This thing started just the other day! September 20. That was just last week … or last month … or nearly last month. The ninth Rugby World Cup concluded today in Japan. South Africa overwhelmed England 32-12 to end the 20-team tournament on its 43rd day. And people complain that the baseball playoffs are too […]

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Just watched the United States national rugby team play in the ninth edition of the Rugby World Cup. On my television, here in France. Live. With French-speaking announcers. Who knew? It went badly for the Yanks — as it nearly always does. Final score: England 45, United States 7. The highlight for the Eagles may […]

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Sports injuries have become a “thing”. Seemingly not a day goes by without some fairly prominent athlete going down with a prominent injury. I remember when none of us were quite sure what an oblique was, but straining/tearing it would put a guy on the shelf for weeks. Those were the good old days. Now […]

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This is mostly an NFL thing, though I see it on the college level, now and then. Wherever it is allowed, it is objectionable. That would be the four-five-six-etc.-man clot of players who push their way into what usually begins as a one-on-one, open-field tackle and ends as something rather like a rugby scrum. (Here […]

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Italy went bonkers tonight. The national team, the azzurri, was held to a scoreless draw with good-but-not-special Sweden, and the home-and-away runners-up playoffs for the final four European berths at Russia 2010 went to Switzerland, Denmark, Croatia — and Sweden. Italy stays home. This is the biggest shock from this edition of World Cup qualifying […]

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A couple of posts on this blog suggest the National Football League will not exist as we know it — if it exists at all — 20-30 years from now. By then, all the horrors of football-related brain trauma will have been clearly laid out and, barring some unexpected breakthrough in protective equipment, the lawsuits […]

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