On October 28, at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris, there will be a new winner of the Ballon d’Or, the highest individual accolade in men’s football. By common consent, the leading contenders are Brazilian winger Vinicius Junior, who scored in Real Madrid’s Champions League final victory, and Spanish midfielder Rodri, who excelled in triumphant…

Texas starting quarterback Quinn Ewers is questionable for the Longhorns’ game this weekend against Louisiana-Monroe, coach Steve Sarkisian said on Monday. Ewers, who suffered a strained oblique in the second quarter of the Longhorns’ 56-7 win over UTSA, left Saturday’s game early in the second quarter and didn’t return. Redshirt freshman Arch Manning relieved Ewers…

Enjoy the next three years of watching Sidney Crosby play for the Pittsburgh Penguins. Breathe it in. Cherish it. Get a little sentimental, if necessary. Never in your lifetime will you see his kind again. I’m not talking about the hockey, the backhand, the vision, the power, the tenacity — you know, all of the…

Two weeks into the NFL season, no team has looked better than the New Orleans Saints, last year’s MVP is 0-2 and the Pittsburgh Steelers are undefeated despite scoring just one touchdown across their first eight quarters of football. Aaron Rodgers has his first win as a New York Jet — his second if you…

Editor’s note: The Athletic 134 is a weekly ranking of all FBS college football teams. You sometimes have to sit in awe of what Georgia has done. The Bulldogs now have 43 consecutive regular season victories. Until this past Saturday, none of them had come by a three-point margin or smaller. But every once in…

If you had the Minnesota Vikings starting 2-0 with Sam Darnold ranking among the NFL’s statistical leaders, set down your Gjallahorn and listen up. You’ll want to know the odds of this fast start turning into a career revival for a quarterback written off by two franchises. Those odds aren’t as terrible as one might…

In the grand scheme of the 2024 season, the identity of the eighth seed in the WNBA postseason bracket is relatively inconsequential. The New York Liberty have been the best team in the league for essentially the entire year. Their net rating of plus-12.1 points per 100 possessions is more than 15 points better than…

The party line for the Los Angeles Dodgers is that there isn’t one way to win a World Series. The 2023 Texas Rangers became champions pitching Max Scherzer at less than full strength in Game 3 and Andrew Heaney in Game 4. The 2021 Atlanta Braves did it going with bullpen games in Games 4…

One penalty, 25 fouls, countless blasts of the referee’s whistle and 14 yellow cards… behold the worst-behaved game in Premier League history. Chelsea players received eight bookings and Bournemouth six at the Vitality Stadium on Saturday, setting a record for cautions, under the stewardship of match official Anthony Taylor. The previous highest number of yellow…

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Joe Burrow stood on a podium in the bowels of Arrowhead Stadium holding a dejected stare of disbelief and the tone of nursing an open wound of defeat. “As frustrating as I’ve had,” he said of the Bengals’ 26-25 loss to the Chiefs, unable to even explain why. “I’ll need a…