An important thing to remember about Andre Villas-Boas is that he had ridiculously good hair. You don’t spend a record-shattering €15 million (£12.9; $16.3m) fee to sign a rookie manager away from Porto unless you’re pretty sure you know what you’re getting, and one thing Chelsea knew for certain, back in the heady days of […]

Matt Blake texted Cleveland Guardians pitcher Shane Bieber a conciliatory message over the weekend. As a member of the Cleveland player-development system in the 2010s, Blake aided Bieber’s rise from college walk-on to unanimous American League Cy Young Award winner in 2020. For a time, Bieber represented the modern model for the manufacturing of a […]

NBA players have always gotten an earful from fans, whether at home or on the road. It comes with the job. But this season, it’s getting darker. The recent surge in legalized gambling in every pro league, and throughout college athletics, has impacted American sports in ways thought unimaginable just a few years ago. But […]

NFL free agency continues, but with the major signings and trades complete, it’s time to check in with executives around the league for thoughts on all 32 teams’ moves to this point. There is so much to discuss, from Kirk Cousins’ Minnesota exit to the New York Jets’ desperation, the Green Bay Packers’ big additions […]

In the story Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter Ippei Mizuhara initially told to ESPN, the two men logged into Ohtani’s bank account together on eight or nine occasions in 2023 and wired increments of $500,000 to Mathew Bowyer, an alleged illegal bookmaker under federal investigation. In the story Ohtani told the public days after Mizuhara recanted his initial […]

OAKLAND — The quarterback wasn’t there. No mention of his name across two hours. Maybe there was no need. The mere prospect of a pairing had already served its purpose — driving news cycles, stirring speculation, drumming up intrigue around a longshot bid for the White House by an outsider intent on defying political norms. […]

A U.S. District judge in Florida sentenced a convicted sex offender to 220 years in federal prison for producing, receiving and possessing child sex abuse material, and for hacking the jumbotron in the Jacksonville Jaguars’ stadium after the team did not renew his contract upon learning that he was a registered sex offender. U.S. District […]

More than 40 members of Ukraine’s national-team party were spread around the centre circle of Wroclaw’s Tarczynski Arena. Players, coaches and backroom staff locked their gaze on the 30,000 spectators sporting blue and yellow as they revved up their version of the Viking thunderclap. Iceland, the architects of that celebration during the 2016 European Championship, […]

For the second-straight NCAA Tournament, the Stanford Cardinal faced a fourth-quarter deficit on their home court in the second round, staring down the possibility of a stunning upset. As the Pac-12 player of the year Cameron Brink spent most of the night in foul trouble against No. 7 Iowa State, the No. 2 Cardinal turned […]

By Zack Meisel, Cody Stavenhagen and Stephen J. Nesbitt GOODYEAR, Ariz. — A decade ago, on a dusty baseball diamond in Puerto Rico, a veteran pitcher shared with Fernando Cruz the secrets of throwing a splitter, a pitch treated like a black-market product, a dark art best learned in the shadows and deployed at one’s […]