You would think that spirits would be high among college football fans across the country. A new season is starting, and the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff affords more postseason opportunities than ever before. But there’s actually a little more pessimism at this point than in the last few seasons, according to our annual Hope-O-Meter…

The Champions League proper returns next month and this season it will have a brand new format. The ‘Swiss Model’ makes its debut and, as a result, the Champions League draw tomorrow (Thursday) is going to look rather different to the eight-groups-of-four setup we’ve all become used to in recent years. So let The Athletic take…

Follow live coverage of the 2024 U.S. Open NEW YORK — What motivates Novak Djokovic now that he has nothing left to fight for? The 24-time Grand Slam champion finally won his coveted Olympic gold medal in Paris this month. In so doing, he essentially completed tennis, sweeping up the only coveted title in the…

EAST LANSING, Mich. — It’s 4:39 p.m. on the first day of August, somewhere near the beginning of Michigan State football finding itself again. Def Leppard and Phil Collins classics fade out and a staffer at the top of the meeting room stairs flashes a thumbs-up to confirm perfect attendance. On the massive projector screen,…

The preseason is hardly a crystal ball. However, for rookies who’ve never experienced the speed of the NFL game live, it’s often a terrific early test to see which draft picks — especially the first-rounders — are ready to start providing returns on their teams’ investments. And, just as important, it can reveal which ones…

There is a moment about 40 minutes into “Untold: Sign Stealer,” the new Netflix documentary, in which former Michigan staffer Connor Stalions recounts his abrupt exile from the program last season after his elaborate scouting scheme got exposed. By this point, we’ve learned from Stalions’ own words as well as family home videos just how…

Follow live coverage of day two at the 2024 US Open NEW YORK — A year ago, Ben Shelton started his U.S. Open on Court 10, in the quasi-hinterlands of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. To find it, walk over to the other side of the fountains, where a ball that flies over…

When Buffalo Bills star Josh Allen comes across YouTube clips of himself throwing passes for the University of Wyoming, he swears he doesn’t recognize that guy. “It’s night and day in terms of the type of thrower I am,” Allen said this summer. “Where I held the ball, where I released the ball — it…

Euston station in London is a bleak place at the best of times. Claustrophobic, harshly lit and always overcrowded, nobody wants to be there for longer than is absolutely necessary. It was thus a fitting venue for a group of Everton fans to harangue their team’s players as they boarded a train back to Merseyside…