Football
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The Inside Story of Shedeur Sanders’ Unique Draft Process April 17, 2025
BOULDER, Colo. -- As Shedeur Sanders left the podium after his news conference at Colorado's pro day, this year known as the "WE AIN'T HARD 2 FIND Showcase 2025," he was greeted by Denver Broncos head coach Sean Payton, who gave him the kind of hug s...
The Unusual Life of Quarterback Caleb Williams April 16, 2025
Caleb Williams, the number-one pick in last year’s NFL draft, has almost blocked out the trauma of his rookie season. The Chicago Bears—the team for which he is the starting quarterback—finished at the very bottom of their division. After a promising...
How the Super Bowl Stole Football’s Soul February 07, 2025
For Americans, bigger is always better. We “go big or go home”. Big Pharma makes our medicine and Big Tech builds our phones. We wash down Big Macs with Big Gulps and jam to Biggie Smalls. College football is much the same. “Big four” bowl games once...
College Football Is Not and Should Not Try to Be the NFL February 03, 2025
In the days following the College Football National Championship Game, Outkick founder Clay Travis took to X to note that:Just 22.1 million viewers watched Ohio State-Notre Dame, the third lowest playoff title game viewership on record. Truly awful n...
The Remarkably Quiet Death of Tackle Football January 27, 2025
Tackle football currently dominates the landscape of our national culture like no sport has done for almost a century. Almost single-handedly, it is keeping the major television networks—otherwise in a death spiral of their own badly broken business ...
The Bowl Games Confound Their Critics January 21, 2025
More than a century after the first Rose Bowl, college football continue to dazzle with its bowl games, confounding those who have prematurely written their obituaries in an era of a 12-team playoff. In game after game, this season’s bowl games provi...
Mike Tirico Has a Note for That January 21, 2025
This NFL season, I was present for the birth of a Mike Tirico Note. Specifics are important. On November 17, the Bengals played the Chargers on Sunday Night Football. The score was tied at 27 with 7:20 left in the fourth quarter. I was standing behin...
Playoff Paradise in the D January 17, 2025
Long before they had their own television show, Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson had each other. After they met at Second City Detroit in the early 2000s, the two hometown boys started bro’ing out over their favorite teams. Robinson, Richardson’s impr...
More Than A Game January 16, 2025
Football at the University of Notre Dame du Lac has never been a matter of mere entertainment. Excellence in football is what made Notre Dame the place Catholic boys from all over the country wanted to go to college. Those with athletic ability dream...
The Year of the NFL’s Running Back Revival January 14, 2025
Two summers ago, the NFL’s running back market hit rock bottom. Saquon Barkley, Josh Jacobs, and Tony Pollard, three veteran starters who had been among the most productive players at the position, had each received the franchise tag in the spring of...
'Landman' Is a Dumb Waste of a Great Premise January 14, 2025
Shortly into the first episode of Landman, Billy Bob Thornton’s protagonist, Tommy Morris, is talking with his seventeen-year-old daughter, Ainsley, at a college football game. He’s just met her quarterback boyfriend, and Tommy asks her if they’re be...
REVIEW: Hateful Jane Austen January 09, 2025
Hate is bad. Minnesota governor and failed vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz declared during the 2024 presidential campaign that there is “no guarantee to free speech on . . . hate speech.” Meanwhile the nation’s most successful entertainment comp...
The Resurgence of the N.F.L. Running Back January 06, 2025
A specter is haunting the National Football League — the specter of the running back. While it would be an exaggeration to say that all the powers of the N.F.L. have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this ghost, it would not be a gross one....
What Happened to the Prime Time Buffaloes? January 02, 2025
After all the talk about finishing the season strong, Colorado’s gridiron heroes looked like they didn’t want to be anywhere near the Alamo Bowl on Saturday night. And based on the lethargic pregame trot of their mascot, Ralphie the Buffalo, neither ...
Loving to Lose December 24, 2024
As a sincere but not vociferous fan of the Cleveland Browns, I have become accustomed to losing records, coaching carousels, quarterback changes, and a litany of high draft picks. Yet, unlike many of my fellow Browns enthusiasts, I have come to savor...
The Resurrection of Bill Belichick December 16, 2024
Some people take up bridge when they retire. Then again, Bill Belichick was never the retiring type. After he left his job as head coach of the New England Patriots, in January, a position that he had held for twenty-four seasons, he only briefly rec...
Did the Crimson Tide Get Rolled? December 16, 2024
For once, the Alabama Crimson Tide didn’t get the benefit of the doubt. Many college football fans in the other 49 states—and in Lee County, Alabama (home of Auburn)—are delighted that the final at-large bid to the inaugural 12-team College Football ...
Will the Bill Belichick Way Work at North Carolina? December 13, 2024
We’ll know how serious Bill Belichick is about trying to turn the University of North Carolina into a college football power once his full staff is announced. If we see Adam Schefter reporting in the next few days that Belichick’s getting the gang ba...
The Year of the American Underdog December 11, 2024
I keep waiting for the Detroit Lions to lose a football game. They should have lost Thursday. Green Bay had the Lions dead to rights and let them off the hook. As the Lions have done time and time again over these last few years, they somehow, dogged...
Ashton Jeanty’s Long Run to College Football Stardom December 06, 2024
For miles and miles, Ashton Jeanty peered out the window of the team bus, watching the European countryside float past him. It was 2018, and Jeanty was a ninth grader on the Naples Middle/High School Wildcats football team, traveling with his teammat...
I Say Forbidden Things About Sports December 02, 2024
I was shocked when I learned that private equity firms plan to take over college football.How is that even possible?...
How I Won the ’89 State Championship December 02, 2024
Thanksgiving is a time for memories. If you’re like me, you probably spent the whole weekend eating leftover turkey and continuing to take joy in the things for which thankfulness grows more powerful over the years. I’m supremely grateful for so many...
The Science of Scheduling a College-Football Season December 02, 2024
On November 23rd, the University of Massachusetts football team played the University of Georgia. It was expected to be less of a game than a slaughter: Georgia was favored by bookmakers to win the game by more than seven touchdowns. The team, which ...
The Divine Comedy of the Dallas Cowboys November 28, 2024
“I am the way into the city of woe, I am the way into eternal pain, I am the way to go among the lost.” —Dante Alighieri, Inferno, 1321“People either love us or hate us, but the most important thing is to be relevant.” —Jerry Jones, from his helicopt...
The People’s Champ Has Lost His People November 26, 2024
Picture this, because it really happened: Dwayne Johnson stands in an IMAX theater, taking Christopher Nolan's seat. "I even asked to let me sit where Chris sits," he said in a recent interview with Imax. "They said, 'Chris sits here.'" He watches Op...
