The Rams moved to St. Louis and became dead to me. Never appreciated the Raiders gangsta thing, and then they went back to Oakland. The Dodgers fell under the spell of the necromancer Frank McCourt. Never was an Angels guy. (I still consider them the Johnny-come-latelies who play 10-man ball.) Don’t care about hockey. Major […]

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After 2.5 years of editing and writing in British English, I am picking up several bad habits. I occasionally want to stick a gratuitous “u” in a bunch of words — colour, labour, honour. I am beginning to use “ae” instead of “a” — aenemic, encyclopaedia. (OK, not really; I’ll never get used to that […]

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I actually know only one person who attended Stanford, and as I watched the second half of the Fiesta Bowl at 8 a.m. UAE time, I was thinking of his (and other Stanford fans) suffering. Frankie, my condolences. I feel your pain. Fourth-ranked Stanford contrived to lose to third-ranked Oklahoma State, 41-38, in overtime, in […]

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To “sort out” is Brit-speak, and it commonly is used when referring to soccer and describes the process by which good defenses deal with attacking players. It implies a sort of impudent coming forward of small men with high-skill … for whom the antidote is a few hard men of limited finesse but grim countenance, […]

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I wrote about the BCS championship game for the Monday editions of The National. Keep in mind, probably 90 percent of our readers are unclear on the concept of American football … never mind college football … not to mention the states of Oregon and Alabama. (How many Americans know where Sussex is? Or the […]

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Seattle Seahawks 41, New Orleans Saints 36. Like anyone else who didn’t see the game live (or doesn’t live in Seattle), there was a shock factor when I saw that score. But once the jolt of “what the …?” subsided, my next thought was one word: “Pete!”

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Going to try something here I’ve never done before — slap in a gmail “chat” I had with a fan of the Seattle Seahawks late tonight, his time. Seattle defeated the St. Louis Rams 16-6 to win the NFC West with a 7-9 record. It is the first time in NFL history in a non-strike […]

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I saw the story on espn.com … taken from wire services … from the hefty Sports Illustrated piece in which a former football agent talks about making cash payments to college players during the 1990s. I should have thought of R.Jay Soward immediately. Instead, it was more of an “well, of course” moment, when I […]

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As a kid, I preferred UCLA over USC. The Trojans were big and bad, but UCLA was little and lithe and a little smarter than your average oafs, and I liked that. Terry Donahue played defensive tackle at 205 pounds. Bob Stiles was 5-foot-9 and and 175 pounds, but he stopped Michigan State’s huge fullback […]

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First, the good news: USC 49, Hawaii 36. And now the bad: Matt Leinart released by the Arizona Cardinals. How the great have fallen. First the on-probation Trojans. Now Matt. It’s almost as if that whole mid-decade USC team is having its history rewritten, and not in a flattering way. Reggie Bush cheated. Pete Carroll […]

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