can't resist a good year-end wrap-up list, so here's a look at the people who had an excellent 2012 (or made 2012 better for the rest of us) -- from Joe Buck to Sara Ganim, from Sunday Night Football to Mike Francesa's cat-nap. More»

It’s time for college basketball to stand up for itself. So what if obscure bowl games trump major upsets in TV ratings? There's no sport more democratic than college basketball, and no sport more readily accessible across the country. More»

One of the most common ways to describe the excitement of watching athletic genius is to say, 'Someday, I’ll tell my grandchildren I saw INSERT SUPERSTAR play.' It's important to hold onto your memories because, someday, no one will believe us. More»

Many of us couldn’t live without ESPN and other sports channels. In many ways, they’re the only reasons we subscribe to cable. The cable companies – and, more to the point, the leagues – know this. And they’re charging everyone for it. More»

While fans may constantly push for the firing of a coach, it's never easy. We always relate most to the coach, because he’s the one person whose job we like to imagine ourselves able to do. For people most fans have never met, coaches are a big part of our lives. More»

Should Bob Costas have gone on a gun control rant on Sunday Night Football less than 36 hours after the Jovan Belcher tragedy? Or should he have reserved his comment to draw attention to the NFL's domestic violence problems? More»

Chance run-ins, impossible trade rumors, unbelievable deals over whiskey at 3 a.m. ... all live on your Twitter feed. Baseball's winter meetings are the social media event of the offseason, and the most fun a virtual sporting event can possibly be. More»

The first New York Knicks at Brooklyn Nets game was one of those lovely sports rarities: A 50-50 crowd. I’m not sure there’s any more fun sporting event to witness in person. But true 50-50 matchups are extremely rare, and getting rarer. More»

For a lot of NFL teams, the season is already essentially over. As an expert in the field of cheering for a team so lousy the last month is meaningless, I can help. So here’s some handy hints for how to deal with December, when your team is done. More»

Big Ten expansion could lead to further destabilization of college sports, another sign that schools are willing to sell out decades of tradition for short-term revenue. You can make an argument that this entire issue exists because of the Big Ten Network. More»

We have gone from nothing on our screens besides the game itself during broadcasts, to everything -- and it happened really fast. Baseball has scaled back some, but football has gone insane. If it's changed so much in a few years, where will it be in a few more? More»

I can’t stop watching the video of Rick Reilly demanding that Stuart Scott credit him for a tweet. Just look at those words: 'Rick Reilly demanding that Stuart Scott credit him for a tweet.' Can you imagine such an indignity five years ago? What in the world happened? More»

Parents always overrate their own influence. But one way I know I can make a difference is with the sports teams my son cheers for. The only thing on earth that’s exactly the same in my life now as it was when I was six years old is my love of my sports teams. More»

Tribalism is a problem in the world. But it isn’t in sports. In politics, people go after you in a second if they’re on the opposite side of the aisle -- and that's pretty much the way sports is all the time. Year-round, sports is like the last days of an election. More»

I’m a sports fan, and a pretty serious one. But I have no illusions that any of this is important. Playing after Sandy, the Knicks and Nets said they hoped to 'bring a little joy during difficult times' -- but I think these are just things teams tell themselves to feel better. More»

The departure of Jeremy Lin was the last straw for a lot of New York Knicks fans fed up with the James Dolan era. But while the Brooklyn Nets provide a new, logical alternative, leaving the Knicks feels like a betrayal of loyal fandom. More»

Watching the 2010 World Cup on ESPN gave you hope not only for soccer in this country, but ESPN itself. But in losing broadcast rights to the English Premier League and the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, ESPN has lost the sport it does best. More»

Fans are suspicious of media and media are suspicions of fans, but oddly enough, the gap between the two is closer than it has ever been. Of course, that probably just makes each side more annoyed with the other. More»

The disconnect between the way advanced statistics are used in baseball front offices and how they're used in media coverage is vast. Baseball is being described by people actively hostile to how it's being practiced. We have flat-earthers making the maps. More»

Everyone always expects me to hate FOX broadcaster Joe Buck. But I don't. In fact, I think he does as well as anyone reasonably could with one of the most high-profile, visible jobs in sports. He's doing his job. I like him. And you should, too. More»

A sports fan's favorite team is like family. You can scream at them because you know them, and you love them. But heaven forbid anyone else say a bad word about them. So while I want you to love the Cardinals the way I do, I know you can't. So buzz off. Go Cards. More»

There's nothing glamorous about sportswriting … unless of course you're a superstar sportswriter. At that level, you're a celebrity. You answer to few and look down on many. At that level, you grow to believe you are different and that you are indeed special. More»

TBS is still new to airing baseball's postseason, and each year has been a little better than the last. Good people are doing good work, but there aren’t enough of them -- so TBS is showing the sport at its best while broadcasting it at decidedly less than that. More»

Few sports jobs have changed more in the last 15 years than that of the baseball beat reporter. What was once one-recap-a-day-plus-a-notebook-twice-a-week has turned into a 24-hour, non-stop news machine. To get a sense of how the job has evolved, I chatted with Derrick Goold, the Cardinals' writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. More»

Most consumers will always be on the side of the team, not the reporter. But it becomes a real problem when publishers start to side with teams instead of their employees. Such was the case with Ron Morris, who criticized South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier and later paid the price. More»

The replacement/scab referee fiasco in the NFL is over, and as our president might say, it’s a teachable moment for us fans. I think we need to talk about how we treat officials, replacement or otherwise, because when you think about, we're mad at them for being human. More»

I’d never watched the NFL's RedZone Channel. I have friends who swear by it, rhapsodizing about its brilliance with religious, almost cultish fervor. So I gave in on Sunday and, because we all love lists, here are seven observations from my experience. More»

Movie critics like Armond White are known for saying outrageous things. It's their shtick, but for the most part, people tend to ignore them. Skip Bayless is like them -- a showman instead of a journalist -- but there's one critical difference with him. More»

The pure function of watching a sporting event because you hope that your favorite team wins and the other team loses is often quaint, almost nostalgic. Some media outlets have gotten better at realizing this than others: Fans want their media tailored to their team. More»

I'm obsessed with ESPN Passport and MLB At the Ballpark because they serve as my modern-day ticket-stub collectors. They hold my tangible memories of games, and though they're essentially social media applications, they're among the greatest services on the Web. But sadly, not for much longer. More»

Many fans accused the media, especially ESPN, of being the only ones who cared about the Tim Tebow craze and the Jets' nonexistent 'quarterback controversy.' They were wrong. The media didn't care either. We all just thought we were SUPPOSED to care. More»

I’ve bought every Madden game since 1996, a brand loyalty I haven’t shown to any other corporations besides the St. Louis Cardinals, the University of Illinois and Cuervo 1800 tequila. The thing is, I haven't actually PLAYED it in about eight years. More»

NFL pregame shows are incredibly vapid, filled with people who aren't professionally amusing but sit there pretending to laugh each other's unfunny jokes. There is no useful information about the game that comes from these shows. But this is exactly what we want. It's our fault they're like this. More»

We can wring our hands and lament at how readers only pick up on just a few words in a 4,200-word piece, but this is how most people think on a basic level. Really, we could learn a lot from Buzzfeed. More»

There's a dirty secret about fantasy football writers: Like sportswriters, they don't need a degree or possess any real expertise to do what they do. Nonetheless, they provide a service that's, frankly, invaluable. More»