Week 7 of the NFL season kicked off with great intrigue on Thursday. Sean Payton made his return to New Orleans, the city where he coached for 15 seasons and guided the Saints to their lone Super Bowl victory in February 2010. Payton’s new team, the Denver Broncos, blew out the injury-riddled Saints 33-10 for…

And now, 20 Final Thoughts from a college football weekend filled with wild comebacks, big-time performances and one heck of a mess to clean up off the field in Austin. 1. All the gentlemen who made picks on ESPN’s “College GameDay” set Saturday morning said No. 1 Texas would beat No. 5 Georgia that night.…

At Astakos restaurant in Glyfada, on the edge of the promenade in this quiet Athens suburb, a waiter is busy laying the tables for lunch. It’s Saturday morning, shortly before midday, and the sun is breaking through the clouds as a steady stream of people stroll by on the seafront. Glyfada is only a 20-minute…

Lincoln Riley is the fourth-highest-paid coach in college football, according to USA Today’s database. It’s a pretty safe bet to assume USC is in the top 10 — and probably closer to the top five — in assistant coach salaries. Theoretically, the return for that sort of pay should be top-10 results. It’s Year 3…

By Kennington Smith III, Joe Rexrode and David Ubben KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — No. 11 Tennessee earned a statement 24-17 win on Saturday against No. 7 Alabama, dealing another blow to its rival’s College Football Playoff hopes in the Crimson Tide’s first season under Kalen DeBoer. After a stagnant first half on both sides, Tennessee came…

In the aftermath of his heated exchange with local radio hosts, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has succeeded in one thing: deflection. Despite the team’s blowout loss on his 82nd birthday, Jones has completely taken the heat off his players and coaching staff during their bye week. It’s been all about Jerry’s outburst — very…

NEW YORK — Welcome to one of the strangest postseason series ever played. Can we just call it The Blowout Series? Every day, you think this National League Championship Series is due for a breathtaking October classic. Then you look up at the scoreboard, and it’s 10-2 in the fourth inning. We’re five games into…

MINNEAPOLIS — Cheryl Reeve is familiar with what the hours leading up to Sunday night will bring. The Minnesota Lynx coach has participated in five of the last seven Game 5s in the WNBA Finals. Each of her three assistants was with her for at least one of those contests, too. What’s ahead of her…

CLEVELAND — For a generation, he was as much a part of October as fun-size Snickers bars and pumpkin-spice lattes. Andy Pettitte made 44 starts in baseball’s postseason, logging so many innings that nobody else comes within 50. And every time he took the mound, Pettitte knew the expectation. “I was going to probably throw…

By Tyler Kepner, Chris Kirschner, Brendan Kuty and Zack Meisel CLEVELAND — For the second night in a row, the New York Yankees scored two runs off Emmanuel Clase, the Cleveland Guardians’ struggling star closer. This time, though, they made the runs stand, taking a thrilling 8-6 victory that gave them a three-games-to-one-lead in the…