It was a little boring to watch it. I don’t know how people go out there and watch games. Now I know why sometimes people don’t come to games. | | | | A run saved is as good as a run earned. Ask Jackie Bradley Jr.
(Billie Weiss/Boston Red Sox/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “It was a little boring to watch it. I don’t know how people go out there and watch games. Now I know why sometimes people don’t come to games.”
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| | rantnrave:// NBA free agency is almost over and there's already talk about summer 2018. We're obsessed with player movement. It doesn't help that the upcoming NBA season has been decided. Congrats on the back-to-back titles, GOLDEN STATE. But free agency in sports' modern era has redefined the relationship between fans and athletes. It's not as common anymore for fans to root for stars just because they're the best players on their favorite teams. With social media, video games, fantasy sports, NBA LEAGUE PASS, NFL REDZONE and national TV contracts, we can branch out past our local teams and choose from the entire landscape of options. You can be a CELTICS fan or a JAMES HARDEN fan. The players are no longer beholden to their teams either. The biggest NBA stars get paid as much, if not more, by their shoe companies. LEBRON JAMES will earn $33.3 million from the CAVS next season. NIKE could pay him more than a billion dollars over his lifetime. Which organization should be LeBron's top priority? For fans, there's less investment in wins and losses and more intrigue in the players and drama. Transactions are as big a soap opera as the games. What does loyalty in pro sports even mean?... It's hard to overstate the outrage there will be if JOHNNY MANZIEL gets an NFL job before COLIN KAEPERNICK. Manziel is a bust. He flamed out in CLEVELAND, has been accused of hitting his ex-girlfriend, and lacks any redeeming moment in his pro career. Yet, he says he's had a few conversations with teams about a job. Meanwhile, Kaepernick remains unemployed. The NFL is already on a razor's edge with the former 49ERS star, straining whatever goodwill it has with a not-insignificant portion of its fan base while Kaepernick seems like he's being blackballed out of the league. Commissioner ROGER GOODELL claims Kaepernick's unemployment is on merit but does that argument fall flat if Manziel lands a job? DAVE ZIRIN writes that the NFL sees Manziel as one of its own and Kaepernick as a threat. Is he right?... Can out-of-home viewership numbers prop up TV ratings?... ALIBABA is trying to grow a sports industry in CHINA. It's taking the long view. | | | - Mike Vorkunov, curator |
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 | Vulture |
| Or is comparing athletes and actors apples and oranges? | | |
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 | ESPN |
| The annual games of calcio storico -- part football, part fighting, part historical recreation -- represent something more than the blood and sweat the players proudly leave on the sands of Florence's Piazza Santa Croce. | | |
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 | USgamer |
| The history of the Evolution Championship Series as told by the people who have been there from the beginning. | | |
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 | The Nation |
| In Colin Kaepernick, NFL owners see a threat. In Johnny Manziel, they see themselves. | | |
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 | Motherboard |
| "I think gaming is the thing that kept me going when I went blind.” | | |
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 | Philadelphia Inquirer |
| A deadly avalanche claimed the lives of seven boys. Years later a survivor revisited the horror. | | |
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 | Polygon |
| When your games become your ghosts. | | |
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 | The Washington Post |
| Baseball resists NBA-style superteams, but the Dodgers have assembled their sport's version of one. | | |
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 | SLAMonline |
| If BBB succeeds, is the next big trend going to be prospects ditching the usual shoe companies in favor of the independent route? | | |
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 | The Undefeated |
| Steelers coach Mike Tomlin: ‘There’s a great deal of confidence in being from this place.’ | | |
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 | Sports Business Daily |
| Fox Sports averaged 35.1 million viewers for its Redskins-Cowboys game last Thanksgiving, making it the most-viewed regular-season NFL game in Fox Sports’ history and the NFL’s biggest regular-season TV audience since 1995. | | |
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 | Vice Sports |
| "Places I thought were never possible to go to because of my disability became a reality in competing in fighting games." | | |
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 | Bleacher Report |
| What is Charlie Blackmon looking at? He is stepping out of the batter's box and staring straight up into the night sky. It is 2010, and Blackmon is with the Double-A Tulsa Drillers. What is it? Is there a UFO swooping in? A Baseball God to beseech for more hits? | | |
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 | USA TODAY |
| The longest-tenured and winningest football coach at Oklahoma State, is about to turn 50. His methods might seem outlandish, but they work. | | |
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 | GQ |
| After 19 Grand Slam championships, there’s still so much to learn from watching Roger Federer play. | | |
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 | ThinkProgress |
| A new study finds the coverage is pretty racist, too. | | |
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 | FiveThirtyEight |
| Who doesn’t enjoy the old-fashioned fun of watching baseballs be launched into the atmosphere? (Judging from the ratings for last week’s Home Run Derby,1 nobody -- that’s who.) As a celebration of the long ball, then, we used data from ESPN’s Home Run Tracker to plot out just how far MLB’s hitters have bashed the ball over the years. | | |
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 | Bloomberg |
| The company is working with every player to develop China’s sports business, which is 1/10th the size of the U.S. | | |
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 | OZY |
| The tug-of-war between cable and streaming has led to a major face-lift for sports networks. | | |
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| Bloomberg |
| Pro athletes who accept sub-market-value contracts aren't subsidizing greedy owners. They're making a business judgment. | | |
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| © Copyright 2017, The REDEF Group |
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