Steve McNair’s football story has been told plenty. Fans know how he emerged from being a star quarterback at HBCU Alcorn State to becoming a Heisman Trophy finalist and, eventually, the No. 3 pick in the 1995 NFL Draft by the Houston Oilers. He led the Tennessee Titans to Super Bowl XXXIV. He was the…

Three days after the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) announced that world No. 1 Jannik Sinner had tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug, the Italian confirmed that he had parted ways with the two men at the heart of the doping case that rocked the tennis world this week. In a press conference Friday, he…

ST ANDREWS, Scotland — As the No. 1 player in the world, Nelly Korda has become used to wearing a target on her back. Heavy expectation necessitates a sudden fall and, so, when she followed a run of six wins in seven tournaments with three successive missed cuts, gravity introduced itself without a handshake. Since…

Super Bowl-winning coaches Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll are potentially closer to Canton as the Pro Football Hall of Fame has revised its selection process, reducing the time a coach must wait to become eligible for enshrinement. But other changes to the process could raise the bar for enshrinement. Coaches now will only have to…

The Olympics are an event that can fuel growth in interest and popularity, not just for a given sport or individual athlete, but for an array of collectibles, as well. The global nature of the Olympics, the way they cross-pollinate fans of different sports and draw in very casual or even non-sports fans — it’s…

It may not be September yet. But you can definitely see it from here. And you know what I see on my viewfinder? I see a few guys who are about to blow up the record book. Want a sneak preview? Or course you do. Which means it’s time once again to roll out another…

If you spent the offseason wondering what the heck is going on in college football at what feels like the sport’s most critical juncture in history, fear not. The one-of-a-kind sport we all know and love has changed — a lot. But here at The Athletic, we’re experiencing all of those changes right along with…

William McMichael, the coach at Detroit’s Mumford High School, insisted he wasn’t looking for publicity when he offered a position to Connor Stalions, the staffer at the center of Michigan’s sign-stealing scandal and the central character in an upcoming Netflix documentary. Publicity found him anyway. Mumford, a program that has gone 2-16 the past two…

After five months of slow and steady, baseball is about to shift into fast and furious mode. It’s almost September, which means the annual all-out sprint to the postseason is about to begin. Unless it’s already happened, and we missed it. The oddsmakers at FanGraphs seem to think the playoff picture is all but set…

After a quick aperitivo, nearly 30,000 fans will pass through the archway at the Stadio Ennio Tardini, no doubt the strains of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida reverberating around the old ground, as they take their seats for newly promoted Parma’s game against AC Milan on Saturday. In the United States, the action could theoretically reach 125million…