Ask any forward tagged with the ‘super sub’ label if they take pride in it, and you’ll get the same response. “I hate it,” says Adam Le Fondre, who scored eight of his 12 Premier League goals after starting as a substitute. “I have always thought I am good enough to impact the game from…

We’ve reached the division round of the American League playoff marathon and one division reigns supreme — the AL Central. Much maligned in recent years and home to the worst team in MLB history, the AL Central is nonetheless the only division in the American League guaranteed to have at least one representative in the…

The Wild Card Round has ended and the stage is set for the National League Division Series, which features not one but two storied rivalries — Mets–Phillies and Dodgers–Padres. If the regular season match-ups are any indication, the Phillies and Mets battle could be a slugfest. The two teams almost split the regular-season head-to-head, though…

The unofficial quarter mark of the 2024 season brings a pair of 4-0 teams traveling wildly different paths, a renewed rivalry between two of the league’s banner franchises, the year’s first London excursion, trade speculation and more. Our NFL writers Mike Sando, Zak Keefer and Jeff Howe discuss some of Week 5’s best storylines and…

Underdog (uhn-der-dawg): noun 1. A predicted loser in a struggle or contest2. A victim of injustice of persecution CLEVELAND — When Will Vest went home for the birth of his second child in late August, the Detroit Tigers’ playoff odds were 2.9 percent. While he was away on the paternity list, Vest texted a group…

LAS VEGAS — Becky Hammon has said all season that she has been waiting for the game when all of her Las Vegas guards click on all cylinders. In 2023, the three-headed monster of Chelsea Gray, Jackie Young and Kelsey Plum was an unstoppable unit most nights, culminating in a WNBA Finals series when the…

Something happened in Luxembourg on Friday that will either bring an end to football’s transfer system as we know it, make the stars even richer, jeopardise player development and ruin hundreds of clubs across Europe, or it will make FIFA rewrite a couple of sentences in its rulebook. As Sliding Doors moments go, that’s a…

Consider it a high-stakes game of telephone. You may have noticed the uptick of college football quarterbacks cupping their helmets to muffle the sounds of the loudest stadiums in the country. That’s because coach-to-player helmet communication arrived this season for all 134 Football Bowl Subdivision programs. Thirty years after the NFL debuted the technology, the…

It is only October, so the 2025 NFL Draft’s first-round picture is still very much in flux as scouts make campus visits all over the country. Aside from some of the quarterbacks, most of the players on my initial top-50 board have played up to expectations and will be in the mix to be drafted…

ATLANTA — KhaDarel Hodge’s left thigh pad has the silhouette of a guitar on it. His right thigh pad reads “Rock Out” in script letters. They are the remnants of a touchdown celebration he developed when he played in Cleveland, one of many stops in a long and mostly anonymous football career. Hodge mimics breaking…