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RELATED: Qualifying results | See every car, team rosters BROOKLYN, Mich. – If Joey Logano was looking for a good omen for Sunday, he found it on Friday afternoon at Michigan International Speedway. Touring the two-mile track in 35.697 seconds (201.698 mph) during the final round of knockout qualifying for Sunday’s Pure Michigan 400 (2 p.m. ET on NBCSN), Logano edged Jimmie Johnson (201.523 mph) for the top starting spot by…

When ESPN sneezes, the entire sports world shivers. The largest force in the sports TV universe, ESPN has lost more than 11 million subscribers since 2011 and more than 4 million since last summer. The cable giant — now in 88.78 million homes, according to Nielsen — has been dramatically affected by two factors: Viewers known as cord-cutters are shunning cable or satellite entirely and current subscribers are electing to…

Medaling at the Olympics is nice. You can get your national anthem played, everyone claps. The McDonald’s in the Olympic Village slides you a free 20-piece McNugget (unconfirmed). But the most underrated part is the cash. Many Olympic athletes are amateurs incapable of accepting financial benefits through sponsorships, so the cash their sport’s national Olympic committee tenders for medals is the only direct financial gain they can see for their work….

A rainbow arches across the sky over Lake Olmstead Stadium during the playing of the national anthem as Class-A Augusta GreenJackets play the Delmarva Shorebirds in Augusta on July 15. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post) AUGUSTA, Ga. — They trickled into the mid-July night, a rain-shortened loss beginning their Friday night early. A 25-year-old catcher hung back. Matt Paré chatted with teammates and underwent a long treatment session as other Augusta…

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As more people watch videos on digital platforms, their viewing behaviors are changing. Whistle Sports believes young viewers ages 25 and under are even more different than previous generations. When it comes to sports content, they don’t want to sit back and passively watch: They want to create their own videos. “Traditional sports media is old guys in a production truck or old guys in suits telling you what to…

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Medaling at the Olympics is nice. You can get your national anthem played, everyone claps. The McDonald’s in the Olympic Village slides you a free 20-piece McNugget (unconfirmed). But the most underrated part is the cash. Many Olympic athletes are amateurs incapable of accepting financial benefits through sponsorships, so the cash their sport’s national Olympic committee tenders for medals is the only direct financial gain they can see for their work….

Enlarge this image Mosquitoes hover around South Korea’s bronze medalist Ki Bo Bae during the medal ceremony for archery, held on Aug. 11 at the Rio Games. Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images Mosquitoes hover around South Korea’s bronze medalist Ki Bo Bae during the medal ceremony for archery, held on Aug. 11 at the Rio Games. Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images Not 1,000. Not 50. Not even…

For those who are unfamiliar with my thought process, I aim to add as many home run hitters as possible to my daily fantasy baseball lineups. One way of doing that is to look at a player’s isolated power numbers (ISO). The ISO statistic removes singles and provides a larger weight for each extra-base hit. I also use the weighted on-base average (wOBA) metric. This stat takes every positive outcome into consideration. Last year,…

FOX Sports GO has now arrived on Apple TV, allowing viewers to watch up to four games at the same time, thanks to an innovative split-screen interface that lets you arrange video feeds side-by-side, picture-in-picture style, or in a mosaic pattern. With the app, you’ll be able to stream from channels including Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, Fox Soccer Plus, Fox Deportes, and Fox College Sports, as well as…

We have a problem that needs to be addressed. One that has been going on for the last 13 summers, and likely much longer. One I’d like very much to rectify. Every summer I compile the list of the 25 Most Influential People in Oregon sports. I’ve been publishing the list since 2004. The glaring problem again this year? If my list were a movie, it would be titled, “Sausage…

It used to be that college football fans cared if their team was better than your team. Now they also care if their conference is better than your conference. We at USA TODAY Sports wanted to help clarify the answer by collecting and analyzing performance data for every FBS team in every conference. By combining strength of schedule data, rankings from the College Football Computer Composite, points per game differential,…

BETHESDA, Md.—Olympic swimming champion Katie Ledecky has broken records in pools around the globe. But in this affluent Washington, D.C., suburb, not even gold medals are enough to win quick entry into the Little Falls Swimming Club. Using an arcane set of rules, the club each spring welcomes a few newcomers into its membership, which is capped at 377 families. Competition is so intense that residents have been known to…

Some fools came to the Rio Olympics and opted to stay in their own hotel rooms, alone. Bold move, but I stayed in the Olympic media village, a newly built complex about 45 minutes away from the main Olympic park that will hypothetically be turned into condos in the near future. It had its quirks — it wasn’t really a hotel, so the inexperienced staff took about three hours to…

A rainbow arches across the sky over Lake Olmstead Stadium during the playing of the national anthem as Class-A Augusta GreenJackets play the Delmarva Shorebirds in Augusta on July 15. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post) AUGUSTA, Ga. — They trickled into the mid-July night, a rain-shortened loss beginning their Friday night early. A 25-year-old catcher hung back. Matt Paré chatted with teammates and underwent a long treatment session as other Augusta…

Minor league baseball is the gift that keeps on giving. Not only do they have some of the weirdest promotions you’ll ever see at a sporting event, but some of those promotions go awry and lead to livestock marching across the entire length of the outfield in the middle of a game. That’s what happened during Thursday night’s Class A game between the Batavia Muckdogs (Marlins) and the State College…

Listen, we know it’s tough to catch up on everything happening in the baseball world each morning. There are all kinds of stories, rumors, game coverage and Vines of dudes getting hit in the beans every day. Trying to find all of it while on your way to work or sitting at your desk just isn’t easy. It’s OK, though, we’re going to do the heavy lifting for you each…

In my view, God invented baseball to provide a sanctuary from the fallen world of politics. I believe I’ve missed two televised Red Sox games this year. To me, the seven-month major league season is the sporting equivalent of, say, ”Downton Abbey” — a complex, seemingly endless narrative filled with surprising events and unforgettable characters. My earliest specific baseball memory is racing into the bathroom where the old man was…

Twenty Major League teams will attend Tim Tebow’s baseball workout, suggesting there are some who believe he actually has a chance to make a positive impact on an organization. Like many other level-headed people, I am skeptical. Tebow’s trainer and Gary Sheffield previously expressed belief the former Heisman Trophy winner is secretly a spectacular baseball player just waiting for an opportunity. Former closer David Aardsma also believes Tebow is legit…