This is for Pat. | | | | | High school football practice, 1968. (Hunter Desportes) | | | | |  | “This is for Pat.”
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| | rantnrave:// WNBA finals game five. You couldn't ask for more than that. CANDACE PARKER and MAYA MOORE saving their best for last, CHELSEA GRAY coming off the bench to turn around a series and a season, a see-saw final minute, league MVP NNEKA OGWUMIKE sealing it with an off-balance second effort with three ticks to go, and all the emotions of a long season pouring out as soon as it was over. Wow... The infuriating thing about the NFL's treatment of RAY RICE two years ago is that it penalized him lightly after learning he had hit his fiancée in a hotel elevator, and then came down on him much harder after video of the incident became public—as if league officials couldn't imagine the horror of domestic violence without a visual aid. Now we have kicker JOSH BROWN, whom the league suspended for all of one game and the NEW YORK GIANTS re-signed after he admitted abusing his wife. Police this week released journals in which BROWN described the abuse, and you'll totally guess what happened next. Is the league truly concerned about domestic violence when it happens? Or only when it goes viral?... And can we add that attitude to the list of potential reasons why NFL TV ratings are plunging this year? Other possible culprits: Cord-cutters. The presidential election. COLIN KAEPERNICK. Lousy games. We collect a range of views and analysis of the troubling trend in our new REDEF SportsSET, "NFL Blues: Where Did All the TV Viewers Go?"... The best RICK PITINO can say for himself after he and LOUISVILLE were charged with violations stemming from the school's escort scandal is that he didn't know what his own staff was doing. Which is not a great defense, as ESPN's EAMONN BRENNAN notes in reassessing the career of "the greatest defensive mind in the history of the college game." Does a renegade assistant coach tarnish a great head coach's career? Is it the head coach's job to know everything that's going on, even in recruits' dormitory rooms? And even if it isn't, is it his responsibility anyway? Captain, meet ship—or strip, as the case may be... Remember way back on Tuesday when the CUBS were in trouble? | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | REDEF |
| Something's missing from US football in 2016, and we don't mean Peyton Manning. Who or what's to blame for plunging ratings? Cord-cutters? The presidential election? On-field protests? Lousy games? And how worried should the NFL be? | | |
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 | ESPN.com |
| One of the fascinating things about sports is that a franchise can seem to be at an oasis, and then find itself wandering in the desert. TAhe Los Angeles Sparks got back to the oasis Thursday when they won the 2016 WNBA championship. | | |
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 | Outsports |
| Sports figures have been painting locker rooms as high-class gatherings of gentlemen. We know that just isn’t true. | | |
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 | Memphis Grizzlies |
| Grizzlies' DJ Stephens and Vince Carter relive some of their greatest dunks. | | |
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 | New York Post |
| Daily fantasy-sports fanatic Charles Badalamenti made a play last spring he figured had long odds for success: He wrote to his local reps in Albany. The 38-year-old real-estate broker from Astoria, Queens, was mad that the state was moving to take away his favorite pastime. | | |
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| ESPN.com |
| Rick Pitino is a great coach. That cannot be argued. He is, at the same time, a prominent player in some tawdry scandals. He is one of kind, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. | | |
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 | Deadspin |
| Even before yesterday's release of documents by the sheriff's office in King County, Wash. in which New York Giants kicker Josh Brown admits in his own words that he abused his then-wife Molly, there was very similar evidence in his divorce file -- a publicly available document that anyone could get. | | |
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 | The Washington Post |
| The hardscrabble home town of Joe Maddon has shaped the man trying to lead the Cubs to a title. Turns out he's shaping it too. | | |
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 | FiveThirtyEight |
| In the 1970s and ’80s, the NHL looked a lot different than it does today. Fighting was more commonplace. Goalies were shorter, wore smaller padsand rarely dropped down to stop low shots; perhaps relatedly, goals were easier to come by. But one of the biggest differences had to do with who played. | | |
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 | MMQB |
| Sin City wants the Raiders. Mark Davis needs a home. And Chargers owner Dean Spanos predicts it all will happen. Detailing the relocation hurdles still to clear, plus five names to watch this weekend, why Detroit is playing better and how the NFL should address its rapidly declining quality of play. | | |
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 | WSJ |
| How new Utah Jazz acquisition Boris Diaw--the league’s preeminent espresso drinker--is brewing team chemistry on the Jazz with a coffee club. | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| Myles Garrett loves the written word, and Muhammad Ali, and Wally West. He's never loved to hit, but that hasn't stopped the Texas A&M defensive end from becoming one of the best players in college football and a prospective no. 1 draft pick. | | |
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 | Vice Sports |
| Engineers are designing exoskeletons and other robotic devices that help paralyzed people, but the real question is who's going to pay for them. Enter an athletic competition unlike any other. | | |
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 | The Undefeated |
| He was considered the No. 1 junior welterweight fighter of the 20th century. | | |
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 | Yahoo! Sports |
| Bobby Hull chose not to attend his induction into the Winnipeg Jets Hall of Fame this week, in which he and his “Hot Line” linemates Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson were its first honored members. He made this decision because he knew - like we knew, like the Winnipeg Jets knew - that there’s no longer | | |
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 | Sports Illustrated |
| After convening for three hours, a federal jury of six women and two men on Wednesday found New York Knicks guard Derrick Rose not liable for sexual battery and related civil offenses. | | |
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 | USA Today |
| Does country believe in former major leaguer who wants to run for Senate, White House? | | |
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 | The Gentleman Ultra |
| ‘Blood and Honour’ is a name that invokes images of Neo-Nazi Rock groups, those who spew out lyrics idolising an Aryan race and denouncing the Jewish parasite as they would see it. But ‘Blood and Honour’ also stands for something different. | | |
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| The Ringer |
| Civic pride, an impending stadium vote, and an American city's sports purgatory. | | |
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| Sports Illustrated |
| With the NBA Finals hanging in the balance, Kevin Love came through in the biggest moment of his life--on the court, at least. | | |
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 | via YouTube |
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| © Copyright 2016, The REDEF Group |
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