World Sports

A dozen games into the season, the question surrounding UCLA has shifted. It’s no longer what it’s going to take for the Bruins to keep winning but what will be required for them to lose a game. UCLA played a ragged, turnover-filled first half Saturday afternoon at T-Mobile Arena and didn’t shoot particularly well over the final 20 minutes. None of it mattered. The second-ranked Bruins prevailed fairly comfortably, 86-73,…

If you haven’t kept a close eye on the fitness industry recently, you might have missed a rather odd development. Athletic clothing company Under Armour has been busy snagging up fitness apps like Map My Run, Endomondo, and My Fitness Pal. It’s the key part of a larger strategy to integrate the various tracking services and devices that fitness nuts use under one banner. It should come as no surprise,…

Leicester City If the most important factor for the judges is which team’s achievement was the most unlikely, they should look no further than Leicester City. Money doesn’t just talk in the Premier League, it stands an inch from your ear and shouts into it with a megaphone, and no one, probably not even Claudio Ranieri’s mother, had Leicester down as title contenders. Promoted from the Championship in 2014, they…

Some say sport builds character, while others argue that it reveals character. The truth is that sport is filled with characters, some sketchy, others reckless, and still others entirely bizarre. We watch sports for the triumphs, but also for the failures and the foibles, for the incomprehensible intersection of man’s best efforts and his most ignominious moments. Here, then, culled from a list that could have been five times as…

Sager was diagnosed with leukemia in 2014, and went through multiple courses of treatment, including chemotherapy and stem cell transplants, to try to beat back the illness. After missing nearly a year, he was cleared to return to television in March 2015, only to see the illness return, forcing him to once again step away from his duties. After several more months of treatment, including a transplant of bone marrow…

Criminal court, civil court, on-campus hearing: There are many places to try to determine if a sexual assault happened. A sports column is pretty low on that list. So let’s say, up front, that we don’t know if 10 University of Minnesota football players are guilty of an obscene crime. What we do know is this: 1. Police did not charge the players after a Sept. 2 incident.2. The…

Major League Baseball’s streaming-technology unit is looking to break into the hot arena of competitive videogaming by partnering with the creator of one of the world’s most popular computer games. The agreement, which was announced Friday, calls for MLB’s BAMTech to pay a minimum $300 million through 2023 to Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s Riot Games for the exclusive rights to stream “League of Legends” competitions. BAMTech, a…

Major League Baseball’s streaming-technology unit is looking to break into the hot arena of competitive videogaming by partnering with the creator of one of the world’s most popular computer games. The agreement, which was announced Friday, calls for MLB’s BAMTech to pay a minimum $300 million through 2023 to Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s Riot Games for the exclusive rights to stream “League of Legends” competitions. BAMTech, a…

One Thursday during Les Miles’s tenure as Oklahoma State’s head coach, a message surfaced on an answering machine inside the Cowboys’ football facility, with a man’s voice making a solemn claim: He had watched practice of Oklahoma State’s opponent and learned its plays. The message detailed a dozen plays and formations for the Cowboys to prepare for. “It was really, really good stuff,” Miles said. “The only thing is, we…

Major League Baseball’s streaming-technology unit is looking to break into the hot arena of competitive videogaming by partnering with the creator of one of the world’s most popular computer games. The agreement, expected to be announced…

It was a year of firsts, lasts, and loss in the world of sports documented in millions of photographs. In one image, LeBron James bowed his head, tears of joy in his eyes, as he fulfilled a promise—for the first time in the franchise’s history, the Cleveland Cavaliers were NBA Champions. At the Rio Olympics, Usain Bolt preserved another title as World’s Fastest Man, grinning in a photograph captured by…

1) Cathal Dennehy There are some great moments in sport that are elevated still further by a great piece of commentary. Sometimes – as with the great Richie Bernaud – these moments are embellished with quick wit and composure, but mostly – in keeping with the high-octane sport around them – it is fully-grown adults going off script, spontaneously combusting to bring the fervour of the action to the viewer…

Craig Sager, a television sportscaster whose outlandish outfits, decades interviewing the biggest names in basketball and public fight with cancer made him a beloved personality in the National Basketball Association, died Dec. 15, two days after his induction into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame. He was 65. His death was announced by Turner Sports, where he worked as a broadcaster. Other details, including the place of his death, were…

Plenty of parents drive kids to soccer tournaments, fork out fees for tennis lessons and travel to lacrosse camps. JoAnn and Ike Moradshahi have them all beat: The couple has moved across state lines three times in as many years so that their 16-year-old son Bryon can play ice hockey. “I don’t exactly like packing and moving, but it’s part of the game,” said Ms. Moradshahi, who is 55. Three…

Ryan Lochte Shortly before the Rio Olympics Lochte gave an interview to GQ in which he said: “Now that I’m more mature, it’s time to focus on the swimming part [of his life] and less on the outside part.” Sadly it turned out he wasn’t more mature after all. He won one relay gold, but also caught the eye when his freshly bleached hair reacted to the chlorine in the…

reader comments 16 Game Details Developer: Ubisoft AnnecyPublisher: UbisoftPlatform: PS4, Xbox One, Windows PC (PS4 reviewed)Rating: T for TeenRelease Date: December 2 (WW)Price: £42, $60Links: Amazon | Official Website Ubisoft’s Steep, while not wholly original in and of itself, is new in the context of extreme sports games. Essentially, it’s the snowboarding edition of Watch Dogs, The Crew, or Assassin’s Creed, complete with all those wonderful Ubisoft idiosyncrasies that you either love or loathe. There’s a…

JD Sports is to launch an investigation into conditions at its Kingsway warehouse near Rochdale after a Channel 4 documentary found workers claiming it was “worse than a prison”. The retailer denied the claims, saying in a stock exchange statement it was “deeply disappointed and concerned by the footage broadcast by Channel 4”. “Whilst we do not believe it to be an accurate reflection of our culture, the vast majority…

You would have thought that the most baffling thing to happen this week in college athletics would be the curious case of a Wake Forest football radio broadcaster getting fired for sharing “confidential and proprietary game preparations on multiple occasions” with opposing teams over the past few years. There is nothing like the radio guy selling out his own program, where he used to coach and play, no less. Then,…

Cable TV channels that televise games of local professional sports teams are highly popular among sports fans, a Nielsen report commissioned by Fox Sports has found. The study, released Wednesday, revealed that in certain markets, including Detroit and St. Louis, fans ranked the local regional sports channel as more essential than ESPN, Discovery, History or HBO. The findings were derived from a survey of 1,500 pay-TV subscribers who identified themselves as sports fans, which means the study was not necessarily representative of…

Log In Don’t have an account? Sign up here »