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Love is nothing

Balls, Pucks, and Monster Trucks
Here’s what I know about tennis: if you’ve got love, you’ve got nothing. From love to 15 to 30 to whatever comes between 30 and the sets and the matches, with those advantage points and tiebreakers thrown in, tennis scoring is less intuitive to me than the Cyrillic alphabet is after eight beers, so who cares? But, things change.

By RICK WORMWOOD | September 09, 2009

Going streaking

Snapping out of the annual NFL training-camp lull. Plus, Plaxico Burress gets his.
It has been an unusually quiet week or so in sports crime, which is perhaps not unexpected, since this is the one time of year when the most arrest-prone class of athletes in America — NFL players — are sequestered in training camps and usually too dog-tired from two-a-days and running suicides to bother to punch out bar skanks or kick in police cruiser windows.

By MATT TAIBBI | August 12, 2009

Stopping Traffic

The Fighting Sioux clean out the garage. Plus, quincy carter continues his slide.
North Dakota might not be the first place you think of when it comes to sports crime, but if the players up there maintain their recent pace, we might soon be listing the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux alongside such infamous programs as the University of Miami Hurricanes and the Florida State University Seminoles.

By MATT TAIBBI | August 05, 2009

Cry me an Old Man River

Balls, Pucks, and Monster Trucks
Readers of this column over the past two years (my mom and my Aunt Theresa, mostly) know that I rabidly support my alma mater's basketball team, the University of Memphis Tigers. This past April, our head coach John Calipari relinquished the Tiger reins to take over at Kentucky.

By RICK WORMWOOD | June 17, 2009

Patriots daze

The ugly legacy of the late-'80s Pats gets even uglier
Ever heard of Eric Naposki? Probably not. He played linebacker for the Patriots in the late 1980s.

By MATT TAIBBI | May 27, 2009

Cocaine blues

Jags great Jimmy Smith done in by illegal tint and an imaginary friend. Plus, the Nevada Wolf Pack goes down shooting.
Wow. That's all I can say after seeing the mug shot of former Jacksonville Jaguars star wide receiver Jimmy Smith, busted last week on pot and crack charges.

By MATT TAIBBI | April 29, 2009

Ballspuck: Where's the hate?

Say it with me: Manchester totally sucks!
I think Portland sports fans should get their hate on. And who should we hate? The answer is easy and plausible: we should hate Manchester, New Hampshire.

By RICK WORMWOOD | April 22, 2009

Life on the D-list

Name that team
Last month Portland learned we'd be getting an expansion franchise in the NBA's D-League.

By RICK WORMWOOD | March 25, 2009

Sports blotter: Steamrolled again

Brian Bosworth gets leveled by John Law, and Marshawn Lynch hops on the Chris Henry express
Brian Bosworth gets a DUI; Marshawn Lynch pleads guilty to a gun charge

By MATT TAIBBI | March 12, 2009

The wild bunch

The 15 craziest athletes in Boston sports history
Stephon Marbury is just the latest in a long and illustrious line of Boston athletes whose tenure here was marked by kooky, flamboyant, inscrutable, or bad behavior.

By MIKE MILIARD | March 04, 2009

How weird is Stephon Marbury?

Brace yourselves for the Starbury show, starring Stephon Marbury — perhaps the strangest pro athlete ever to suit up in a Celtics uniform.
In 1994's The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams , author Darcy Frey offers potent evidence that the matchlessly bizarre Celtic Stephon Marbury dates back at least to early adolescence.

By ADAM REILLY | March 10, 2009

Bring back Maris

Balls, Pucks and Monster Trucks
Alex Rodriguez, media lightning rod and three-time American League MVP, was never my favorite, even before he wore pinstripes.

By RICK WORMWOOD | February 26, 2009

Busting Balls: 20 ways to improve sports

We blow the whistle on the ridiculous rules and quirks that make the games lame
College football is stupid. Everybody knows it.

By LANCE GOULD | January 12, 2009

Barkley edition

Barkley Rules
Thank you, Charles Barkley. Thank you!

By MATT TAIBBI | January 07, 2009

Annus horribilis

Balls, pucks, and Monster Trucks
It’s New Year’s, a time for reckoning. With the notable exception of the Celtics, the past twelve months were tough on my teams, starting with a huge, unforgettable disaster.

By RICK WORMWOOD | December 31, 2008

Hello, Larry

Sports blotter: "End of an era" edition
Absolutely nothing is funny about the Lawrence Phillips case, so let’s not even go there — there isn’t a single laugh to be found in this past week’s news that the onetime Next Jim Brown was sentenced to 10 years in Cali.

By MATT TAIBBI | October 16, 2008